Tag: thrillers

A hint of gold glistened in the sand. It was a watch, no doubt about it. A watch… attached to a body.

Criminal psychologist Robyn Adams is at breaking point after a previous case resulted in an attempt on her own life. But as she sits in the car about to head home, her phone rings. It’s Robyn’s cousin, Vicky Carter, who she hasn’t seen or heard from in years.

Vicky’s voice cracks down the phone. Her husband, Simon, has been found buried on Golden Sands beach. Desperate to help and determined not to let her last case get the better of her, Robyn returns to the coastal village where she spent summers with Vicky as a child.

Robyn knows that she has let Vicky down in the past and is set on making up for lost time. Throwing herself into the case, she combs through evidence, intent on discovering a lead that will help the local police.

But there is clearly someone who wants Robyn gone. She is convinced someone is watching her and when she begins to receive threatening notes, Robyn knows that she could be risking her life…

But Robyn won’t leave again – she owes it to Vicky to stay.

My thoughts:

An enjoyable thriller, where one person’s growing paranoia threatens to unravel everything around them.

Robyn needs a break, moving straight from a serial killer case that could have killed her to a more personal one involving her family members has a detrimental affect on her mental wellbeing and sends her spiralling.

Her past resurfaces and her relationship with her cousin threatens to fall apart completely. Complicating matters is her rocky professional agreement with the local police and her decision to try and solve the murder on her own.

The case takes a back seat to Robyn’s growing crisis and becomes more of a book about her not managing her issues and how dangerous that can be.

I found this book interesting and enjoyable as it was more than the average thriller it initially appeared to be.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my o

YOU HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN.

THEY HAVEN’T FORGIVEN.

Leah Wallace has just achieved her dream of becoming editor at a regional paper. On her first day a 15-year-old girl, Hope Hooper-Smith, is reported missing. The police fear that she has been abducted.

Hours later, another teenage girl goes missing. But this girl, Tilly Bowers, is from a troubled background and is a habitual runaway. Leah decides to run the Hope’s abduction on the front page, while Tilly only gets a small mention on page eighteen. The next day, Hope is found unharmed at a train station. But Tilly is never seen or heard from again.

Sixteen years later, a TV documentary questions Leah’s decision not to give Tilly’s case immediate coverage, implying that she could have cost Tilly her life, and Leah starts receiving death threats online.

Then mysterious paper dolls begin appearing, cut from the newspapers Leah used to edit, and she suspects that an intruder has been in the house. Leah becomes convinced that someone wants to punish her for the part she played in Tilly’s disappearance. But just how far will they go to make her pay?

My thoughts:

Creepy paper dolls and candles, doors left open, footsteps in the hallway, Leah feels like she’s losing it, her family are worried. Who is coming after her?

This was a nicely creepy thriller, with weird goings on contrasted with every day activities like dropping the kids off and walking the dog; giving it the slightly off-kilter feeling that Leah experiences.

I honestly didn’t see the twist coming and had several wrong ideas about the villain of the piece. The sub plots are so cleverly done, leading you away from the stalking and off onto other tangents.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

You love him. You trust him. You can’t escape him.

Mia thinks she has escaped her controlling ex-husband, Rob. She’s found herself a new home, a new boyfriend and a new life.
But when the police arrive to tell her that Rob has been found dead on his boat, things quickly fall apart. Mia is terrified she’ll be suspected, however the police are keeping all options open. They know Mia had reason to hate her ex-husband, but she’s not the only one. Plenty of people wanted Rob Creavy dead, not least his new wife, Rachel.
What they don’t know is that Mia has a secret, one she’s desperate to protect.

But someone else knows. Someone with very dark secrets of their own . . .

My thoughts:

Coercive control or gaslighting is in the news a lot more recently, an insidious form of abuse that can be more easily hidden than the marks of physical violence. Rob is a skilled manipulator and con man. Mia, Rachel and plenty of other women suffered at his hands. So clearly there are people who want him dead.

The plot twists and turns, flashing back to Mia’s turbulent marriage and to the present and the investigation into Rob’s death.

Lots of red herrings pop up, little plot cul de sacs that trick the reader into going “a-ha!” incorrectly. Mia makes some of the same errors.

The sting at the end, after the case appears to be solved is very clever and makes you reconsider some of the characters and their actions.

A very enjoyable and clever thriller.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

Sophie Angel is the night lawyer. Once a week, she’s the one who decides what the papers can and can’t say.

During the day, she’s a barrister. She struggles for justice in a system that’s close to collapse, where she confronts the most dangerous aspects of humanity.

Her life changes when a wealthy Russian offers her the biggest case of her career, a rape trial with a seemingly innocent client.

But is someone manipulating Sophie from the shadows? With her marriage under strain and haunted by nightmares from the past, Sophie must find the answer to these questions before it’s too late.

This is a story about betrayal, trust, guilt and innocence, played out from the courtrooms of London to the darkest corners of Soviet era Moscow.

My thoughts:

This was a really interesting thriller that didn’t go where the synopsis suggests. It’s not Sophie’s Moscow connection that puts her in danger, or her work at the newspaper.

Sophie is an interesting character and this books gives a glimpse into the reality of life as a barrister under a system where there’s no guarantee of getting paid unless you take cases, some of which might make you very uncomfortable.

Sophie really grew as the plot unfolded, stepping into her own rightful place, demonstrating her competence and intelligence, in and out of the court room.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

A gruesome discovery unravels a dark trail of murder and madness.

A six-year-old girl sneaks out of bed to capture a mermaid but instead discovers a dead body. Terrified and unable to make sense of what she sees, she locks the vision deep inside her mind.
Ten years later, Lily is introduced to the charismatic Flo and they become best friends. But Lily is guilt-ridden – she is hiding a terrible secret which has the power to destroy both their lives.
When Flo’s father is accused of killing a schoolgirl, the horrors of Lily’s past come bubbling to the surface. Lily knows that, whatever the consequences, she has to make things right. She must go back to the events of her childhood and face what happened at the boat house all those years ago.
Can Lily and Flo discover what is hiding in the murky waters of the lake before the killer strikes again?

Charlie has been writing for years but it was taking a creative writing course in 2018 which gave her the gentle kick she needed to finish her debut novel.

Charlie is very much a morning person and likes nothing more than committing a fictional murder before her first coffee of the day. She studied Theology at Worcester College, Oxford and now lives in a Leicestershire village with her husband, three teenagers and golden retriever.

Website Twitter

My thoughts:

There’s a woozy, disjointed feel to this tale of perverse sisterhood that mimics Lily’s lost memories and the past she can’t piece together.

At first I thought we were in My Sister, The Serial Killer territory but then it veered off somewhere completely different. In fact it does that several times, keeping the reader on their toes as Grace’s facade starts to slip and the trail of bodies begin to unravel behind her.

Shocking and chilling, the twists keep coming and I didn’t really know what to expect. A clever, clever book.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

Where is Hannah?
When Kyle’s wife Hannah goes missing, the whole town is out in force to try to find her. One person knows where she is. One person is keeping a secret.
Detective Inspector Simon Peters and Detective Kerry Lawlor have been brought in to investigate the case, but Hannah has left no traces and Kyle has no clues.
Local Belfast resident Julia Matthews joins the #FindHannah campaign and becomes friendly with Kyle, sympathising with his tragedy. As Julia becomes more involved in the case than she bargained for, she begins to uncover more secrets than the Police ever could.
Julia was only trying to help, but has she become drawn into a web of mystery that she can’t escape?

Discover a gripping thriller that has you on the edge of your seat!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

THERE’S A SERIAL KILLER ON THE RUN
AND HE’S HIDING IN YOUR HOUSE

Thomas Brogan is a serial killer. With a trail of bodies in his wake and the police hot on his heels, it seems like Thomas has nowhere left to hide. That is until he breaks into an abandoned house at the end of a terrace on a quiet street. And when he climbs up into the loft, he realises that he can drop down into all the other houses through the shared attic space.

That’s when the real fun begins. Because the one thing that Thomas enjoys even more than killing is playing games with his victims – the lonely old woman, the bickering couple, the tempting young newlyweds. And his new neighbours have more than enough dark secrets to make this game his best one yet…

Do you fear The Resident? Soon you’ll be dying to meet him.

My thoughts:

The second creepiest thing I ever saw on TV was an episode of CSI where the murderer was living in the victim’s ceiling. My parents’ house has a huge empty attic, there was a chimney in my room (hello very old house) and I don’t think I slept for a week after that.

The Resident is as creepy but also funnier than that. Honestly bits of it are quite ridiculous, which alleviates the shivers. Thomas might be a very bad man but he is also very human and not the most ingenious of people.

His fixations on the people living in the terrace houses he haunts are pretty bizarre, but wouldn’t we all secretly like to know what goes on in other people’s houses, even if not quite to this extent.

This was really enjoyable, gripping and clever. I now live in a flat and know my upstairs neighbours so no nightmares for me over this thankfully.

(And the number one creepiest thing I’ve ever seen on TV? The human mushroom farm on Hannibal – genuinely makes me want to hurl.)

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

To the outside world Hannah married the perfect man. Behind the closed doors of their imposing home it’s a very different story. Nathan controls everything Hannah does. He chooses her clothes, checks her receipts, and keeps her passport locked away. But why does she let him?

Years before, in the midst of a relentless storm, the tragic events of one night changed everything. And Hannah has been living with the consequences ever since. Keeping Nathan happy. Doing as she’s told.

But the past is about to catch up with them.

Set against the unforgiving backdrop of a Cornish fishing port in the ‘90s, this is a devastating exploration of the power of coercive control in a marriage where nothing is quite as it seems…

My thoughts:

Coercive control is often in the media at the moment as people understand how dangerous it can be, Hannah’s quite frankly, insane, husband Nathan uses it, along with financial abuse, to keep Hannah trapped in an unhappy, and dangerous, marriage, constantly gaslighting and threatening her.

Hannah lives for her son Alex and dog Cass, her only real outlets, unable to drive, with no job or money of her own. She dwells on a terrible incident from her past, which gave Nathan his power, and when a figure from that past comes back into her life, is forced to deal with things that she’s kept locked away.

Shocking, and terribly sad, Hannah’s story is not unique but set amidst the scenic fishing villages of Cornwall, (shout out to Newlyn, home of the best crab!), it seems somehow magnified.

Jennings is a powerful and clever writer and this book gripped me, waiting for Hannah to finally take back control of her own life.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

A stolen painting. A gangster intent on revenge. And nothing is what it seems.

Art consultant Kate Carpenter has an off-the-books sideline in art recovery, dealing with thieves, gangsters and the occasional war criminal to reunite priceless artworks with their owners. But when she refuses a request from the owner of one missing painting, Yuri Sokolov isn’t prepared to take no for an answer.

Her knowledge has cost him millions, he wants revenge, and he isn’t planning to show any mercy. The only way that Kate can get Yuri Sokolov to keep his distance is to find out exactly what happened to his painting, but when she starts scraping away at the surface, she finds that nothing is exactly as it appears.

Don’t Blink is the first book in the Kate Carpenter series.

Buy

Vanessa Robertson has lived in Scotland for over twenty years. A former publisher and bookseller, she won the Pitch Perfect event for unpublished writers at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival in Stirling in 2015.

Death Will Find Me, a crime novel set in 1920s Edinburgh featuring former spy, Tessa Kilpatrick, was her first novel, and Don’t Blink, the first in a series set in the world of art crime investigator Kate Carpenter was published in May 2020, with the second, Trace Evidence, scheduled for later in the year. Vanessa has also published a short novella, Vanishing Point, introducing the character of Kate, which is available on Amazon and free via her website at www.vanessarobertson.co.uk.

Vanessa lives in a cottage in the middle of a Scottish wood with her family and ridiculously large dog. Currently, she’s editing the third Kate Carpenter thriller, researching the next Tessa Kilpatrick 1920s novel, and trying not to be distracted by new plot ideas. Vanessa loves windswept beaches, the coffee-scented fug of Venetian cafes and wandering around art galleries.

My thoughts:

This was a really fun crime thriller with a twist – the “detective” isn’t a cop but an art expert and dealer who can spot a fake Rothko with no problems at all.

Unless that fake belongs to a rather dodgy millionaire who doesn’t like to lose and isn’t afraid to set his goons on anyone who shows him up.

I really enjoyed this and Kate is a great protagonist, the supporting cast was interesting as well, not least the hunky Russian ballet dancer lover, can’t wait for book two!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour but all opinions remain my own.