Category: Book Reviews

Review: The Ranger by Ace Atkins

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What the blurb says: “Northeast Mississippi, hill country, rugged and notorious for outlaws since the Civil War, where killings are as commonplace as in the Old West. To Quinn Colson, it’s home – but not the home he left when he went to Afghanistan.

Now an army ranger, he returns to a place overrun with corruption, and finds his uncle, the county sheriff, dead – a suicide, he’s told, but others whisper murder. In the days that follow, it will be up to Colson to discover the truth, not only about his uncle, but about his family, his friends, his town, and not least about himself. And once the truth is discovered, there is no turning back.”

The Ranger is the first book in a new series featuring Quinn Colson, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Edgar Best Novel Award 2012. It’s the first of Ace Atkins’ books that I’ve read, and I have to say, I loved it.

It’s a classic western re-imagined into contemporary life. Atkins builds a three dimensional world bursting with dynamic characters, like the brave Deputy, Lillie Virgil, who is determined to get to the bottom of what happened to the Sheriff, and showing modern challenges like property development in rural areas, the struggle of backwater towns as the wealth, and jobs, move to the cities, and the basic desire to protect family.

Quinn is a modern twist on the archetypal lone ranger. A man of few words and great action, he lives by a strong moral compass and a determined streak to see things though.

As the story progresses, Quinn discovers that the place he left behind when he become a Ranger has changed. Good and bad are no longer clear, and people he once respected have formed alliances with those more corrupt. When Quinn starts to uncover the truth he is warned off. He ignores the threats, and the uneasy tension builds until lawless violence erupts. It’s hard to write a review that doesn’t give away spoilers, but the showdown at the climax of the novel is spectacular and highly cinematic.

If you’re a fan of action thrillers, this should definitely be on your reading list.

Highly recommended.

[With thanks to C&R Crime for my copy of The Ranger]

Just Finished Reading: Hamelin’s Child by DJ Bennett

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What the blurb says: “Michael Redford died on his seventeenth birthday – the night Eddie picked him up off the street, shot him full of heroin and assaulted him. 

Now he’s Mikey and he works for Joss. With streaked blond hair and a cute smile, he sleeps by day and services clients at night. Sometimes he remembers his old life, but with what he’s become now, he knows there is no return to his comfortable middle-class background.

Then he makes a friend in Lee. A child of the streets, Lee demands more from friendship than Mikey is prepared to give. But the police are closing in on them now and Mikey’s not sure anymore who he really is – streetwise Mikey or plain Michael Redford.”

Set in the seedy world of London’s drug and prostitution rings, this is a harrowing and gritty story. However, as brutal as parts of this novel are, I found that I kept reading on, wanting to find out if Mikey could turn things around, get out of the horrendous situation he found himself in, and get some of his old life back.

This is a well written, fast paced thriller with plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. It’s gritty and has adult content, but is never gratuitous.

If you’re looking for hard-hitting realism, this could be well worth a read.

[With thanks to the author DJ Bennet for my copy of Hamelin’s Child]

Review: Just What Kind of Mother Are You? by Paula Daly

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What the blurb says: “She’s gone and it’s your fault. You were supposed to be watching your best friend’s 13-year-old daughter, and now she’s missing. But you know she’s not just missing – she’s been taken. Because Lucinda is the second girl to be abducted within a fortnight. And the first was found on a busy high street, naked and severely traumatized. No one expects the next to be so lucky. You’re going to have to figure this out – who did it. Because if you don’t, then Lucinda will be next. And you’ll never forgive yourself.”

Lisa’s life is beyond hectic. With her family, her job at the animal shelter, and the demands of her friends she rarely has a minute to herself. It’s easy to empathize with her, and it’s easy to understand how she might overlook the odd detail. An odd detail that leads to her worst nightmares coming true.

Alternating point-of-view characters – Lisa, DC Joanne Aspinall, and the child abductor – show the situation from three different angles. Like all the characters in this book, they don’t feel like characters in a story, they feel like real live people.

As DC Aspinall investigates the case as part of her job, Lisa sets out to find the truth herself as a way to try and make amends to her friend. As a reader you get a real sense of the close-knit community in Troutbeck – a small ‘typically English’ village near Lake Windermere in the Lake District. But the close knit-ness can be a blessing and a curse, and some residents’ lives are not exactly as they might have seemed, as Lisa discovers.

From the outset, the story sets off at a rapid pace. For me it was a real page turner with plenty of twists and turns in the plot to keep me hooked. High stakes and high tension equalled high speed reading – I finished this book in 24 hours, unable to put it down until it was finished. It also made me want to go and adopt another animal from the local shelter.

What Kind of Mother Are You? Is a stunning debut novel.

If you enjoy fast-paced psychological thrillers with an emotional kick, then this is for you. Read it. Now!

Highly recommended.

 

[With thanks to the publishers, Bantam Press, for my copy of Just What Kind of Mother Are You?]

Review: Chilled to the Bone by Quentin Bates

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What the blurb says: “When a shipowner is found dead, tied to a bed in one of Reykjavik’s smartest hotels, sergeant Gunnhildur “Gunna” Gisladottir of the city police force sees no evidence of foul play, but still suspects things are not as cut and dried as they seem. As she investigates the shipowner’s untimely death, she stumbles across a discreet bondage society whose members are being systematically exploited and blackmailed.

But how does all this connect to a local gangster recently returned to Iceland after many years abroad, and the unfortunate loss of a government laptop containing sensitive data about various members of the ruling party? What begins as a straightforward case for Gunnhildur soon explodes into a dangerous investigation, uncovering secrets that ruthless men are ready to go to violent extremes to keep.”

It’s easy to like Gunna, she’s strong and determined, yet compassionate and giving: a hardworking detective and a dedicated mother juggling the complexities of modern life. As Gunna starts to unravel the threads that bind a set of seemingly unconnected crimes together, she uncovers a secret community that she’d never realised existed. When a witness goes missing, the question is can Gunna find the truth, and the culprits, before the sinister man impersonating a police office does?

Told through several viewpoints, in addition to Gunna’s, over the course of the story we learn how initially unconnected events have brought the main point-of-view characters – Baddo, Hekla and Joel Ingi – to their current situation, and how, even though they may not realise it, they are bound together by the secrets they keep and the choices they have made.

The tension builds steadily throughout the story. Each character is conflicted, some are criminal, but through showing their many facets, and relationships both work and personal, Bates has a way of making each of them empathetic.  I found myself caring about each of them, compelling me to keep turning the pages, hungry to find out what would happen.

I’ve never been to Iceland, but I loved the evocative imagery of this novel, and the chilling sense of cold, that made the setting really come alive for me. At first the Icelandic names took a little bit of getting used to, but they add wonderfully to the authentic feel of the story, and I was soon used to them (although I’m not sure that my pronunciation would be correct!).

This is a beautifully crafted, intricately plotted, atmospheric thriller.

Highly recommended.

 

[With thanks to C&R Crime for my copy of Chilled to the Bone]

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Review: LIKE THIS FOR EVER by S.J. Bolton

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What the blurb says:

“Bright red. Like petals. Or rubies. Little red droplets.

Barney knows the killer will strike again soon. The victim will be another boy, just like him. He will drain the body of blood, and leave it on a Thames beach. There will be no clues for detectives Dana Tulloch and Mark Joesbury to find.

There will be no warning about who will be next.

There will be no good reason for Lacey Flint to become involved … And no chance that she can stay away.”

It’s hard to write a review of this novel without included spoilers and I don’t want to spoil the story for you. So all I’m saying is that Barney, an eleven-year-old boy with a gift for spotting patterns, is looking for the connections to help him solve the child murders while he’s home alone while his Dad works late. He’s also Lacey Flint’s neighbour.

The story is shown primarily from three perspectives – Barney’s, Lacey’s and Dana’s. This lets you, as the reader, in on a lot more of the facts than any one of the main characters have – a sure-fire recipe for heart-banging moments!

The story is artfully plotted, with many possibilities for who is behind the killings. This, and the multiple twists and turns, create an unputdownable puzzle that kept me reading well into the night.

But it wasn’t just the puzzle that kept me reading. SJ Bolton creates such deeply drawn characters, like the smart, often strong and yet also emotionally fragile heroine, Lacey Flint, that I felt compelled to read on just to stay with them on their journey within the story.

As well as motivation to murder, the story touches on a number of themes including modern-day vampire culture, online stalking and how social media influences, aids and inhibits investigations.

Utterly gripping, tense and suspenseful: this is a real page-turner of a crime novel.

Highly recommended.

[My copy of Like This For Ever was provided by the publisher]

Review: The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook by Josie Brown

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Donna Stone isn’t a regular mom. She might be super efficient at managing her home, and her three kids, but she’s got a deadly job – she’s a trained assassin focused on avenging the death of her husband, Carl.

But things hadn’t always been that way, until Carl’s death five years earlier she’d been unaware of his job as an assassin for the black ops organisation known only as Acme Industries. That all changed the night she gave birth to their third child, and Carl’s car blew up on the way to the hospital.

Since then, Donna trained hard and has become an elite ‘honey trap’ assassin. When Acme Industries discover that the organisation believed to be responsible for Carl’s murder, The Quorum, have planted operatives in Donna’s community, she’s keen to bring them to justice. So they decide to bring Carl back from the dead (in the shape of sexy super-agent, Jack) to act as bait. As they race against time to foil The Quorum’s plans, Donna discovers that everything might not be as she’s been led to believe.

The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook is a hilarious, laugh-out-loud read. Donna is a fantastic character – practical, witty, and kick-ass tough. There’s plenty of action – both in and out of the bedroom – and although there are a few grittier scenes, generally this is a light, humourous caper of a crime novel. I especially love the house-keeping tips at the start of each chapter – each with its own deadly twist!

This book is perfect for relaxing in the bath with after a long day. I can’t wait to read the next in the series.

Highly Recommended.

[I bought my copy of The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook via Amazon Kindle] 

Review: Out of Sight Out of Mind by Evonne Wareham

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What the blurb says: “Madison Albi is a scientist with a very special talent – for reading minds. When she stumbles across a homeless man with whom she feels an inexplicable connection, she can’t resist the dangerous impulse to use her skills to help him.

J is a non-person – a vagrant who can’t even remember his own name. He’s got no hope, until he meets Madison. Is she the one woman who can restore his past?

Madison agrees to help J recover his memory, but as she delves deeper into his mind, it soon becomes clear that some secrets are better off staying hidden. “

Out of Sight Out of Mind might not be my usual type of read, but I found it really enjoyable.

It doesn’t fit neatly into a sub-genre bracket but, if you wanted to categorise it, I think it would be as romantic suspense with a dash of science fiction.

Told through the point-of-views of Madison, J and the shadowy people at ‘The Organization’, the reader is able to piece together information, alert to the increasing danger that Madison and J are unaware of until much later in the story. This adds an extra level of danger, up-ing the stakes, and keeping the reader on their edge of their seat, hoping that Madison will find out who, or what’s, behind J’s memory loss before it’s too late.

The main suspense in the story comes from the question: who is J? A mysterious (and rather sexy) character, he has no memory of his past, but he can remember how to navigate through London. When Madison tries to help him by reading his mind she encounters a wall that she’s unable to see through. As a research scientist at the top of her game, she throws all she’s got into the challenge of finding out just who J is.

As the relationship between Madison and J develops the reader gets to discover more about Madison’s past, and details about J’s life as he begins to remember things. There’s a lot of sexual tension between the two characters. The ‘will they, won’t they?’ question hangs over them for a large portion of the book as they both resist the attraction they feel for each other. This kept me hooked into the story, but I did, at times, want to scream at Madison to just kiss him and get on with it!

As Madison tries increasingly risky and unproven memory experiments, she manages to get past the wall and discover J’s sinister past. And that’s when the danger really escalates. After a gradual build in tension during the first two-thirds of the book, the final third races along to the action-packed finale.

My verdict: even if science fiction isn’t usually your thing, don’t let it put you off – this is a classy romantic suspense novel that’s definitely worth a read.

[My review copy of this novel was provided by Choc Lit publishers]

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Review: BLEED LIKE ME by Cath Staincliffe

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What the blurb says: “The Journey’s Inn, Lark’s Estate, Manchester. Three bodies have been found, stabbed to death in their beds. A man – apparently the father and husband of two of the victims – has fled. The police are in a race against time to find him – especially when they discover his two young sons are also missing …

Manchester Metropolitan police station. Having survived a near-fatal attack, DC Janet Scott is quietly falling apart. And her best friend and colleague DC Rachel Bailey is reeling from a love affair gone bad. DCI Gill Murray is trying to keep the team on track, but her own family problems are threatening to tip her over the edge.

Finding the desperate man is their top priority. But none of them knows where he is going or what he intends to do next. Or what will they have to do to stop him …”

BLEED LIKE ME is based on the characters from the hit ITV series SCOTT & BAILEY.

It’s a police procedural, but as well as a race-against-time premise to find the missing children and their father, it delves deeper into the stormy personal lives of the three female protagonists.

And their lives are certainly complex. Covering challenges that many will relate to – from juggling work and home life, bringing up teenagers, and the illness of a parent – to the more extreme – recovering from an attempt on your life – the three women are up against it from the outset. Artfully written, this exploration of the characters lives doesn’t slow the pace, instead it adds layers of tension onto an already tense situation.

The setting is highly atmospheric, with Manchester and the surrounding area painted with a gritty realism. From getting the call, the three women work tirelessly, often a great personal cost, to try to find the killer and his two young children before it’s too late. The story twists and turns towards a nail-biting conclusion, defying you to put the book down until you’ve read the very last page.

With a great pace, deeply drawn characters, and high action, I think BLEED LIKE ME will appeal to fans of the series and those new to Scott & Bailey.

Highly Recommended.

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Review: Retribution by Adrian Magson

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What the blurb says: “An atrocity that allegedly took place under Harry’s watch in Kosovo in 1999 returns to haunt him when he receives a summons from an old UN contact. A lone assassin is tracking down all those who were present that fateful night, despatching his victims with cold, skilful efficiency. Who is he and why does he want revenge? If he is to uncover the identity of this ruthless killer and stay alive in the process, Harry must uncover what really happened in Mirovica back in 1999.”

I love a good action thriller and this novel doesn’t disappoint.

Harry Tate, an ex-M15 hunter now working in the private sector, doesn’t hang around. He’s a dynamic character, utterly focused on getting the job done, and with a strong moral compass. Hired to stop a potential terrorist plot and find the lone assassin picking off all those present at a UN compound on a specific night in 1999, Harry’s moral code is challenged when he discovers the horror of the crime the assassin is avenging. Pragmatic and logical, but prepared to do what’s necessary for justice, Harry is faced with a difficult dilemma.

What I especially like about this story is that Magson creates an utterly ruthless assassin, known as Kassim, yet although he commits a series of murders across the timeline of the novel, as a reader I found him both chilling and empathetic. That said, whilst Kassim certainly racks up the highest body count, the true title of ‘villain’ for this story really rests with another character (which I won’t name or it will spoil the story for you).

From London, across Europe and over to the States, Harry follows the clues, and the bodies. With the tension tightening notch by notch through each chapter, by the time you’re heading for the end the pace is breathlessly rapid and, as a reader, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

A joy to read.

Highly Recommended.

 

My Guest Review for the Mean Streets blog: The Nameless Dead by Brian McGilloway

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A high-action, atmospheric procedural with plenty of twists and turns

What the blurb says: “Declan Cleary’s body has never been found, but everyone believes he was killed for informing on a friend over thirty years ago. Now the Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains is following a tip-off that he was buried on the small isle of Islandmore, in the middle of the River Foyle.

Instead, the dig uncovers a baby’s skeleton, and it doesn’t look like death by natural causes. But evidence revealed by the Commission’s activities cannot lead to prosecution. Inspector Devlin is torn. He has no desire to resurrect the violent divisions of the recent past. Neither can he let a suspected murderer go unpunished.

Now the secret is out, more deaths follow. Devlin must trust his conscience – even when that puts those closest to him at terrible risk.”

Compared to the majority of police procedurals that I read, what struck me most about this story was the action-packed, fast paced style. Despite the tip-off that Inspector Devlin is following being about a murder conducted over thirty years previously, the story feels immediate and pacy right from the start. As the plot unfolds, and Devlin starts to uncover the many activities – both within and outside of the law – that Declan Cleary was connected to, he realises that this was not the straight-forward revenge killing that he had originally believed it to be.

The isle of Islandmore, or Isle of Bones as it has come to be known locally, is an atmospheric setting that adds to the brooding tone of the novel. That Islandmore is also the site of a ‘cillin’ – an unofficial burial site for unbaptized babies – adds to the sense of sadness and loss. As the story progresses, Devlin discovers that what took place at Islandmore all those years ago, still has a huge impact on the local community.

The subject matter covered in the story is evocative and main all the more chilling and heartbreaking by its closeness to real life events. When the bodies of seven children are uncovered as part of the dig for Declan Cleary’s body, Devlin wrestles with the action he believes to be right – to investigate their deaths, versus the constraints of the law by which he is bound – that no bodies found as part of a Commission’s dig can be investigated. This personal struggle shows the human, family man that Devlin is, as well as his strong commitment to the community and personal values.

This is the first of the Devlin novels that I’ve read – The Nameless Dead is the fifth in the series – but I’ll certainly be looking out for the others.

Highly recommended.

 

The Nameless Dead by Brian McGilloway is available now, published by Pan Books.

Check out this and other great reviews over on the Mean Streets Crime Fiction Blog at http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/crimefiction/