Crime – Page 15 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: ‘Mark Of The Devil’, By Tana Collins

MARK OF THE DEVIL final

Published By: Bloodhound

Publication Date: 24th April 2018

I.S.B.N.: 9781912604180

Blurb

While Inspector Jim Carruthers and team are busy investigating a series of art thefts they receive an anonymous tip about the body of a young woman on a deserted beach.

The bizarre clues to her identity, and what might have happened to her, include a strange tattoo, a set of binoculars and slab of meat left on the cliffs.

The team’s investigations lead them to a local shooting estate and its wealthy owner Barry Cuthbert. However, Carruthers suspects Cuthbert is not all he seems and the DI soon starts to wonder if the cases of the missing works of art, the dead woman and the estate are connected.

Then when the body of a young gamekeeper is pulled from the sea tensions boil over. The trail of clues lead the team to the unlikely locale of Tallinn and into the sinister world of international crime and police corruption.

Needing answers Carruthers must look further afield than Fife. However, the closer he gets to discovering the truth the more danger he finds himself in.

Since everyone who crosses the vengeful killers seem to end up dead, can Carruthers solve the case with his life in tact?

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Review: ‘Turn A Blind Eye’, by Vicky Newham

Published By: HarperCollins – HQ

Publication Date: 5th April 2018

Format: Hardback

I.S.B.N.: 9780008240677

Price: £12.99

Blurb

A dead girl.
A wall of silence.
DI Maya Rahman is running out of time.

A headmistress is found strangled in an East London school, her death the result of a brutal and ritualistic act of violence. Found at the scene is a single piece of card, written upon which is an ancient Buddhist precept:

I shall abstain from taking the ungiven.

At first, DI Maya Rahman can’t help but hope this is a tragic but isolated murder. Then, the second body is found.

Faced with a community steeped in secrets and prejudice, Maya must untangle the cryptic messages left at the crime scenes to solve the deadly riddle behind the murders before the killer takes another victim.

Turn a Blind Eye is the first book in a brand-new series set in East London and starring DI Maya Rahman.

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Review: ‘Pendle Fire’, by Paul Southern

Paul Southern - Pendle Fire_cover_high res.jpg

Published By: Bloodhound Books

Publication Date: 4th January 2018

I.S.B.N.: 9781912604098

Format: Kindle

Blurb

Social worker Johnny Malkin is battling a crippling workload and a hostile local community. That’s on a good day: things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Two fourteen-year-old girls are found wandering Aitken Wood on the slopes of Pendle Hill, claiming to have been raped by a gang of men. With no female social workers available, Johnny is assigned to their case. But what, at first, looks like yet another incident of child exploitation takes a sinister turn when the girls start speaking of a forthcoming apocalypse.

When Johnny interviews one of the girls, Jenna Dunham, her story starts to unravel. His investigation draws him into a tight-knit village community in the shadow of Pendle Hill, where whispers of witchcraft and child abuse go back to the Middle Ages.

One name recurs: The Hobbledy Man. Is he responsible for the outbreaks of violence sweeping across the country?

Is he more than just myth?

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Review: ‘We Were The Salt Of The Sea’, by Roxanne Bouchard, trans. by David Warriner

Published By: Orenda

Publication Date: 28th February 2018

I.S.B.N.: 9781912374038

Format: Paperback

Price: £8.99

Information here

Blurb

As Montrealer Catherine Day sets foot in a remote fishing village and starts asking around about her birth mother, the body of a woman dredges up in a fisherman’s nets. Not just any woman, though: Marie Garant, an elusive, nomadic sailor and unbridled beauty who once tied many a man’s heart in knots. Detective Sergeant Joaquin Morales, newly drafted to the area from the suburbs of Montreal, barely has time to unpack his suitcase before he’s thrown into the deep end of the investigation. On Quebec’s outlying Gaspe Peninsula, the truth can be slippery, especially down on the fishermen’s wharves.

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Bonus Review #1: ‘Snuff’, by Sir Terry Pratchett GNU

8785374 Published by: Doubleday UK

Publication Date: 13th October 2011

Format: Hardback

I.S.B.N.: 9780385619264

Price: £18.99 (And yes, I did pay that much, I used to get my Discworlds as soon as I could)

Blurb

According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.

And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.

He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment.

They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.

But not quite all…

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Review: ‘I Know Where You Live’, By Pat Young

I know where you live FINAL correct (1)

Published By: Bloodhound

Publication Date: 1st March 2018

Format: ebook

Price: $2.99

I.S.B.N.: 9781912604012

Blurb

Penny seizes the chance of a new life for her family when her husband is offered a job in Europe.
Penny believes she’s being watched. Yet no one should know where she lives.

At the airport they meet charming Sophie, fluent in French and looking for work as an au pair.

Penny, struggling to cope in France, offers Sophie a job and she soon becomes an important part of the family’s life. But Sophie is hiding something.

Then Penny’s toddler son, Ethan, is abducted and an international hunt for the child begins.
The police beg Penny and her husband to take part in a television appeal but the couple refuse. Unknown to the police, Penny and Seth have new identities and are determined to lay low and protect them. But it may be too late for that.

Who has taken Ethan and why?

Are the couple’s true identities linked to the abduction?

And who has been watching them?

To save her son Penny may have to put her own life on the line.

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Review: ‘An Unquiet Ghost’, by Linda Stratmann

An Unquiet Ghost

Published By: Sapere Books

Publication Date: 1st March 2018

Format: Kindle

Price: 99p

Blurb

Brighton, 1871

Mina Scarletti, writer of horror stories but supernatural sceptic at heart, is becoming well known for unmasking those who fraudulently claim to be able to communicate with the dead. So it is no surprise to her when a young couple write to her seeking her advice.

They are George Fernwood and Mary Clifton, betrothed distant cousins with a family secret that is preventing them from getting married. Twenty years ago their alcoholic grandfather died in his bed. Though the official verdict was accidental poisoning rumours have been circulating that someone in the family murdered him.

If the murderer is one of their relations George and Mary are afraid they might pass on the ‘corrupted’ gene to their children. Desperate to find out the truth, they have decided to seek out a medium to communicate with their dead relation on their behalf, and they want Mina to help them find one who is genuine.

Though she is not a believer in ghosts, Mina is intrigued by the family mystery and decides to help them in any way she can. Could one of the new mediums advertising in Brighton really be genuine? Will they help George and Mary find the answers they are looking for?

Soon Mina finds herself caught up in a web of deception and intrigue that leads to one of her most fascinating discoveries yet …

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Bonus Review #1: ‘Bring Me Back’, by B.A.Paris

Published By: HQ

Publication Date: 8th March 2018

I.S.B.N.: 9780008244873

Format: Paperback

Price: £7.99

Blurb

The Disappearance
Twelve years ago Finn’s girlfriend disappeared.

The Suspicion
He told the police the truth about that night.
Just not quite the whole truth.

The Fear
Now Finn has moved on.
But his past won’t stay buried

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Bonus Review #3: ‘The Darkness’, by Ragnar Jonasson

Published by: Penguin UK

Publication Date: 15th March 2018

I.S.B.N.: 9780718187248

Price: £12.99

Blurb

Before Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir of the Reykjavik Police is forced into early retirement she is told to investigate a cold case of her choice, and she knows just the one. A young woman found dead on remote seaweed-covered rocks. A woman who was looking for asylum and found only a watery grave. Her death is ruled a suicide after a cursory investigation. But Hulda soon realizes that there was something far darker to this case.

This was not the only young woman to disappear around that time. And no one is telling the whole story. When her own force tries to put the brakes on the investigation Hulda has just days to discover the truth. Even if it means risking her own life . . . Spanning the icy streets of Reykjavik, the Icelandic highlands and cold, isolated fjords, The Darkness is an atmospheric thriller from one of the most exciting names in Nordic Noir.

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Bonus Review #5: ‘Shadow Man’, by, Alan Drew

9781786493316

Published by: Corvus

Publication Date: 4th January 2018

ISBN: 9781786493316

Format: Paperback

Price: £12.99

Blurb

Southern California, 1986. Detective Ben Wade has returned to his hometown in search of a quieter life and to try to save his marriage. Suddenly the community, with its peaceful streets and neighbourly concerns, finds itself at the mercy of a serial killer who slips through windows and screen doors at night, shattering illusions of safety.

As Ben and forensic specialist Natasha Betencourt struggle to stay one step ahead of the killer – and deal with painful episodes in the past – Ben’s own world is rocked again by violence. He must decide how far he is willing to go, and Natasha how much she is willing to risk, to rescue the town from a psychotic murderer and a long-buried secret.

With eerie, chilling prose, Alan Drew brings us into the treacherous underbelly of a suburban California town in this brilliant novel of suspense; the story of a man, and a community, confronted with the heart of human darkness.

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