Category Archives: Fiction

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

Turn a Blind Eye Hardcover by 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?

www.paulsouthern.org

https://www.facebook.com/paulsouthernauthor/

 https://twitter.com/psouthernauthor

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Review: ‘The Cubit Quest’, by Trevor Leck

Cubit 3.2

Published By: Clink Street Publishing

Publication Date: 2nd March 2017

I.S.B.N.: 978-1911525271

Format: Paperback

Price: £9.99

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blurb

Twelve-year-old Charlie Watkins could have inherited his dad’s massive intellect.
He got his massive feet instead.

Perhaps if Charlie had that intellect he might have been able to figure out why so many men in suits were suddenly following him or where his dad hid the Cubit – a mythical object that men have sworn to protect and even more have died trying to possess – before his so-called accident.

If starting yet another new school wasn’t bad enough, Charlie meets Mr Leopold, a disfigured, mind-reading lunatic and discovers that he alone must find the Cubit if he is to save his dad. The Brotherhood, however, have other ideas. Led by the ruthless Draganovic, they will stop at nothing to get their hands on it. With the help of Mr Leopold and fellow new boy Elvis, Charlie sets out on The Cubit Quest.

Hunting for the Cubit, playing football, lessons with the dreaded Funeral Face and unsuccessfully avoiding school bully Grimshaw by day, Charlie finds his nights no less complicated. Stalked in his dreams, he’s soon immersed in a world of power struggles, battling dragons and duels to the death. With the Brotherhood hot on his heels and as the bullets begin to fly, there are no guarantees that Charlie, or anyone else, will make it to the end in one piece.

Purchase from Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N12WKPG/

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Review: ‘The Book of Air’, by Joe Treasure

 

Published By: Clink Street Publishing

Joe Treasure Final front cover only

Publication Date: 4th April 2017

I.S.B.N.:  978-1911525097

Format: Paperback

Price: £8.99

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blurb

Retreating from an airborne virus with a uniquely unsettling symptom, property developer Jason escapes London for his country estate, where he is forced to negotiate a new way of living with an assortment of fellow survivors.

Far in the future, an isolated community of descendants continue to farm this same estate. Among their most treasured possessions are a few books, including a copy of Jane Eyre, from which they have constructed their hierarchies, rituals and beliefs. When 15-year-old Agnes begins to record the events of her life, she has no idea what consequences will follow. Locked away for her transgressions, she escapes to the urban ruins and a kind of freedom, but must decide where her future lies.

These two stories interweave, illuminating each other in unexpected ways and offering long vistas of loss, regeneration and wonder.

The Book of Air is a story of survival, the shaping of memory and the enduring impulse to find meaning in a turbulent world.

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Review: ‘The Horse’s Arse’, by Laura Gascoigne

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Published By: Clink Street Publishing

Publication Date: 4th April 2017

I.S.B.N.: 978-1911110873

Format: Paperback

Price: £8.99

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blurb

Patrick Phelan is an ageing artist who has never made it big but who somehow manages to live on air in a North London suburb.

When not running art classes for amateurs, Patrick wrestles in the shed at the bottom of his garden with his life’s work: a series of visionary canvases of The Seven Seals.

When his wheeler-dealer son Marty turns up with a commission from a rich client for some copies of paintings by modern masters, Phelan reluctantly agrees; it means money for his ex-wife Moira. However the deal with Marty is, typically, not what it seems.

What follows is a complex chain of events involving fakery, fraud, kidnapping, murder, the Russian Mafia and a cast of dubious art world characters. A contemporary spin on Joyce Cary’s classic satire The Horse’s Mouth, The Horse’s Arse by Laura Gascoigne is a crime thriller-cum-comic-fable that poses the serious question: where does art go from here?

Purchase from Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Horses-Arse-Laura-Gascoigne-ebook/dp/B01MUZXN8G/

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

 

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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

8785374Published 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: ‘When I Grow Up’, by Patricia Asedegbega

When I Grow Up

 

 

 

 

Blurb

“You need a plan B,” said Alicia’s mother when at five years old she told her what she wanted to be when she grew up. Thirty odd years later, Alicia is on plan D: sharing a flat, no tangible savings, and working for hateful Julia, whose sole purpose in life is to make her existence utterly miserable. Good thing she has Oscar and the girls to make the long hours at work bearable. But when a series of events tears the close-knit group apart, putting friendships and motives under suspicion, will Alicia be able to restore balance and set things right? More importantly, will she ever be able to upgrade her life to at least plan C?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Author of I stand corrected, When I grow up…, Rewind, Balou uncensored, Bienvenidos a gatos anónimos, Pasarse cuatro Pueblos and Sesenta segundos dan para mucho, Patricia Asedegbega Nieto was born to a Spanish mother and a Nigerian father in Madrid. As a child, she relocated with her family to Nigeria and later returned to Spain, where she acquired her BSc and master´s degree. She is currently living near Madrid with her family and her very stubborn cat, Merlin Mojito.

http://www.patriciascorner.co.uk/

Twitter @Patricias_Place 

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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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