crime fiction – Page 3 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Extract Post: Justice Gone, by N Lombardi Jr

An act of police brutality hurls a small town into a turmoil of rage and fear, igniting a relentless witch hunt and ending in the trial of the decade.

“When a homeless war veteran is beaten to death by the police, stormy protests ensue, engulfing a small New Jersey town. Soon after, three cops are gunned down.

A multi-state manhunt is underway for a cop killer on the loose. And Dr. Tessa Thorpe, a veteran’s counselor, is caught up in the chase.

Donald Darfield, an African-American Iraqi war vet, war-time buddy of the beaten man, and one of Tessa’s patients, is holed up in a mountain cabin. Tessa, acting on instinct, sets off to find him, but the swarm of law enforcement officers gets there first, leading to Darfield’s dramatic capture.

Now, the only people separating him from the lethal needle of state justice are Tessa and ageing blind lawyer, Nathaniel Bodine. Can they untangle the web tightening around Darfield in time, when the press and the justice system are baying for revenge?”

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Review: Blackwood, by Michael Farris Smith

Pub. Date: 19 March 2020
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 978-0-85730-390-5
Binding: Paperback

The small town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, but now seems stuck in a black-and-white photograph from days gone by. Unknowing, the town and its people are about to come alive again, awakening to nightmares, as ghostly whispers have begun to fill the night from the kudzu-covered valley that sits on the edge of town.
When a vagabond family appears on the outskirts, when twin boys and a woman go missing, disappearing beneath the vines, a man with his own twisted past struggles to untangle the secrets in the midst of the town trauma.

This is a landscape of fear and ghosts, of regret and violence. It is a landscape transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding terrible secrets deeper still. Blackwood is the evil in the woods, the wickedness that lurks in all of us

Review: Containment, by Vanda Symon

Pub date: 5 March 2020
ISBN: 978-1-913193-19-5
EPUB: 978-1-913193-20-1
Price: £8.99
Dunedin’s favourite young police officer Sam Shephard is drawn into a
perplexing investigation when a series of shipping containers wash up on
a sleepy New Zealand beach, and a spate of unexplained deaths
ensues…
Chaos reigns in the sleepy village of Aramoana on the New Zealand
coast, when a series of shipping containers wash up on the beach and
looting begins.
Detective Constable Sam Shephard experiences the desperation of the
scavengers first-hand, and ends up in an ambulance, nursing her wounds
and puzzling over an assault that left her assailant for dead.
What appears to be a clear-cut case of a cargo ship running aground
soon takes a more sinister turn when a skull is found in the sand, and the
body of a diver is pulled from the sea … a diver who didn’t die of
drowning…
As first officer at the scene, Sam is handed the case, much to the
displeasure of her superiors, and she must put together an increasingly
confusing series of clues to get to the bottom of a mystery that may still
have more victims…

Review: Death Deserved, by Jorn Lier Horst & Thomas Enger, translated by Anne Bruce

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm
never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography,
Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits
Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and
signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number ‘one’ has been
pinned to the TV.
Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missingpersons
investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of
a hostage situation nineteen years earlier, when he killed the
father of a five-year-old girl. Traces of Nordstrøm soon show up at
different locations, but the appearance of the clues appear to be
carefully calculated … evidence of a bigger picture that he’s just
not seeing…
Blix and Ramm soon join forces, determined to find and stop
a merciless killer with a flair for the dramatic, and thirst for
attention.
Trouble is, he’s just got his first taste of it…

PUBLICATION DATE: 6 FEBRUARY 2020 | PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £8.99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Review: Keeper, by Johanna Gustawsson, translated by Maxim Jakubowski

38468901. sy475 — Whitechapel, 1888: London is bowed under Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror.

London 2015: actress Julianne Bell is abducted in a case similar to the terrible Tower Hamlets murders of some ten years earlier, and harking back to the Ripper killings of a century before.

Falkenberg, Sweden, 2015: a woman’s body is found mutilated in a forest, her wounds identical to those of the Tower Hamlets victims.

Profiler Emily Roy and true-crime writer Alexis Castells again find themselves drawn into an intriguing case, with personal links that turn their world upside down.

Published April 28th 2018 by Orenda Books (first published March 15th 2017)
Original Title: Mör
ISBN:1912374056
ISBN13: 9781912374052
Edition Language: English
URL : http://orendabooks.co.uk/book/keeper/
Series
Emily Roy & Alexis Castells #2

My Review

So, today I’m reviewing the second Emily Roy & Alexis Castells novel, and introducing Alienor, who I adored when I read Blood Song.

This book is as twisted as the first novel, Block 46, and just as tightly plotted. We learn more about Emily and Alexis, their backgrounds and neuroses. The Whitechapel Murders of 1888 were tenuously linked to the investigation as the background for the abusive family history of the murderers. The modern murders are confusing until you get to the revelations later on. The betrayal at the end was an unexpected twist but made the whole book make sense.

As with books 1 and 3, Gustawsson alternates between the investigation and the personal history of the murderers. I like the insight I got into the background to the crimes but was frustrated that I didn’t put the clues together. I’m not very good at that, clearly.

Another fantastic book from Gustawsson and Orenda.

Review: ‘Sound’, by Catherine Fearns

Sound
Can you hear it?

A professor of psychoacoustics is found dead in his office. It appears to be a heart attack, until a second acoustician dies a few days later in similar circumstances.

Meanwhile, there’s an outbreak of mysterious illnesses on a council estate, and outbursts of unexplained violence in a city centre nightclub. Not to mention strange noises coming from the tunnels underneath Liverpool. Can it really be a coincidence that death metal band Total Depravity are back in the city, waging their own form of sonic warfare?

Detective Inspector Darren Swift is convinced there are connections. Still grieving his fiancé’s death and sworn to revenge, he is thrown back into action on the trail of a murderer with a terrifying and undetectable weapon.

But this case cannot be solved using conventional detective work, and D.I. Swift will need to put the rulebook aside and seek the occult expertise of Dr. Helen Hope and her unlikely sidekick, guitarist Mikko Kristensen.

Purchase Link – mybook.to/sound

Review: ‘Without A Trace’, by Carissa Ann Lynch

·        **Paperback:** 380 pages
·        **Publisher:** Killer Reads; Digital original edition (13 Jun. 2019)
·        **Language:** English
·        **ISBN-10:** 0008324514
·        **ISBN-13:** 978-0008324513

**Amazon:** https://www.amazon.co.uk/Without-Trace-Carissa-Ann-Lynch-ebook/dp/B07L9LKMGW

BLURB

From the USA Today bestselling author of My Sister Is Missing

Lily’s gone.
Someone took her.
Unless she was she never there…

A little girl has gone missing.
Lily was last seen being tucked into bed by her adoring mother, Nova. But the next morning, the bed is empty except for a creepy toy rabbit.
Has Nova’s abusive ex stolen his “little bunny” back for good?

At first, Officer Ellie James assumes this is a clear custody battle. Until she discovers that there are no pictures of the girl and her drawers are full of unused toys and brand new clothes that have never been worn…
Is Ellie searching for a missing child who doesn’t actually exi

Publication Day Review: ‘The Lost Shrine’, by Nicola Ford

With bonus review: ‘The Hidden Bones’, by Nicola Ford

Late last year I bothered Allison & Busby for review copies of some of there books, and I’ve been trying to work out how to fit them into the blog ever since. Well, today is publication day for The Lost Shrine, thus I have decided to do a joint review post in celebration.

Nicola Ford is the pen name of archaeologist Dr Nick Snashall, who is National Trust Archaeologist for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. She has a two book deal with the publisher and I hope she’ll get another because the Hills & Barbrook series has only just started getting wind in its sails.

On to the reviews. The Hidden Bones is only getting a short review because I want to focus on The Lost Shrine.

Review: ‘The Convalescent Corpse’, by Nicola Slade

The Convalescent Corpse by [Slade, Nicola] — Published By: Crooked Cat
Publication Date: 20th November 2018
Format: Kindle
Price: £1.99

Blurb

A story of Family, Rationing and Inconvenient Corpses.
Life in 1918 has brought loss and grief and hardship to the three Fyttleton sisters. Helped only by their grandmother (a failed society belle and expert poacher) and hindered by a difficult suffragette mother, as well as an unruly chicken-stealing dog and a house full of paying-guests, they now have to deal with the worrying news that their late – and unlamented – father may not be dead after all. And on top of that, there’s a body in the ha-ha.

Keep reading for the review, a bit about the author and a chance to win another of Nicola Slade’s books.

Review: ‘She Was The Quiet One’, by Michele Campbell

She Was the Quiet One Paperback by — *Published By: HQ*
*Publication Date: 10th January 2019*
ISBN: 9780008301811
Price: £7.99
Format: Paperback

Blurb

The gripping new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Michele Campbell

Because murderers are never who you expect…
She was the quiet one but is she guilty?

For twin sisters Rose and Bel, enrolling at the prestigious new boarding school should have been a fresh start. But with its sinister rituals and traditions, Odell soon brings out a deadly rivalry between the sisters.

For Sarah and husband Heath, the chance to teach at Odell seems like the best thing that ever happened to their small family a chance to rise through the ranks and put the past behind them.

Until one dark night ends in murder.

But who’s guilty and who’s telling the truth? And who’s been in on it all along..?

From the Sunday Times bestselling author Michele Campbell comes the breathtaking new thriller SHE WAS THE QUIET ONE.