Category: Uncategorized

Series: N/A

Book Number: N/A

Read this book for: short story collection, multiple authors, crime stories, mysteries, psychological thrillers, variety

Quick Review: A wonderfully varied collection of excellently written crime stories, with something for everyone.

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Open the files on an anthology of seventeen new crime stories to probe the brutal and complex hearts of criminals, and unravel the strangest of mysteries. Watch as a secretive group of intelligence community officers trace Jack Reacher through Heathrow in Lee Child’s “Smile”. In Mary Hoffman’s “Fallen Woman”, a journalist on the trail of a secretive drug lord gets caught up in the violent suicide of a young woman in Siena. And in Jeffery Deaver’s “Connecting the Dots”, detectives follow the trail of clues in the brutal killing of a homeless man, wherever it may lead… Invisible Blood is a gripping collection exploring the compulsions of the criminal mind.

SEVENTEEN STORIES FROM TODAY’S FINEST CRIME WRITERS

Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Denise Mina, R.J. Ellory, Christopher Fowler, Stella Duffy, Ken Bruen, Lauren Henderson, James Grady, Jason Starr, Mary Hoffman, Cathi Unsworth, Bill Beverly, Lavie Tidhar, Johana Gustawsson, A K Benedict, John Harvey

Continue reading “REVIEW: Invisible Blood edited by Maxim Jakubowski” →

Series: Daniel Hawthorne

Book Number: 1

Read this book for: author self-insert, reality/fiction blend, UK mystery, amateur detective, consulting detective, unique format

Quick Review: A unique and well-crafted mystery; a must read, especially for fans of Horowitz’s work!

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One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper – the wealthy mother of a famous actor – enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service.

Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who’s as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz.

Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne is brusque, temperamental and annoying but even so his latest case with its many twists and turns proves irresistible. The writer and the detective form an unusual partnership. At the same time, it soon becomes clear that Hawthorne is hiding some dark secrets of his own. Continue reading “REVIEW: The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz (Daniel Hawthorne #1)” →

Series: Jan Reyna (Faroes Novels)

Book Number: 3

Read this book for: Nordic noir, British mystery, international mysteries, now it’s personal, dark pasts, detective backstories, multiple investigations

Quick Review: A perfect end to a brilliant trilogy, and another Nordic noir must-read.

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In the wake of a dying man’s apparent suicide, the skeleton of a young woman is discovered on a windswept hillside. Detective Hjalti Hentze suspects that it is the body of a Norwegian woman reported missing forty years earlier, while a commune occupied the land, and whose death may be linked to the abduction and rape of a local Faroese girl.

Meanwhile British DI Jan Reyna is pursuing his investigation into his mother’s suicide. But as he learns more about her final days, links between the two cases start to appear: a conspiracy of murder and abuse spanning four decades. And as Hentze puts the same pieces together, he realizes that Reyna is willing to go further than ever before to learn the truth…

Continue reading “REVIEW: The Fire Pit by Chris Ould (Jan Reyna (Faroes Novels) #3)” →

Series: N/A

Book Number: N/A

Read this book for: non-murder investigation, journalist investigators, women banding together, US investigation, LA mystery, bringing known perpetrator to justice

Quick Review: A very readable novel about justice finally coming to a sexual predator — timely and relevant.

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At Windemere School for Girls, one of America’s elite private schools, Dr. Gregory Copeland is the beloved chair of the English Department. A married father with a penchant for romantic poetry—and impressionable teenage girls—he operates in plain sight for years, until one of his former students goes public with allegations of inappropriate conduct. With the help of an investigative journalist, and two additional Windemere alumnae who had relationships with Copeland as students, the unlikely quartet unites to take him down.

Continue reading “REVIEW: These Violent Delights by Victoria Namkung” →