As you’d expect from someone who cut her writing teeth at Jackie magazine, author Karen King writes with confidence and style.

Hand on heart, romantic fiction isn’t my preferred genre – I’m more of a whodunit fan – but if anyone could convert me, King could.

Her new release from Accent Press, The Cornish Hotel by the Sea is a perfect demonstration of her story-telling expertise: a nicely believable plot that builds at a satisfying pace without getting bogged down in long descriptive passages, which could have been a temptation given the glorious setting.  Continue reading →

It’s not often I get to the end of a book and find myself lost for words – although perhaps that’s an appropriate response to a book titled The Silence.

I turned the last page and thought: ‘Oh!’

(Strictly speaking, I didn’t turn the page, I swiped my kindle. But you get the point.)

And, it wasn’t: ‘Oh, that was unexpected.’ Or even: ‘Oh, I enjoyed that.’

Although both of those are true.  Continue reading →

Quite by coincidence I’m writing this review of Nordic noir thriller Wolves in the Dark by Norway’s legendary Gunnar Staalesen shortly after a particularly intense trek with my Friday Nordic walking group.

Appropriate really because this latest instalment of Staalesen’s long-running Bergen-based Varg Veum series is equally intense, with a brutal plot and at least one genuine sharp intake of breath moment.

As the novel opens, Veum, who debuted in 1977 in the bizarrely titled The Buck to the Sack of Oats, is still reeling from the death of his great love Karin. Continue reading →

Goodness me! There are enough red herrings in One to Watch, the new thriller from Rachel Amphlett, to feed a smorgasbord of crime fiction readers.

First, the guilty person just HAD to be X.

Then it was definitely Y and I never saw Z coming until the last couple of pages.

Although, perhaps that’s because making Z a murderer breaks one of the cardinal rules of classic crime fiction.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you which one because then you’d know whodunnit. Continue reading →

My dad was ten-and-a-half when the Second World War broke out.

And he was 12-or-thereabouts when his father took him out in the fields near their Warwickshire home and taught him how to load and fire the old rifle hidden behind a coat in the hallway.

The lesson was just in case Grandad wasn’t home when the Germans invaded and Dad needed to defend his mother and sisters and younger brother against the enemy.  Continue reading →

Maggie Thatcher was newly installed as the UK’s first female Prime Minister the last time I read Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole.

She took office in May 1979 in the middle of a recession and in the wake of Labour’s Winter of Discontent.

And, as she entered the door of No 10 Downing Street for the first time as premier, she spoke some lines from a prayer by St Francis of Assisi.

‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth…where there is despair, may we bring hope.’ Continue reading →

One of the joys of belonging to a book group – besides talking books with friends – is discovering literary gems that might have passed you by otherwise.

My book group has been going for almost six years.

Time enough to have read some stunning books – although we don’t always agree about what makes a good read.

But that’s the fun of being in a book club, isn’t it? Continue reading →

Let me begin by listing the things I like about Bad to the Bone, first in a new crime thriller series by Tony J.Forder.

One: it’s well written.

Very well written.

Forder is clearly a writer, who cares about words and getting them in the right order and using the right word in the right place.

And he’s good at painting word pictures too. Continue reading →

It’s a long time ago but I can’t now remember whether I met Jane Eyre before or after being introduced to Lizzie Bennett.

One thing’s for sure though: both were the first book women of my acquaintance who considered themselves the equal of any man.

In fact, both thought themselves far superior to some of the men they knew.

Even on the cusp of the 70s that was a revolutionary idea so goodness knows what the 19^th century reader must have thought. Continue reading →

As a little girl I loved silent movies – oh, the edge of the seat excitement when the dastardly villain tied the  platinum blonde heroine to the rail track and gleefully ran off as the puffing Billy engine advanced inexorably.

Would the beautiful blonde perish?

Or would the hero save her in the nick of time?

As a bloodthirsty nine-year-old I never really understood the fatal, bloody implications of the what if…which, perhaps, made the opening chapter of Rachel Amphlett’s new crime thriller Will to Live, the Continue reading →