18 Monday Feb 2019
Posted in Reviews
Former detective sergeant Charlie Bell has come a long way since he was first locked up for the murder of Phillip Mansel-Jones, a ‘scumbag of the worse degree’.
Now a free man, he’s attempting to re-build his life, but in Locked Down, the third and final instalment in the Bell and Teddington trilogy by GB Williams, he’s finding it easier to make enemies than to make friends.
Even the woman he loves, prison officer Ariadne Teddington, wants nothing to do with him. Continue reading
11 Monday Feb 2019
Posted in Reviews
What happens when you read a book that’s so good, you can’t find the words to adequately describe how much you enjoyed it?
You procrastinate – and six months down the line, you still haven’t posted a review.
Which is daft!
Because all I really need to say about Blackbird Road, the third novel in James L. Weaver’s Jake Caldwell series, is that it’s a cracking thriller with great characters.
And I LOVED it. Continue reading
13 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
From the start of Alison Moore’s quietly creepy book, the expectations are that not all will end well. Continue reading
11 Tuesday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
What happens when the good man you married isn’t all he seems to be?
In fact, he’s much, much worse than Katerina Rowe, a church deacon in the historic plague village of Eyam, could ever imagine.
And the tension is palpable as Kat slowly realises her life is built on a lie and Leon, the husband she adores, is a crook and a scoundrel.
But is he also a murderer?
Murder Undeniable is a promising start to a new crime fiction series from prolific Sheffield-based writer Anita Waller. Continue reading
10 Monday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized
Everyone needs the right mix of Hope and Christmas Spirit and the mysterious Natalie Hope has both in abundance.
She’s a woman on a mission: every December she has just 24 days to make sure four unhappy people have a Christmas to remember.
This year she’s landed in the small town of Winstanton, twenty miles north of Glasgow, and, in next to no time, she’s working her magic: re-uniting families, bringing lovers together and generally stirring things up.
It’s all a bit clichéd but who cares? Continue reading
06 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in Reviews
Hopefully CM Taylor won’t take this the wrong way, but I thought the author of Staying On must be a woman.
Partly, this was because the family-orientated thrust of the story seemed a feminine rather than a masculine theme and partly too, because in the opening pages, the authorial voice seemed to be female rather than male – don’t ask me to analyse why, that’s just the way I read it.
But the clincher was that the exploration of the inner lives of the main protagonists was…well, it’s what women writers do. Continue reading
07 Wednesday Nov 2018
Posted in Reviews
Every so often you get to the end of a book and think: ‘I’d better read that again.’
Fishing with Māui, by Wellington-based author Isa Ritchie, is one such book.
I turned the last page a couple of days ago and I’m still not sure I’ve picked up on all the nuances or that I’ve properly understood what Ritchie was trying to say about the importance of family and tradition; the place of religion (or not!); and the difficulties of being comfortable in your own skin. Continue reading
21 Sunday Oct 2018
Posted in Reviews
Losing one patient to suicide is happenstance.
When a second dies it could be coincidence…
But alarm bells start ringing VERY loudly for Dr Sam Willerby, a specialist in post traumatic stress, when suicide claims the life of a third patient.
It’s not just her professional reputation that’s at stake – all three turned to Sam for counselling after surviving a fire on the London Underground – her lover Con is also displaying similar symptoms, and Sam is terrified he too will give in to the voices in his head that tell him he doesn’t deserve to live. Continue reading
05 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized
The phrase ‘O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive…’ might have been coined especially for Elizabeth Dulcie’s new thriller Corruption!
It wasn’t, of course, the quote is a line from Sir Walter Scott’s 1808 poem, Marmion, but it does provide a perfect summary of the plot of this third, and final instalment, of Dulcie’s Suzanne Jones series.
Corruption! is a more-ish deliciously twisty tangle of deception and false trails and crooks masquerading as caring family men. Continue reading
23 Sunday Sep 2018
Posted in Reviews
David Bowie certainly knew what he was talking about when he penned the line: ‘Put on your red shoes and dance…’
Because as beleaguered ex-pat Brits Belinda, Julia, Laura and Georgina discover in Isabella May’s sunny third novel Costa del Churros, it really is possible to dance your troubles away.
Or, at least, in the case of the four friends, confidence on the dance floor translates into an ability to face head on the issues that are making their lives a misery.
And, boy, despite the happy faces they try and present to the world, all four women are seriously unhappy. Continue reading
