My latest read was Live Wire by Harlen Coben.

This book was based around the character of Myron who was a sports agent/detective, with a previous life as a super athlete (as we are told many times!) He is asked to help out pregnant former tennis star Suzze T who’s husband, a famous musician, has gone missing. Amongst this Myron also has to look for his sister in law and brother who have been missing for years, … Read More >>

Adrian McKinty’s The Cold Cold Ground has been garnering some excellent reviews and after reading it in one sitting I can see why.

The story is set in 1981 in Northern Ireland during The Troubles with the newspapers full of the Republican hunger strikes in the Maze prison, the forthcoming royal wedding between Charles and Diana, the recent shooting of the Pope and the ongoing trial of the Yorkshire Ripper in England. It is a hugely evocative … Read More >>

Review by Candi Colbourn

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The Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival Challenge (TOPCWFC for short) has got off to a flying start. My first book was by Laura Lippman, called Don’t Look Back.

A brand new author for me, the story is about Elizabeth, now Eliza, who is married with two children, including a teenage daughter. Eliza was kidnapped when she was 15 by Walter the serial killer (the choice of name could probably have done with some … Read More >>

Lainey is thirteen. She resents her mother, stepfather and despises her step brother. There’s a boy called Zach that Lainey fancies but is known to her only through Instant Messaging, and it is very clear (though not to Lainey) that he is grooming her for something sinister. After she posts a picture of herself, skilfully made up by her friend to look about 17, Zach steps up the blandishments and sets up a date. We know … Read More >>

Flavia De Luce, the main character and narrator in this book, is like a child-genius mini-Miss Marple. The story is quirky with plenty of slightly odd characters, the oddest probably being Flavia herself.

Alan Bradley has very cleverly captured the child-like qualities in what might otherwise have been a somewhat less than believable character – an 11 year old girl in the 1950s with a penchant for chemistry, especially poisons and a brain way beyond her years, … Read More >>

I’m a long-term reader of Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski novels, a series started in 1982 and based around the derring-do of a Chicago PI. Thinking about it the other day, I read my first VI Warshawski book in 1996, and have now happily read my way through all of them.

The last but one in the series is Hardball which was published after a break in which Sara Paretsky wrote Bleeding Kansas, a novel outside the VI … Read More >>

We have a legal system so that the courts can take responsibility for meting out justice, taking decisions regarding punishment away from those who have been offended against and making that justice impartial instead of fueled by revenge. But what if those courts let you down?

This is the situation the main character in Random finds himself in. His 11 year old daughter is killed by a drunk driver. The culprit, because of a contact in the … Read More >>

The Colour of Death is the sixth novel from author Michael Cordy.

This book grips you from the explosive first chapter, where a ten year old Nathan Fox loses both his parents and sister in a petrol station robbery.

It then cuts straight to nineteen years later, to women running from something but we don’t know what. A police car scares her into cowering beside a building, out of sight. Simply by touching the wall she could sense … Read More >>

Saints of New York is the 8th book from Birmingham-born crime titan R.J. Ellory. The tale opens with Frank Parrish, alcoholic NYPD detective, trying and failing to talk a junkie out of a murder/suicide. From then on, trouble mounts for the beleaguered Parrish, as heroin dealer Danny Lange and his sister are each found murdered. Danny’s death is hardly a surprise, but the murder of his innocent, unassuming sister raises difficult questions … Read More >>

This is much more than a TV tie-in. It’s a novel written by the creator and sole writer of hit BBC drama, Luther. Told as a prequel to the first series, it shows us how Luther became the man we met on television.

DCI John Luther is a man in crisis. His marriage is falling apart. He hasn’t slept in weeks, maybe months. His work is nearly killing him. “His heart is a furnace”, Cross tells us … Read More >>

Bad Signs is set in the 1960s, in Texas in the USA and takes place during one week – only seven days, but an exhausting seven days, for the characters and for the reader. Elliot and Clarence are two half-brothers, better known as Digger and Clay, they were orphaned at an early age and have spent their time in ‘juvy’. Life has not been good for them – were they born under a … Read More >>

I quite enjoyed this book, it’s not a genre I usually read, I think I’ve probably read one other similar book and that’s it!

It tells the story from the point of view of the captive, Merete, and of the detective looking into the case, Carl. This is quite an interesting way of telling the story as Merete’s story is mainly in the past where as Carl’s is present, and they eventully meet.

It’s well written (and translated) … Read More >>