The Crime Warp

This second novel in this trilogy catches up with HP and Rebecca after their escape from The Game at the end of the first book The Game .   HP is on the run, drifting from country to country in a haze of drugs, alcohol and increasing paranoia, whilst desperately homesick for Sweden.   Rebecca is as focussed as ever and after a surprise promotion heads up a close protection team and settling down into some semblance of domestic normality. This equilibrium soon starts to unravel for HP after a trip to a Bedouin desert camp organised by his friend Vincent takes a strange turn and HP finds himself framed for the murder of a fellow Swede Anna Argos.   His detention turns nasty and after several waterboarding sessions, HP reveals his identity, uncertain if he is back in The Game again.     However, police colonel Aziz realised HP has been set up and frees him.   HP knows he is lucky, but feels some responsibility to find out who did murder Anna Arg...

I’m really excited at this month’s choices, a great mix of established and new authors and a mix of settings.  If you’re wondering about Peterborough, which certainly isn’t anything like Copenhagen or Reykjavik, I can assure you that Long Way Home is one of these books where the setting doesn’t matter, because…well, just read on and you’ll see why.   The Killing (3) by David Hewson – The third case for Sarah Lund starts with a gruesome search for body parts in a scrapyard, and soon sweeps into an attempted assassination of the Prime Minister and the kidnapping of billionaire Robert Zeuthen’s nine year old daughter..   The investigation finds links to a young girl’s murder some years before but with the election in full swing, it looks like politics is bound to get in the way of finding the truth.  I started to read the first page and was genuinely hooked – Hewson definitely has the touch of turning an exciting screenplay into a gripping novel ...

                          The Scent Of Death  By Andrew Taylor I haven’t read a lot of historic crime fiction, but when I met Andrew at an Arvon course last summer I decided to start my experience with his latest novel.   I AM SO GLAD I DID! The Scent of Death is brilliant.  I thoroughly enjoyed every page of it and as my family will testify I completely ignored them for the three days it took me to read it – they’ll survive!  Andrew Taylor Taylor, introduces the reader to the New York 1778 and in the opening scene, where the main character Edward Savill, sent to work in New York also views the city for the first time.   This strikes an immediate chord between Savill and the reader and as the story unfolds we become invested in Edward's fate in terms of his relationship with the mysterious Arabella   and   the murder of a gentleman in the slums. Taylor writes with a ...

                  Cross and Burn By Val McDermid If, like me, you are an avid fan of Val McDermid’s Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, you will no doubt have formed a strong emotional bond with the characters and their relationship.   At the outset of her previous Hill/Jordan novel, The Retribution , it seemed that the pair finally found common ground, only for that fragile glimmer of hope to be extinguished by the end of the book.   McDermid skilfully threw all the familiar things that constituted the series up in the air and who knew where they would land. Val McDermid Well finally, in Cross and Burn , McDermid’s new Hill/Jordan novel we find out.   Tony has miraculously navigated his way through the canals with his houseboat and is back in Bradfield in his old job.   A mourning Carol has disappeared to the place you’d least expect to find her and is toiling her way rough her grief.   Paula, workin...

Kernick’s books are all fast paced, action based thrillers.   With Stay Alive, Kernick has paused his political thriller series (Siege and Ultimatum) and instead delivered a standalone novel. This book has a number of threads, starting with Amanda Rowan’s escape from a brutal sadistic murder, dubbed The Disciple.   Her husband and his mistress weren’t so lucky.   Kernick builds the story introducing a wide cast of characters; Detectives Mike Bolt and Mo Khan; Policeman turned rogue Frank Keogh plus nasty men Mehdi, Sayenko and Maclean. Having then thought that Rowan is going to be the focus of the action, we meet Joss Granger and her little sister Casey, who with their step parents Tim and Jean are out for an idyllic day trip canoeing.   A shocking reality strikes when Keogh and Maclean burst onto the scene pursuing Rowan and within minutes Jean and Tim are dead. The chase is now on, but at this point what’s not clear is why.   Keogh...

Regular Crime Warp readers will know that I’m a fan of Emerald Noir in general but especially Adrian McKinty and his character Sean Duffy.   I started with a taster chapter of his first Sean Duffy book The Cold Cold Ground and was immediately hooked.   I waited anxiously for his second Sean Duffy novel I Hear the Sirens in the Street and loved the picture of corruption on a grand scale but flabbergasted when Duffy was busted down to uniform at the end of book 2.   I’ve been waiting for book 3 to find out what happened to Duffy.   Here goes…. If you thought things were bad for Duffy at the end of I Hear the Sirens in the Street things just get worse.   It’s 1984 and after a stretch in uniform Duffy is pressured into resigning from the force on a trumped up charge of injuring a pedestrian with the wing mirror of a Landrover that he wasn’t even driving!   Duffy falls into a cycle of drink and dope until one day, through the haze, Kathy and he...