The Crime Warp

You’d think that with all the wonderful new crime books in the market place there’d be no need to revisit the ‘golden oldies’. But you would be missing out. How many of the new books lining shelves in shops today will stand the test of time? Or perhaps you are fortunate enough to be too young to have read these books when they were the bestsellers of their day?  Some publishers, like Vintage or Virago are reissuing crime classics and either way, by not taking this opportunity you would be denying yourself a very enjoyable experience. Recently I reread Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham, the eleventh novel in the Albert Campion Series. To gain the most enjoyment you must be in the right frame of mind. Relax, clear your head, and let yourself drift back to 1941 when this cracking mystery was first published. What do you read in the middle of a terrible war to relax and take your mind off your troubles? Interestingly, Allingham does not shy away from leading her readers into ...

I’m a latecomer to Harlan Coben and was impressed by his novel Fool Me Once , which I previously reviewed on The Crime Warp ( http://thecrimewarp.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/look-out-for-these-aprils-selection-of.html ).  When I saw there was a new Harlan Coben novel coming out, I thought it would be worth a go.  So, the story – Patrick Moore and Rhys Baldwin were kidnapped from their home ten years ago and disappeared.  Nothing has been heard of them since until an anonymous tip leads Myron Bolitar’s close friend Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III no less!) to London.  Win and Myron rescue Patrick Moore but Rhys Baldwin is nowhere to be found.   Back in the US, Win and Myron become suspicious that the boy who says he is Patrick may be an impostor and as Myron digs into the original kidnapping, he becomes more uneasy about the circumstances of what really happened to Patrick and Rhys.  The relationship between the boy’s parents adds another lay...

After being invited to be one of the Spotlighted debut authors with my debut novel Unquiet Souls at this year's Bloody Scotland, I was privileged to meet my 11 co-spotlighters.  I was impressed  by their work. In an attempt to keep the spotlight shining here is a rundown of these fantastic authors debut novels.

The Blurb The Devil’s Work is an exhilarating and chilling grip-lit novel that follows Sophie Greenwood, a young mother who unwittingly accepts a job at the office from hell! Re-entering the workforce after having her first child, Sophie thinks she’s found her dream job in the marketing department of an iconic children’s publisher. But very quickly Sophie comes to find that someone is out to get her and that the dream job may turn out to be a nightmare. A mouse nailed to her front door… A stranger following her home in the shadows… Unexplainable whispers in the office late at night… As her life begins to fall apart at work and at home, Sophie must confront dark secrets from the past and race to uncover the truth about her new job… before it kills her. What is her ambitious young assistant really up to? And what exactly happened to Sophie’s predecessor? Mark's Post My favourite crime/thriller writers and how they have influenced my work – guest post for The Crim...

What makes Darktown such an important read is the fact that the events it covered happened within the last century and with the USA presidential election and Donald Trump, highlighting how attitudes haven't changed so much over the last century, it's imperative that we remember the atrocities of this era.

   You can’t escape your past. I know that for a fact, I’ve tried. Unsuccessfully. And so did our two protagonists, Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. Neither Strike, a former military police officer, now a private investigator, nor Robin, his secretary and an aspiring investigator, can shake off their past. Imagine trying to build a new life, a career, relationships, and pretending that your past will never catch up with you. But then it finally does. In ‘Career of Evil’, all hell breaks loose when a severed leg is delivered to Robin. It continues with a finger and ends with …. You’ll have to read it, this book with its satisfyingly complex plot and its many twists and turns. If you like Jack Reacher, then you will love Strike. The author Robert Galbraith, aka J.K. Rowling, is more generous than Lee Child. You get a wider range of evil suspects with varying degrees of depravity, a sharper drawn supporting cast – an altogether fuller picture. Set mainly in L...

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Told over two time lines Lazy Blood is a stunning exploration of friendship, loyalty, secrets and serendipity from debut author Ross Greenwood. It opens with Will being processed in prison after being convicted of murder.  Pretty quickly we discover Will has friends who are keeping an eye out for him whilst he's in prison... and so the intrigue begins.

As summer draws to its end and schools colleges and Universities open their doors once more I thought I'd do a round up of a few of the books from early 2016 that I've read and enjoyed.

Warning! Hard core violence and psychological gore. I wasn’t going to review this book as it contains more violence than I’m comfortable with. However, it is well written, unusual and complex. So if you like your crime hard core and challenging then this might just be the book for you. I love the cover – it’s what made me pick up the book. It is a nod to the Western genre, but more Clint Eastwood or Spaghetti Western than John Wayne. However, the setting is not the adventurous West of the turn of the 19th Century, but the contemporary bleakness of abandoned ghost towns in a harsh arrid environment. The protagonist, a morally ambivalent anthropologist, gets lost in a desert in the American Midwest during a research trip. I don’t know what is more chilling – what happens to him after he is ‘saved’ by a group of people or what takes place in his inner world. This book is a great reminder of just how thin the veneer of our civilisation is. At more than one point in the book you wo...