The Crime Warp

Clue: read tomorrow's review February 1st 2017!

Welcome to the blog tour for Her Every Fear , the latest book by Peter Swanson. My first Peter Swanson novel was The Kind Worth Killing – a simply superb book that I couldn’t put down.   Last year I read Swanson’s first novel The Girl With a Clock for a Heart , thinking it wouldn’t be as good – it was!   So, when I saw last July that there would be a new Swanson novel in 2017, I wondered whether Her Every Fear would be a Swanson hat trick? You guessed it, I just couldn’t wait to find out.

Set in New Orleans, detective Micki Dare is teamed with 'Light Keeper', Zach Harris in this police procedural/paranormal thriller.  

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva is basically Bear Ghrylls meets The Hunger Games in this apocalyptic psychological thriller told through flashback and current events... Astounding !

It's that time of year when after the excitement of Christmas things feel a bit flat.  Combine that with the dark nights and drab weather and January could be the worst month. However, don't despair because there are some brilliant crime drama to curl up and watch and the bonus is they all have strong female protagonists.

The ducking and diving of the psychological thriller is what makes them so compelling and Seeber's The Stepmother is no exception.  The notion of the mind being tormented sometimes to the point of insanity draws the reader in.  In this book the traditional concept of the evil stepmother is challenged as Jeanie, determined to create a blended family, begins her new life, putting her past firmly behind her.

Angela Marsons is rapidly becoming one of my favourite UK writers and with her fifth novel Blood Lines my enthusiasm shows no signs of abating.  Blood Lines is a fantastic book and one of the main pulls for me has to be the battle of wills between DI Kim Stone and her nemesis Dr Alexandra Thorne... a truly magnificent battle worthy of any Star Wars movie!!!

Thank goodness there is one cop unprepared to kowtow to his superiors and the establishment when it comes to taking on a complex and dangerous case pointing to a well-connected family. Of course this kind of independence and risk-taking will mark our protagonist DI Ray Mason as unreliable and hard to control. How much pressure will it take to make him back off? When you persist on going your own way in the face of violent opposition, you need someone to watch your back. The out-of-favour Mason finds formidable support with the troubled private investigator and former cop Tina Boyd. ‘The Bone Field’ starts with the discovery of some mysterious bones and takes in a murdered child, human trafficking for the sadistic end of the sex trade, Satanism, a criminal conspiracy and a powerful gang, … all elements of an engrossing read. Add to that an atmosphere of danger and menace, a well-crafted plot,  as well as plenty of action and you get a captivating and intriguing thriller. ...

Well, we've seen the back of 2016 with all its trials and tribulations.  However there are a few books I've read in 2016 that deserve a shout out on The Crime warp ... so here's my thoughts on them

P olice at the station and they don’t look friendly , is the title of the sixth novel in the Sean Duffy series, written by Adrian McKinty.  It’s a bleak start to the novel, as Duffy is being led through a forest by three masked gunmen.  It’s not just a beating this time, Duffy’s ben told he must dig his own grave and if he co-operates and doesn’t make a fuss, they’ll be kind enough to kill him cleanly.  The book then switches back in time to a cosy family scene, with Duffy, his girlfriend Beth, their infant daughter Emma and Duffy’s parents.  A sweet, touching scene, until Duffy is called away to investigate the murder of a local drug dealer, shot to death with a crossbow. When Duffy arrives at the crime scene the novel descends into what seems like a slapstick farce, with an unguarded corpse on the drive about to be nibbled by a stray goat, the trusty Sergeant McCrabban in hospital after being stabbed with a fork and an ice cream van driver who...

This is a Nordic Noir novel of the creepy scary type we Brits love. The author is young, blonde, Swedish and female and she sets the tone for the book. You can just imagine her working in the dress stores, walking the sludgy streets and sleeping in the sparse apartment blocks in which the drama is set. It is a psychological thriller set against the backdrop of a cold snowy Christmas in Stockholm. The stylish dust jacket is stamped ‘Guaranteed To Keep You Up All Night’ and I can confirm this is true, well almost, in any case as I have to be up early for work, but I happily turned off the telly and read it by the fire through the evening. It took me a couple of days, and when I put it down I wanted to get back to it, to find out what happened. I was intrigued by the main characters and their interactions - all of them, police, suspects, victims have their character flaws and these weaknesses, predilections, and traumas drive their actions and the plot. The prose is easy to re...