The Crime Warp

Available o n Amazon Click  here Edge of Darkness is layered and nuanced, alive with intriguing sub plots, full of appealing characters, dark with vile villains  .... and of course shrouded in ROMANCE!  Karen Rose has a very dark mind, but she also has a vert romantic one and when the two come together we get a fantastic story like Edge of Darkness ... I loved it!

How do we know that events in the past which we are told happened actually happened? Most historians accept that history is written by the victors, and spin doesn’t only apply to current politics and news reporting, but also to the writings of historians. What has this got to do with Deposed, a thriller set in ancient Rome? Everything. The author David Barbaree presents an interesting scenario. What if the Emperor Nero hadn’t actually died when and as the history books tell us? What if he managed to survive a life-changing attack, re-invent himself and step into a breath-taking mystery? The standard of research undertaken these days for the writing of historical crime fiction is usually so high, that I have to look to other features to isolate what makes this book so particularly engaging. The plot is pacey and the style approachable, if a big modern. What lifts it above the average read is that the psychological development of the characters is so astute. It’s an honest book,...

Available on   Amazon When sassy local TV reporter Ana Maria Villareal stirs up interest about the cold case murders of three Cheyenne Police Officers, she enlists the help of old friend and retired detective, Arn Anderson. The local police don't  take too kindly to an interloper, even if that interloper's roots lie in Cheyenne, looking at cases they failed to solve first time round.   Arn's return to Cheyenne opens up baggage he thought he'd disposed of years previously when he re-opens his old family home and alongside his emotions and the investigation it seems that Ana Maria is being stalked.  Is her stalker the serial killer the three dead officers were investigating at the time of their deaths.  has he come out of retirement after so many years?   With a cast of characters from a handyman with an assumed name, to a retired detective, a smart TV reporter, a dodgy mechanic and one of the victim's sons, there is an abundance of suspects. ...

Now here is a doozy. I love crime books written in a first-person narrative, especially if the protagonist is as complex and interesting as Nora Watts, a researcher for an investigation bureau in Vancouver, Canada. Forget Canada being a place of polite and kind people who articulate all their violent instincts on the hockey rink. Like everywhere else, it has bad people, really bad people. And they are out to get Nora. What could be worse? Really bad people out to get the teenage daughter she gave up for adoption the day she gave birth to her. In a tight spot, like when you are running for your life, you hope you have friends or family to turn to for help. You hope there is at least one person you can trust with your life. But what if that isn’t the case? What if you are entirely on your own? Nora Watts gives new meaning to two words - ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘survivor’. Will she be able to save her daughter though? The author, Sheena Kamal, is new on the block, but not for...

A different class of spy (guest reviewer Sylvia Campbell) Let me make it clear, I am all for bloody murder but loathe dystopian science fiction and, just as much, Dickensian poverty, filth and misery. It´s just not my thing. So when a crime book featuring poverty stricken street urchins in miserable turn of the century London was put into my hands I was not full of the joys of reading. Trust me, when I first opened the covers this book, the first crime novel by H. B. Lyle, it was an exercise of duty. After page 3 I could not put the damn thing down. I hunkered down with it every free minute of the day, delayed turning out the lights at night until my eyes went on strike and snuck it out of my bag in every queue I had to stand in.  Following the story of Wiggins, former street urchin and leader of the ´Baker Street Irregulars- clever, poor and trained by Sherlock Holmes- was addictive. Wiggins, now a hardened former soldier, street fighter and reluctant bailiff wi...

In The Dock today we have Mason Cross' very enigmatic character, Carter Blake and I for one am determined to get right under his skin and see what makes this character tick ...Over to Carter! Tell us a little about Carter Blake's background Carter Blake has a fairly mysterious background, although we’ve learned a bit more about him over the four books to Available  here date. At the start of the first book, we know nothing about him other than that Carter Blake is not his real name. As we start to get to know him better, we find out he has a history in special operations and a talent for finding people who don’t want to be found. He used to work for a shadowy project within the US military codenamed Winterlong, but now works for himself. The Fields of Wheat moment… What is the most rebellious thing Carter has ever done? The most rebellious thing he’s done has been to turn on his handlers when he realised they were up to no good. He managed to negotiate a ...