How the world has changed since my last Good Reads blog at the beginning of February. Strength to you all in these tough times. Stay well and safe. Social isolation really brings home how much the arts mean to us, doesn’t it? How would we possibly get through without music, art, movies, TV, games, and of course, books? Support your local bookshops if you can, but hallelujah eBooks! We’d be lost without them. Speaking of books, here are the crime reads I enjoyed in February and March, along with the one I have currently underway.
Disclaimer:
Being a crime fiction addict and lover of series books, expect lots of my reading to fall into these categories. You can also expect to only hear about the books I have enjoyed – but as I have honed my selections to my tastes over the years, I am rarely disappointed, and I get that reading enjoyment is subjective anyway. I love to jump over to Goodreads and share the books I’ve enjoyed with the reading community, and this led me to posting my standouts in a “Good Reads” column each month or so.
A Mersey Killing: When Liverpool Rocked, and the Music Died (Mersey Murder Mysteries #1) Brian L Porter – 5 stars
A Mersey Killing was the perfect example of “right book at the right time” – it was so charming in both story and author style that I could forget about the current world crisis for a while, and immerse in a mystery set in Liverpool, UK during the roaring 60s and the more current era of 1999. Back in 1961, a group of young male friends formed pop band Brendan Kane and the Planets with the hope of breaking through as the next Beatles. Their greatest supporter was Marie, sister to two of the band members. Shift to Liverpool in 1999 and meet Detective Inspector Andy Ross, Sergeant Izzie Drake and their team who have just landed a murder case upon the discovery of skeletal remains at the docklands. Then that murder case grows to include a missing person. And it all ties into the early days of the Mersey Beat and that friendship group with big ambitions. Without giving away more of the plot, I’d recommend this murder mystery and am happy to note it is the first in a series, so there will be plenty more Mersey Murder Mysteries to enjoy.
Mastermind (Mitchell Parker Crime Thrillers #1) Helen Goltz – 5 stars
So much to enjoy in this action-packed thriller that this is my second read of Mastermind! A billionaire mastermind and his cronies devising the perfect crime that only a chosen few will play. The stakes are high…this is no game, but for real, and it’s on Special Agent Mitchell Parker and his team to shut down the crimes. The landscape spans from Washington DC to London. The characters, especially Mitchell Parker, value-add to a tight, page-turning, roller-coaster ride well-spun by its author. Mastermind is a terrific start to a new action series.
Less You Know (Ashes to Ashes #2) Rowena Holloway – 4.0-4.5 stars
Less You Know is the second instalment in Rowena Holloway’s Ashes to Ashes series. I feel you’ll get the greatest enjoyment from this book by starting with book one, Bad Things Happen, as there is a complex plot running through the series. In Less You Know, journalist Charlotte Ashe has run into trouble in her career, her love life and her best friend Allie is missing. Dead or alive? Is her disappearance connected with Allie being involved in Charlotte’s bid to expose Tyrone Garner—a former football star turned property developer—as a fraud? The story rolls out in Charlotte’s “now” point of view, alongside Allie’s movements “then”, in the months leading up to her disappearance. There is also some mystery about an event in Italy several years earlier and just how Allie was involved in that. As Charlotte attempts to find her friend, she needs to trust people she never believed she could, and learns some friends are those with the biggest secrets. It obviously won’t be until the reader finishes book three in the series that all will be revealed. I enjoyed the author’s style and setting of Less You Know. It probably would’ve been good to refresh my memory of Bad Things Happen before diving into this one, but it was a very enjoyable read in the context of a three-part series.
The Connecticut Corpse Caper (Triple Threat Mysteries #1) Tyler Colins – 4 stars
The Connecticut Corpse Caper is the first in the Triple Threat Mysteries and my first read of this author. It’s a fun twist on the traditional isolated country house whodunnit trope – the writer’s style is energetic and brims with quirky humour and description. There’s a posh mansion, tonnes of hidden passageways, a singing-talking ghost, and cast of both likeable and unlikeable characters all required to stay a week to inherit a packet of money. When the body count rises, corpses disappear and unexpected parties make an entrance, it’s time for our amateur sleuths to get to work to solve the case. A very enjoyable cosy mystery.
The Ruin (Cormac Reilly #1) Dervla McTiernan – 4.5 stars
Detective Cormac Reilly has recently transferred to Galway from a specialist detective unit in Dublin, but instead of being welcomed into his new team, he’s been relegated to cold cases and given an equally cold shoulder by several of his colleagues, and he also senses other undercurrents among the team. Meanwhile, Aisling Conroy’s boyfriend Jack is found in the River Corrib, and the police rule his death a suicide…until Jack’s long-lost sister Maude shows up, determined to prove what happened to her brother was no accident. The timing is then iffy when Reilly lands a cold case that takes him back twenty years, when as a rookie cop he was called to a crumbling property to find the body of Hilaria Blake, and had to deal with her two surviving children: Maude and Jack. The story then becomes a push-me-pull-you with Reilly in the middle of a historic murder and Jack’s recent death. The complicated strands in The Ruin are well-woven and told in an evocative style and set in atmospheric Ireland. A few times slightly confusing between characters, and with a sub-plot perhaps not needed, overall this page-turning mystery leaves me keen for more by Irish-born, Australian author Dervla McTiernan.
Vengeance List (Foley & Rose #1) Gary Gregor – 4.5 stars
Vengeance List is the first book in a series starring homicide investigator Russell Foley and private investigator Sam Rose and it’s set in Australia’s top-end—specifically steamy, tropical Darwin—which adds an extra film of oppression to the story. It opens with the brutal and daring murder of a cop, and it’s one of a series to come, but don’t be mistaken, while there is a sadistic killer at large, there are layers to this novel and its characters that keep the pages turning. Foley and his team are struggling to find leads to the killer and links between the victims. He is a good cop but it’s questionable if he’s up to the job of tracking down this serial killer, or if his recent marriage breakdown and tremendous, public falling out with his best friend, Rose, is getting the better of him. Meanwhile, Rose is hired to covertly investigate the killings and it soon becomes personal on multiple levels. Can Foley and Rose put aside their painful past and catch the killer before he completes his killing list? I’m looking forward to more by this author.
Camp Leichhardt (standalone) Greg Barron – 4 stars
Camp Leichhardt is a rural thriller brimming with its author’s love of fishing and the rugged Australian outback, and his respect for the Indigenous people. It’s the place where cop Ben Mulligan takes a timeout from work in the Northern Territory town of Katherine. A Grey Nomad camp in Australia’s top end, on a wild river, in the middle of nowhere, where crocodiles and snakes should be his only fear. It’s Ben’s chance to escape his past, his demons, but they follow him anywhere he goes. And instead of just whiling away his time fishing, he stumbles upon a gang of criminals making themselves filthy rich off the backs of others, and he falls for a woman who is off-limits. He is determined to stop the crooks and the immoral, mortal damage they are inflicting on the fragile local community, and be with Melea, the woman who has captured his heart. But will his quest cost him his career? His life? I found Camp Leichhardt to be a very enjoyable read.
The Nowhere Child (standalone) Christian White – 4.5-5.0 stars
The Nowhere Child is my first read of Christian White. A ripper read and a strong debut. A psychological thriller set largely in Kentucky USA, though centred around the character Kimberly Leamy, a late-twenties photography teacher living in Melbourne, Australia. Kim’s world comes apart when an American man named Stuart claims she is not who she thinks she is, and he claims he has DNA evidence proving it. He says she is his youngest sister, Sammy Went, who disappeared at the age of two. For that to be the case, Kim’s recently deceased mum, can’t be her mum, which seems impossible. But Kim’s step-father shocks her when he doesn’t deny Stuart’s claim. And so, Kim goes to Kentucky to reunite with the rest of her family (fractured by the tragedy? or already doomed before her disappearance?) and on a quest to find out who abducted her twenty-odd years ago, and why. In then-and-now style, we follow Kim/Sammy’s story through the twists and turns until the truth reveals itself. The Nowhere Child held my interest all through the slow-build lead-up to a riveting climax, and I found the “then” story to be particularly strong.
I have just dived into Crash Land set in Scotland by Doug Johnstone. I’ll share more about that, along with other great crime reads in my next Good Reads blog. Meanwhile, happy reading!
Cheers, Sandi
