Sins of the Fathers by James Craig
Inspector John Carlyle is a wearily decent copper, working in the heart of London. He lives with his long-suffering wife and teenage daughter in a block of council flats not far away. Permanently tired, struggling to make ends meet but fiercely honest, he is one…
Cemetery Girl by David Bell
Tom Stuart is a professor of English in an un-named town in America. He and his wife Abby sit amid the ruins of their slowly crumbling marriage, a disintegration brought about almost entirely by the abduction of their 12-year-old daughter. Four years have passed, with…
The Exit by Helen FitzGerald
The Exit is a psychological thriller with a fixation on death, though one principal character has to negotiate the maze of dementia before she’s able to reach her final destination. Rose Price is a children’s author and illustrator, though she’s now struggling to write those…
Fear the Darkness by Becky Mastermind
It’s a dangerous thing, retiring from the FBI, especially when you spent most of your time there working deep under cover. In a nutshell, that’s the history of Brigid Quinn, a character who first appeared in Masterman’s acclaimed debut novel Rage Against the Dying. I’ll…
The Devil You Know by Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Canada is often thought of as a gentler, safer, and dare I say it, more boring version of its southern neighbour. Canadian citizens are less brash, perhaps less overtly patriotic than Americans, and the country’s gun laws are tighter. At least, the kind of violent…
The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson
This book begins with a scenario eerily reminiscent of the classic Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train (written by the excellent Patricia Highsmith). A successful businessman meets a woman in an airport bar and the pair strike up a conversation which continues when they end up on the…
The Jigsaw Man by Elena Forbes
After a lengthy hiatus, Elena Forbes returns here with a fourth edition in her DI Mark Tartaglia series, set in London. Tartaglia’s colleague Sam Donovan has left the force, deeply affected by the traumatic events of the previous book. These are succinctly covered for those new to…