Suicide in Santa Monica?
On the Radar — Our lead book this week takes us out to the sunny LA suburb of Santa Monica but if the gruesome deaths there are too hot to handle, then there are chills aplenty too. Yes, we have ghostly chills in a haunted…
CIS: The Flaxborough Chronicles by Colin Watson
Colin Watson was one of those writers who certainly had his day in the sun, but is largely forgotten in these days of supermarket best-sellers and huge promotional budgets for writers thought to be the next big thing. Watson was a modest man. Born in Croydon…
A gazetteer of British crime: East Anglia
Oh, you can complain about the weather, the food, the accommodation and the service. Fair enough. Our country has exported everything from stiff upper lips to football hooliganism. But what you can’t complain about in the UK is the sheer variety in its regions and customs….
Reacher on the prairie
On the Radar — Ann Cleeves, Anthony Horowitz and Lee Child – three of the UK’s biggest names in crime fiction – all feature this week. Cleeves has written about a moth hunter, Horiwitz about 007 and Lee Child, well, he’s got a new Jack Reacher story…
Black Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin
The Black Eyed Susans of the title are an attractive daisy-like flower and the cover as a whole is eye-catching, innocuous enough. There’s no sign of violence; this red haired girl could just be sleeping…. Lulled into a false sense of security, we begin with a…
A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd
In book seven in the Bess Crawford mystery series, Bess works as a World War I field hospital nurse in France, 1918. Despite the well-imagined and effectively described violence of her surroundings, it this is a cosy mystery. The action begins when, on leave and…
Life or Death by Michael Robotham
Avid readers will relate to what I’m about to say: Sometimes, life just gets in the way. I mean, why waste time working, eating or sleeping when you’re in the thrall of a gripping book like Life or Death? Because believe me, this book snags…