The Valley
Don’t expect a cosy rural crime thriller – the valley of the title is actually a street in suburban London. On the one hand the book is a psychological study of the hopes and fears of the families who live in The Valley, but it…
The Crooked House by Christobel Kent
Following a series set in Florence featuring private investigator Sandro Cellini, Christobel Kent has shifted the action to an English estuary village for her 10th novel. It feels like a fresh start for the author, who’s been taken on by a different publisher. There’s not…
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
With the publisher calling it ‘the new Gone Girl’, this book is one of the most hotly anticipated crime debuts of early 2015 and it has been impossible to avoid all reviews and buzz before reading it. Does it deserve all the hype? Well, yes and…
Calvin's Head by David Swatling
We crime fiction fans are bombarded with books that have ‘death’, ‘die’ or ‘blood’ in the title. So when a story entitled ‘Calvin’s Head’ came to my notice, my interest was piqued. Was it the name of a place? A person? Soon, all became clear…
The Dying Place by Luca Veste
The body of a known teenage troublemaker, Dean Hughes, is found dead on the steps of a church in a run down part of Liverpool. But this is no ordinary death, his corpse is covered with signs of torture, some of them months old. As…
NTN: The Waiting Game by Sheila Bugler
After an impressive debut last year with Hunting Shadows, Sheila Bugler returns with The Waiting Game. It’s her second London-based police procedural featuring DI Ellen Kelly. The first book focused on the abduction of a young woman, which proved a tricky and dangerous case for…
Memento Mori by Keith McCarthy
Picture an old man alone except for his daughter, living in an secluded and abandoned infirmary. He hears voices. Not just ordinary voices, but the voices of the three ancient Muses – Mese, Nete and Hypate, hot on the line from Delphi – and their…