Desire & Deceit (The Victorian Detectives Book 9) by Carol Hedges ~ #BookReview for #RBRT @carolJhedges #TuesdayBookBlog

Posted in Book Review, Crime, Historical Fiction, Murder/Mystery, Victorian by Cathy

Author: Carol Hedges

Published: July 2021 by Little G Books

Category: Historical Crime Fiction, Victorian, Book Review

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It is 1868, and the body of a young man has gone missing from the police mortuary at Scotland Yard, an event that has never happened before. Who was the mysterious corpse, and why was he spirited away in the night? These are the questions baffling Detective Inspector Stride and Detective Sergeant Cully as they set out to uncover the truth.

London during 1868 is experiencing the hottest summer on record, wilting under the relentless heat and resulting odours. Detective Inspector Leo Stride, feeling the lack of his daily caffeine from the usual coffee stalls holders who have forsaken London for the much cooler countryside, is summoned along with his colleague DS Jack Cully to the morgue. There was a problem. A body had gone missing.

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11Sep2021

#MiniBlogBlitz for Mum’s The Word by Lorraine Turnbull @LorraineAuthor #Murder #DarkHumour @rararesources

Posted in Blog Blitz, Crime, Dark Humour, Guest Post, Murder, Uncategorized by Cathy

Welcome to the 5 day Mini Blog Blitz for Mum’s The Word by Lorraine Turnbull, organised by Rachel’s Random Resources.

Lorraine says…

Mum’s the Word starts with a murder, but although the tense and tantalising question from the beginning has to be ‘Does she get away with it?’, the novel is peppered with everyday life and some good old fashioned Scottish humour. I didn’t want to put readers off with descriptions of blood and gore or gratuitous violence; life is tough enough at the best of times, so many hours of reading, rereading and rewriting took place to achieve the right sort of balance. Yes, it’s a book for women – only women can truly understand the hollowness of an empty marriage, of working in what is primarily a man’s world and facing their golden years knowing the best is behind them. But I hope the story is also uplifting and holds the hope that no matter what age we are, we can all hope for a ‘happy ever after’.

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10Jun2021

#ThrowbackThursday ~ Birthday Girl by Matthew Iden ~ Every Parent’s Nightmare #Psychological #Thriller

Posted in Crime, Mystery, Psychological, Thriller, Throwback Thursday by Cathy

Birthday Girl was published in 2018 by Thomas & Mercer.

My Thoughts

Since his daughter’s abduction and murder eight years ago, Elliott Nash has lived under a crushing cloud of guilt. His marriage failed, his brilliant career as a criminal psychologist is nothing but a memory, he’s homeless and lives on the streets. The only constants in his life are nightmares and pain. His natural drive to help people has diminished. That is, until he meets former addict Amy Scowcroft. Amy’s daughter, Lacey, has been missing for almost a year but Amy refuses to believe her daughter is dead. Getting nowhere with the investigation into Amy’s disappearance, the police have closed the case. Detective Dave Cargill, who works for the D.C. Metropolitan Child and Family Services, refers Amy to his old friend and former colleague, Elliott Nash.

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3Jun2021

#ThrowbackThursday ~ The Lewis Man by Peter May ~ #Mystery and #Drama in the Outer Hebrides

Posted in Audiobook, Book Review, Crime, Drama, Murder, Mystery, Uncategorized by Cathy

The Lewis Man is the second book in the fabulous Lewis Trilogy by Peter May. I listened to the audiobooks (this one relaesed in 2012), performed brilliantly by Peter Forbes.

My Thoughts

On the Isle of Lewis peat cutting is considered a social activity, with families, friends and neighbours all joining in and working together. Trenches are dug and the peat cut and stacked as it has been for centuries. Only this time the peat cutters uncover more than they bargained for when an almost perfectly preserved body is discovered. Initially the police surgeon thinks the body could have been there for hundreds of years, it was only when a tattoo becomes visible they realise the young man had been murdered much more recently.

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6May2021

#ThrowbackThursday ~ Sitting Murder: A Lancashire Detective Mystery by A.J. Wright #Historical #CrimeFiction

Posted in Book Review, Crime, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Throwback Thursday by Cathy

Sitting Murder was originally published in 2017 and choosing this book for my Throwback Thursday choice has reminded me I have the next book on my kindle.

Set in a North-Western English town during the late 19th century, this murder/mystery whodunnit brings the history of the era to life with the terraces of houses, local dialect and a community living in close proximity to one another. The main source of work were the cotton mills and the mines. Alice Goodway, only married a year, has lost her husband, Jack, in a mining accident, which also took the life of her friend’s husband. Since her husband’s death, Alice has become a medium, offering comfort to those who have lost loved ones, through her spiritual contact with Jack.

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26Mar2021

The Night Hawks: Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 13 by Elly Griffiths @ellygriffiths #MurderMystery #BookReview

Posted in Book Review, Crime, Murder, Mystery by Cathy

Author: Elly Griffiths

Published: February 2021 by Quercus

Category: Muder, Mystery, Archaeology, Book Review

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The Night Hawks, a group of metal detectorists, are searching for buried treasure when they find a body on the beach in North Norfolk. At first Nelson thinks that the dead man might be an asylum seeker but he turns out to be a local boy, Jem Taylor, recently released from prison. Ruth is more interested in the treasure, a hoard of Bronze Age weapons. Nelson at first thinks that Taylor’s death is accidental drowning, but a second death suggests murder.

Dr Ruth Galloway has returned to Norfolk and her much loved cottage after a stint as a Cambridge lecturer, taking over her old boss’s position as Head of Archaeology at North Norfolk University. She’s hardly had time to settle in when she gets a call from DCI Nelson to say a body has been washed up at Blakeney Point, found by some metal detectorists.

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11Mar2021

#ThrowbackThursday ~ Don’t Let Go by Harlan Coben #Suspense #Thriller

Posted in Book Review, Crime, Suspense, Thriller, Throwback Thursday by Cathy

This was actually my first Harlan Coben book…hard to believe, I know. I don’t know why but I had it in my mind he wrote horror. Anyway, Don’t Let Go was a great one to start with and was published in 2017.

My Thoughts

Napoleon ‘Nap’ Dumas, a New Jersey Detective, has never quite come to terms with his twin brother’s death, and has carried that baggage with him since Leo and his girlfriend, Diana, were found dead on the railroad tracks back when they were all in high school. Nap’s girlfriend, Maura, disappeared from his life at the same time and for the last fifteen years Nap has been consumed with wanting to know the circumstances behind his brother’s death and the sudden and mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend, Maura.

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9Mar2021

Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot Book 16) by Agatha Christie #MurderMystery #AudiobookReview #TuesdayBookBlog

Posted in Audiobook, Book Review, Crime, Murder, Mystery by Cathy

Author: Agatha Christie

Performed by Hugh Fraser

Category: Murder, Mystery, Book Review

Everyone blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th…

When Miss Emily Arundel died, not unexpectedly as her health had been delicate, the contents of her will caused a variety of emotions, including surprise, anger, criticism, excitement and gossip. The residents of Market Basing talked and speculated for weeks, and theories were numerous. Although Miss Lawson, Miss Arundel’s companion, professed to be as astonished as everyone else when the will was read, not everyone believed her, especially the Arundel family.

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5Feb2021

Crossed Skis: An Alpine Mystery by Carol Carnac ~ A British Library Crime Classic #PoliceProcedural #Mystery #FridayReads

Posted in Book Review, British Library Crime Classics, Crime, Mystery, Police Procedural by Cathy

Author: Carol Carnac

British Library Publishing; 1st edition (10 April 2020)

Category: Crime, Mystery, Police Procedural, Book Review

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In Bloomsbury, London, Inspector Brook of Scotland Yard looks down at a dismal scene. The victim of a ruthless murder lies burnt beyond recognition, his possessions and papers destroyed by fire. But there is one strange, yet promising, lead – a lead which suggests the involvement of a skier. Meanwhile, piercing sunshine beams down on the sparkling snow of the Austrian Alps, where a merry group of holidaymakers are heading towards Lech am Arlberg. Eight men and eight women take to the slopes, but, as the C.I.D. scrambles to crack the perplexing case in Britain, the ski party are soon to become sixteen suspects.
This exciting, and now extremely rare, mystery novel was first published in 1952, one year after the author’s own excursion to the Austrian Alps.