Reviews: Cameron, Carson, Koch, McCreanor, McKenzie, Murray, Rowson

Here are seven reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, two have appeared on the blog since last time, and five are completely new.

NB. You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

Lynn Harvey reviews poet David Cameron's The Ghost of Alice Fields set in Edinburgh;


Michelle Peckham reviews Paul Carson's Inquest set in Dublin;

Lynn also reviews Herman Koch's Summer House With Swimming Pool tr. Sam Garrett;



Amanda Gillies reviews  A J McCreanor's debut, Riven set in Glasgow which introduces DIs Ross and Wheeler;

Michelle also reviews Sophie McKenzie's psychological thriller, Trust in Me;

Terry Halligan reviews Blood of the Rose by Kevin Murray, set in London, 1986

and Terry also reviews the latest in the DI Andy Horton series by Pauline Rowson, Shroud of Evil, set in Portsmouth.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year. NB. Forthcoming releases by category for 2015 are now available.

Awards News: Winners Announced of Gold, Creasey, Steel and TV & Film Daggers

Just received news of the winners of the Gold, Creasey, Steel and TV & Film Daggers. Here's the press release (book-related awards are in red):

Keeley Hawes and Matthew McConaughey won the Best Actress and Best Actor awards at the prestigious Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2014, held at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel tonight.

The star-studded awards ceremony was hosted by Bradley Walsh and attended by the cream of actors, writers and producers from the world of crime TV and fiction, including Keeley Hawes, Stanley Tucci, Anna Maxwell Martin, James Norton, Rachael Stirling and Amanda Abbington.

Authors who received recognition at the awards, which celebrate the best in crime fiction on TV and in books, included Peter May, Wiley Cash and Robert Harris.

For the first time a whole series, ITV’s Midsomer Murders, was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and the cast and crew turned out in force to collect their Award.

The glittering event, organised by Cactus TV and ITV3 in partnership with the Crime Writers’ Association, saw and Happy Valley win the TV Dagger and True Detective win the International TV Dagger.

Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards Winners are:

●        Keeley Hawes for Line of Duty – Dagger for Best Actress

●        Matthew McConaughey for True Detective - Dagger for Best Actor

●        James Norton for Happy Valley - Dagger for Best Supporting Actor

●        Amanda Abbington for Sherlock - Dagger for Best Supporting Actress

●        Happy Valley – Dagger for Best TV Series

●        True Detective – Dagger for Best International TV Series

●        Cold in July - Dagger for Best Film

●        Peter May - Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the Year

●        Wiley Cash - CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger

●        Ray Celestin - CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger

●        Robert Harris - CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year

●        Denise Mina, Robert Harris and Midsomer Murders were inducted into the Hall of Fame

The awards, now in their seventh year, mark the culmination of ITV3’s six-week prime time series, The Specsavers Crime Thriller Club. The ceremony will be shown on ITV3 at 9pm, Monday 27 October 2014.

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read of the year was awarded to Peter May for ‘Entry Island’. This award is selected by a group of independent publishing experts from the Awards Academy, from a shortlist of 6 great Crime reads featured throughout the Crime Thriller Club Series on ITV3.

This year’s CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year was won by Wiley Cash for debut novel This Dark Road to Mercy, a story of blood and vengeance involving two young sisters. Cash’s book beat an exceptional line-up of likely suspects including Paul Mendelson’s The First Rule of Survival, Louise Penny’s How the Light Gets In and Paula Daly’s Keep Your Friends Close to win the prestigious award.

The CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger for Best New Crime Writer of the Year was awarded to Ray Celestin for his debut novel The Axeman’s Jazz. Named the most wanted new author in crime fiction, Celestin’s The Axeman’s Jazz and its tale of an axe killer with a mysterious identity beat off competition from M.J. Carter’s The Strangler Vine, Antonia Hodgson’s The Devil in the Marshalsea and A.S.A. Harrison’s The Silent Wife to take home the award.

The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year went to Robert Harris for An Officer and a Spy. This bestselling author thriller battled it out against Terry Hayes for I Am Pilgrim, Greg Iles for Natchez Burning and Louise Doughty for Apple Tree Yard to win the esteemed award.

Review: Riven by A J McCreanor

Riven by A J McCreanor, October 2014, 384 pages, Constable, ISBN: 147211230X

Reviewed by Amanda Gillies.
(Read more of Amanda's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

This is the debut novel for A J McCreanor and it is first-rate. A real page-turner, it gets into your head and niggles away at you when you aren’t reading it. The solution is not an easy one to guess and you are desperate to find out who the guilty party actually is. It is right up my street! Although she no longer lives there, the author was born in Glasgow, and indeed that is where the story is set. You can tell it is a place that she knows well.

The story opens with two young lads trying their luck at housebreaking. To their horror, they find that owner of the house is not out, as they had hoped, but dead and swinging from a beam in the ceiling in the lounge by means of a rope. They call the police and the hunt is on to find the killer and his/her motive.

The deceased, a Mr James Gilmore, was a quiet and solitary individual. He worked as a psychologist and was involved with helping troubled youngsters at the schools in the area. DIs Steven Ross and Kat Wheeler are called in to solve the crime but it is not a straightforward case, as Gilmore lived a ghost-like existence and nobody knows much about him or his work. Determined to get to the bottom of this particularly brutal murder, they dig deeper and find themselves face-to-face with less than savoury characters involved in Glasgow’s underworld. All the while, the killer is watching them. Waiting…

A super story with a breath-taking ending that leaves you wondering whether the truth is better left unsaid at times. I loved this story and am keen to read more by this author in the future. She is definitely a name to watch!

Highly Recommended.

Amanda Gillies, October 2014.

The Serbian Dane - new cover, old review

Leif Davidsen's The Serbian Dane was first published in Danish in 1996 and was published in English in 2007 courtesy of a translation by Barbara J Haveland. It has just been reprinted with a new cover (the old cover is on the right):

I read and reviewed The Serbian Dane back in 2007 and loved it.

You can read my review on the Euro Crime website.

One of the characters from The Serbian Dane also appears in The Woman From Bratislava (2009) reviewed here by Maxine Clarke.

Review: Blood of the Rose by Kevin Murray

Blood of the Rose by Kevin Murray, June 2014, 320 pages, Urbane Publications, ISBN: 1909273120

Reviewed by Terry Halligan.
(Read more of Terry's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

London, 1986. A newspaper editor is horrifically murdered, his death quickly followed by a series of more brutal, and often bizarre, slayings. The police are baffled, the only clear link between the murders being a single blood red rose left at the scene of every killing. Why? What does the rose mean? What connects the killer to each bloody corpse? Scotland Yard detective Alan Winters leads a hunt for the elusive prey. As the body count rises, Jennifer Chapman, renowned investigative journalist and daughter of the murdered newspaper editor, sets out on a personal quest for revenge. Drawn together in their pursuit of a deadly quarry, Winters and Jennifer unwittingly face a fatal surprise, for the killer is closer than they think. As they close in on the truth of the blood red rose, their unseen foe plots a shattering end to his reign of terror, and death awaits them all.

This first new police procedural from this very talented new South African author will keep you engrossed until the last exciting page. I really enjoyed the very tight plotting and immensely imaginative story. The richly drawn characters, such as Inspector Alan Winters and his associate Superintendent Van Deventer, I found very fascinating and I hope that they are featured in future books. I understand that the author was a Chief Crime Reporter in Johannesburg's biggest daily newspaper and has personal experience of dozens of violent cases of murder to draw on. Having personal experience from what is considered the crime capital of the world is an invaluable experience for an author. The book, as it was based in 1986 is very atmospheric and well researched and I didn't detect any flaws in his presentation of London during that period.

The author brings out the troubled relationship between the police, who just want to get on and investigate the crime and the press who want to provide details to their readers, that may interfere with the enquiry and how the happy balance between these two opposing forces can be agreed. I was enthralled by the suspense and the brutal reality of the story and I do hope that this becomes a series and I look forward to reading books by this author again. I have read books by the only other South African mystery author I'm familiar with, Deon Meyer, but he writes his stories set in his country of residence whereas Kevin Murray is writing about London which is no mean feat for a foreign based author. Strongly recommended.

Terry Halligan, October 2014.

TV News: River starring Stellan Skarsgård

Stellan Skarsgård is to star as a police officer in BBC One's River, to be shown next year.

From the BBC Website:

Production has begun on River, a new drama series written and created by Emmy award-winning Abi Morgan for BBC One.

Stellan Skarsgård (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) stars as John River, a brilliant police officer whose genius and fault-line is the fragility of his mind - a man haunted by the murder victims whose cases he must lay to rest.

Nicola Walker will play River’s colleague and confidant, Detective Sergeant Jackie ‘Stevie’ Stevenson, with Adeel Akhtar as Detective Sergeant Ira King. Lesley Manville will play their superior, Chief Inspector Chrissie Read. Eddie Marsan also joins the cast as a notorious killer who haunts River.

Further confirmed cast include Sorcha Cusack as Stevie’s mother, Bridie, and Georgina Rich plays police psychiatrist, Rosa.

The 6x60-minute series [] is being filmed in East London for transmission in 2015.

Reviews: Chambers, Hauxwell, Perry, Ramsay, Robinson, Simenon, Sundstol, Wagner

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, five have appeared on the blog since last time, and four are completely new.

NB. You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

Susan White reviews Kimberley Chambers's The Victim which she recommends for readers of Martina Cole and Lynda La Plante;


Amanda Gillies reviews Annie Hauxwell's A Morbid Habit the third book to feature PI Catherine Berlin;

Terry Halligan reviews the latest in the William Monk series by Anne Perry, Blood on the Water which is now out in paperback;


Terry also reviews Caro Ramsay's The Blood of Crows the fourth in her Anderson and Costello series;

Michelle Peckham reviews Caro Ramsay's fifth and most recent Anderson and Costello book, The Night Hunter;


Michelle also reviews Ray Robinson's Jawbone Lake;

Lynn Harvey reviews Georges Simenon's Pietr the Latvian freshly translated by David Bellos as part of Penguin's project to republish and re-translate all the Maigret novels; this being the first in the series;

Laura Root reviews Vidar Sundstol's Only the Dead translated by Tiinna Nunnally and is the middle part of the Minnesota trilogy

and Lynn also reviews the Petrona Award shortlist-listed Light in a Dark House by Jan Costin Wagner, translated by Anthea Bell which is now out in paperback.


Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year. NB. Forthcoming releases by category for 2015 are now available.

Publishing Deal - Ragnar Jónasson

From today's Bookseller, Ragnar Jónasson has been signed up by new company Orenda Books:

Arcadia Books managing editor Karen Sullivan has left the company to set up her own publishing company, Orenda Books.

Launching next week with a small, “exciting” list of commercial literary fiction, the company has already signed three début novels, including David F Ross’ The Last Days of Disco, which Sullivan said will draw comparison with Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh.

Sullivan has also negotiated British Commonwealth rights with David Headley at DHH Literary Agency and Monica Gram at Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency A/S for Icelandic crime writer Ragnar Jónasson’s atmospheric, gritty début thriller Snowblind, and a second title, Dark Night (Bjartur Veröld). It will be author Jónasson’s first publication in English.

Crime Scene Britain and Ireland: A Reader's Guide

A review copy of John Martin's Crime Scene Britain and Ireland: A Reader's Guide arrived this morning. It's available to buy now and from a quick flick (at the East Anglia section naturally), is the sort of book I would love to have written, sigh, but at least the Euro Crime website gets a credit.

Here's the blurb:

This book is for all readers of crime fiction. Dividing Britain and Ireland into twelve regions, the author describes the work of contemporary and historic crime writers and their novels where the setting of the novel is crucial, giving the story context and local relevance. While regional crime novels go back to The Hound of the Baskervilles, identifiably regional crime within specific cityscapes and landscapes only came into its own twenty years ago with Ian Rankin, John Harvey and Val McDermid. Their work, together with hundreds of others, and thousands of titles are described in this volume which will be essential for the serious crime reader.

Another title, which might also be of interest is Scene of the Crime: A Guide to the Landscapes of British Detective Fiction (2002) by Julian Earwaker and Kathleen Becker, which is now out of print but second-hand copies are available (at least at amazon). The blurb:

Great writers of crime fiction not only create memorable detective heroes, they also firmly establish them in a setting. The home counties town of "King's Markham", for example, is the perfect "patch" for Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford and Ellis Peter's Brother Cadfael is as inseparable from the cloisters of medieval Shrewsbury as John Harvey's D.I. Resnick is from the mean streets of modern Nottingham. Addicts of the British detective story should enjoy this gazetteer. With it in their hands they can navigate the streets and alleyways of Edinburgh where Sherlock Holmes sprang to life in Conan Doyle's imagination and where Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus now tracks down villainy (and a dram or two). They can explore the desolate coast of East Anglia, a favoured venue for P.D. James' Adam Dagliesh and the home of Margery Allingham, who also set many of the adventures of her enigmatic Albert Campion amid the Essex marshlands. In Oxford, they can tread in the footsteps of Inspector Morse or pay homage at the site where, in "Gaudy Night", Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey embraced - at long last - his Harriet Vane. The many black and white and colour photographs evoke the atmosphere and history of these and many other settings with which hundreds of thousands of readers will already be familiar in their imaginations. Based on interviews with leading writers and extensive research, and fuelled by the authors' enthusiasm for Britain's most popular literary form, this book should be an interesting read for all crime addicts.

Publishing Deal - Andrew Taylor

In The Bookseller yesterday, news of a publishing deal for Andrew Taylor with HarperCollins:

Crime and thriller publisher Julia Wisdom signed world English-language rights to The Ashes of London and two more 17th-century-set novels.

The Ashes of London is set in 1666 as the Great Fire of London rages, when a murder victim is found in the ashes of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Review: Only the Dead by Vidar Sundstol tr. Tiina Nunnally

Only the Dead by Vidar Sundstol translated by Tiina Nunnally, September 2014, 152 pages, University of Minnesota Press, ISBN: 0816689423

Reviewed by Laura Root.
(Read more of Laura's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

ONLY THE DEAD is the second in the acclaimed Minnesota trilogy by Norwegian author Vidar Sundstol, set around Lake Superior and takes place soon after the end of the first instalment, THE LAND OF DREAMS. In THE LAND OF DREAMS Forestry Services cop Lance Hansen found the body of a young Norwegian tourist at Baraga's Cross, and was involved in the investigation of the murder. As a local history enthusiast, Lance has also become obsessed with another possible murder that took place in the area over a hundred years previously, of a Native American trapper, Swamper Caribou, who disappeared in suspicious circumstances.

At the start of this novel, Lance is supposedly taking it easy on a weekend hunting trip with his brother Andy. But despite the tidy resolution of the murder case, Lance is riven by doubts. He is unable to voice his suspicions of Andy, who lied about his whereabouts on the night of the murder and becomes increasingly unable to act naturally around him. Lance's Ojibwe ex-father-in-law tries to reach out to Lance, sensing the stress that he is under, but Lance is unreceptive. An incident where Lance uses excessive violence when carrying out what he justifies as a mercy killing of a wild animal seriously injured by his car, shows that Lance may not the stolid principled man he seemed in the previous book.

When Lance goes out on a second hunting trip with Andy, the scene is set for fraternal relations to deteriorate further. Sundstol alternates the story of paranoid fear and suspicion between Lance and Andy with a similar tale over a hundred years early, of the relationship between Lance's ancestor, Norwegian immigrant Thorson Ormod, and the lethal distrust he develops towards Swamper Caribou, who rescues him after he falls through ice in Lake Superior and takes him to his cabin to dry off. (Though whether this version of events is to be accepted by the reader as definitive, or the product of Lance's imagination remains ambiguous).

ONLY THE DEAD has a very different feel to the previous instalment in the series. THE LAND OF DREAMS opened out, via the central character Lance Hansen, to show a whole community and way of life of a Scandinavian-American diaspora, and how they are viewed by big city incomers, such as the FBI agents involved in investigating the murder at Baraga's Cross. By contrast ONLY THE DEAD is a claustrophobic thriller focussing on the interaction between hunter and the environment, and between two sets of men, the Hansen brothers Lance and Andy, and the men of the past, Thorson and Swamper Caribou, where the hunter becomes the hunted and vice versa.

Although hunting-based thrillers tend not to be my choice of reading, I found ONLY THE DEAD was genuinely gripping. The author was very successful in building up tension in the relationships between the men, and showing how fear and poor communication can lead to fatal misunderstandings. Sundstol also very convincingly shows the perils faced by his characters in dealing with the hostile environment of the wintry lake and forest. Overall I felt this was an unexpected but surprisingly enjoyable follow up to the first book in the series, and I look forward to seeing how this trilogy is concluded. Although this book could work as a standalone, I would recommend reading THE LAND OF DREAMS before this book, to see the characters in their full context.

Laura Root, October 2014

Danish Crime at the Manchester Literature Festival

On Monday I went up to Manchester to both visit Sarah of Crime Pieces (and a Petrona Award judge) and to go with her to a Nordic Noir event hosted by the Manchester Literature Festival.

The event, Danish Crime, featured Peter Guttridge interviewing Elsebeth Egholm and Lene Kaaberbol.

Elsebeth Egholm is the author of the Dicte Svendsen series and the Peter Boutrup series (more about the relationship between these in a moment). Only one of the Dicte Svendsen series has been translated into English - the fourth, Next of Kin - and this was only published in Australia. Both of the Peter Boutrop series are or soon will be available in English in the UK.

Lene Kaaberbol, co-writing with Agnete Friis, is the author of four Nina Borg novels (only three are available in English at the moment). Nina Borg is a Red Cross nurse, living in Copenhagen.


The event opened with both authors reading from one of their books:

Elsebeth Egholm read a section from Three Dog Night, the first of the Peter Boutrop series, where Peter discovers a body.

Before reading she gave some of the background to the series: Peter is the son of her series heroine Dicte Svendsen. Dicte is a Jehovah's Witness and got pregnant aged sixteen. Her baby, Peter, ended up in an orphanage and had a terrible upbringing and ended up in jail.  Peter doesn't forgive his mum and only meets Dicte in book five of her series when he needs a new kidney.

The title Three Dog Night comes from an Australian saying which refers to a very cold night when you need three dogs to keep you warm!




Lene Kaaberbol then read the scene from The Boy in the Suitcase (the first in the Nina Borg series) where Nina discovers the boy, in the suitcase at Copenhagen station.


Then Peter began his interview.

EE's first book was published in 1999 and her first three books weren't really crime but did contain mysteries. She then embraced crime with the Dicte Svendsen series. Dicte is a journalist, as is EE, however EE is not a crime journalist so this involved lots of research.

LK has written children's and YA books but the scene she's just read out popped into her mind. An avid crime reader she got 'stage fright' over the idea of writing a crime novel so called an acquaintance Agnete Friis. They have a 'bible' and storyboard the series. They felt that there were lots of police characters, both male and female, as protagonists so they though who else would discover bodies - doctors and nurses - so they settled on a tough nurse. Nina is a terrible detective however, say LK, as she doesn't care who killed who!

EE originally thought the Dicte series would be a trilogy. There are currently six with two more planned. She commented on how you can't undo something like a pregnancy which was in the first book.

Peter asked about humour in Scandinavian crime fiction. EE feels that there is humour in her books. LK says that Danes are the Italians of the North (they live in the "beer belt" of Europe - below it's wine and above it's the hard stuff). She then gave an example of a Finnish joke:

How do you tell an extrovert Finn?
He's looking down at your shoes, not his own.

EE said she was inspired/influenced by Sara Paretsky and Liza Marklund, (comment from LK - "volvo envy" - as Swedes get everything first) and LK was also inspired/influenced by Sara Paretsky, Agatha Christie and Sjowall and Wahloo. Sjowall and Wahloo wanted people to move over to socialism and decided the best way to influence people was via a crime series. The political element increases through the [Martin Beck] series.

The Dicte Svendsen series has been made into a tv series with the first six books making up the first series. The second series is based on original stories. EE chose not to get involved with the scripts - based on her experience with Those Who Kill - it is very time consuming.

One of LK's children's books is being made into a film - she is not involved as she has an Oscar winner doing the script.

LK said that she didn't consider children's books as lesser to adult as though an adult can get a few days entertainment from your book, a child can be influenced for life by your book.

It is most rewarding when someone hasn't read a book before and says that I've read one of yours and then went on to read all of them.


Sarah asked the question about reading from an English translation of your own books: EE said it puts a slight distance but she loves the English language and thinks it sounds better in English :). LK said she had a close relationship with her translator for Boy, as it was herself!

Review: A Morbid Habit by Annie Hauxwell

A Morbid Habit by Annie Hauxwell, July 2014, 400 pages, William Heinemann, ISBN: 0434022969

Reviewed by Amanda Gillies.
(Read more of Amanda's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

This series by Annie Hauxwell is fabulous. Her protagonist, private investigator Catherine Berlin, is a damaged soul who struggles with her heroin addiction at the same time as doing her best for the people who hire her, even when her own neck is on the block. Hauxwell writes extremely well and her tales are as addictive for her reader as the drugs are for her main character. I was delighted to be given another of her wonderful books to review.

This book, A MORBID HABIT, is set at Christmas time. Berlin actually has a job – as a security guard – and is watching monitors in the warehouse she is working in. Things start to go wrong when an undocumented delivery van arrives and appears to drop something off. Her boss tells her to forget what she saw and attempts to help her with this by means of a £50 note. But Berlin can't. She leaves her job, disgusted at the bribe, and tells a journalist friend what she has seen. This is just the beginning of her problems. Initially all seems well as she is given another contract, by a reputable company, really quickly and is set to go to Moscow to perform a due diligence investigation on a businessman. All nice and straightforward. Or is it? Her guide and interpreter is not everything that she appears to be and then a body is found at the airport, clutching a sign with Berlin’s name on it. All too soon Berlin is on the run from just about everybody and, with her passport and prescription drugs taken from her, has no way of returning home or controlling her withdrawal symptoms. The pressure builds as Berlin tries to get to the bottom of everything and the reader is left wondering whether this time she really has reached the end of the line.

If you like a good book that has a gutsy woman as the main character, as well as a nail-biter of a plot, then you are going to love A MORBID HABIT. There is no need to worry if you haven't read either of the previous two books in this series, as each one works well on its own. However the series is so good that you won't be able to leave it at just the one instalment!

Highly Recommended.

Amanda Gillies, October 2014.

Reviews: The Night Hunter & The Blood of Crows by Caro Ramsay

Two reviews today -  the fourth and fifth books in Caro Ramsay's Anderson and Costello series, starting with Michelle's review of the newest book, The Night Hunter, followed by Terry's review of the previous book, The Blood of Crows.

The Night Hunter by Caro Ramsay, July 2014, 256 pages, Severn House Publishers Ltd, ISBN: 0727884220

Reviewed by Michelle Peckham.
(Read more of Michelle's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Elvira's (Elvie's) sister Sophie has been missing for some time, but Elvie is keeping a secret. Just before Sophie disappeared, she told Elvie that she had to get away for a while, but not to tell anyone. But did she really go away of her own accord, or even with her supposed boyfriend Mark? Or is she one of the latest in a line of missing women, women who have disappeared while out jogging?

Sophie's disappearance has had its effects on the family. Elvie has suspended her medical studies, and is now working as a nanny/spy for a woman called Mary and her young son Charlie, who live way out in the countryside, outside of Glasgow. Mary is married to a rich husband (Alex) who is also a bit of a bully and needs someone to keep an eye on Mary. Elvie's stepfather has set up a 'Find Sophie Campaign', Elvie's mum is just about holding it together, though cooking and refusing to eat, and Elvie's brother Grant is becoming increasingly more fragile, with his behaviour becoming more and more unpredictable. Elvie is suffering from some undiagnosed syndrome with spreading acne and hair growth under her chin, that she refuses to tackle, as she focuses on what happened to Sophie.

And then, on her way home from dinner with her family, she encounters a car, a man in distress, and a near dead naked woman. But, this is not an ordinary hit and run. Somehow, the unknown woman had fallen off the cliff above, and onto the car. And what's more, Elvie recognizes her as one of the missing women; Lorna Lennox. She is just barely alive, and dies shortly afterwards. Where had she come from? Why was she naked? Who, or what was she running from?

Through a 'self-help' group Elvie makes an unlikely but productive alliance with an ex-cop, now private investigator called Billy Hopkirk, who turns out to have been an investigating officer for one of the missing women, Gillian Porter. Together they start a bit of sleuthing on their own, while liaising with the police. It works because Elvie is desperate to find her sister, and Billy wants to find out what happened to Gillian. They work on the possibility that there could be a link between these and other disappearances, and the discovery of Lorna is the catalyst, the start of the journey to finding out what did happen.

This book contains a bunch of interesting characters; Elvie is stubborn, difficult, ugly and determined and Billy certainly sounds like someone one wouldn't wish to sit next to on a bus, but he is canny and can help Elvie work out what to do next. The police contacts are supportive, as much as they can be, but in the end it's Elvie who drives the plot forward, and finds out what happened. I thought that the book was well plotted, with some great twists along the way. It contained some excellent and realistic descriptions of a family falling apart, while trying to stay together. Sophie and Elvie were great friends as well as sisters, and the long-lasting ramifications of Sophie's disappearance on Elvie are described well. I greatly enjoyed this book, as I have done with others by this author, and highly recommend it!

Michelle Peckham, September 2014

The Blood of Crows by Caro Ramsay, August 2012, 496 pages, Penguin, ISBN: 0141044365

Reviewed by Terry Halligan.
(Read more of Terry's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

This excellent police procedural recounts the story of Detective Inspector Colin Anderson during a very hot summer in June 2010 at Partick Central Police Station, Glasgow, Scotland. Anderson and his team are called to an incident, which truly shocked him, where a young immigrant girl had been chained to a ladder immersed in the River Clyde and the tide was rising and the police just did not have the capability to remove the chains in time before the water rose. In another incident a psychopathic gang boss had been killed following an arson attack and at first his wife was thought to be the culprit until her body was discovered murdered also. A paedophile conviction of a criminal named Skelpie Fairbairn is declared unsafe - putting Fairbairn back on Glasgow's streets and leaving Anderson under investigation.

A couple of other major incidents occurred as well which racked up the stress on Anderson to dangerous levels. His wife is urging him, whenever she has an opportunity to speak to him which is very limited as he is always working, to quit the job whilst he is still eligible and migrate to Australia with her and their children. He is not attracted to emigrating as he enjoys the demands of his job in Scotland too much but he feels he has to be interested to please his wife.

Anderson feels that he has been passed over for promotion to Detective Chief Inspector and is starting to resent it which is causing him even more stress. There is talk on the grapevine of the launch of a new Police initiative called "locust" a sort of serious crimes quad and he is of course interested and hopes he is chosen to go on to it in some capacity. To meet all these commitments Anderson is working all around the clock and discovers that a lot of the crimes he is trying to solve are connected and are masterminded by an elusive individual known as "The Puppeteer".

This is the fourth book DI Anderson book written by Caro Ramsay and my first introduction to the character and her brilliant writing. This was a really interesting book with marvellous cast of characters which I just could not put down. The only problem I had was that there was so many characters in the book that I was confused some times when picking the book up the following day, but a quick recap of a few pages and I was quickly back into the rhythm of the book and was gripped once more. I will certainly look out for her earlier books and look out for her name in the future. Very enjoyable and entertaining.

Terry Halligan, September 2014

Some 1932 Titles (for Past Offences)

The latest monthly challenge over at Past Offences is to read a book in October, published in 1932. Here are a few classic crime titles to choose from, first published in English in 1932, pulled from my database:

Edward Acheson - Murder by Suggestion (apa Red Herring)
Christopher Bush - Cut Throat
Agatha Christie - Peril at End House
Agatha Christie - The Thirteen Problems (apa The Tuesday Club Murders)
Clemence Dane - Re-Enter Sir John (with Helen Simpson)
Georgette Heyer - Footsteps in The Dark
Gladys Mitchell - The Saltmarsh Murders
Dorothy L Sayers - Have His Carcase
Georges Simenon - Death of a Harbour Master (apa Maigret and the Death of a Harbor Master)
Georges Simenon - Liberty Bar (apa Maigret on the Riviera)
Georges Simenon - The Flemish Shop (apa Maigret and the Flemish Shop)
Georges Simenon - The Madman of Bergerac
Georges Simenon - The Mystery of the 'Polarlys'
Georges Simenon - The Saint-Fiacre Affair (apa Maigret and the Countess/Maigret Goes Home/Maigret on Home Ground)
Georges Simenon - The Shadow in the Courtyard (apa Maigret Mystified)
Beryl Symons - The Opal Murder Case
Patricia Wentworth - Nothing Venture
Patricia Wentworth - Red Danger (apa Red Shadow)
T H White - Darkness at Pemberley

Review: Blood on the Water by Anne Perry

Blood on the Water by Anne Perry, September 2014, 416 pages, Headline, ISBN: 0755397215

Reviewed by Terry Halligan.
(Read more of Terry's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

It is London 1865 and Commander William Monk, head of the River Police is in a rowing boat on the Thames with his deputy Mr Orme, when suddenly they see a large pleasure boat "The Princess Mary", a hundred yards or so from them explode! Monk and Orme immediately start rowing back to the vicinity of the troubled vessel and try to take as many of the survivors from the water as they can, there seems to be bodies everywhere. Other boats and crafts in the river also render assistance. The resulting disaster claimed the lives of 179 passengers. Monk with his men, immediately started investigating what caused the terrible incident including him going down to to the wreck in a diving suit the next morning.

However, later that morning he was astonished to have the investigation taken from him by orders of the Home Office who said that the Commander of the London Metropolitan Police should head the investigation. Monk is completely astonished by this surprising turn of events and angry that his team of men who are very knowledgeable about the River Thames and its users should have had the investigation taken from them for probably political reasons.

The Suez Canal was being constructed during the period 1859 to 1869 and there was a lot of antipathy to this as it was felt that British interests would suffer and lots of jobs and money would be lost and there was a lot of hatred shown towards the Egyptians as a result. There was much pressure directed at the Metropolitan Police to find the guilty culprit who caused the explosion as soon as possible and the Metropolitan Police later arrested an Egyptian man, who was quickly tried and sentenced to hang for the crime. However, William Monk, Head of The River Police investigating a separate crime, discovers that the case against the Egyptian is flawed. He makes his misgivings known and he is surprised to be ordered to reinvestigate the crime again himself.

The story moves on at a very fast pace until the very surprising conclusion is reached almost on the last page.

This author published her first mystery book in 1979 with the Inspector Pitt story, THE CATER STREET HANGMAN, she has since then published a further twenty-nine books in that series together with additionally a further twenty books about William Monk, five in her World War 1 series and a further sixteen books in other series or stand-alones.

The author's research is truly first class and she cannot be faulted on anything. Although she has published so many books each one of them is very interesting and non formulaic, well plotted, with well-drawn characters. It is not necessary to read all the earlier books to appreciate this one as the author explains everything.

Although I have read a few of the earlier books in the William Monk series and was familiar with the character I have many more to read to catch up with all the back stories of the characters described. I have also read for review some of the titles in her Inspector Pitt series and enjoyed them also. Anne Perry is an extremely gifted author and is very deserving of the worldwide success she has had.

I enjoyed this book enormously and still cannot get the plot out of my mind. I look forward to reading more books in any of the series. Extremely well recommended.

Terry Halligan, October 2014.