Review: Deadly Dance by Hilary Bonner

Deadly Dance by Hilary Bonner, August 2017, 256 pages, Severn House Publishers Ltd, ISBN: 0727887343

Reviewed by Geoff Jones.

(Read more of Geoff's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Bristol, Avon. DI David Vogel is called to the discovery of a young teenage girl's murdered body, found in the red light district. The fourteen-year-old - Melanie Cooke was dressed to appear older and had been reported missing by her mother, who thought she was staying at a friend's home. Vogel who has a daughter of a similar age is keen that they waste no time in catching the murderer. Together with his immediate team - DS John Willis and DC Dawn Saslow they interview the mother Sarah Fisher and her husband, Melanie's step-father, and also Melanie's father who has also remarried. Vogel reports as part of Avon and Somerset Major Crime Investigation team to DCI Reg Hemmings.

Sally Pearson, the friend that Melanie was supposed to be staying with, must know something but is not saying much. Vogel and his team find few clues but eventually two more murders provide some surprising answers. Throughout the investigation we hear from  three separate characters:

Saul - wants to get married but is wary of women and has problems.
Leo - a gay man but reluctant to let friends and work colleagues know his secret. He regularly visits London's gay scene and is particularly attracted to one man.
Al – a paedophile. He takes risks watching children at play.

The author has written several police procedural books and this one is well crafted. I was unsure of the style of Vogel referring to his team by their surnames and his boss also referring to him as Vogel. To me this didn't ring true, however this is a minor criticism. I would definitely recommend this book and will certainly read more from this author, an ex- journalist who lives in Somerset.

Geoff Jones, January 2018

New Reviews: Bonner, Chase, Colfer, Forsyth, Jones, McIntosh, Masterton, Sundstol, Zouroudi

This week's set of reviews, added to Euro Crime today, is a mixture of new reviews and a catch-up of those posted directly on the blog in the last two weeks, so you may have read some of them before if you're a regular :).

Useful Information:
I've now set up the 2014 International Dagger Eligibles post so you can see which 76 (so far) titles are  published in the qualifying period.
There is a similar post for the 2014 Petrona Award Eligibles.
There is also a Euro Crime page on Facebook which you can like and will keep you up to date with the blog (plus occasional extras).

New Reviews

It's been a 9 year gap between books but Hilary Bonner is back with The Cruellest Game reviewed here by Susan White;

Michelle Peckham reviews  Wicked Game, the first in a new series by E V Seymour writing as Adam Chase, starring assassin for hire, Hex;

Lynn Harvey reviews Eoin Colfer's Screwed, the sequel to Plugged, which is now out in paperback;

Terry Halligan reviews Frederick Forsyth's The Kill List;

Geoff Jones reviews J Sydney Jones's Ruin Value set in Nuremberg at the time of the trials;

Terry also reviews The Fourth Crow by Pat McIntosh, the ninth in the Gil Cunningham series set in medieval Glasgow;

Rich Westwood reviews Graham Masterton's Broken Angels, the second in the Superintendent Katie Maguire series set in Cork, and warns it has some strong content;

Laura Root reviews Vidar Sundstol's The Land of Dreams, tr. Tiina Nunnally, the first part in his "Minnesota Trilogy"


and Amanda Gillies reviews the seventh in the Greek Hermes Diaktoros series from Anne Zouroudi: The Feast of Artemis.




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.

Review: The Cruellest Game by Hilary Bonner

The Cruellest Game by Hilary Bonner, September 2013, 400 pages, Pan, ISBN: 1447218736

Reviewed by Susan White.
(Read more of Susan's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

The story is based in Dartmoor and concerns a woman whose small family, one teenage son and her husband, are her whole life. They live in a beautiful house on the edge of a small village, their life is very contained and, to an extent, they are complacent with their good fortune. One day Marion returns home from her part-time teaching job to find the house very quiet and wonders why her son, who she left revising, hasn't responded to her calls. She takes him a cup of tea and finds him hanging from a beam in his room. Her life continues to fall apart as she finds that her husband is not who she thought he was.

Her only friend is Bella, a fellow dog walker that she met on the beach. But even Bella isn't everything she seems to be. A series of incidents beginning with a burglary and ending with a child abduction makes this a roller-coaster of a read. The evidence seems stacked against Marion, proving her an unstable, paranoid grieving mother in the eyes of the police.

The story reminds me of Barbara Vine and Sophie Hannah, concerned as it is with physiological torture and destruction. There are difficult themes: the death of one child, the abduction of another and the difficulty of making people listen when all the evidence points in one direction

I personally found Marion and her husband quite unsympathetic. My only sympathy for anyone in the family being with Robbie, the son, so distressed with life to take his own life. I think the lack of sympathy is generated by the total insulation and self satisfaction of Marion, who distances herself even from her own father, ignoring his needs for support and care in his grief.

Because of my lack of involvement in the main character, I didn't really enjoy THE CRUELLEST GAME, however, I can recommend it as an interesting and a very good read.

Susan White, October 2013

Publishing Deal - Hilary Bonner

A new publishing deal for Hilary Bonner has been announced. From The Bookseller:

Pan Macmillan has acquired two psychological thrillers by Hilary Bonner.

Publishing director Wayne Brookes bought world rights for The Cruellest Game and an as-yet-untitled novel. Pan Macmillan plans to publish the first title in 2013.

The Cruellest Game follows an apparently perfect family, tracing the "calamitous sequence of events" which follow "unexpected revelations of lies and duplicity".