New Reviews: Cutler, Holt, Jordan, Kernick, Khan, Oswald

Here are six reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, three have appeared on the blog since last time, and three 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

Geoff Jones reviews Judith Cutler's Green and Pleasant Land which is the sixth in the Fran Harman series and is set in the Midlands;

I review Anne Holt's Death of the Demon tr. Anne Bruce third book in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series;

Amanda Gillies reviews Will Jordan's Betrayal, the third in the Ryan Drake series;


Terry Halligan reviews The Final Minute by Simon Kernick, his latest thriller and which features regular protagonist, Tina Boyd;

Michelle Peckham reviews The Unquiet Dead, the impressive debut novel by Ausma Zehanat Khan

and Terry also reviews James Oswald's Prayer for the Dead the newest in the Inspector McLean series and the first to be released first in hardback.


Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

New Reviews: Cutler, Forrester, Macbain, Morgan, Nesser, Preston, Rankin, Von Schirach, Welsh

Here are 9 new reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today:

Lizzie Hayes reviews Judith Cutler's Burying the Past, the fourth in the Chief Superintendent Fran Harman series;

Terry Halligan reviews James Forrester's second in the Clarenceaux, Elizabethan series, The Roots of Betrayal;

Amanda Gillies reviews the first in the Pliny the Younger series by Bruce Macbain: Roman Games which now has a UK release;

Fidelis Morgan, author of a well-loved historical series, switches to modern day with The Murder Quadrille, reviewed here by Susan White;

Lynn Harvey reviews the paperback release of Hakan Nesser's Hour of the Wolf, tr. Laurie Thompson, the seventh in the Van Veeteren (and team) series;

JF reviews Australian author Luke Preston's Dark City Blue an ebook from Momentum, the digital-only wing of Pan Macmillan Australia;

Maxine Clarke reviews Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave which sees the return of Rebus;

Earlier this week I reviewed on the blog, Ferdinand von Schirach's The Collini Case, tr. Anthea Bell

and Michelle Peckham reviews Louise Welsh's: The Girl on the Stairs set in Berlin.

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.

Crime series set in Birmingham (UK)

Eagle-eyed readers of this blog may have seen that I've listed Maureen Carter's Bad Press as my current read and recently her previous book Hard Time. This is not just because I had a review copy of Bad Press but also because Maureen is giving a talk at Mere Green Library at 11am on Wednesday (a few spaces left if anyone wants to come btw). I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Maureen at my crime reading group when her debut book, Working Girls was first published in 2001. A slight hiatus ensued but since joining Creme de la Crime publishers in 2005, she has produced a book a year, Bad Press being the fifth. Her series stars the feisty, gobby DS Bev Morriss. Her bibliography and links to reviews of her books (written by esteemed reviewer Sharon Wheeler) can be found here. (I'm enjoying these books enormously as well!) 

Maureen joins a select band of authors who set their books in the 'perceived to be' unfashionable/unsaleable-market setting of Birmingham. 

As far as I know the only other crime authors to set a series in Birmingham are:

Valerie Kershaw who wrote a five book series featuring a radio presenter (published between 1993 and 2000)

Judith Cutler who wrote two series set in Birmingham, published between 1998 and 2003, one with an amateur sleuth and another with a policewoman. (She is probably the best well known of the local crime writers, based on my library experience). 

Plimmer and Long - an ex-cop and ex-con who co-wrote a two book series between 2000 and 2001. 

Chris Collett who began a series in 2004 featuring policeman Tom Mariner which stands at eight books so far. (Tom Mariner has many female fans in my reading group!) 

If anyone knows of any more series set in Birmingham (looking at you Martin E :-)) then do please pop them in the comments. 

Update 26/4/21 

Also set in Birmingham:

Recent:

Lucie Whitehouse has written two books (so far) in the DCI Robin Lyons series set in Birmingham: Critical Incidents and the forthcoming Risk of Harm (July 21).

G S Locke's Neon (2020)

Rachel MacLean's West Midlands DI Zoe Finch series.

Tess Makovesky's  Raise the Blade and The Gravy Train.

Steve Robinson's The Penmaker's Wife. 

Slightly older:

Marc Blake's Bigtime features Birmingham and Corley Service.

Maureen Carter's DI Sarah Quinn series.

 

Terry Coy's The Evil Ones.

Gary Coyne's The Short Caution.

John Dalton's The City Trap.

Mick Scully's Little Moscow.

If you are after the Black Country, then Thomas JR Dean has a series set there in the 1950s: Once Upon a Time in The Black Country. Alex Grecian's second book in his Scotland Yard Murder Squad series is called The Black Country and is set in a fictional Midlands mining town. Patrick Thompson's Execution Plan and Seeing the Wires are set in Dudley.

There are also some further suggestions in the comments.