Review: Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton

Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton, June 2016, 352 pages, Bantam Press, ISBN: 0593076311

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

DAISY IN CHAINS is a standalone psychological thriller by Sharon Bolton set in South West England. The protagonist is Maggie Rose, a highly successful barrister and true crime author. Maggie has moved away from court appearances to writing true crime books, carrying out her own research to help overturn unsafe murder convictions on behalf of her clients.

Her latest client is Hamish Wolfe, a young, dashing, arrogant doctor imprisoned at Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight, after being convicted of a series of a killings involving four overweight young women. The women were lured to their death by a malevolent, internet, stranger who set up a false identity to tempt them into meeting him.

Hamish's mother, Sandra, and a motley array of supporters, the “Wolfe Pack”, are determined that Wolfe is innocent, and persuade Maggie to take on his case. Maggie looks to have an uphill struggle as the evidence against Wolfe was strong: both circumstantial and forensic. Unfortunate rumours have followed him from his university days, that he has a history of exploiting fat women with his friends and making sex tapes without their permission.

Despite (or because of) the nature of his crimes, Wolfe receives over a hundred letters a month, mostly from women. Maggie soon finds she has a rival in the “Wolfe Pack”, a young woman jealous of her prison meetings with Hamish. Maggie herself has to guard against Hamish's attempts to charm and manipulate her. She also has the police to deal with; the detective responsible for Wolfe's arrest is keeping a careful eye on the re-opening of his case.

I found DAISY IN CHAINS an enjoyable, compelling pageturner, with twists and turns that reminded me of Pierre Lemaitre's Verhoeven trilogy. Sharon Bolton skilfully builds up tension, carefully giving the reader clues about the details of the court case and its effect on the police and families involved. The author also casts an interesting light on the phenomenon of the magnetic attraction of convicted killers to outsiders, especially women.

Laura Root, July 2015

TV News: Sacrifice on Channel 5

Scheduled at 10pm on Sunday night on Channel 5 is the film version of Sharon (SJ) Bolton's Sacrifice.

Here is the blurb from IMDB:

Sacrifice is the story of consultant surgeon, Tora Hamilton, who moves with her husband, Duncan, to the remote Shetland Islands, 100 miles off the north-east coast of Scotland. Deep in the peat soil around her new home, Tora discovers the body of a young woman with rune marks carved into her skin and a gaping hole where her heart once beat. Ignoring warnings to leave well alone, Tora uncovers terrifying links to a legend that might never have been confined to the pages of the story-books.

The cast includes Radha Mitchell (as Tora) and Rupert Graves (as Duncan).

Review Roundup: Bolton, Carol, Carter, Den Tex, Edwards, Gordon-Smith, Hodgson, Jones, Kelly, Mankell, Marklund, Mogford, Patterson & Ellis, Staalesen

Here are sixteen reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, all have appeared on the blog since last time.

If you like translated crime fiction then you may be interested in the International Dagger 2016 Speculation list of titles.

You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page and follow on Twitter, @eurocrime.

New Reviews

Michelle Peckham reviews Sharon Bolton's Little Black Lies, set in the Falklands;

Susan White reviews James Carol's Prey, the third in the Jefferson Winter series set in the US;

Amanda Gillies reviews Chris Carter's I Am Death, the seventh in his Robert Hunter series set in LA;


Guest reviewer Bob Cornwell reviews the Dutch thriller Mr. Miller by Charles Den Tex tr. Nancy Forest-Flier;

Rich Westwood reviews Martin Edwards's The Golden Age of Murder - a history of the Detection Club;


Terry Halligan reviews Dolores Gordon-Smith's The Chessman, the ninth in the 1920s Jack Haldean series;

Terry also reviews The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins by Antonia Hodgson, the sequel to the award winning The Devil in the Marshalsea;


Geoff Jones reviews J Sydney Jones's The Third Place, the sixth in the Viennese mystery series;

Geoff also reviews Jim Kelly's Death on Demand, the sixth in the Shaw & Valentine series set in North Norfolk;


Lynn Harvey reviews Henning Mankell's An Event in Autumn tr. Laurie Thompson;

Michelle also reviews Liza Marklund's Without a Trace tr. Neil Smith - the tenth and penultimate entry in the Annika Bengtzon series;

Lynn also reviews Thomas Mogford's Sleeping Dogs which takes Gibraltar-based lawyer Spike Sanguinetti to Corfu;

I review parts Three, Four and Five of Murder House by James Patterson and David Ellis


and Ewa Sherman reviews Gunnar Staalesen's We Shall Inherit the Wind tr. Don Bartlett which is the sixteenth in the PI Varg Veum series though only six are currently available in English and is the first of three from Orenda Books.

Review: Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton

Little Black Lies by Sharon Bolton, July 2015, 368 pages, Bantam Press, ISBN: 059306920X

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

Catrin Coffin, works for Falkland Conservation, lives on the Falkland Islands, and as the book opens, she is out at sea, diving off her boat, collecting sea urchin samples, when she sees an elephant seal killing a young fur seal in seconds. She admires the quickness of the kill, and the ruthlessness. Could she kill something as easily?

When she returns, as she pulls into her usual mooring at the harbour, someone is waiting for her. A three-year old child called Archie has gone missing, and the police want to know if she has seen any unknown vessels out at sea. Is this new disappearance linked to those of two children of about the same age who went missing previously? Fred, about two years ago, and then Jimmy about six months later. Has this third missing boy been taken by the same person? Search parties are organised, and Catrin is asked to lead one of the teams in the search to find him.

Catrin has two boys of her own that are no longer there, Ned and Kit. She is clearly still raw with grief, and her thoughts about killing someone relate somehow to how they died. And have something to do with someone called Rachel, the woman who used to be Catrin’s best friend, until she somehow killed Rachel’s sons three years ago. She left them alone in a car, which went over a cliff and they were killed instantly. But why would she do this? Ben, a medic, and now her ex-husband, had rung her to tell her the news. Was he somehow responsible too?

As the story progresses, slowly the truth emerges about Catrin and how her sons died. Her reasons for her hatred for Rachel start to become apparent, and how now she is slowly starting to plot her own revenge, driven by her desperate grief. However, as she is drawn into the search for the third missing boy, she becomes distracted, we sense that this search will turn into a something more, something that will somehow link back to her own life in some way, and lead to some kind of resolution.

The first inkling of this starts with what she and Callum Murray discover on an old ship just out to sea; the Endeavour, which is close to where the boy went missing. Callum is an ‘incomer’, a Scotsman who fought in the Argentine conflict, and then bought a cottage close to Stanley after leaving his regiment, shortly after the conflict ended. Involved in the search, he thinks the boy might be hidden on the Endeavour, as it’s close by but out of everyone’s way, and persuades Catrin to go and look with him.

LITTLE BLACK LIES is an intriguing book, which weaves in the backdrop of the Falklands Islands very effectively. There is a strong sense of the isolation, the rawness of nature, and the small close-knit community which all play into the story. Catrin is a strong, determined character, well embedded into the local community and yet at the same time she also feels very isolated. Various tales of Catrin’s life, her experience with her father with a whale out at sea, and the desperate plight of the beached whales on the Falklands, and how she has to deal with that, ring true. Her grief at the loss of her children and her happy family life as a result are played out slowly. The secrets that people kept from her, and the clues that she didn’t pick up on as events first unfolded, gradually become apparent, as she slowly pieces together the truth behind the death of her children, and the mystery of the missing boys. An excellent read, that I very much enjoyed.

Michelle Peckham, September 2015

New Reviews: Bates, Beaton, Bolton, Harvey, Meredith, Mogford, Morris, Roslund & Hellstrom, Wilson

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, one has appeared on the blog over the last couple of weeks and eight are completely new.

Since the last set of reviews, we've announced the winner of the Petrona Award 2014; I've been at CrimeFest and you can see my notes on twitter @eurocrime or on #crimefest14, and there's been lots of tv news.

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 the latest in Quentin Bates's Icelandic series, Cold Steal which has just been released as an ebook;

I muse on the latest books in M C Beaton's Hamish Macbeth series including Death of a Policeman;

Michelle Peckham reviews the fourth in the Lacey Flint series by Sharon Bolton: A Dark and Twisted Tide;

Mark Bailey reviews John Harvey's Darkness, Darkness which is the last in the Resnick series and, I understand, his final crime novel;

Amanda Gillies reviews The Devil's Ribbon by D E Meredith, which is now out in paperback;

Rich Westwood reviews Thomas Mogford's Sign of the Cross which is set in Malta;

Terry Halligan reviews R N Morris's The Dark Palace, the third in the Silas Quinn series, set in 1914;

Lynn Harvey reviews Two Soldiers by Roslund & Hellstrom tr. Kari Dickson, which is now out in paperback

and Terry also reviews Capital Punishment by Robert Wilson, which is the first in the Charlie Boxer series and is also 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.

Reviews: Bolton, Carter & Ripley, Ferris, Holt, James, Jones, McKinty, Vargas, Woodhouse

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, three have appeared on the blog over the last couple of weeks and six 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

Amanda Gillies reviews the paperback release of Sharon Bolton's Like This, For Ever, the third in the Lacey Flint series;

Albert Campion returns in Mr Campion's Farewell, based on Philip Youngman Carter's unfinished manuscript and completed by Mike Ripley, reviewed here by Terry Halligan;

Terry also reviews Gordon Ferris's Gallowglass, the newest and final book in the Douglas Brodie series;

Amanda also reviews the first part in the Carnivia trilogy - The Abomination - by Jonathan Holt, set in Venice and now available in paperback;

Rich Westwood reviews Almost Love the second in the DCI Yates series by Christina James, set in the Lincolnshire Fens;

Geoff Jones reviews Carys Jones's Prime Deception, a political thriller (ebook only);

Mark Bailey reviews In the Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty, the third in the Sean Duffy series;

Lynn Harvey reviews Freg Vargas's Dog Will Have His Day, tr. Sian Reynolds, the second in the "Three Evangelists" series

and Michelle Peckham reviews After the Silence the first part in Jake Woodhouse's Amsterdam Quartet.


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: Like This, For Ever by Sharon Bolton

Like This, For Ever by Sharon Bolton, November 2013, 512 pages, Corgi, ISBN: 0552166375

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

Barney has a secret. He thinks he knows who the murderer is but is too scared to tell. He sees things differently does Barney and while it is useful for finding things he sometimes loses track of time. He doesn't like that. He also misses his mum.

Dead boys are being found beside the Thames, tied up and drained of their blood. Whoever is doing this is speeding up and the pressure is on for DI Dana Tulloch to find the killer as soon as possible. The public is scared and no one is safe outside after dark, although Barney and his friends still do venture out, and end up terrified as a result. Lacey Flint is still on sick leave and determined to resign from the police force once and for all. Except her neighbour, Barney, asks her for help finding his mum and, once drawn in, she can't help but get involved, even when she herself becomes a suspect in the current killings.

This fabulous book is so well written it will draw you in and transport you to another place. You walk down the street with Barney, see what he sees, sit in his room with him and desperately will him to find his mum so that he can be at peace. I had no idea at all who the killer was and the reveal at the end was a fantastic surprise that, then, all made sense. The storyline chapters are interspersed with shorter ones that are the (unknown) killer talking to a psychiatrist at a later date. The tale they tells about why they like blood and what it was like to kill for it, is gruesomely disturbing and written such that you end up suspecting everyone over the course of the book. Everyone except the actual killer, that is!

I love books by Sharon Bolton. She has a real way with words that fills me with dread and keeps me totally focused. This is the third in a series featuring Lacey Flint and I am looking forward to finding out what she does next.

Highly Recommended.

[Read another review of LIKE THIS, FOR EVER.]

Amanda Gillies, April 2014.