Love, deceit, guilt and mystery: Erin Kelly’s second novel – The Sick Rose – has it all.

Louisa is a young girl trying to find her path in life when she meets the lead singer of a small band – Adam Glasslake. They share a steamy and passionate relationship over a period of months before Louisa’s paranoia leads her to discover a truth that shatters both their lives, and casts a dark cloud of guilt and regret over her youth. Louisa tries to forget her past and move on, but her cloud of darkness encases her and becomes a constant shadow of misery and pain. Twenty years on, Louisa finds peace renovating the grounds of a crumbling Elizabethan mansion away from family, friends and her haunting past. Whilst on her renovation project she meets a boy who resembles the one person she never believed she would see again. This new boy in her life rekindles her past love and also breathes new life into her tired and lonely existence, but can she move on and start afresh with such a burden of guilt and regret?

Paul befriends Daniel, a new pupil in school, who seems to have taken a liking to him. What starts off as a great friendship slowly turns into a love hate relationship and the two boys battle between their own personalities and their own values and aims in life. After Daniel drags Paul into a compromising situation Daniel finds himself in prison whilst Paul is to testify against him. Sent to a crumbling Elizabethan mansion to work until the trial is finished, Paul finds himself in a world of lies and blackmail and his only source of release from that world is his new boss, Louisa. After finding out about Louisa’s past, Paul decides to help Louisa move on and begins to gather information about her past love: Adam Glasslake. But will Louisa see this as interference in her most private part of her life, or the closure she has been looking for all these years?

We flit between years ranging from 1989 to 2012 and have two protagonists – Louisa and Paul, but once you find your feet with this story you begin to settle into the two lives of past and present. The start does trundle along slower than I expected but once the momentum gets going and you begin to understand the characters and their lives you really start to flick through those pages just that little bit quicker.

I found myself reading page after page to find out just how these two stories intertwine and become one, and I was pleasantly surprised at how the two stories slot neatly into place. It was a great read and although I was a little disappointed with the ending it was definitely a book that would look great on anyones bookshelf. I loved the easy style of writing and the inventive way in which the story was told.

I recommend this novel to anyone looking for that little something different but with all the mystery, intrigue and suspense we all love from our psychological thrillers.

This is Erin Kelly’s second novel and I will certainly be reading her first novel – The Poison Tree – to see if it lives up to my expectations.

I’ve heard Gus likened to Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus; Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, and even the psychotic ‘Begbie’ from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. (The last one came from the author himself, and I’d actually have to agree with his assessment!)

But, truth be told, Gus – my “reluctant PI and enthusiastic alcoholic” protagonist, as one reviewer described him, is much more of an amalgam of several diffuse influences from literature – and – film and television.

Don’t get me wrong, I get nothing but the greatest kick from being likened to best-selling novelists in the crime genre, however, if you were to as me for the stand-out markers in my reading that produced Gus Dury I’d be hard pressed to mention more than one or two definites.

Film influences, I could list easily. I grew up in the Eighties. Healthy, testosterone-filled movies and television such as Dirty Harry, Minder, and the A-Team … it was a time when men were men, and female programming executives were nervous.

I remember latching onto macho male leads like Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callaghan and thinking – he get’s the job done! Nice work, fellah … There is no doubt in my mind that there is a direct link between such boyhood influences and my own male lead Gus Dury.

Perhaps, this is why – as a young-ish man – I recall Clint’s unforeseen move from the hard-man genre to, er, Romance, in the form of The Bridges of Madison County. When I saw the-man-himself being asked “Why?” in one interview … Why, Clint, did you turn away from that established audience? … I was blown-away by his response: “Because you either progress, or you decay!”

Quite.

Several years later – and four PI novels under my belt – Clint’s wisdom and influence struck me again. My fifth novel, I decided, was going to progress … it was going to challenge me as a writer. Hence, Truth Lies Bleeding (Preface/Random House) was a true departure for me and the learning curve continued with my just released Murder Mile.

My Gus Dury novels were anarchic – the Scottish Daily Record even described Gus as “the punk rocker of the Scottish crime scene”; but, DI Rob Brennan – who heads up my latest novel – is a pillar of the force – truly one of Lothian and Borders’ finest.

There are many reasons why I chose to change tack; firstly, I grew up. Yes, it happens to the best of us. Whereas Gus was, in many regards, a perfect representation of my younger self – he had my taste in music, my truncated academic background, and my former profession (journalist) – Rob is much more of a reflection of my advancing years (I am loath to use the word ‘maturity’).

Rob is a father, a man with responsibilities, older and wiser. I think it would have been too much of a reach for me to even attempt a creation like DI Rob Brennan in my younger days. Much of this comes down to craft too; I am a huge proselytiser when it comes to teaching craft – the more you know about writing, the more you can achieve, or even attempt.

The Gus Dury novels I began my published career with were first-person narratives. Fine, for linear storylines and plots – but – I found when writing my new police procedural series that the complexity of the narrative simply didn’t lend itself to first-person.

With multiple storylines, several layers of plot and sub-plot, it was clear that as an author I needed to take a more helicopter view. Rob, unlike Gus, couldn’t be in every single scene. There were too many incidents happening off stage that needed to be relayed to the reader. There was too much going on that Rob – as dictated by the story and plot – could not be a party too.

Was this harder to achieve? Well, yes.

In a first-person narrative like my first novel, Paying For It, I had my protagonist bounce from pillar to post, chasing every lead. It was easy to sink a few hooks, add areas of tension, drop red herrings … because, as long as Gus was in the dark, so too was the reader: instant tension!

This is not to say that Paying For It was rendered in a more facile way: it was sometimes tricky to engineer the protagonist into every visible turn in the road; but, with Truth Lies Bleeding and Murder Mile there was the added consideration of whether or not the scene had been shown from the best viewpoint: Rob’s view – or another character’s? Sometimes it was simply a better server of suspense to have Rob unaware of the main turns and have the reader know something that the protagonist didn’t!

The mechanics of storytelling aside, attempting a new genre – for me, the police procedural – when previously I’d been known purely as a Tartan Noirist was a challenge in itself. Quite apart from convincing my agent and editor that this was a move I should make (especially when the reviewers had been so kind to Gus Dury) there was the added question of whether the novel would gain acceptance with my established readership.

Colleen McCullough may, quite effortlessly it seems, move from general fiction to the historical genre, and then onto crime – but lesser mortals (those without a Thorn Birds to their name!) have an uphill struggle simply getting into print regularly, never mind changing course.

What I found, however, was that the people backing my work couldn’t have been more supportive. Enthusiasm, it seems, breeds enthusiasm … even in an industry as difficult to break as publishing.

A writer who needs no introduction once said, “A man’s reach should far exceed his grasp.”

Sound advice, I’d have to say.

 Tony Black’s latest crime thriller, Murder Mile, is published by Preface/Random House. For more information on the author, visit: www.tonyblack.net or the author’s blog: www.pulpppusher.blogspot.com

For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella’s innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel. His wife is drinking more than she should. His oldest son has dropped out of college and moved in with an exprostitute. His youngest son is working for him and trying to stay within the law. And his father, whom he thought was long dead, has turned up under an alias. 

This was very nearly the shortest review I’d ever written, but I remembered the days when I collected debts for a living and a previous collector had written simply on the notes: ‘attended, actions speak louder than words, paid’…..it didn’t do much to warn you of an impending baseball bat, so elaboration is needed.

Back in the early 90′s, Walter Mosley & James Lee Burke introduced me to crime fiction. I read a novel of each that was given out free with ‘Esquire’ magazine, whilst I was pondering where I would get drunk that night and looking at half undressed showbiz stars. The Mosley novel was either ‘Devil in a blue dress’ or ‘White butterfly’ by memory, and it introduced me to the world of Easy Rawlins.

I read a lot of Rawlins, there was a lot to read, but after a while, although I stayed with Burke, I drifted away from Mosley. Therefore, somewhere in the house is, I know, a number of unread Mosley novels, particularly RLs Dream. I even wondered whether I’d enjoy reading him again after so many years, the unsaid thought was that I’d done Mosley to death.

I needn’t have worried.

This book is superb, and the pages flew past as I didn’t want it to end. Its like Mosley’s other novels in that it is a complex story with a complex hero. The difference is that whilst Rawlins was compared to Marlow, its difficult to know who to compare McGill to. Easy and Mouse were very similar in ways to Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel, Patrick Kenzie and Bubba Rogowski, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, the sidekick being the crazy/out there accomplice to the morally more upstanding if slightly more troubled main man. Where McGill differs is that he’s closer to a concoction of Clete, Bubba and Joe than the straighter trio of the more main three. He tries to prove it whilst trying to hold his family together and solve  the problems facing him, whilst walking around the city in a one man tidal wave of mayhem and destruction, an ex-boxer still bouncing around the canvas, riding and dodging punches. Whilst saying McGill is more akin to the aforementioned renegade sidekicks, that may well leave his own friend and accomplice, Hush, simply incomparable in his brutality and standing.

McGill makes you think and is complex and educated enough to be a contradiction in terms. To explain, I was reading him as though he was black with a Swedish wife, yet couldn’t definitely confirm his colour until page 240! Whether that says more about me or the speed I was reading I don’t know.

This book deserves to be read, and I’m about to purchase the previous three in the series on the kindle for just under twenty pounds. When he writes like this Mosley is at a level reached by very few, and I could only dream of writing a book like this. Reading this makes me feel like bumping into my first love in a bar years after parting, the crush still there somewhere, just hidden under dust.

Superb. Needs to be read.

Lydia Chin is a Chinese American Private investigator with an ‘occasional partner’ by the name of Bill Smith, a loner, ex-soldier. Chin has grown up under the extended influence of Grandfather Gao in China Town, and is delighted to be entrusted, together with Smith, with the delivery of Gao’s oldest friends ashes back to Hong Kong. Sounds simple? A young boy connected to the family gets kidnapped along with his nanny and the family closes ranks, meaning no police. Then two separate ransom demands arrive…..

Before anyone asks I’ve no idea where that ‘click to look inside’ came from as it wasn’t on the original image. Lunatics and asylum come to mind….

I only discovered after reading this book that it was released in the USA in 2001 under the title ‘Reflecting the Sky’ but Ebury Press are obviously releasing the series over in the good ol’ UK.

I’ll admit I’d never heard of the author, but looking into her she has got a large portfolio. Chin and Smith are an interesting pairing. Her being about a decade younger, him constantly soft-flirting with her, her knocking him back constantly. Add to the fact that Chin’s family hate Smith and it gets a bit complicated. I’m not generally a ‘jump in in the middle of a series’ type person, if I like the sound of something I’ll generally buy the series from the beginning. There’s an element of not knowing what’s gone on before when you should do that annoys me a little, and I’m in that scenario here.

I enjoyed this book, the setting of Hong Kong was a new one to me and I think I’d enjoy reading about these pair in their American setting. That said, I struggled to get into it to start with. That occasionally happens to me when I’ve read a few books in quick succession and I think the problem was more that I’d just read Frank Bills ‘Crimes in Southern Indiana’ on Barb’s suggestion, which is about as cut throat, immediate and brutal as can be. This is a much more sedately paced affair, and reminded me of a comment I read in an agents interview of maybe it would be nice to read a crime novel where everyone doesn’t get killed. Well, there are deaths in this, but it does feel a little like that comment, as though it were from a slower age, which is ironic as it constantly points out how quick life is in Hong Kong. The book is very good in its setting, and captures the atmosphere very well. The dialogue is good although when I was struggling a little to start with I was flicking through and seeing a lot of blocky, long paragraphs that made me wonder whether I’d finish it. Eventually it drew me in, and as I say I think the fault there might be more mine than the writers.

I would read more of Rozan’s work, and I would like to start from the beginning and read it as a series, but whether I’ll ever be in a ‘non cut-throat’ enough mood to do it I’m not sure. I’d recommend this as a good read for those who are after a little less blood and guts and a complex plot, a little sexual tension and a good old mystery. She’s good at what she does.

Review by Edwin Tipple

An exiled Prime Minister, who’d love to get back into power; the current incumbent a woman from the opposing party; red shirts and yellow shirts, violent demonstrations and a good smattering of corruption in all the high places. You’ve heard something like this before, recently? Yes, it’s topical: it’s what’s been happening in Thailand – well except for the exiled PM – and it’s not done yet.

This is not fiction; it is how things are here, which lends a great deal of accuracy to A World of Trouble, Needham’s latest Asia crime thriller novel. But who can calm things down before civil war breaks out? Enter Jack Shepherd, lawyer and money mover who’s hired by the ex PM to … well that would be telling, wouldn’t it. Needham shuttles you through Dubai, Bangkok via Hong Kong and back again. While you flit from country to country, your suspicions grow. You think you know what’s coming, that it’s just the Thais squabbling amongst themselves again, and you work out how it will all end up. Then, as you turn the pages faster impatient for the end, you discover you’re wrong.

A nice hook on the last page makes me suspect that Jake will be giving us more of Jack.

The members of an exclusive London set for the wealthy, and their beautiful, spoiled wives, in their designer-labelled lingerie, and out of it, start dying in the most horrific manner. To DCI Jackson Flare and his partner, DI Mandy Steele, the first killing and mutilation is a gruesome mystery, but before they can begin to come to any conclusions, there is another, and another…

DCI Flare has mutilations of his own to deal with and not only on his ravaged face. Harlan White, the man responsible for the damage is on the loose again and Flare has a score to settle. Good looking, tough Mandy Steele burns the candle at both ends as her sexual demons pursue her even as she pursues the elusive killer.

Slowly but surely Gertrude Miller, wife, and mother of two, starts to slip off the edge of sanity. As her battered childhood persona takes over, she takes on sexual clients on whom to take revenge. One of them happens to also be a member of the Glamour Club. The change of modus operandi throws the investigators a curved ball.

Successful artist ‘Razor’ cuts a regular line of hits on the current music scene, and cuts an even more frequent line of coke. Having kicked his girlfriend unconscious, he is the only suspect when Anne Lacey is found  dead…

Where does Michael McKleith, a man for whom human life holds no value, fit in, as he searches for his daughter? What about the gigolo, Jack Martin, who has slept with most of the wives?

The body count mounts relentlessly. The profiler and the pathologist scrape in piles of clues, but the identity of the psychopath eludes the investigators. Each carcass has different body-parts removed, but who is the common denominator that links them together?

Even when that is established, the tail keeps writhing like a headless snake.

This is not a meal for the faint-hearted! Having started it, I considered wearing gloves to pick it up, half expecting the book to be soggy with blood and giblets and semen. It is a horror story rather than a who-done-it, but the revelations are clever and plausible, if so much madness and depravity is plausible at all.

Published by Black Jackal Books

Middle-aged sleuths, Carole Sneddon and her friend Jude, eagerly nose their way into their 13^th mystery in Simon Brett’s Fethering series, when Carole takes over the tenancy of a Smalting beach hut, but finds a fire-damaged floor. Her reporting thereof introduces us to a beautifully described, varied collection of people who line themselves up as possibly having something to hide when the floor-repair man discovers human remains buried beneath it.

The curiosity of both reader and detectives mounts even before the police finally reveal the identity of the remains. In the meanwhile, a man is missing and his girlfriend is distraught, but will not report it. Who lit the fire, who put it out again and who put a carpet down to hide the damage? The suspects, unveiled one by one by the determined ladies, all have motives for a variety of crimes and misdemeanours, but even as the tale nears its conclusion, the tail twists and twists again…

Simon Brett, the author of over 30 novels as well as plays and short stories, is a master character builder. His two sleuths, one fastidious and cautious, the other voluptuous in both body and nature, dovetail each other well. His story flows easily along and it is threaded through with a subtle humour, but is as old-fashioned as Agatha Christie. It is a mystery, but not a thriller. I crept happily along, curious and intrigued, but nowhere did I have to put the book down to catch my breath or allow a hammering heart to quieten down.

If you like blood and guts action, this one is not for you.

Korolev-  despite recently being  decorated after the events in William Ryan‘s cracking previous novel, The Holy Thief - expects the worse – to be dispatched to certain death in one of Siberia’s frozen prison camps.

However, he is, in fact, sent off to a film set in Odessa, to investigate the apparent suicide of a young woman who was a ‘very close’ friend of the Commissar for State Security.

Like  The Holy Thief, The Bloody Meadow throbs with a sense of paranoia and fear, as Korolev carefully negotiates the tangled spider web of Stalinist Russia while trying to get to the bottom of the case.

The Bloody Meadow is an immensely satisfying murder mystery that is packed with great characters -including some familiar faces from The Holy Thief - and strong on atmosphere. Korolev himself is a particularly likeable protagonist who constantly struggles with the duality of his position and the need to do the right thing.

Ryan’s great descriptive skills are really to the fore in The Bloody Meadow, which is sometimes so richly cinematic the it makes you wish that Carole Reed were still alive in order to faithfully adapt the book for the silver screen.

The Bloody Meadow is a fantastic follow up to The Holy Thief, which comfortably confirms the Korolev series as must reads and William Ryan as very much ‘the real deal.’

Can’t wait for the next one.

Set against the backdrop of Portsmouth’s criminal underworld, the Faraday and Winter series reaches a dramatic conclusion

Bazza Mackenzie, Pompey’s top criminal, is now beyond the reach of D/I Joe Faraday.  Hungry for power and profile, Bazza decides to stand for Portsmouth North in the 2010 general election.  His campaign is taking the city by storm.  But as election day beckons, and his police nemesis – D/S Jimmy Scuttle – closes in, there’s far more at stake than the votes.

This is the twelfth and final book of Graham Hurley’s Faraday and Winter novels, and I have to confess it’s the first of his books I’ve read.  Undaunted, I jumped in and quickly found myself immersed in the world of Bazza, Jimmy and Winter.

Unlike most other police procedurals I’ve read, this novel has a large ensemble cast. Most will be familiar to regular readers of the series, and even coming late to the novels as I have, there are still plenty of quirky and intriguing characters to get to know.

As old scores are settled, and new boundaries pushed, the events of the book ensure each character faces the consequences of their choices, and shows the impact on them and those around them. 

In this character-driven thriller, the setting is as much a character as the people who live in it.  Hurley’s Portsmouthgives a rich, vibrant and sometimes darkly disturbing glimpse into the city and its inhabitants.

I especially liked the way Hurley blurs the lines between wrong and right, and between police, criminal and politics.  With dramatic plot twists and volatile characters, it kept me turning the pages, wanting to find out who’d end up on top.

And, after that cracking opening line, things really go downhill for Gabriel Hill, Ph.D.

Gabe is the white sheep of the family. Well, compared to his estranged, drug dealing brother, Mike, he is. But when the aforementioned dead paedophile is dumped in front of his house, Gabe becomes a murder suspect. Then he discovers that Mike has been murdered and he decides to investigate the killing.

And then things really, really go downhill.

There’s a duplicitous femme fatale. A very scary and very, very messed up psychopath called Tyler, and his creepy, obedient sidekick. Add weird animal sacrifices, missing loot and a slew of corpses. And the mysterious Mr Greenstreet.

R. Thomas Brown’s breathless hillbilly-noir  is rough and tough, lean and mean, hard-boiled and hard core. And a hell of a lot of fun, though not for those of a sensitive disposition.