July 24

The Domino Killer – Neil White

25643638When a man is found beaten to death in a local Manchester park, Detective Constable Sam Parker is one of the investigating officers. Sam swiftly identifies the victim, but what at first looks like an open and shut case quickly starts to unravel when he realises that the victim’s fingerprints were found on a knife at another crime scene, a month earlier.

Meanwhile, Sam’s brother, Joe – a criminal defence lawyer in the city – comes face to face with a man whose very presence sends shockwaves through his life. Joe must confront the demons of his past as he struggles to come to terms with the darkness that this man represents.

Before long, Joe and Sam are in way over their heads, both sucked into a terrifying game of cat-and-mouse that threatens to change their lives for ever…

 

My thanks to Little, Brown UK who provided a review copy through Netgalley

 

The Domino Killer was my first introduction to Neil White’s books. The two central characters, Sam and Joe Parker, had clearly featured in previous books so the first question I have to address is “Does not knowing the back-story create any problems?” The answer would seem to be NO. I suspect that there are several elements which will reward returning readers that (as a new reader) I totally failed to grasp the significance of. However, as an introduction to the Parker brothers I found The Domino Killer to be a great read – important events and incidents from previous novels were explained (or discussed in such a way that I never got confused with the latest developments.

The book opens with a particularly nasty murder. In a lonely park on a dark evening a man is beaten to death, he dies clutching a bunch of flowers. An illicit rendezvous gone wrong perhaps? The police investigate but not much progress is being made. However, all this will change when a second murder is committed and the two deaths are found to be linked in the most unexpected of ways.

Meanwhile lawyer, Joe Parker, is called out late to meet a new client, a man who is accused of stealing and then torching his own car. What seems a routine client call is about to send Joe’s world into chaos – although he has never previously met his client he knows who he is as the two men are bound by a single event, one which has shaped Joe’s whole life.

The Domino Killer is a captivating read and the villain of the piece is one of the nastier characters I have encountered in recent reads. I enjoyed the fact the two Parker brothers adopt very different approaches to counter the perceived threat they feel they face. Sam, the policeman, follows procedure and acts within the confines of the law. His brother, Joe, is a defence lawyer – however, Joe has a secret that has haunted him for many a year and the Domino Killer knows this. Joe finds himself confronting a demon from his past and he is prepared to sacrifice friendships and his career to put the ghosts of his past to rest.

Neil White writes with an easy, entertaining and very readable style. The action ticks along at a great pace and I found I wanted to keep reading long after I should have been setting the book down. Although I only finished The Domino Killer within the last week or so I have already picked up a couple of Neil’s earlier books to add to my TBR pile.

 

The Domino Killer is published by Little, Brown UK Ltd and is available from 30th July in both hardback and digital formats.

Neil White is on Twitter: @neilwhite1965

He also has a wee corner of the internet at: http://www.neilwhite.net/

 

 

 

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May 17

The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die – Marnie Riches

the girl who wouldnt die 2HE’S WATCHING HER. SHE DOESN’T KNOW IT…YET

When a bomb explodes at the University of Amsterdam, aspiring criminologist Georgina McKenzie is asked by the police to help flush out the killer.

But the bomb is part of a much bigger, more sinister plot that will have the entire city quaking in fear.

And the killer has a very special part for George to play…

A thrilling race against time with a heroine you’ll be rooting for, this book will keep you up all night!

 

Marnie Riches suggested I would enjoy her book – she was absolutely right. This ticked all the right boxes and the twists were too clever for me. Many thanks Marnie!

 

Right from its explosive opening to the dramatic endgame, The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die kept me hooked. Marnie Riches has created a fascinating character in Georgina (George) McKenzie and her debut story is a strong start for what I hope will become a long and successful series.

The majority of the story is set out in Holland, a country I confess to knowing little about. I enjoyed the depiction of the seemingly relaxed Dutch society, the Amsterdam Red Light District (and marijuana consumption) that I expected to read about are included but the further inclusion of university life added a new dimension and made the feel of the city come to life.

George is a student at the university in Amsterdam. She is balancing her studies with her personal investigation into the deaths that are occurring around the city. The police have enlisted her help as they recognise her online blog could be used to flush out a bomber who targeted the University buildings. Having been given a small insight into the investigation George feels compelled to follow her personal investigation as she second-guesses the official investigation: she feels the police are following the wrong path to track down the bomber. What George does not realise is that the person she is tracking has already found her…

Running alongside George’s investigations is the story of Ella. Ella lives with her mother in London, they are being targeted by a local gang of kids who seem intent on terrorising Ella while she is at home, their attentions are unwelcome and the peril is increasing. The activities of a gang of badly behaved kids in London seemed a long way from the hunt for a bomber in Amsterdam so I was keen to see how Ella and George’s stories would overlap (I assumed they would). The ‘No Spoilers’ rule is very much in force here but I did love what Marnie Riches did to Ella and her mum over the course of the story.

The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die is one of the tales I cannot discuss too much as the enjoyment comes from discovering the twists for yourself. There are some nasty folk hanging around Amsterdam and you implore George to keep away from them. Marnie Riches places some red herrings in our path to keep the identity of the killer well hidden and she does it extremely well – safe to say I was miles off solving this one!

I reached the end of The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die and was delighted to learn that Georgina McKenzie is due to return later this year in The Girl Who Broke The Rules. You can sign me up for that one right now, this is a series I will be happy to spend time with.

 

The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die is currently available online in digital format. It is published through Maze and Avon (Harper Collins).

Marnie Riches is on Twitter: @Marnie_Riches

At online at http://marnieriches.com

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April 21

Huntress Moon – Alexandra Sokoloff

The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 1

FBI Special Agent Matthew Roarke is closing in on a bust of a major criminal Huntress_Moon_TM_CVR-FTorganization in San Francisco when he witnesses an undercover member of his team killed right in front of him on a busy street, an accident Roarke can’t believe is coincidental. His suspicions put him on the trail of a mysterious young woman who appears to have been present at each scene of a years-long string of “accidents” and murders, and who may well be that most rare of killers: a female serial.

Roarke’s hunt for her takes him across three states…while in a small coastal town, a young father and his five-year old son, both wounded from a recent divorce, encounter a lost and compelling young woman on the beach and strike up an unlikely friendship without realizing how deadly she may be.

As Roarke uncovers the shocking truth of her background, he realizes she is on a mission of her own, and must race to capture her before more blood is shed.

 

My thanks to Alexandra Sokoloff for giving me the chance to read Huntress Moon.

 

I think I will need a thesaurus for this review. I would open it to the word ‘Brilliant’ and then apply a number of superlatives to Huntress Moon. It was that good!

FBI Special Agent Roarke is witness to a colleague’s sudden and unexpected death. The deceased agent had been working undercover and was due to rendezvous with Roarke but was killed by a speeding vehicle. Just before the incident Roarke spotted a woman standing beside his colleague she vanished when Roarke’s line of sight was broken but her presence unsettled him.

The reader then gets to join the woman. She is on the run, not that she fears capture – she is escaping a crime scene and has a code to follow. She has clearly done this many times in the past. At a truck stop the woman is confronted by a trucker, it ends badly for him but the woman leaves an unavoidable mess.

We now have a fabulous set up. We follow Roarke and his investigations into the mystery woman. We follow the killer as she tries to blend in and establish a cover story. As the story develops we learn more about our mysterious killer and see how she constantly lives on the fine edge between fight and flight. The FBI investigations also progress and it becomes clear that the mystery woman will not be able to remain a mystery for long.

I found Huntress Moon to be a compelling read. I enjoy reading FBI ‘manhunt’ novels and the added bonus of seeing how the hunt unfolded from the point of view of the killer was a nice twist. By the time the story was entering the Endgame I was genuinely torn as to how I wanted events to unfold.

LACMA.best.DSC_6246-2There are moral implications to consider in Huntress Moon. If a killer is targeting victims who they perceive as immoral, or if the victim was engaging in criminal activities, can their death be justified? One for the reader to consider and one of the reasons I was torn over how I wanted the book to end. I don’t have an answer to that question.

Huntress Moon is a stand out book for me. I liked Roarke and his FBI colleagues (who were all well developed and made to feel real). I found the killer to be fascinating, her motives are clear to her but what triggered her obsession was disturbing.

Huntress Moon is the best crime thriller I have read for many months and it easily scoops a review score of 5/5. I am now lining up the next book: Blood Moon

 

Huntress Moon is just £1 on Kindle through April 2015.

Alexandra Sokoloff recently visited the blog to discuss Serial Killers. The interview can be found here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=696

 

Visit the author’s website at AlexandraSokoloff.com

Follow Alexandra on Twitter at @alexsokoloff

Huntress Moon:  http://amzn.to/1wEwxZo

 

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February 26

Haterz – James Goss

HaterzA blackly comic crime novel about a one-man crusade to rid the internet of haters, flamers, trolls and vaguebookers… even if he has to kill to do it.

Is there someone online who really annoys you? Who is always bragging, posting too many pictures and just doesn’t get jokes? Look at your Twitter feed, don’t you get cross at the endless rage, bigotry and the pleading for celebrity retweets? Meet Dave. He decides that unfollowing someone just isn’t enough. He’s determined to make the internet a nicer place, and he won’t stop at murder in order to achieve it. When he kills his best friend’s girlfriend, he isn’t planning on changing the world. She was just really annoying on Facebook. But soon Dave realises he’s being manipulated. A conspiracy are using him to gain control of something dark forming at the heart of the world wide web…

My thanks to Solaris and Netgalley for my review copy

James Goss is a clever man. He has taken all the annoying things that we see each day on the internet and drawn them together into a single story that is not remotely annoying. How does a collection of irritations not annoy the reader? Mainly by following a likeable lead character who kills the annoying people who abuse Social Media. And (here is the clever bit) he makes it seem like it is a perfectly reasonable course of action to undertake. Genius!

In Haterz we follow Dave. He is in a pub one evening when he gets cornered by Danielle, she is his best friend’s girlfriend. We learn that Dave his not Danielle’s greatest fan and he finds her inane Facebook updates a source of constant irritation. In short, Dave finds Danielle so irritating (both in person and online) that he decides to kill her – and he does. In the very first Chapter!

Reaching home, safe in the knowledge that Danielle’s death will be considered a tragic accident, Dave is horrified to receive an email from an unknown sender which reads: “We know what you’ve done. Killer”.

From this point on Dave is no longer master of his own destiny. He will be contacted by email and made aware of individuals who are exhibiting unacceptable online behaviour. Dave then has to address these problematic individuals and make them change their way – or silence them permanently. How he tackles each of these problems is clever, entertaining (for readers) and should probably leave any friends of James Goss slightly concerned as to how he may perceive their online behaviour.

Through the story Dave takes on the likes of Twitter trolls, media columnists, banks and high interest loan companies. He believes his actions are for the greater good and sometimes it is hard to disagree. I doubt that any reader will make it through the book without recognising some form of online interaction that they have previously encountered and found to be highly objectionable or that they have themselves been guilty of (in which case…BE AFRAID).

I cannot give away too many details as to why I enjoyed Haterz so much as this would risk robbing you of the delight of finding the great plot twists for yourself – spoilers and all that. What I can share is that this is a sharply written novel with a clever premise. It captures perfectly the failings of Social Media and pokes fun at the worst offenders. Once I started reading I wanted to keep going – the pacing was perfect, the victims were plentiful and there were laughs to be had along the way.

There are characters in the book which you will mentally picture as real life people – either because you have a Facebook friend that exhibits similar traits to the poor Danielle or because you think that the columnist is basically <REDACTED> under a different name and you want to see if something nasty will happen.

Haterz is one of the rarer gems of crime fiction – a novel that delivers a good ‘murder’ story yet also keeps the humour front and foremost which helped to make it such good fun to read.  Consider The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – a science fiction story but so deeply interlaced with the humour of Douglas Adams that it is frequently considered a comedy book rather than sci-fi. Goss does the same in Haterz: there are some dark and graphic scenes yet the tone is softened with a joke or wry observation and the perception of the whole book changes. Anyone that uses the internet should read this book. If a review score helps you to decide then I hope that 5 out of 5 should be persuasive.

 

Haterz is published on March 12th by Solaris Books.

James Goss is on Twitter: @gossjam

I have previously reviewed Doctor Who: The Blood Cell which was also written by James Goss. This book was one of the first published to feature Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor. Search for The Blood Cell at www.grabthisbook.net

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January 8

Hellbound – David McCaffrey

hellboundHis crimes – unforgivable. His death – inevitable. His suffering – just beginning.

Obadiah Stark aka The Tally Man, is executed at ADX Absolom, his death sentence watched by the world’s media, victim relatives and one investigative reporter, Joe O Connell. Penning an account of Stark’s personal history and subsequent crimes in the hope of determining what elements make the sociopathic mind tick, Joe discovers clues and inconsistencies which cause him to investigate Stark’s execution.

While this is happening in the real world, Obadiah Stark awakens to an afterlife where he has a wife and daughter bound to his childhood hometown. Following his natural predatory instinct, Obadiah proceeds to torment the town, committing multiple murders before being gunned down by the police.

He awakens to find that everything has reset, with no one recalling his murderous spree a reality which offers no escape. As the scenes repeat, he is forced to submit to emotions he has never experienced before…and with it, a poisonous dose of morality.

 

Thank you to the Crime Book Club for giving me the chance to host this leg of the Hellbound Blog Tour and to David McCaffrey for providing a copy of Hellbound for review.

Joe O’Connell is a journalist writing a book about a serial killer – Obadiah Stark. Hellbound opens with Joe attending Stark’s execution. We are left in no doubt that Stark is a cold and unrepentant killer and that nobody will mourn his passing. The execution proceeds (no last minute reprieves) and Stark is gone.

Joe intends for his book to cover Stark’s crimes and he hopes that the families of Stark’s victims will help with his research. He stands a good chance of gaining their support as Joe has made a commitment not to sensationalise the murders committed by Obadiah Stark. It becomes clear that there is a symmetry here with Hellbound; David McCaffrey also chooses not to depict Stark’s crimes (over 20 murders) into a gore-fest tale aimed to shock the reader, instead he adopts a much more clever approach…I shall explain.

The narrative of Hellbound can broadly be broken down into three distinct sections. One section takes the form of clinical notes or reports upon Stark’s movements and interactions (including the killings) which are described in precise and factual detail. I found this unusual approach to be a really effective way of establishing the dispassionate and brutal nature of the killer.

The second narrative stream follows Joe. His quest to get to the heart of the Obadiah Stark story brings him into contact with the family members of Stark’s victims, prison employees and even another writer that wants to assist Joe with his work. Yet the deeper he digs the more he becomes convinced that the execution did not progress quite as it should have.

Now we get to the third of the key narrative streams – that of Obadiah Stark himself. Stark remembers his life, his crimes and even his execution…yet how is this possible if he died?

Stark has awoken in a town he remembers from his childhood yet he is now married, has a child and seems not to have spent the last years of his life in a remote island prison. Confused and angry Stark commits some very public murders and is gunned down by the police. The next day he awakes and finds that everything has been reset as if nothing ever happened. I must confess at this stage of reading that I had no idea what was going on and the words ‘Groundhog Day’ were zooming around my head.

From this point on David McCaffrey takes the readers on a fascinating journey. First the investigation: O’Connell is pursuing a story as he is sure the prison are hiding something following Stark’s execution.   Alongside is the unexplained mystery: Stark seems to be living in a dreamlike world where he is self-aware yet nobody knows he is one of the most infamous killers the world has seen.

I was compelled to keep reading as I simply had to find out what was happening! Fortunately this was no chore: the story progresses at a nice pace (crucially there was never any feeling of plot padding) and there plenty of twists to hold my attention.

Throughout the story you find that the morality of the Death Penalty will arise but the reader has to form their own opinion as to whether it is appropriate punishment for Stark. I can see a reading group having a ball with that one! I believe some readers may start to feel sorry for Stark, others most certainly will not – huge plaudits to Mr McCaffrey for tackling such an emotive issue and pitching it perfectly.

By the end of Hellbound I was willing the story to go on. I hope that I am right in my guess that David McCaffrey has not finished will all the characters he introduced in Hellbound – there was a very real feeling that <REDACTED> was being set up for a sequel.

Hellbound is a book that deserves to be read – a clever thriller, well written and extremely enjoyable.

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