Tag: Crime

Posted in Netgalley

The Shadow of the Northern Lights by Satu Rämö

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As Christmas comes to the west cost of Iceland, a corpse is found in a fish farming pond. Detective Hildur Rúnarsdóttir and trainee Jakob Johanson barely have time to start their investigation before another body is discovered. And soon a third.

While investigating the case, Hildur’s lost sister weighs heavy on her mind. Meanwhile, Jakob travels to Finland for the hearing of his fraught custody battle, that leaves him facing dire consequences. As the number of deaths continues to grow, Hildur and Jakob are desperate to catch the killer before they strike again.

If I said to you ‘horse vampire crime spree’ you’d probably think I’d gone bonkers, but that’s just a small part of what might be going on in this Icelandic thriller from Satu Rämö. When a body is found suspended by hooks in an Icelandic fish farm in the run up to Christmas, Detective Hildur is put in charge of the investigation, by her objectionable boss Jonas. Hildur’s partner Jakob’s mind isn’t on the job but on his custody battles, so she’s working alone a lot of the time and we’re in it with her, party to her thoughts and theories. So when a second victim has her hair burned off with a candle, a strange idea starts to form. Could the attacker be basing their methods on the Icelandic tradition of the Yule Lads?  I’m an avid QI fan and without it I would have known nothing about this particular tradition of thirteen mischievous troll-like creatures who come down from the hillsides and play tricks on people. The translations of their names include Spoon Licker, Pot Scraper and Sausage Swiper, something I have never forgotten since. The case is interesting psychologically, but there’s a lot more going on here and I found myself sidetracked by the lives of the detectives. I did find it a bit slow to get going and I think it was when these family stories developed that I became gripped. 

Jakob is rather fascinating – a taciturn character who has the unlikely hobby of knitting. In fact he’s so compelled to knit, that he’s able to do it in the car while Hildur is driving and in waiting rooms. It’s clearly displacement activity and we learn that Jakob has a son with his estranged partner Regina who has taken him out of the country to Finland. Although Jakob is fighting this, he’s now at the mercy of a foreign legal system and is having to fly over to attend court which affects his job and leaves Hildur coping alone. In the midst of her investigation Jakob calls Hildur to give her some shocking news, he has been arrested on suspicion of murder. Regina and the new man in her life have been shot dead in their vehicle while in a car park. Worse than this, a witness has described someone who looks remarkably like Jakob as being in the vicinity before the shooting. He has access to a gun and is in a contentious court battle with the deceased, he knows his chances aren’t good and asks for Hildur. Surely, if she had even the smallest suspicion of Jakob being guilty, Hildur wouldn’t fly to his aid without question? 

Underneath everything, this is a novel about family. The estrangement between Hildur and her sisters is so painfully believable and we can see the effects of generational trauma in the family. Their mother was an alcoholic, leading to neglect and one sister being very badly burned. We’re reminded of those small traditions families have that make celebrations personal and bind us together. Yet the story is also full of secrets people are keeping from each other and things they can’t talk about, until the right person comes along to unlock that emotion. 

“She knew from experience that she had a hard time forming attachments with anyone who hadn’t known grief.” 

This was such an eloquent description of how grief feels, almost like living on a different plane of existence to others. I felt this deeply when in the depths of grief and ever since I’ve been unable to do small talk and my tolerance levels for certain people and activities have lowered significantly. Some doors can only be opened with experience. What kept me reading was Jakob’s situation and the incredibly difficult opening flashback of three boys playing by a lake, a quietly devastating scene with ripples that must have spread through the community for years. The haunting and secretive nature of that event sets the tone for the rest of this novel, a perfect reading choice for those who like their Christmas nostalgic and a little bleak. 

Translated by Kristian London

Meet the Author

 

Hæ hæ! My name is Satu Rämö, I’m a Finnish-Icelandic author of bestselling nordic blue crime series called HILDUR. International rights are sold to 20+ countries and d during the first 2,5 years HILDUR books have sold over one million copies worldwide.

I was born in Finland in 1980 and moved to Iceland twenty years ago as an economics exchange student. Instead of macroeconomics I ended up studying Icelandic culture, literature and mythology.

Living in Iceland, I have written extensively about Nordic culture and life in the North Atlantic, blending my firsthand experiences into my novels.

I live with my family in the small town of Ísafjörður in northwest Iceland. I love ice cream, rye bread and sparkling wines. I drink my coffee with cream as often as possible.

My crime fiction debut Hildur (2022) changed the game for me as an author, totally. HILDUR-series is Icelandic-Finnish nordic blue crime fiction that takes place in a small village in the Westfjords of Iceland. Nordic blue is similar to nordic noir but more human. The stories are from the darker sides of the Nordic society but they also follow how people are dealing with each other in life in general.

Finnish Take Two Studios will shoot the HILDUR series in Iceland with an Icelandic co-production.

Turku City Theather stages HILDUR on their Main Stage in autumn 2024–2025.

I just love writing!

You can chat me your thoughts in Instagram at @satu_ramo I hope to hear from you 🙂

Posted in Personal Purchase

Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

ONE TRIAL. FIVE TRUTHS. BUT ARE THEY READY FOR HERS?

When a waitress is charged with murdering four men at an exclusive private club, her personal life and upbringing are thrust into the spotlight. During the trial, people closest to Katie start to question what they know about her.

Her father remembers the sweet schoolgirl.

Her childhood friend misses her kindness and protection.

Her lover regrets ever falling for her.

Her lawyer believes she is hiding something.

A journalist is convinced she is a cold-blooded killer.

To each of them she’s someone different. But is she guilty?

This thriller grabbed me straight away and never let go! The pace was fast, with short punchy chapters containing the narratives of five men each linked in some way to a woman called Katie. Each man has his own name for this woman and their narratives tell us her story as they see it. John is her father, Gabe is her childhood friend, Conrad is her lover, Tarun is a lawyer and Max is a journalist. Each one thinks they know her, each one presents a different face. But who is she and which is her real identity? Is she a combination of all five or nothing like this at all. It’s a timely, compelling and addictive story that you’ll want to finish in one go. 

The murder that has taken place at March House has killed four very important men at once. Lucian is a businessman and owner of March House, a private members club for the richest and most influential men in the UK and their guests. His guests that night were Harris Lowe, Lucian’s new right hand man, Dominic Ainsworth MP and Russian millionaire Aleksander Popov. They appear to have been poisoned with an incredibly expensive bottle of brandy laced with poison. Only one person has been serving the party all evening and that is waitress Katie. She is soon under arrest, but what possible motive could she have had to kill these men? Yet when police apprehend her not long after she’s left work for the evening she is reported as saying ‘they got what they deserved’. Is this an admission of guilt or an acknowledgment that whoever killed them, did the world a favour? 

It’s hard to get to know Katie because she is simultaneously a wildcat, a conspiracy theorist, a squatter, a farmhand, a waitress or the accused. These are just some of the descriptive words used to label her by the men in her life, but we have to remember that they are viewing her through their own lens. How much can we trust their impressions of her and do we accept that they’re telling the truth? She’s clearly beautiful, even without the ‘right’ clothes she has something that men desire. Conrad feels this when she’s helping out with the pigs on her uncle’s farm but then is shocked when she turns up at his club and his boss Lucien clearly desires her too. Both of them see a sex object rather than the young, troubled woman in front of them. John still sees his little girl, unable to equate the terrible crime she’s accused of with his daughter. However, we learn that she’s always been sympathetic and perhaps a little soft where his daughter is concerned whereas her mother sees her as a naughty child who grew up still getting into trouble. If anyone sees a more rounded Katie it’s her childhood friend Gabe, even if he is in love with her. She pulls him into her internet wormhole of conspiracy theories and he follows her down to London, ready for direct action to change everything that’s wrong with society. Yet when he gets there, Katie is living in a squat and has moved on in her belief system. Gabe has fallen under the spell of the elusive Mr E who appears in the comments under YouTube videos, disparaging the rich and the corruption within the system. He’s saddened to find her working at March House, the centre of online rumours about secret cabals and the ‘real’ people who run the world. He sees the Katie who had these beliefs as the real Katie and now she doesn’t believe or belong to him anymore. Similarly, Conrad sees her as this beautiful, innocent farmhand: 

“You’d taken on a hazy, pure quality, a perfume ad of a person. In the cafe you looked ordinary.” 

Every so often a book comes along that captures a moment and this definitely does. It isn’t the first book I’ve read where online radicalisation is part of the story and how dangerous it can be to become drawn in by conspiracy theorists. We tend to use the word grooming when it refers to children, but young adults and people with learning disabilities are also vulnerable and political or conspiracy theories seem to be changing the way people view the world without them even leaving the house and experiencing it for themselves. The echo chambers created when we look at certain subjects means people can be left thinking they have the majority viewpoint, no matter how crazy or extreme the ideas. Conspiracy theories are popular because it gives explanations for events that are incredibly complex and totally outside of our control. The realisation that a small group of individuals could hijack a few planes and attack the most powerful cities in the USA is almost too scary. People didn’t want to feel that their country was that vulnerable and open to attack, so they created stories that their own government must have been involved. Mr E directs his followers to March House as the real seat of power and their list of members could easily feed into that narrative. There is no doubt that some dodgy deals and introductions go on there, but the difficulties facing the country are international and much more complex than a few smoking men in a private room, but for some, life being random chaos is a scary prospect. 

At the centre of all this is Katie, a lost young woman unsure of who she is and what she wants from life. With no plan or purpose, she lurches from one crisis to the next never feeling safe or grounded. The novel made me angry, especially with Conrad and Max who want to use and exploit Katie. Conrad has the audacity to suggest his connection to her was flimsy at best: 

“I could barely even remember your real name. You had come onto me so hard, when I looked back, that in a way it was embarrassing. I was embarrassed for you”. 

I was furious and desperately wanted him pulled apart in court by her barrister Tarun. It reminded me of how women who are seen as controversial, such as Caroline Flack or the Duchess of Sussex, are presented and packaged by the media. There’s misogyny at the root of this and it’s the same with the male characters in the book who package Katie into roles and personalities that absolves them for the harm they cause and assuages their guilt. This is brilliantly done by the author who doesn’t put a foot wrong in her characterisation and the pace of this novel. It’s fast moving and she doesn’t waste a single word, keeping you gripped by what might happen next. We’re never sure on what has happened or who is responsible and the courtroom scenes are brilliant meaning it was impossible to put down – there was one late night where I completely wrote off the following day for anything useful. This is powerful and will make you angry, but you won’t be able to stop those pages turning. 

Meet the Author

Nicci Cloke is an author and editor based in Cambridgeshire. Her novels have been published in twelve languages, and she has previously worked as a nanny, a cocktail waitress and a Christmas Elf. Before being published, she was a permissions manager, looking after literary estates including those of Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and T. S. Eliot, and was also communications manager at the Faber Academy.

Posted in Random Things Tours

Scars of Silence by Johanna Gustawsson 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As autumn deepens into darkness in Lidingö, on the Stockholm archipelago, the island is plunged into chaos: in the space of a week, two teenagers, the son of the island’s mayor and that of a powerful businessman, are brutally murdered. Their bodies are left deep in the forest, dressed in white tunics with crowns of candles atop their heads, like offerings to Saint Lucia. Maïa Rehn has fled Paris for Lidingö, where her husband grew up, trying to come to terms with the death of their only child in a car accident. But when the murders shake the island community, the former police commissioner is drawn into the heart of the investigation, joining Commissioner Aleksander Storm to unravel a mystery as chilling as the Nordic winter. As they dig deeper, it becomes clear that a wind of vengeance is blowing through the archipelago, unearthing secrets that are as scandalous as they are inhuman. But what if the victims weren’t who they seemed? What if those long silenced had finally found a way to strike back? How far would they go to make their tormentors pay? And you – how far would you go?

I loved the timing of this novel from Johanna Gustawsson, her second set on the island of Lidingö in the cold, dark run up to Christmas. Here she bases her murder mystery around the feast of St Lucia and it begins when a body is found in the traditional dress of the festival. The victim is wearing a white tunic that’s been slit up the back, with a red sash and a crown of candles representing the festival of light. It reminded me of the locally held Christingle services, where small children in white hold a symbolic orange with a lighted candle in it and a red ribbon meant to symbolise Christ’s blood and his role as the Light of the World. It was something I’d never encountered before, being Catholic it wasn’t part of our tradition, but it fits into the many festivals that bring light to the winter months such as Hanukkah and Diwali. The festival and the victim’s clothing make the scene of the crime even more dramatic and hard to forget. It also throws up immediate questions about whether the date or the costume is a message from the killer. Visiting French detective Maia Rehn offers her help to local commissioner Aleksander Storm and they begin to investigate together. It soon becomes clear that the killer isn’t finished with the island community and the pair must work very fast, prizing secrets from people who are reluctant to talk and digging up long buried events that will devastate and destroy lives. 

One of the things I love most about this series is the atmosphere that the author builds. This is not the average crime novel, it definitely has a more Gothic feel that I would normally associate with folk horror. 

“It was hardly an ocean this mere strip of sea. A moat more like – cutting Lidingo off from the life of the Stockholm mainland. A ghost infested moat, surrounding a poisoned island”. 

This killing takes the community back several years to the murder and rape of a young woman dressed in her St Lucia costume. The victim is Jennifer, a well known and liked teenager in the community whose white dress and crown gives the impression of a angel in the snow. Jennifer was the daughter of Sophie Ackerman who bonds with Maia at a party, when they realise that both of them have lost a child. The pain and confusion of these unexpected and sudden losses have no descriptive word in the Swedish language, only the Sanskrit word ‘vilomah’ comes close, meaning ‘against the natural order.’ Motherhood and who we become when we lose a child is a theme of the novel and drives home that violent deaths affect a whole community. In fact, following the death of Jennifer Ackerman suspicions fell on her friend Gustav who found her body. The way the community treated Gustav, as well as the grief, caused him to commit suicide. It’s such an important theme that the novel’s opening takes us to a classroom on the island where Gustav’s mother holds everyone at gunpoint, blaming them for the death of her grief stricken son. These events and the darkening winter days hang heavy over the tiny island. Maia describes the loss of her son with such beautiful and haunting words that let us know he is still so present in her thoughts she almost expects him to materialise: 

‘He’s everywhere around me, so I’m always waiting for […] a word, a sound, the slightest caress from him. I find myself sniffing the air for the scent of him’.   

Sophie talks about her daughter Jennifer in the words of Cyrano de Bergerac, showing that she is still ever present for her too. It’s such a beautiful way of describing grief that comes in waves, some days it seems far away and other days it feels as if the loss was yesterday. I identified with this so much, knowing that even ten or twenty years on there are days when the grief feels painfully fresh. How much worse it must be with violent deaths where there are feelings of anger, guilt, resentment and so many questions left unanswered. 

‘Her name is in my heart like a bell. Every time I think of her it’s like I can hear that bell ringing and ringing and the memories and feelings resurface every time’. 

As the investigation unfolds it is clear that Maĩan and Aleks work quite differently, but complement each other. He is more of a facts person, whereas she picks up on emotion and her own feelings, heightened by tragedy, seem to have honed this skill. As an outsider she also seems more effective at getting people to talk, something that can be a struggle when a detective lives in the community they’re investigating. Their discoveries are both haunting and horrifying – especially a ‘trophy’ find that absolutely turned my stomach. Some of the themes were very timely, aside from the normal teenage themes of peer pressure, relationship angst and experimentation, there are also more up to date themes of incels, grooming and consent. I found it fascinating that Swedish law reform in 2018 placed the emphasis on positive consent so that rape was no longer defined by saying no, but the absence of actively saying yes. It recognises that when backed into a corner, freezing and becoming unresponsive are normal survival instincts and not consent, so threat and physical force don’t have to be present for an incident to be defined as rape. When we are finally taken to the night Jennifer Ackerman died it is hard to read, but that’s how it should be. This first incident is like a veil of darkness triumphing over light. It’s as if the island loses its innocence. I loved that the answers don’t come easily and the tendrils of the aftermath are everywhere. This is a vivid, symbolic and haunting crime story and the truth is devastating – a gradually revealed horror that has echoed down the generations of this isolated community. 

Out now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawssonhas worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press and Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, has won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in nineteen countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France and is the first in a new series. Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads October 2025

Posted on by thelotusreaders

October brought many several wonderful things, as birthday months so often do. As always we went away, this time for two weeks in Dumfries and Galloway for book shopping at Wigtown and fishing for my other half. We knew we were onto a winner as we turned off the single track road onto a farm track that was a mile long! I’ve never stayed somewhere so quiet and because it was a Dark Skies area we got to stargaze too, with a meteor shower being a high point of the fortnight. I finally got to check out The Bookshop, run by author Shaun Bythell. The daily occurrences in the shop are depicted in his three books and I grabbed the latest one along with some second hand purchases too. As well as all the shops in Wigtown we stumbled across a little gem called Gallovidia Books in Kircudbright. This was a treasure trove of new fiction, poetry and children’s books as well as a good collection of biographies. The owner was very knowledgeable, definitely a real book lover and he recommended one of my choices above as his wife was reading it and was torn between savouring and devouring it. We alternate on holiday, when it’s a fishing day I stayed on the farm and had a fabulous view to enjoy while reading and getting some of my own writing done. After a couple of months without a kitchen it was a joy to come home to everything finished so I now have a functional kitchen again.

Bought on recommendation from the owner of Gallovedia Books I couldn’t wait to read this atmospheric book so dived straight in, This felt like the perfect autumn read – a sinister mystery filled with atmosphere and a slowly building sense of menace. Evelyn Dolman embarks on his honeymoon with his new wife Laura and it proves to be anything but the honeymoon he expected. With Laura settling in early for the night at Palazzo Dioscuri he decides to go for a walk and perhaps a drink somewhere close by and she suggests Florian, a cafe that first opened in 1720 and still serves Venetian visitors today. A chance meeting is followed by a night of drinking and one unforgivable act. So when he wakes in the morning, sluggish and nauseous and finds his wife isn’t next to him in bed, he imagines she has taken herself to another room. However, as the morning progresses it becomes clear that Laura has simply disappeared. 

There are clues to what is transpiring here but they are subtle. The writer has incredible sleight of hand and they seem inconsequential or at list explicable. Some completely passed me by. As I opened the book again for writing this review it made me think of The Sixth Sense and how no one saw the clues on their first watch of the film but when they watched for a second time they couldn’t believe they’d missed them. Each character is slippery and elusive with an unpredictable quality that felt dangerous. I lived this uncanny feeling the author created which grows organically from the city. This is a sparking jewel of a city that’s risen from the mud and brackish waters of the lagoon. Evelyn mentions the fin de siécle, that time of decadence towards the end of the 19th Century and that timing certainly informs some of the events in the book, particularly the fluid social order and sexual licentiousness. We’re told constantly that Venice is decaying and sinking. One day it may be completely under water, but the decay isn’t what you see when you first visit. Venice bewitches you with its golden domes, Morrison arches, coloured glass and the way sparkling light from the surface of the water bathes everything in a soft light. Then suddenly, only a street away you notice a tree growing out of someone’s house and at night most residences seem in darkness now that families can no longer live in the water logged lower floors. Banville captures this ‘double’ city utterly, describing the timeless romance of a gondolier serenading his passengers but also the jarring sound of the vaporetto. We see the sparkling water but also smell the mud as the passing boats churn it up. He links this duality with human nature, our surface selves and the real us, even the parts we avoid and keep locked away. Everything about this novel is a conjuring trick and I fell head over heels in love with it. 

I can barely contain my happiness at being back in the world of Jimmy Perez, this time in the Orkney islands where he grew up. Jimmy is living with partner Willow Reeves, who’s both his boss and heavily pregnant with his child. It’s Christmas and the couple are looking forward to the celebrations. Jimmy’s stepdaughter Cassie is spending the holidays with her father Duncan and his family on Shetland, so it just the two of them and son James. For the police, Christmas isn’t a holiday and as a huge storm passes across the islands, terrible discoveries are made. Everywhere there’s storm damage, but when a body is found at an ancient archaeological site Jimmy is devastated to find out it’s his childhood friend Archie Stout. Archie is a well known ‘larger than life’ character who’s the centre of every gathering and runs the family farm with a wife and two teenage sons. Jimmy finds that Archie has suffered a blow to the head and the murder weapon is a Neolithic stone covered in ancient runes and Viking graffiti, one of a pair taken from the heritage centre. Now Willow and Jimmy must investigate their friends and neighbours to solve the murder in the run up to Christmas, where events will traditionally bring the whole island together. The uncomfortable truth is that the murderer is likely to be someone they know and that means nobody is safe. 

I really loved Willow and the atmosphere she creates at home, particularly around Christmas. Just as dedicated to her work as Jimmy she takes an active role in the investigation, her pregnancy not holding her back at all. She knows it’s a delicate situation, working together and being in a relationship, especially when she’s the boss. Somehow they manage to keep the personal and the work life separate and she seems to know which responsibilities she must let Jimmy bear and those she’s happy to share. As Christmas Eve approaches fast she’s not running around like a headless chicken trying to make sure they have all the right things, they have food and she points out something I say every year – the shops are only closed for one day. It’s the traditions and being together that are the most important thing. She’s a great interviewer though, brilliant at picking up what people are not saying. She reads their body language and their tone, plus knowing each islander’s history helps too. What she picks up on are the unexpected or secret alliances, such as Archie’s investment in the hotel or his in-law’s apparent friendship with a regularly visiting academic. The case is fascinating, covering potential adultery, family tensions, environmental disagreements and historical conflicts, as well as academic jealousy. As everyone gathers on Christmas Day for The Ba and someone goes missing, my nerves were like violin strings! It’s this gradually rising tension alongside the beautifully drawn relationships that make Anne Cleeves’s novels. Jimmy has always had incredible empathy for others, feeling his own loss alongside theirs and understanding behaviour that might at first glance seem inexplicable. This is a hugely welcome return for Jimmy, both in a different landscape and place in life. Hopefully it’s the first of many. 

The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…

And a final reckoning…

With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved. To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money laundering case that her friend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything…

I’ve been hooked on the story of Áróra and the case of her missing sister Ísafold for a few years now and the tension has slowly gripped the reader ever tighter with each novel as each one has brought it’s revelations. With this being the reason Àrora is in Iceland, it’s always been the over-arching narrative, but other cases run alongside. The combination of Áróra’s skills as a financial investigator plus the skills and powers of Daniel and Helena who are detectives, complex cases are profiled and attacked from different directions, making them a formidable team. We meet everyone after the discovery of Ísafold’s body in a suitcase deep within a fissure in a lava field. They were directed to it by an unusual little girl who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ísafold, something that was difficult for Daniel to accept. There’s so much more to understand and we get the narrative through different viewpoints, aside from Áróra, Daniel and his colleague Helena. Felix has fallen into working for a local dealer and we see his fear as the bag he has been sent to collect has disppeared from the car while he was getting some food. There are also flashbacks to the last few months Ìsafold was alive and we finally hear her story in her own voice, which I loved.

We’ve always had suspicions but have never known who killed Ísafold. The novel is gripping and of course we want this mystery resolved, but I didn’t feel any of that racing tension or triumph that I often get from thrillers when the killer’s revealed, especially when I’m right. This was just so desperately sad. I found myself taking a moment for this under confident woman who was so far out of her depth. A woman whose emotions dictated her life decisions. I was harrified and had that strange empty feeling of loss. A loss I knew Áróra would feel. The question is, if she does get all the answers she needs, what will Áróra do next? Unlike her sister Áróra has a clear sense of what she wants and needs to be happy and fulfilled. She makes decisions based on self-knowledge and it remains to be seen whether Daniel is a part of that eventual happiness. 

It’s delightful to be back in the hands of a consummate storyteller like Val McDermid. She takes us straight into the story and I always feel like these characters are real, going about their lives and then we drop into their world from time to time. Here the Historic Cases Unit are working two cases: the death of a high-end hotel manager and a body found after a landslip in heavy rain on the M73. Tom Jamieson’s death is flagged up by his brother in New Zealand. Thought to be an accidental death, Tom’s brother has footage that shows someone was behind Tom as he left the hotel after his shift and in the staircase where he met his death. If this man entered the steps after Tom and can be seen exiting then he must at least have seen Tom’s fall, or is there a more sinister explanation? The body in the M73 has to have been placed there deliberately. It turns out to be the body of investigative journalist Sam Nimmo, thought to have killed his pregnant girlfriend Rachel before going on the run about eleven years ago. The discovery opens up her murder case as well as Sam’s. I was hooked by the evidence that leads to a secretive book club of successful men who meet once a month in Edinburgh. They’re named the Justified Sinners, alluding to a James Hogg book that is based on the Calvinist principle that once a person is ‘saved’ they can commit any sin, even murder, and still enter the kingdom of heaven. Is this a joke between literary friends or something more sinister? Have they stumbled upon an unofficial Freemasons’ club where the members share business tips and inside knowledge? The team start to wonder about the potential benefits of becoming one of the twelve members and whether those benefits are worth subterfuge or even criminal acts. 

The book is rooted in the now with cancel culture, the MeToo movement, Covid and the corruption around it and the cost of living crisis all pertinent to these cases. I think the team are feeling overwhelmed, even without the quagmire surrounding the Justified Sinners and Sam’s quest for the truth. I thought that some characters did behave unpredictably, just like they do in life. The outcome isn’t straightforward and there were people to blame that I genuinely didn’t expect. This is an enthralling read from a writer at the very top of her game. Someone who knows exactly how to pitch a story and keep the reader engrossed until the final pages. She knows that the joy of a book is in the journey and that sometimes we don’t get the answers we expect. 

It’s getting quieter as we move into the last months of the year but here’s my expected reading for November:

Posted in Random Things Tours

Black as Death by Lilja Sigurdardóttir  

Posted on by thelotusreaders

The haunting final chapter to an award-winning series…

And a final reckoning…

With the fate of her missing sister, Ísafold, finally uncovered, Áróra feels a fragile relief as the search that consumed her life draws to a close. But when Ísafold’s boyfriend – the prime suspect in her disappearance – is found dead at the same site where Ísafold’s body was discovered, Áróra’s grip on reality starts to unravel … and the mystery remains far from solved. To distract herself, she dives headfirst into a money-laundering case that her friend Daníel is investigating. But she soon finds that there is more than meets the eye and, once again, all leads point towards Engihjalli, the street where Ísafold lived and died, and a series of shocking secrets that could both explain and endanger everything…

I’ve been hooked on the story of Áróra and the case of her missing sister Ísafold for a few years now and the tension has slowly gripped me ever tighter as each novel has brought its revelations. With her disappearance being the reason Àrora is in Iceland, it’s always been the over-arching narrative, with other cases running alongside. The combination of Áróra’s skills as a financial investigator plus the skills and powers of Daniel and Helena who are detectives, means complex cases are profiled and attacked from different directions, making them a formidable team. We’re back with everyone after the discovery of Ísafold’s body in a suitcase deep within a fissure in a lava field. They were directed to it by an unusual little girl who claimed to be the reincarnation of Ísafold, something that was difficult for Daniel to accept. As Áróra’s boyfriend, his hackles were raised particularly with her parents who he suspected of feeding ideas and information to their daughter with the aim of deceiving them. But what possible motive could they have? As we meet our characters again, Áróra occasionally has the urge to go back and visit the family, but there’s been nothing new from her reincarnated sister for some time as if the thread that bound them has broken or the little girl’s age means the channel that was open between this life and the next has now closed. With Bjorn found in the same fissure as Ísafold many new questions are thrown up. Not least the one aspect of Ísafold’s death has remained a secret up till now. Daniel doesn’t know how to tell Áróra that her sister’s body was found without a heart. 

There’s so much to understand here and we get the narrative through different viewpoints, not just from Áróra, Daniel and his colleague Helena. One narrator named Felix has fallen into working for a local dealer and we see his fear as the bag he was sent to collect disappears from the car while he’s getting some food. This theft draws his ties to this man ever closer, with no real chance of escape. There are also flashbacks to the last few months Ìsafold was alive and we finally hear the story in her own voice, which I loved. There’s a lot of crossover between these two narratives in terms of control and manipulation. The means used to tie Felix to the drugs gang are diabolical, making sure he ‘owes’ the boss and keeping him firmly onside. On one hand the boss demands total loyalty from its operatives but on the other he uses treachery to keep everyone in their place. Bjorn’s treatment of Ísafold feels even worse, because this is someone is supposed to love her. We have always known that Ísafold’s partner was violent, in fact Áróra’s guilt about her sister is based around their last phone call when for the first time Áróra decided not to run to her sister’s aid. The downstairs neighbour Grimur had also testified to the violence his neighbour suffered, but hearing it from the victim adds another layer to the narrative. We can feel how vulnerable Ísafold is and the tenderness Bjorn treats her with from time to time, that glimmer of a meaningful connection he drip feeds to her guarantees her forgiveness again and again. Almost more than the violence I hated that he took away her only bit of independence by making her leave the job she loved, to work with elderly people. At first it’s a suggestion, then he flatters her by saying how good she would be in a caring role, but the truth is he wants to coerce her into stealing their drugs. There’s a realisation that Bjorn is a low level dealer, just doing enough to get by but slowly coming to the attention of the bigger players who feel their territory has been encroached upon. Could this be the beginning of the end for the couple?

The tense and twisty parts narrative also follows Daniel’s investigation into a local coffee chain, where every barista seems to tell customers that their other sites are busier. What he finds is a company with a large turnover but no real evidence of where that money is coming from. None of their shops are in tourist areas and they seem to take a large amount in cash, an unusual thing these days. He also finds a couple of complaints from the director’s home of criminal damage, that they later chose not to pursue. This seems like a case where Áróra’s financial skills could be utilised and she throws herself into it, with dangerous consequences. This is where the couple work so well together, although there’s a recklessness to Áróra that Daniel finds difficult. He would never get in her way, she’s tough and quite capable of looking after herself physically but it’s in his nature to worry about those he cares for. He knows that her weight training and work are her ways of sublimating her frustration that she still doesn’t have all the answers about her sister. With Helena currently working the case he has a choice to make, if answers come does he let Helena break the truth to her, or does he choose to do that himself? Although he could have the chance to comfort and support her as he’s wanted, will she let him? Or will he always be the man who told her the harshest and most painful truth she will ever hear? 

We’ve always had suspicions but have never known who killed Ísafold. The novel is gripping and of course we want this mystery resolved, but I didn’t feel any of that racing tension or triumph that I often get from thrillers when the killer’s revealed. This was just so desperately sad. I found myself taking a moment for this under confident woman who was so far out of her depth. A woman whose emotions dictated her life decisions. I was horrified and had that strange empty feeling of loss. A loss I knew Áróra would feel. The question is, if she does get all the answers she needs, what will Áróra do next? Unlike her sister Áróra has a clear sense of what she wants and needs in order to be happy and fulfilled. She makes decisions based on self-knowledge and it remains to be seen whether Daniel is a part of that eventual happiness. This has been an incredible series from the author, combining a good mystery with real intelligence and depth of emotion played out on a bleak and forbidding landscape.

Out now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Icelandic crime writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written eleven crime novels, including Snare, Trap and Cage, making up the Reykjavík Noir trilogy, and her standalone thriller Betrayal, all of which have hit bestseller lists worldwide. Snare was longlisted for the CWA International Dagger, Cage won Best Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year and was a Guardian Book of the Year, and Betrayal was shortlisted for the prestigious Glass Key Award and won Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year. The film rights for the Reykjavík Noir trilogy have been bought by Glassriver. Cold as Hell, the first book in the An Áróra Investigation series, was published in the UK in 2021 and was followed by Red as Blood, White as Snow and Dark as Night. TV rights to theseries have been bought by Studio Zentral in Germany. Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner and a brood of chickens.

Posted in Netgalley

The Killing Stones by Anne Cleeves

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I can barely contain my happiness at being back in the world of Jimmy Perez, this time in the Orkney islands where he grew up. Jimmy is living with partner Willow Reeves, who’s both his boss and heavily pregnant with his child. It’s Christmas and the couple are looking forward to the celebrations. Jimmy’s stepdaughter Cassie is spending the holidays with her father Duncan and his family on Shetland, so it just the two of them and son James. For the police, Christmas isn’t a holiday and as a huge storm passes across the islands, terrible discoveries are made. Everywhere there’s storm damage, but when a body is found at an ancient archaeological site Jimmy is devastated to find out it’s his childhood friend Archie Stout. Archie is a well known ‘larger than life’ character who’s the centre of every gathering and runs the family farm with a wife and two teenage sons. Jimmy finds that Archie has suffered a blow to the head and the murder weapon is a Neolithic stone covered in ancient runes and Viking graffiti, one of a pair taken from the heritage centre. Now Willow and Jimmy must investigate their friends and neighbours to solve the murder in the run up to Christmas, where events will traditionally bring the whole island together. The uncomfortable truth is that the murderer is likely to be someone they know and that means nobody is safe. 

Jimmy always comes across as someone who’s very still, the listener rather than the talker and the exact opposite of Archie and perhaps that’s why they became friends when they boarded at secondary school, something that all the islanders doat that age. Only the reader and perhaps Willow know the depth of feeling that runs underneath Jimmy’s calm exterior. We are privileged in knowing the depth of his grief for his previous partner Fran, the mother of his stepdaughter Cassie. I’ve always loved the way Duncan and Jimmy co-parent Cassie after Fran made it clear she wanted Jimmy to be the resident parent. He’s also dad to James and we can see the love and the anxiety he has about both his children, brought to a head when James becomes lost on Christmas Day. Part of him hates delving into the private lives of people he’s so close too, but then his knowledge and understanding of this small community is also a strength. He finds out things he didn’t know about his friend: an unexpected relationship with an island newcomer; a secret investment in the hotel and bar; financial difficulties at the farm. The killer made a point with their choice of weapon because they managed to get access to the heritage centre then lugged the stones to the murder site. But what was the point? Did they think Archie was betraying the community or the history of the islands? Is the inscription a clue? To have lured Archie out to such a remote spot in a storm means the site or the weapon must have been important to him. 

Anne Cleeves creates a beautiful atmosphere in this novel, her descriptions of this series of islands are both beautiful and savage, echoing its residents who are inextricably linked to each other and their shared ancestry. The storm really sets the scene of just how remote this community is and how they must pull together to get through difficulties, even where they don’t like each other. Each of the families are living history, something you can hear when Jimmy and Willow interview people and they have an encyclopaedic knowledge of several generations of other island families. Each generation has been at school together, worked together, attended each other’s weddings and celebrated the birth of the next generation. Archie’s father Magnus was an amateur historian and archivist, with a box of his research in the heritage centre. Even his looks hark back to a time when Vikings invaded the islands with his blonde hair and stature a stark contrast to Jimmy’s dark hair and Spanish eyes, thought to be a throwback to an Armada ship blown off course and it’s sailors who settled in Orkney. The different celebrations that lead up to Christmas show these different influences from the Christian carol service at the cathedral, to The Ba on Christmas Day and then Shetland’s Up Helly Aa in January. James’s determination to watch Archie’s sons participate in The Ba shows how the upcoming generations are inspired to take part just as their forefathers did in their predestined teams of the Uppies and Doonies. It’s best described as a game of ‘mob football’, something very like the Haxey Hood that takes place on 6th January with two teams trying to get their hands on a leather hood and take it back to one of two pubs in the village in the Isle of Axholme. My dad and his father before him participated in the Hood as young men and it’s still Christmas until Twelfth Night in our family. The author also uses this history to highlight tension between generations, those who leave and those who stay, those who participate and those who don’t, islanders and incomers. This tension also exists over development on the island and those trying to keep a balance between respecting the past, but also providing projects to employ newer generations. Incomers who use islanders to further their own agenda or make money will be made unwelcome. 

I really loved Willow and the atmosphere she creates at home, particularly around Christmas. Just as dedicated to her work as Jimmy she takes an active role in the investigation, her pregnancy not holding her back at all. She knows it’s a delicate situation, working together and being in a relationship, especially when she’s the boss. Somehow they manage to keep the personal and the work life separate and she seems to know which responsibilities she must let Jimmy bear and those she’s happy to share. As Christmas Eve approaches fast she’s not running around like a headless chicken trying to make sure they have all the right things, they have food and she points out something I say every year – the shops are only closed for one day. It’s the traditions and being together that are the most important thing. She’s a great interviewer though, brilliant at picking up what people are not saying. She reads their body language and their tone, plus knowing each islander’s history helps too. What she picks up on are the unexpected or secret alliances, such as Archie’s investment in the hotel or his in-law’s apparent friendship with a regularly visiting academic. The case is fascinating, covering potential adultery, family tensions, environmental disagreements and historical conflicts, as well as academic jealousy. As everyone gathers on Christmas Day for The Ba and someone goes missing, my nerves were like violin strings! It’s this gradually rising tension alongside the beautifully drawn relationships that make Anne Cleeves’s novels. Jimmy has always had incredible empathy for others, feeling his own loss alongside theirs and understanding behaviour that might at first glance seem inexplicable. This is a hugely welcome return for Jimmy, both in a different landscape and place in life. Hopefully it’s the first of many. 

Meet the Author

Ann Cleeves is the author of more than thirty-five critically acclaimed novels, and in 2017 was awarded the highest accolade in crime writing, the CWA Diamond Dagger. She is the creator of popular detectives Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn, who can be found on television in ITV’s Vera, BBC One’s Shetland and ITV’s The Long Call respectively. The TV series and the books they are based on have become international sensations, capturing the minds of millions worldwide.

Ann worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other British northern writers to promote crime fiction. Ann also spends her time advocating for reading to improve health and wellbeing and supporting access to books. In 2021 her Reading for Wellbeing project launched with local authorities across the North East. She lives in North Tyneside where the Vera books are set.

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads September 2025

Posted on by thelotusreaders

September has been a month of crime fiction, with even my one historical read has a mystery at its heart. I’ve honestly been struggling to read and review this month because we are still living without a kitchen. We decided on a new one but it wasn’t as easy as popping in a new one – emptying the bath and having the water cascade through the kitchen ceiling is something I don’t recommend. So we have a new levelled ceiling and a new floor too. The kitchen is in and it’s now just tiling, painting and putting all the contents from the kitchen back! So my round up of September is a little late and a bit sparse!

I’m quite the Prime Suspect fan so I was beyond pleased to receive a proof copy of the first in Lynda La Plante’s new series featuring CSI Jessica Russell. I’m fascinated with the psychology of profiling suspects and in awe of how every tiny bit of evidence has to be catalogued and checked. There has to be so much trust between a team of CSIs and the team of detectives they work alongside. Jessica Russell is another strong character for the author, although outwardly she feels a little softer than La Plante’s other heroines. However, she has great confidence in her abilities and intellect as a forensic psychologist and head of the Met’s new MSCAN team. Jess, Diane and Taff have a lot of experience in working together and are hired to create this fast-track forensic team reserved for the most serious of the MET’s cases and they have to hit the ground running. Johan de Clerk is a young South African man who has settled in London after marrying his wife Michelle and started a branch of his family’s wine company that supples their products direct to restaurants across the capital. An intruder disturbed him while sleeping and there was a fight. The intruder fled, leaving Johan with serious stab wounds and a head injury. His sixty-thousand pound Rolex watch was taken along with money from a safe. While Johan fights for his life in hospital, Jess and her team make a start forensically examining the scene. I think what the author has done is very clever in terms of setting up a new series. We’ve spent a lot of time with the central character and there was a fascinating case to get lost in, but there are also clear hints where this might go next. There were whispers of a course with the FBI in Quantico for Jess, some hints of potential romance and I was sure there was a lot more to Guy who’s had a fascinating working life before MSCAN. There were also interesting aspects of her personal life I’d love to explore more such as Jess and her brother’s family background. Her brother is also diagnosed with a life limiting disease that will affect them all. We also don’t get much in terms of Taff and Diane’s lives. All of which shows there is definitely room to grow here, which isn’t surprising given the author’s track record at plotting a series. I can see this being an addictive reading experience and I look forward to seeing where this series goes next. 

This was a totally new series to me, despite this being the seventh in the Ben Kitto novels. I absolutely loved it! Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated remains of a young woman. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer has made sure that no one will find her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He knows they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost. This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive and the daily difficulty of living on an island that’s at the mercy of the weather, cut off in the Atlantic. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place, but it does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place. To have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose, involving people he knows, has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him. 

Nina and her daughter Ash live in the bougie seaside town of Whitstable in Kent. They are grieving for husband and father Paddy, who was killed when a man having a mental health crisis pushed him into an oncoming train. Ash has been living at home since her own mental health deteriorated. She was living in a house in London with two other girls but she developed a crush on her boss, that turned into an obsession. She claimed to have letters from him, but it turned out she’d written them herself and she was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She had come home to recover when Paddy, her dad, was killed. When her mum receives a parcel in the post Ash is intrigued. It’s beautifully wrapped, with a note inside from a man who has heard about Paddy’s death. He used to work with him in the 1990s when he Paddy was just starting out. The gift wrapped box contains a Zippo lighter he borrowed from Paddy but never returned. Since then Paddy has built a restaurant empire, with his flagship restaurant in Whitstable and two others down the coast. There is of course a number, should Nina wish to thank him for his thoughtfulness. Over the next few months Nick and Nina start to WhatsApp each other and then go out for a drink. Ash is glad to see her mum with a glow, but there’s something about Nick that’s just ‘off’. She can’t be sure and maybe she’s viewing this situation through her own grief or her personality disorder, but something isn’t right. She needs to find out more about him before he becomes a permanent fixture. 

I galloped through this book as we went backwards and forwards in time, learning a little more in each chapter and inching towards the truth. I loved the fragile Ash who is at that stage of recovery where she doesn’t fully trust her own mind. Is she making too much of this? Is she just paranoid? Worst of all, if she finds something questionable, will her Mum even believe her? She’s so lonely at this point, she doesn’t have many friends to talk to and feels bad she’s had to bounce back home at her age. Her mum deserves to be happy and she might ruin it all. Just when you think you have all the answers, the author takes it to the next level! There were twists here that I wasn’t expecting and I felt very relieved that I once got away from a similar situation relatively easily, if not unscathed. This book is like a twisted knot in a necklace. It takes a long time to loosen it, but then the whole thing suddenly unravels before your eyes. This is masterful thriller writing from an author who gets better and better. 

According to our narrator, a ‘bride stone’ is a precious stone given to the groom’s family as a dowry, although they were sometimes shown a beautifully made fake stone that they could only have checked when it was too late. It’s an apt title for a book where the women are traded in many different ways. It is set just after the French Revolution when many aristocrats left France for British shores and were welcomed in society. Edmée has somehow made her way to Britain, despite seemingly being an ordinary citizen. Yet she is being offered at a ‘wives’ sale’ by her husband’s brother, this chapter can’t be worse than the last. For Duval Harlington it’s something he would never usually countenance, but his circumstances are uniquely desperate. Having been captured by the French while treating wounded soldiers, on his return he is met by one of the family servants who bears bad news. Duval has become Lord Harlington as his father has recently died. Although he has the title, his right to the ancestral home of Muchmore and his father’s wealth is rather more complex. Duval had a tough relationship with his father who didn’t see the point of him training as a doctor. Once he departed for France, Duval’s father installed a distant relative, Mr Carson and his wife, to manage the day to day running of the estate. So his will has an interesting stipulation, in order to claim his inheritance Duval must be married and now he has only two days to achieve this. Otherwise the estate is Mr Carson’s. When his servant points out the wife sale it seems like a means to an end. Duval notices a young woman being led around the room by a scarf round her neck. Her hair looks like it’s been shorn away and she has a veil covering her face, but the buyers call out for it to be removed and he’s shocked to see that one side of her face is swollen and covered in bruises. Someone has recently beaten her very badly. On impulse he puts up his hand and bids for her, his intention being to marry her quickly and claim his inheritance. Then he could seek an annulment. However he does find Edmée fascinating and with the Mr and Mrs Carson ready for a fight this might not be as easy as he thinks. 

This isn’t just a love story, it’s a thriller. Just as Duval starts to settle in to being home, the unthinkable happens. The couple are talked into holding a ball to introduce the new Lady Harlington to society. Their guests come from the local area, but also from London and some are French emigrés including a Marquis. Mr and Mrs Carson are even invited and unbelievably accept. Edmée is a great success as the host in her new role as mistress of Muchmore, but the next morning she has simply vanished. Did she leave of her own accord – perhaps spooked by someone she saw the previous night. Or has something more sinister happened? It could be the work of someone closer to home though – a disgruntled lover of Duval’s or someone determined that their marriage won’t succeed. I was drawn so deeply into the story of these unlikely partners. Duval and Edmée have both had difficult starts in life. It’s a hard read when it comes to the ways women are mistreated but I was hoping for Edmée to have a happy ending. It was clear that this might not be the case, which made for a tense read in those final chapters. The book has a mix of hardship, adventure and mystery interlaced with the romantic possibility of an unlikely match being perfect, if only he can find his unlikely wife.

That’s all for this week but here’s my potential tbr for October.

Posted in Squad Pod Collective

Silent Bones by Val McDermid 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

It’s delightful to be back in the hands of a consummate storyteller like Val McDermid and to be reading with my fellow Squad Pod friends. She takes us straight into the story and I always feel like her characters are real people going about their business and we just drop into their world from time to time. Here the Historic Cases Unit are working two cases: the death of a high-end hotel manager and the identity of a body found after a landslip in heavy rain on the M73. Tom Jamieson’s death is flagged up by his brother in New Zealand. Thought to be an accidental death, Tom’s brother has footage that shows someone was behind Tom as he left the hotel after his shift and in the staircase where he met his death. If this man entered the steps after Tom and can be seen exiting then he must at least have seen Tom’s fall, or is there a more sinister explanation? The body in the M73 has to have been placed there deliberately. It turns out to be the body of investigative journalist Sam Nimmo, thought to have killed his pregnant girlfriend Rachel before going on the run about eleven years ago. The discovery opens up her murder case as well as Sam’s. I was hooked by the evidence that leads to a secretive book club of successful men who meet once a month in Edinburgh. They’re named the Justified Sinners, alluding to a James Hogg book that’s based on the Calvinist principle that once a person is ‘saved’ they can commit any sin, even murder, and still enter the kingdom of heaven. Is this a joke between literary friends or something more more? Have they stumbled upon an unofficial Freemasons’ club where the members share business tips and inside knowledge? The team start to wonder about the potential benefits of becoming one of the twelve members and whether those benefits are worth subterfuge or even criminal acts. 

Every time I pick up one of the books in this series the same thing happens. I start off slowly, savouring each chapter until about halfway, then I’m racing all the way to the end. It’s superbly plotted, creating a build-up of tension through the short chapters. Each chapter flits to a different viewpoint or separate lead in the cases, causing cliffhangers that last for three or four chapters. This means ‘just one chapter’ at bedtime becomes just three more and finally – I may as well finish. As we near the end of the book those revelations come thick and fast and I had to keep reading till I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I loved the red herrings thrown up in Sam Nimmo’s case as they try to find out what story he was working on. Every lead has to be followed and Jason is tireless on his match fixing leads but is this the story that got Sam killed? The political intrigue is as always murky and fascinating. Between the Independence Referendum and COVID there are plenty of possibilities for corruption and cover-ups. 

What I love most about Karen is her tenacity and absolute belief in her own skills as a police officer. She knows she’s a good detective and believes in the team she’s built, even if Jason and Daisy do bicker and become competitive. She knows how to use their skills and how much free rein to give them. I loved her conversations with the boss, the Fruit Gum and other men who outrank her. She doesn’t allow them any room for misogyny or sexism. When she’s told mockingly that the force can do better than rely on ‘women’s intuition’, she’s quick to tell him that it’s no different from a hunch or copper’s nose, a phrase male officers use frequently. She also won’t be bulldozed into moving their office, stating that it would mean longer commutes and distance from the research and forensic teams they rely on most. She also pushes for what she wants in the course of the investigation. When she doorsteps the Justified Sinners, their facilitator mentions they have plenty of pull with the Chief Constable who calls Karen and tells her to back off. She insists on him supplying a list of members before she does and even follows up in the morning to make sure she wasn’t fobbed off. Even in her private life she’s very sure of what she needs. She is still involved with Syrian refugee Rafiq who’s currently working as a surgeon in Canada. With British and US politics ‘beyond satire’ and political funding becoming ever more shady Karen does worry about their future. She’s flown to Montreal several times but she can’t wait until he has Canadian citizenship and can visit Scotland again, maybe even returning for good at some point. When she has a heartbreaking choice to make she faces it by staying true to herself, because she can be romantic but has a hefty dose of realism too. She can also be ruthless, at one point perhaps a little too ruthless for a softy like me. She has her eye on the end goal, not the other person’s feelings because in her eyes the end justifies the means. The truth is not found by treading lightly. 

I enjoyed getting to know more about Daisy and Jason’s home lives and it’s here where a bit of humour creeps in. Jason and Meera’s stake-out of a football match with the aftermath being a ‘follow that cab’ tour of Scotland’s motorways made me smile. Especially when the reward that clinched Meera’s attendance was a match day pie. Food looms large in Daisy and Stephanie’s relationship too, in fact Daisy eats so much that Jason is sure she has a tapeworm. That’s not a problem for Daisy, in fact she ponders that it might be the only thing that ensures she stays thin. She’s always scoring leftovers from lunches out and between Italian biscuits, french pastries and the South Indian curry that lures a suspect out of hiding I kept feeling hungry. All of this is to balance the darkness at the heart of these cases, where we see powerful and rich people doing what they like, safe in the knowledge that their status and privilege will always protect them from answering to their crimes. It’s also set in dark times and the weariness Karen feels about what’s happening in the world is something I’ve felt myself for the last couple of years, finding myself thinking the world can’t get any worse. Not only is a sex offending, fraudulent, narcissist running the biggest country in the world, but we have politicians here happy to emulate him. The book is rooted firmly in the now with cancel culture, the MeToo movement, the Covid pandemic and all the corruption surrounding it, as well as the cost of living crisis all pertinent to these cases. I think the team are feeling overwhelmed, even without the quagmire surrounding the Justified Sinners and Sam’s quest for the truth. Some characters did behave unpredictably, just like they do in life. The outcome isn’t straightforward and there were people to blame that I genuinely didn’t expect. This is an enthralling read from a writer at the very top of her game. Someone who knows exactly how to pitch a story and keep the reader engrossed until the final pages. She knows that the joy of a book is in the journey not just those final revelations and that sometimes we don’t get the answers we expect and it’s a better read for that.

Out on 23rd October from Sphere

Meet the Author

Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and in 2017 received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime, and was elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Val has served as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Man Booker Prize, and was Chair of the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017. She is the recipient of six honorary doctorates and is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She writes full-time and divides her time between Edinburgh and East Neuk of Fife.

Posted in Random Things Tours

Deadman’s Pool by Kate Rhodes 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated and ruined remains of a young girl. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer made sure that no one found her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He’s worried they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost.

When this blog tour request came through, I was intrigued by the blurb and the feel of the Scilly Isles as a backdrop for a murder investigation. Then I realised it was the eighth book in the Ben Kitto series, although the first in its new home at Orenda Books and it’s a perfect match. I was worried about whether I would be lost without all that back story. Thankfully I wasn’t lost at all. I was drawn in immediately by the opening chapter as Ben took Father Michael to St Helen’s, an uninhabited island that’s always been seen as the spiritual centre of the Scilly Isles. Father Michael uses one of my favourite phrases for places that feel holy and haunted at the same time: 

‘Christians call these places “thin”. The gap between us and the spiritual world is narrower here than any shrine I know, even Lourdes. It was hallowed ground for centuries.’ ‘It still feels haunted.’ The sky overhead is boiling with clouds.’

I love the idea of thin places, that ghosts are not necessarily trying to haunt you, they’re just going about their business. In fact you’re probably as much of a fright for them as they are for you. It’s just that the veil between us and them has worn so thin we’ve become visible to each other. The author keeps this metaphor throughout the story and it soon becomes clear that the actual world also has its veils. We meet Mai, a girl trapped somewhere, unseen by those gardening only a small pane of glass away because they’re not looking down. There’s the gap between what the teenagers and the adults see; the rumour in school that there’s a network of well known adults trafficking children is dismissed as a conspiracy theory early on. But these young people lead a different lifestyle to the adults, they’re around in the dead of night travelling by boat to the uninhabited islands either to party or be where they can’t be seen. There are signs of a camp fire and drinks cans just inches from the body Ben and Father Michael discover, only a small layer of earth between the living and the dead. This mystical feel does extend to the body of the child, wrapped in what looks like a prayer shawl with jade charms left inside. There’s a sense of contradiction here, between the care taken to bury the body and the huge hole where the skull has been smashed. The atmosphere created by the author along with the description of the body make it one of the most horrifying I’ve read, emphasising that this is a human being clearly emaciated and treated with extreme violence. There’s also a loneliness to her final resting place, cut off from those living on the islands but also buried in a soil that isn’t her own. 

‘I crouch down to study the victim’s face more closely. There’s nothing inside the eye sockets except blackened hollows, but her exposed jaw catches my attention. Most of her teeth are intact, but several are blackened by decay. It’s unusual these days, when most kids obsess over their teeth, bleaching them to a perfect white.’

These are established characters but I felt that I knew them very quickly. Ben comes across as a gentle giant, huge in stature but easily affected by the cases he investigates. He comments that his wife Nina who works as a counsellor, has a way of detaching from the terrible things she hears at work while he doesn’t. Becoming a father hasn’t helped, especially when cases involve children like this one. When a baby is then left on the steps of the police station Ben is horrified. Their pathologist thinks the dead girl has Vietnamese heritage, if the baby is the same they have a monster on their hands and he has to face the fact that it is one of his neighbours. Until they know he has to make sure that there are no teenage girls who could have been concealing a pregnancy. It’s particularly distressing for Ben’s lifelong friend Zoe who has tried everything to become a mum, but I loved his sensitivity with her and the way he talked to the teenage girls he has to question. I loved how Nina’s violin playing allows him a meditation, sifting through the images of the day in his head and finding enough solace to sleep. 

“I can still feel the girl’s cold weight in my hands, when we lifted her from the sand, and see her blue-white skin. I have to find the monster who put her there, or she’ll be in my head forever. When I open my eyes again, Nina is returning her violin to its case, and it’s time we slept, before Noah wakes us again at dawn.”

We know someone is being kept prisoner because there are short narratives between Ben’s chapters told by a young girl called Mai. She lives in one room with constant fear of the door opening and her captor coming in. These are distressing scenes and really add to the urgency of finding this man. My nerves were shredded by one of Mai’s narratives where she’s been trying to break the rotten frame of a tiny window, high up in the room. It doesn’t give her much light because all she can see are the weeds and grasses of an unkempt garden, but one day as she’s working away on loosening the frame she sees the feet of someone cutting a lawn and she desperately wants them to notice her. The knowledge that she’s so close to this stranger but living in an entirely different world really got my heart racing. I was simply begging them to look down. The more we get to know her, the more Ben’s desperate search feels. There are potential suspects, particularly a musician who lives in an isolated position on the coast with a house that looks out to St Mary’s and a telescope trained on the horizon. He definitely has an odd manner but Ben needs much more than that to go on. The author pitched this quiet start to the investigation beautifully, it’s definitely not cozy but there’s a sense of waiting, the calm before the storm. It then kicks up a notch as the forensic examiner, Gannick, finds red carpet fibres and results on the baby’s DNA point to a young Vietnamese girl who’s fostered by a family on Bryher. Suddenly Ben has something to go on and he can’t move quickly enough. He sets the uniformed officers out to check households for red carpet and he sets out to the school to talk to the girl who is related to the abandoned baby. Now he’s sure that his suspect is an island resident, it’s just a race against time to find someone with a red carpet but also a cellar or storage area where someone could be kept and never seen.

One of my favourite characters was Gannick, the grumpy and brusque forensics specialist. Ben is privileged to have her company at home, where Nina seems to melt the icy facade in just a few minutes. There are some lovely moments where Ben just observes and appreciates her careful work and how she does everything to ensure she gets the evidence needed to lock this murderer away for a long time. He tells us she has severe and chronic back pain and he describes her using her crutches to swing across the terrain of St. Mary’s missing nothing. He knows she’s in considerable pain and as a woman with a similar disability I loved having a disabled character who isn’t instantly likeable or some sort of superhero. She’s just quietly getting on with her job the best way she can. There’s no redemptive character arc here and I loved that her disability and her grumpy attitude remain. Yet Ben does confide in her that he’s worried, that the closer they come to the offender the more danger his victim is in. Gannick acknowledges that ‘this one’s a psycho’ but they will definitely get him. As we come closer to the truth, the weather mirrors Ben’s turmoil: 

“The outside world is comfortless, though. When I pull back the curtain, breakers are lashing the shore. Seabirds are returning to Bryher in flocks, scattered by the breeze. It feels like we’re at the mercy of some savage force that’s trying to tear these islands apart.”

This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging both the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive, but also the wildness and daily difficulty of living on these islands in the Atlantic. When a storm blows in people are cut off, there’s no way to travel between the islands and everything has to stop. Nina worries that as he’s older Noah won’t know what it’s like to be able to meet friends in town and to visit a cinema together. On the other hand he’ll have experiences other teenagers won’t like making a fire and cooking on the beach, camping on uninhabited islands and learning to drive a speedboat. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place and while there are many experiences he’ll only have rarely, there are others that some people don’t have in a lifetime. Yet the case does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place, to have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him. 

Meet the Author

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet, selected for Val McDermid’s New Blood panel at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for her debut, Crossbones Yard. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious CWA Dagger in the Library award, and is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for the critically acclaimed Isles of Scilly Mysteries series.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Scene of the Crime by Lynda La Plante 

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Jane Tennison was one of my tv heroines growing up. I was asked on my first ever counselling course to write down three characters who I admired and why – so I choose Linda from Press Gang (Julia Sawhala), Dana Sculley (Gillian Anderson) and Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren). They are characters and actresses I still admire today. I think it was their resolve, their competence and passion for their work and their intelligence. I wanted to have that belief in who I was and what I wanted to do. Jessica Russell is another strong character for the author, although outwardly she feels a little softer than La Plante’s other heroines. However, she has great confidence in her abilities and intellect as a forensic psychologist and head of the Met’s new MSCAN team. Jess, Diane and Taff have a lot of experience in working together and are hired to create this fast-track forensic team reserved for the most serious of the MET’s cases and they have to hit the ground running. A wine dealer has experienced a home invasion while he was sleeping upstairs. Johan de Clerk is a young South African man who has settled in London after marrying his wife Michelle and started a branch of his family’s wine company that supples their products direct to restaurants across the capital. The intruder disturbed him and when he came down to confront him there was a fight and the intruder fled, leaving Johan with serious stab wounds and a head injury. His sixty-thousand pound Rolex watch was taken along with money from a safe. While Johan fights for his life in hospital, Jess and her team make a start forensically examining the scene. This means working alongside DCI ?? Who seems almost personally affronted by the MSCAN team and is very brusque in his manner. Luckily they have his deputy DS Dave ?? Who seems very happy to work with the team and gels straight away. This is the case that will define whether the cost of their department is worth it’s while and whether Jess’s much talked about abilities are up to scratch. DCI Woods was on the interviewing panel for her job and didn’t want to appoint her, but was outvoted. This case is not going to be as straightforward as it seems because once you’ve thrown in a mystery late night visitor drinking in the cinema room, a furious and forensically aware spouse and Jess’s own personal link to the case there are a lot of variables. Oh, and the team have a leak too. Will Jess manage to bring this offender to justice?

I always look forward to a new Lynda La Plante character and Jess is going to be an interesting woman to get to know. She’s whip smart and confident when it comes to her job but rather more hesitant when it comes to her private life. She’s currently living with brother in their mother’s bungalow, an arrangement that works because although they’re quite different, they do understand one another. They have an interesting dynamic, having recently lost their mother they’re both grieving and Jess’s response to trauma is trying to control other parts of her life, such as her home environment. Chris has to intervene over the matter of hoovering first thing in the morning before work, when he’s trying to stay asleep. She’s wiping down surfaces as soon as something has touched them and insists on rinsing everything before it is stacked in the dishwasher, something Chris is more than happy to leave to the dishwasher. Although it’s possibly this need for correct procedure that makes her so good at her job and this one is creating more anxiety than most since it is the team’s first, but also because Jess is going to meet someone she hoped never to see again. Despite her rather fragile pre-raphaelite exterior (I see Kelly Reilly here) Jess has a core of steel and a willingness to place herself in very uncomfortable situations if it’s going to get the right result. This is especially important when she has an SIO who lacks experience, Woods was fast-tracked as a graduate and quickly promoted, but has no experience in uniform or with the minutiae of forensics, he relies very heavily on his deputy Dave who does most of the liaising with MSCAN. On Dave’s part that might have a lot more to do with Jess than his work ethic. Jess is loyal to her team, even to Guy who she doesn’t know well yet. She doesn’t hover over what they’re doing, she simply trusts them to do their jobs well and report in. Her mix of skills from the psychology of human behaviour to managing a crime scene are formidable. I think, if I’d been Dave I’d have been a little bit in awe of her. 

I found the case fascinating, solving only a small part of it before the end. I felt sure there was more to this married couple than met the eye. Nobody is known as ‘that bitch Belsham’ without a reason and I wondered if the victim’s wife’s reputation was built on more than her court appearances as a KC. She will certainly know criminal law as well as, if not better than, the police. She would be a formidable rival to them in court, although she can’t represent her husband, they would certainly talk about the best strategy together. This suspect can’t stop talking though, even overriding his solicitor’s advice. Even worse he’s known to a member of the team. Yet listening to his evidence they wonder whether this man could ever have been the dark shadow that invaded their nights and left them changed. Although he’s clearly been involved in criminal behaviour could he really have planned and executed that break in or overpowered a huge man like Johan de Clerk?                                                                                                                         

It was clever that the case kept moving in two different directions, drip feeding us a little about the investigation into their suspect and following the forensic evidence, but also investigating Johan de Clerk and even his family back in South Africa along with their wine business. The pacing is pitch perfect, just enough revelations to keep you reading but not so much that you’re running ahead of the team. Then there are the sections where there would be a CSI type montage of scientific testing and nerdy types delving into the devices like phones and tablets. It showed that every breakthrough in a case must be backed up by evidence – can they prove someone was where they claim to be? Can they prove a suspect’s alibi? Can they prove a connection between subjects? Everything has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. I must admit there were places where I found the evidence overwhelming to keep track of and even though the characters are constantly in touch by phone I couldn’t imagine how they keep hold of all this information in their heads! Taff and Diane have bags and bags of things to test for DNA, Guy must have an inbox a mile deep because he is finding evidence to lock down the case against a suspect and also having the follow up theories and hunches the team might have. I had to let go sometimes and accept that I wasn’t going to understand or lock down every detail, just as long as it sounded plausible. I was reading a book, not running a forensic unit – a job I was more than happy to leave for Jessica. I was surprised by how much Jess actually did in terms of investigating and I could understand that she and DS Dave were coming a bit close to having the investigation blow up in their face. She questions people alongside Dave and offers profiling insights during interviews. I wasn’t sure whether the manager of a forensic team would be so involved with that side of a case, but I have the same criticism of Silent Witness and it’s still entertaining regardless and this is too. 

I think the author has achieved her goal of setting up a new series and a central character with a lot more to give. We’ve spent a lot of time with Jess, there was a fascinating case to get lost in and there are also clear hints where this might go next. There were whispers of a possible course with the FBI in Quantico for Jess, some hints of potential romance and I was sure there was a lot more to Guy who’s had a fascinating working life before MSCAN. There were also interesting aspects of her personal life I’d love to explore more such as Jess and her brother’s family background. Her brother is diagnosed with a life limiting disease that will affect them all in future books. We don’t learn much about Taff and Diane’s lives yet. All of which shows there is definitely room to grow here, which isn’t surprising given the author’s track record at plotting a series. I can see this being an addictive reading experience and I look forward to seeing where this series goes next. 

Meet the Author

Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool. She trained for the stage at RADA and worked with the National Theatre and RDC before becoming a television actress. She then turned to writing – and made her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful TV series WIDOWS.

Her novels have all been international bestsellers. Her original script for the much-acclaimed PRIME SUSPECT won awards from BAFTA, Emmys, British Broadcasting and Royal Television Society as well as the 1993 Edgar Allan Poe Writer’s Award. 

Since 1993 Lynda has spearheaded La Plante Productions. In that time the company has produced a stunning slate of innovative dramas with proven success and enduring international appeal. 

Based on Lynda’s best selling series of Anna Travis novels, Above Suspicion, Silent Scream, Deadly Intent and Silent Scream have all adapted into TV scripts and received impressive viewing figures.

Lynda has been made honorary fellow of the British Film Institute and was awarded the BAFTA Dennis Potter Writer’s Award 2000.

On 14th June 2008 Lynda was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List (Writer and Producer for services to Literature, Drama and to Charity).

On 3rd October 2009, Lynda was honoured at the Cologne Conference International Film and Television Festival with the prestigious TV Spielfilm Award for her television adaptation of her novel, Above Suspicion.

Books penned by Lynda La Plante include: The Legacy, The Talisman, Bella Mafia, Entwined, Cold Shoulder, Cold Blood, Cold Heart, Sleeping Cruelty, Royal Flush, Above Suspicion, The Red Dahlia, Clean Cut, Deadly Intent and Silent Scream, Blind Fury (this entered the UK Sunday Times Bestsellers List at number 1 having sold 9,500 copies in its first two weeks), Blood Line, Backlash, Wrongful Death, and Twisted, which have all been international best-sellers. 

In Feb 2012 Lynda’s chilling tale of THE LITTLE ONE was published in conjunction with Quick Reads through Simon & Schuster UK.

Lynda’s latest book, Tennison, was published on 24th September 2015 and is the prequel the highly acclaimed Prime Suspect. The story charts Jane Tennison’s entry into the police force as a 22 year old Probationary Officer at Hackney Police Station in 1973.

Lynda La Plante is published in the UK by Simon & Schuster.

Lynda La Plante is published in the US by HarperCollins Publishers.

Please visit http://www.lyndalaplante.com for further information. You can also follow Lynda on Facebook and Twitter.