Tag: crime fiction

Posted in Netgalley

One Half Truth by Eve Dolan

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I really enjoyed this police procedural set in Peterborough which is part of a series I’ve often read before. Zigic and Ferreira are the detectives looking for a killer when young student Jordan is shot dead walking home from watching football at a club. The club is for men who worked at Greenaway’s factory, but the factory is long gone and so are the jobs. This left skilled engineers consigned to the scrap heap in their fifties – an age where getting new employment is very difficult. The club lingers on as a reminder and is still frequented by a group of men bonded together due to their shared experience, with a lot of bitterness and anger remaining. So what was a young man like Jordan doing there and how had he ended up shot in the back of the head, execution style, close to the Parkway on his shortcut home?

The story line grabbed me straight away, possibly because my family are working class enough to have experienced what these men have gone through, but in the mining and steel manufacturing industries. I’ve seen what it does to a man to leave him unemployed near retirement age. Jordan really stood out as one of the good guys in life, using his writing to stand up to big business and expose corruption. Of course we only experience him through his deeds and other people’s impressions of him, but that’s enough for me to feel he was ambitious to be a journalist, but also had some integrity. He wanted to do the job to write the big stories, not doorstep celebrities or cover fun days for the local paper. He’d already been published in the Big Issue, the piece that told the stories of the men at the club and the reason he knew and bonded with them. He’d shown how their mental health suffered after redundancy, that many had lost their wives and families too, some had even lost the roof over their heads. The fact that he’d stayed in contact with these men, tells the detectives that the club is the best place to start investigating.

There are three stories that Jordan was working on with the potential to ruffle important feathers. One is about a social care company attached to a woman called Sheila Yule, but she is very wary of even speaking to the police and appears scared. Then there’s the death of the owner of Greenaway’s, in a helicopter crash. It had been ruled an accident but could Jordan have found out otherwise? Finally, he was looking into a housing development on the outskirts of the city, where Ferreira had almost bought a flat. Any one of these stories would have made this an interesting book, so to give us all three was generous and created a few red herrings along the way. There were so many leads to follow that the pace never let up and the story never flagged. All three stories were right up my street politically, so I really enjoyed delving into the detail and the thinking Jordan would have gone through when researching. All the undercurrents of deprivation, corruption, the collusion of big business and local politics couldn’t have been more timely and they fit perfectly with how I see the world.

There were some great bits of character revealed in Ferreira and Zigic’s home lives. Ferreira’s competitive streak comes out when her partner, and fellow police officer, wants to have his hunch on the case confirmed. The next minute they’re bantering about paint colours and wallpaper. The comical scene of Zigic and his wife clearing out his wardrobe was eerily familiar and very funny. These are the lives they go back to after working long hours and it was enjoyable to see those glimpses of their home selves. Both Zigic and Ferreira have a conviction to see justice done and hate being told what they can and can’t investigate from higher up. In this case, high ranking police officers being too cosy with local councillors and big business in the area. Ferreira is slightly more reckless and I love how she takes things into her own hands at the end. I like her fire and her need to get to the truth – whoever is involved. There are twists I didn’t expect, but I was glad of them, because they changed an outcome I was struggling to accept. This was solid, intelligent, crime writing with a lot of heart and a social conscience so I enjoyed it immensely.

Meet The Author


Eva Dolan was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger for unpublished authors when only a teenager. The four novels in her Zigic and Ferreira series have been published to widespread critical acclaim: Tell No Tales and After You Die were shortlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year Award and After You Die was also longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. She lives in Cambridge.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Distant Dead by Lesley Thomson.

Posted on by thelotusreaders

A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. A tragic casualty of the Blitz? Or something more sinister? Sixty years later, the detective’s daughter unearths the truth… From the number 1 bestselling author of The Detective’s Daughter.

LONDON, 1940

Several neighbours heard the scream of the woman in the bombed-out house. One told the detective she thought the lady had seen a mouse. Another said it wasn’t his business what went on behind closed doors. None of them imagined that a trusting young woman was being strangled by her lover.

TEWKESBURY, 2020

Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man lies bleeding, close to death. He is the creator of a true-crime podcast which now will never air. He was investigating the murder of a 1940s police pathologist – had he come closer to the truth than he realised?

This is the first time I’ve read Lesley Thomson and her Detective’s Daughter series, of which this is the eighth novel. At first it felt a little like coming into the room in the middle of a conversation, but once the second timeline began I’d been drawn into the atmosphere of an interesting story, full of character and historical detail. In the now section of the novel, Stella is settling in Tewkesbury and trying to finally come to terms with the death of her father in a place where she isn’t reminded of him at every turn. It was a tough choice to completely uproot herself, leaving behind her business Clean Slate and a long term relationship with Jack. She has moved with journalist Lucie, who also loved her father, and the women are dealing with their grief in their own ways. Stella has started visiting The Death Cafe, run by pathologist Felicity Branscombe. It’s a space to meet others struggling with grief and they discuss their experiences of death. While on one of her cleaning jobs – at Tewkesbury Abbey – she meets a man called Roddy Marsh and they pass the time of day as he asks her questions about how she keeps a place like this clean. However, she then meets him again at her second visit to the Death Cafe group. Is this a coincidence, or did Roddy want to meet Stella? Straight after the group meeting, Stella returns to the Abbey only to find poor Roddy, dying from a stab wound in his back. He has something important to say to her, but sadly Stella can’t catch his words.

In our past storyline we are taken to the London Blitz and the murder of young mother Maple Greenham. For some reason, my connection to Maple was instant and I really enjoyed her part in the story. We meet her as she is getting ready for a night out and we sense her parent’s trepidation that she’s stepping out with a man who doesn’t pick her up or even walk her home. They’ve never met him at all. After an evening of dancing, her beau produces a key for a friend’s house and they have a tryst. I loved the small details Thomson evokes in these glimpses of the past. Here, Maple has a moment of irritation as she notices a snag in the toe of her silk stocking and mentally tots up how much time she’s had to spend working to afford them. This told me that the man she’s with wouldn’t understand that sort of concern, because he’s from a different class to her. Maple’s scream is dismissed by those who do hear it. No one imagined it was the sound of this young woman being strangled by her lover. DI George Cotton is the investigating officer and finds incontrovertible evidence of her killer’s identity, but finds his case and his career shelved. This is a man too important to the war effort to be hauled up on a murder charge. Put simply, it’s decided his life and the potential lives his work will save, are more important than Maple. The link between cases is a podcast, titled The Distant Dead, featuring murder cases where the real culprits were never caught. The presenter of this true crime series was Roddy Marsh and he was featuring the death of a 1940s police pathologist. Is there someone in the present day who wants these truths to stay buried?

Now, the Clean Slate staff alongside Stella, Lucie and Jack decide to investigate past and present murder cases. This is not without it’s dangers and leads us to an interesting cast of characters, none of which are exactly what we expect. Stella realises again, that it seems impossible for her to leave her father’s world behind. There’s even a connection to the SIO on Roddy’s murder, a WPC who worked with Stella’s dad. I enjoyed tracing the links between past and present cases and watching how Stella works – no matter that she doesn’t want to fall into her father’s work and habits, she does seem to have a talent for it. I loved the historical detail from the 1940 case too. This was an atmospheric tale, full of the twists and turns a modern reader expects. However, there’s also a feel of a much earlier mystery novel, possibly a 1930s/40s cozy murder mystery. It has elements like the eccentric characters, gatherings in tea rooms and unusual methods of murder. Some aspects are spooky, such as the cathedral or the dark and narrow country lanes. Others, such as the dialogue, are almost comical. There’s also Stanley the dog’s antics too of course. It is an enjoyable read, slightly slow in some parts, but with a great sense of place and characterisation.

Meet The Author.

Lesley Thomson is the author of the Detective’s Daughter series of West London-set mysteries featuring private investigators Stella, a cleaner, and Jack, a tube driver. The first novel, The Detective’s Daughter, became an ebook phenomenon in 2013, staying at number 1 in the digital charts for 3 months. Since then, the series has gone on to sell 800,000 copies worldwide. Lesley is an active member of the UK crimewriting community, and appeared at several crime festivals in 2019, including CrimeFest, Harrogate, Morecambe & Vice and Capital Crime. She lives in Lewes with her partner and her dog

Follow Lesley:

Facebook: @LesleyThomsonNovelist

Twitter: @LesleyjmThomson

Website: lesleythomson.co.uk

Buy links:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3eCVO6O

iBooks: https://apple.co/3y3A8Zf

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3hmq47F

Google Play: https://bit.ly/3uMuAjS

Waterstones: https://bit.ly/3y7IRtC

Bookshop.org: https://bit.ly/3y3O6dN

Follow Head of Zeus

Website: www.headofzeus.com

Twitter: @HoZ_Fiction

Facebook: @headofzeus

Instagram: @headofzeus

Posted in Random Things Tours

Winterkill by Ragnar Jonasson (Dark Iceland Book 6).

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Publisher: Orenda Books (21 Jan. 2021)

ISBN:1913193446

When given the opportunity to read an Orenda book I rarely pass it up. My only misgiving with this one, was that it was the sixth in a series I didn’t know whether I’d ever be able to catch up and fully understand what was going on. Once I’d done my research and read a few reviews of the Dark Iceland series, I was in! Described as ‘creepy, chilling and perceptive’ by Ian Rankin and full of ‘poetic beauty’ by Peter James, this instalment comes highly recommended. The New York Times review blew me away and made this a must read.

‘Jónasson’s true gift is for describing the daunting beauty of the fierce setting, lashed by blinding snowstorms that smother the village in a thick, white darkness that is strangely comforting’ New York Times

That image of the setting grabbed me because I’ve lived in some isolated locations here in the U.K. and have written myself about that strange sense of safety a huge snow fall brings. All falls quiet and you are safe, sheltered and warm. The world becomes muffled as you are slowly cut off from civilisation, under a think blanket. I knew I would connect with the setting at least. Of course, I shouldn’t have worried, because this was a great read in its own right and I managed perfectly well without the reading the others first – obviously as soon as I finished this one I ordered them all since so I could have an Orenda Christmas!

The hero of the Dark Iceland series is Ari Thor Arason, the police inspector of a small town in Iceland called Siglufjörður. He is recently separated from his girlfriend, who now lives in Sweden with their three year old son. As Easter approaches Ari Thor is looking forward to spending some time with them both when they come to stay for the weekend. However his plans are thrown into disarray when the body of a young girl turns up to claim his attention. A nineteen year old girl appears to have jumped from the balcony of a building, but seems to have no connection to anyone who lives there. Why would she travel to this particular building to commit suicide? Ari can’t help wondering and his wondering leads him to dig a little deeper and find out whether she was pushed. His suspicions are aroused further when an old flame, now working in a local nursing home, gives him a call because she’s concerned about an elderly resident. She shows Ari the old man’s room, and he’s shocked to see the words ‘she was murdered’ written over and over again. As a huge storm heads towards Siglufjörður, Ari is left pondering whether these two events are connected and also whether he can salvage his family or even reconcile any sort of private life with his job.

Ari Thor isn’t an ‘action man’ type hero, he’s thoughtful, perceptive and investigates gently. The awkwardness of his Easter plans are really painful; he books his ex-partner and son in at the hotel, but is excited when they want to stay at the house. Ari misunderstands and thinks they might all stay together, but he ends up in the hotel. He feels excluded, but also awkward as other guests and staff know him well (this is a small remote town after all). He wonders what they will be thinking about their local detective. He knows that the job he loves has to command all his attention, when an important case comes in and so does his estranged partner. However, there is a large gap between knowing this and the reality of living it. Can he ever promise his family what they need? This conflict becomes ever clearer over the weekend when he is pulled from one place to another as new evidence comes to light.

I loved the atmosphere of this small town, where everyone knows each other. Yet there’s also the uneasy thought that many residents could be in this remote place to disappear and keep secrets. There’s so much going on under that polite layer of familiarity, even where Ari thinks he knows someone well. In one sense Siglufjörður has changed enormously, new road links have made it more accessible so even tourists have started to visit for ski-ing and to stay in new luxury holiday chalets. However, once the blizzard descends it becomes bleak, remote and strangely more beautiful. Ari’s investigation takes him into the even more rural area of Siglunes, where two men live in a small wood cabin inaccessible by road. I found Siglunes quite sinister, but Siglufjörður feels remote too and even claustrophobic as the weather pulls in. The author skilfully ratchets the tension up a notch, just at the same time as the community becomes more isolated. Yet we never feel rushed, Ari Thor does not panic or hurry the investigation- every move is well thought out and measured and he shows great compassion to the bereaved and those involved.

I thought it was so clever that, without knowing it at first, Ari is slowly uncovering more than one crime. We are forced to learn the lesson that people are not always what they seem, as the manager of the nursing home is called on for questioning. Ari Thor would say he knows him, likes him even and there has been no indication that he has been doing anything but noble, humanitarian work for the elderly of the town. However, just under the surface are financial worries, difficulties gaining government funding and enough residents to make the venture pay. If you’re looking for high octane action, or the endless twists and turns of a convoluted plot then this is the wrong book for you. The pace is gentle, the motive uncomplicated, and our detective is a contemplative sort rather than an action hero. What compels here (as it should) is the human tragedy – the loss of a girl on the brink of adult life and full of promise, for her family and the whole town. There is even an element of humanity and complex, conflicting, motives within our criminals too, when they are unmasked. This doesn’t take away from the chilling nature of their crimes though – in fact I find the thought that killers walk among us, with the same worries and preoccupations that we have, even more disturbing than some of the more obvious monsters we see in crime fiction. I would recommend this book and the whole series, as a fabulous introduction to Nordic Noir, and I could easily imagine sitting with my feet up, a glass of whiskey in hand, being compelled by these stories on BBC4. This book was beautifully written, has an evocative setting and a detective I truly enjoyed spending my Christmas with.

Meet The Author

Ragnar Jónasson was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he works as a writer and a lawyer and teaches copyright law at Reykjavík University. He has previously worked on radio and television, including as a TV news reporter for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, and, from the age of seventeen, has translated fourteen of Agatha Christie’s novels. He is an international Number One bestseller