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Wednesday 14 January 2015

'Believe No One' by A. D. Garrett



Published by Corsair,
6 November 2014.
ISBN 978-1-47211-419-9


The thrills here are superbly delivered as Detective Chief Inspector Kare Simms goes to the USA to work with a team in St Louis reviewing cold cases.  In a previous book she had worked an investigation with Professor Nick Fennimore who is, coincidentally, in the USA on a book tour.  They both become embroiled in a case in Oklahoma which a sheriff's deputy has realised has some unusual features.  Gradually the further realisation comes to Nick that Kate's cold case and the one deputy Abigail Hicks is  pursuing have similarities.  As the whole team looks further they find a pattern linking a number of cases where women and children have disappeared.  The whole tale fizzes with action full of exciting acronyms and amazing computerised ways of investigation.

The characters involved in the investigating team are sharply delineated and the focus on a particular mother and child enables the tension to grow.  The story grows well and the conclusion is reached dramatically.  We leave Nick with the situation concerning a previous trauma of his when his daughter disappeared  showing signs of leading somewhere.  A next book is signalled.

My only complaint here is about the unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the torture of the women.  In a 450 page plus book there were, I think, 5 or 6 short sections gradually revealing the treatment of these women.  It spoils the book for me but others may not feel that it is unacceptable.
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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer
A. D. Garrett's first book is Everyone Lies. 
 
A D Garrett is the pseudonym for Margaret Murphy and Professor Dave Barclay’s writing collaboration.
Margaret Murphy has written nine psychological thrillers – both stand-alone and police series. Her work has been published in the UK and the USA, and in translation across Europe, receiving accolades from broadsheets and tabloid newspapers alike, as well as starred reviews from Publishers’ Weekly and Booklist in the USA.  Her novels have been shortlisted for the First Blood critics’ award for crime fiction, and the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Dagger in the Library; she was the joint winner of the 2012 CWA Short Story Dagger. Margaret is founder of Murder Squad, a touring group of crime writers, and in 2009-10 she was Chair of the CWA. She was RLF Writing Fellow in Liverpool and Chester from 2008-2011, and has tutored creative writing at Masters level, as well as presenting talks and workshops in creative writing for library groups and literature festivals. She has been a countryside ranger, science teacher and dyslexia specialist, and her lifelong passion for science is reflected in her painstaking research for her novels. Everyone Lies is her first collaborative work with forensic scientist Prof. Dave Barclay, under the pseudonym A.D. Garrett.
Professor Dave Barclay is a world renowned forensics expert and Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Professor Barclay has worked on some of Britain's highest profile murder cases. He is also a former head of physical evidence for the UK National Crime and Operations Faculty, where he was involved in reviewing more than 200 murder investigations, cold case reviews and inquiries into alleged miscarriages of justice, including the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the Omagh bombing, the World's End murders in Edinburgh, and the Milly Dowler and Soham murders. His extensive experience also led him into becoming an adviser for the BBC television series 'Waking the Dead' and more recently, the Channel Four documentary, Dispatches, invited Prof Barclay to Praia da Luz, Portugal to review the Portuguese police investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.



Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.



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