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On arrival at the chateau, he discovers he has a pregnant wife, a daughter obsessed by the saints, a sister to whom he has not spoken for years, a brother and sister-in-law, a mother who has taken to her bed, and an extended (for want of a better word), family of people who for generations have relied for work on the de Gué family. It quickly becomes apparent that Jean de Gué had been on what was expected to be a fruitless mission to secure a continuing contract for the glass works, to guarantee future work for the company and its employees.
The strength and power of the book
is in the relationships within the family. And the hostilities stretch back to
the war. But although his mirror image, John, is not Jean. Whilst John’s
blunders are initially catastrophic, his innate decency as a person begins to
make a difference. It is this that is so fascinating, being just himself, he
begins to make changes in the dysfunctional family. Despite the hopelessness of
the business, which in his ignorance he has made worse, he begins to see ways
it might be improved. But fails to take into account the hostilities that have
festered since the war. Only one person guesses that he is not Jean de Gué, but
even that is in itself is a surprise. And, yes, there is intrigue and death,
but it is the effect of John as a catalyst that marks the book so exceptional.
Not forgetting the incredible power of the writer, a storyteller who for me
remains unsurpassed.
Detective Superintendent Christian Dane was in a meeting called by Assistant Chief Constable Caroline Wix when he receives a call from Sergeant Bob Soanes that he has been called to the Florida Motel on the A12, as the management have found the body of a guest tied up in his room. It looks as though he strangled himself for sexual gratification. But Soanes says ‘It doesn’t look right’. He is booked in under the name of ‘Smith’. But the car parked outside belongs to Detective Chief Superintendent Parr, who retired a few years ago.
Pauline Rose, forensic crime scene manager, says that Parr is trussed up in away that caused him to seemingly strangle himself, but leaving him no safe way of releasing himself. This looks like murder.
The death of Colin Parr unlocks a huge investigation into sexual abuse of young children in a state home.
The team that Dane finds himself leading in Essex is disorganised and possibly corrupt. Coupled with the problems he in encountering with Assistant Chief Constable Caroline Wix, a willowy blonde fiercely ambitious, who had arrived recently from the Met, and had taken an instant dislike to Dane.
Dane soon finds
that he has problems within his new team.
One officer appears to be leaking information to Angus Boyd, a tabloid
journalist. But which of his team is doing it? The only person Dane can totally
trust is Detective Constable Hayley Cross; a skilled detective he brings in to
help and watch his back.
As the
investigation digs deeper into the life of Colin Parr more comes to light, and
Dane realises that the abuse of young children is widespread. Meanwhile four
more men have been found murdered in the same way as Parr.
Dane realises he is hunting a killer who is targeting people linked to Parr and
a defunct children’s home. Following a trail leads Dane to France and from
there he realises just how widespread the poison is.
On happier note he and his partner Chief Superintendent Vicky Needham are now living together, although she is currently commuting to her job in Cambridge.
This is an intense
novel, that explores a difficult subject. A compelling read.
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Reviewer Lizzie
Sirett
Published by Alison & Busby
21 May 2026.
The 7th book in the DI Kelson Strang series.
It is a bitterly cold night, with rain falling and
an edge of snow. Under the sickly yellow lighting in the lorry park, three men
are looting precious cargo from the tarpaulined trailers – but the crack of a
gunshot pierces the night, and everything changes.
Six months on and a key witness at the subsequent
murder trial finds herself under police protection in the remote ancient
highlands around Loch Torridon. She is determined to find out what happened to
her beloved Callan, one of the three looters, but everything becomes more
complicated by another local murder, and the arrival of DCI Kelso Strang.
The local dramatic peaks form the uncompromising
backdrop of the police investigation, and Strang must contend with seismic
events that will change many lives to get to the truth.
The story opens in Derry, November 1998. Liam Rafferty is 11 years old and idolises his elder brother Martin who is 15. When Liam spots a guy, he knows doesn’t belong in their area, he alerts his brother. Martin turned to his friends, ‘he must be a Brit spy. Hugh told us to keep watch’, Martin said. Things escalate and Martin is shot in the head. Liam stares into Hugh’s eyes. I will find them. I swear I will kill them all.’
After Martin’s death, Hugh Murphy took Liam in, and he became a fully-fledged volunteer dedicated to a united Ireland. Move forward 25 years and Liam discovered that Hugh and the three senior commanders had betrayed everyone’s trust using funds to purchase hard drugs. So, Liam set about with the munitions they had stolen recruiting his own band of fighters. Liam and his group then disappeared. Hugh and his organisation have been hunting him ever since.
Liam had made a vow to find and kill the men responsible for Martin’s death. Years passed but when he least expected it the British Press exposed a police officer in Essex as Martin’s killer.
Detective Christian Dane works on major crimes and has long been on the trail of a network of drug dealers. The man who organises the ring of dealers has cleverly managed to avoid being identified but eventually Dane discovers that he worked with him during his time in the British Army.
When Karen Teller, a veteran MI5 officer,
receives a warning of an imminent terrorist attack, by an unknown dissident
group, Dane is called in to investigate.
Still seeking to avenge his brother Martin’s death. Liam Rafferty and Mary Sullivan both Irish Republican dissidents. plan is to bring terror to the British mainland to avenge Liam's brother’s murder.
While Dane is determined to find and stop what he believes could be multiple killings he is having to work around hindrance from Chief Superintendent Brown of the Met Counter Terrorism Command. They knew each other in the army and Brown nearly got Dane killed. Dane isolates and arrests some of the gang and confirms that the threat is real.
Unbeknown to Dane, Liam is determined to take everything from him including his family and loved ones. Can Dane protect them from Rafferty’s vengeance?
This is a thrilling read. An action-packed
book you really cannot put down. What is called a heart in your mouth book.
Most highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett
11 June 2026.
Book 3 in the Carla James series.
Foul deeds lie buried under campus grounds.
Jericho College is closed for the summer break. But professor Carla James is busy teaching a short course to a small group of archaeology enthusiasts.
Keen to get involved with local history, the newcomers become fixated on the century-old grave of Meg Woodthorpe.
Killed for being a witch. A single stone sits on the burial site supposedly to prevent her rising again.
And excavations reveal she may have. Meg's body is no longer there. She has been replaced by a modern victim.
With no one missing, Carla must work out who this is and where Meg has gone.
Sinéad Nolan’s first novel is set in rural Ireland during 1995. Nine-year-old Jack is playing in woods near his home in Drumsuin with his sister Saoirse (who is 13) when she goes missing. The village goes once again into mourning as this is not the first time that a girl has disappeared from the forest. No traces of these previous girls have been found, and there are no clues as to what has happened to Saoirse.
The children come from a broken home. Their father left to live in Dublin some time previously, their troubled mother died more recently and they are looked after by their older sister Kate. Their father’s disabled sister Aunt Bronagh lives close by, but she has her own problems which can make her appear unsympathetic and is away when Saoirse goes missing. Kate has a history of self-harming. There are secrets between Jack and Saoirse. The family is looked on with suspicion by the locals.
One-eyed Garda Walter Morris heads the investigation, and Freya Hemmings is summoned from Dublin. She is a former journalist and semi-pro singer who has retrained as a psychotherapist and who has, in the way of contemporary crime novels, her own back story, including the loss of a daughter and a failed relationship which led her to the bottle. She is needed because Jack, the one person who was present when his sister went missing, has been traumatized by his mother’s death and finds it difficult to talk to anyone. He knows things but doesn’t – or can’t - tell. The word ‘erase’ crops up many times when Jack’s memories come to the surface. He finds it easier to express his emotions by painting pictures.
The forest, in which the children play their counting game (it appears to be like hide and seek), looms malevolently over the whole story. It was the site of one of the infamous Magdalene laundries and is a source of terror for some people. Kate says: ‘Everyone in the village knows the forest makes people pay for disrespecting it. The evil forces in that forest stem from the Magdalene Laundry and the horrors back then – the forest felt desecrated by these atrocities – so that’s why we don’t mistreat the forest now. You mess with that forest and you’ll end up involved. ..... The game ... it’s not just a game, it’s a curse you can’t escape.’ And later: ‘People think the rumours about that forest are a joke, but they’re not. The forest knows how to punish people who don’t respect it.’ As a consequence Freya is reluctant to enter the forest when curiosity gets the better of her. There are also claims that an intimidating figure, ‘The Creature’, lives there.
There are a number of
inter-personal relations which add to the problems encountered by the
investigation into what has happened to Saoirse, but the story opens up as time
goes by, particularly after the remains of one of the earlier missing girls are
found. The plot moves swiftly and keeps us guessing. The characters are
well-drawn and the conclusion is convincing. It is a welcome and impressive
debut.
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Reviewer:
David Whittle
Published by Sapere Books,
5 June 2026
Book 11 in the Early Casebook of Sherlock HolmesDespite Aubrey’s death, Callender is still planning to enter and Sherlock sends his good friend Mr Stamford to spy on the test flights at Callender Hall.
One of those much-quoted axioms of crime fiction is that it's the plot that keeps you reading one book, but the characters who leave you desperate for the next. Thorne Moore has discovered a talent for both; once you've read one book with her name on the cover, a new one becomes a must-have, to follow the fate of new people or the fortunes of familiar ones.
This Cold Night is the third in a series featuring former detective constable Rosanna Quillan. Rosanna left the police when she realized getting a result had become more important than serving justice. She has discovered a talent of her own, for tracking down missing persons, and with the help of computer-whizz Gethin Matthews, who has become her life-partner, she sets about trying to find what became of Lianne, who left home at sixteen uncared-for and unmissed.
The story she pieces together is full of surprises, which it would be a shame to give away. None of the characters she encounters are what they seem, all the way from Lianne's aunt who sets the ball rolling to the final reveal which I guarantee will leave you open-mouthed.
And therein lies Thorne Moore's secret – the characters. They all have pasts, and lives away from the page, and even the most minor of them has a personality. There's a body, as befits a crime novel, and there's more than one mystery to solve, but at its heart the book is about family. Since the last in the series Rosanna has found a stable family to replace the bullied and abused mother she lost and the father she despises. Gethin is a gentle giant who gave up city life to care for his father who has dementia. Rosanna now lives in their welcoming farmhouse home and helps with the caring.
Elsewhere there are different kinds of family, some the right kind with warmth and support, others with less positive agendas. It's hard to describe the plethora of other players who people them without giving the game away; suffice to say they are all meticulously drawn, from misguided coppers to trusting landlords and everyone in between. Locations are equally well realized: large houses which offer different kinds of welcome, an extensive millionaire-style estate, small towns and large ones.
Thorne
Moore's last venture into series fiction was a self-contained science fiction
trilogy. With the Cold Cases series she has returned to her comfort zone of
domestic noir – and this time she has created a pair of leading characters with
the potential to run and run. I for one sincerely hope they do.
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Reviewer:
Lynne Patrick
https://www.thornemoore.co.uk/
When on holiday from Edinburgh, Ally
McKinley had fallen in love with an old two-storey malthouse just outside of
the small riverside village of Locharran. Her husband Ken had been a wonderful husband
and father but lacked an adventurous spirit. Now seven years after his death
she has decided to retire to Locharran. Purchasing the Auld Malthouse was costly
but converting it to a B&B with three en-suite bedrooms should help to payback her overspend on the conversion.
So, five feet ten inches tall and sixty-eight years of age, Ally is happily
running her guest house. Being a small village, it isn’t long before she is
making friends with the locals.
On this bright morning, she is surprised that the guest American, Mr Carrington in Room 1 has not appeared for breakfast. While knocking on his bedroom door she hears a loud scream from somewhere below. And leaning out of the window she sees her cleaner Morag, with her hand over her mouth staring in horror at the prone figure at her feet lying across the cobblestoned courtyard with a dagger protruding from the centre of his back.
Ally picked up the phone and called the police. I could do with a wee drop of whisky said Morag in a wobbling voice, that makes two of us says Ally withdrawing the bottle of Glenmorangie from the cupboard.
Detective Bob Rigby, originally from Birmingham, was not looking joyous at this call-out. He’d come to Inverness for a few quiet years before he retired, and the young police constable was noticeably nervous as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
Murdo, the postman, married to Morag,
tells Ally that Mr Carrington apparently had Scottish ancestry and was in some
way related to the owner of Locharran castle, Hamish Sinclair, the earl who
owns most of the land around Locharran.
When the police seem totally baffled, Ally decides to do her own investigation. She
learns that her dead guest believed that he was the rightful Earl of Locharran.
Even worse, that he had plans for the village that would put many people out of
their jobs and even their homes.
So, which of the locals resorted to murder? Or maybe it was the earl himself, whose entire way of life was threatened. Ally chats to everyone and then quietly lists the names of those who could be suspects. Then one night she is awakened by Wailing Willie, the ghost, who is always heard wailing foretelling a death. And sure enough one of her suspects dies in a suspicious accident. Can she uncover the truth, before there are more killings.
A fascinating mystery, full of marvellous
characters. Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett
