‘The Woke and the Dead’ by Mark S. Bacon

Published by Archer & Clark,
15 March 2025.
ISBN: 979-8-218-51594-2 (PB)

When a man is found shot dead at Nostalgic City theme park in Arizona, ex-cop turned taxi-driver Lyle Deeming is not the only person who wants answers. So, too, does his girlfriend Kate Sorenson, who happens to be the theme park’s PR director. The couple suspect the dead man was the victim of a homophobic attack. Their suspicions intensify after it is revealed the theme park will be holding a special LGBT event as part of its inclusivity programme. The announcement unwittingly lights a fuse that ignites further hatred, racism and bigotry from white supremist groups that results in employees of the theme park being injured and killed.

As the death toll rises, Lyle and Kate are forced to take drastic measures to keep one step ahead of their enemies. They become convinced the man controlling many of the hate groups is Arizona’s reigning governor Rod Cudgel who is running for re-election. Will Lyle and Kate be able to expose the full extent of the governor’s sleave and corruption? In a bid to secure justice for all those affected by events, Lyle infiltrates a hate group while another of his associates goes undercover working for the governor.

The Woke and the Dead is a fast-paced political thriller that shines a fascinating light on the hate groups proliferating throughout America and cries out to be made into a slick Netflix drama. After reading The Woke and the Dead it came as no surprise to find its author Mark S. Bacon is a former South California police crime reporter. The narrative is imbued with the authority of someone who knows their subject inside and out and provides readers with insights into the skewered thinking of the individuals who comprise these hate groups and defend their constitutional right to own guns and inflict damage with them. Mark S. Bacon is clearly on the side of the angels, and the book stands as a timely metaphor with much that is wrong in America today. There is also much that is good, and he never loses sight of this in an exciting and compelling tale that sees the bad guys getting their just deserts. The Woke and the Dead is a formidable achievement and comes highly recommended.
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Reviewer Jared Cade

Mark S. Bacon began his career as a Southern California newspaper police reporter, one of his crime stories becoming key evidence in a murder case that spanned decades. Before, turning to fiction, Bacon wrote business books, one of which was printed in four languages and three editions and named best business book of the year by the Library Journal. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Denver Post, San Antonio Express News, and many other publications. Most recently he was a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. Death in Nostalgia City, the first in his five-book series, was recommended by the American Library Association. Desert Kill Switch, the second series book, was the top fiction winner in the 2018 Great Southwest Book Festival. Bacon gets some of his ideas from experience as a police reporter and also from his work as a copywriter for Knott's Berry Farm theme park. He taught university journalism in California and Nevada and is trying to teach his golden retriever to stop pulling the leash.

Jared Cade’s latest non-fiction book Secrets from the Agatha Christie Archives was shortlisted for the 2025 ALCS Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction Award and explores how the Queen of Crime conquered the UK and US serial markets with her thrilling tales of murder and mayhem. He is a former tour guide for a bespoke luxury travel company, escorting parties around Agatha Christie’s former home Greenway, in Devon, England, which is open to the public courtesy of the National Trust.  Jared Cade is also the multi award-winning creator of the Lyle Revel and Hermione Bradbury mysteries. Titles in the series include The Elusive Dietrich, Murder on London Underground and Murder in Pelham Wood. The couple’s most recent case Deadly Fortune is described by one Amazon reviewer as ‘tense, twisty and impossible to put down.’

Readers can connect with Jared Cade on Facebook or visit www.jaredcade.com.

‘Deadly Fortune’ by Jared Cade

Published by Scarab Books,
9 August 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-0686729-9-6 (PB)

Deadly Fortune, one of the books comprising Jared Cade’s award-winning Lyle Revel and Hermione Bradbury mystery series, is entertainingly littered with corpses. The events of the story are triggered at its outset, when Andrew Rogers, a self-made billionaire—owner and mastermind of a huge hotel empire—dies unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack. He is only sixty-three and, up to that point, had seemed to enjoy good health.

Cade’s work generally falls into the “cozy crime” category, with the author sparing us guts and gore. He informs us these deaths occurred and provides a cursory explanation of how and when but refuses to inflict on us with the grisly details. He also shirks from explicit sex scenes. His female characters, however dubious their motivations, are usually beautiful, refined and wealthy. When they aren’t committing murder, he features males who are similarly well educated, well behaved and well off.

Cade’s detectives contribute to the charm offensive characteristic of his work. Lyle is extremely handsome and well-spoken, and Hermione is lovely and loveable despite her sharp wit and keen intelligence. Together, they make an effective team. Hermione helps Lyle in his career as an actor while the two of them make a habit of solving murders that baffle the police, whether in England or the States, where Lyle finds work as a devilishly good-looking rogue on a popular soap opera. They are admirably brave and resourceful, ignoring personal danger as they plough ahead with their investigations, intent on finding the killer and bringing him—or her—to justice.   

The plot of Deadly Fortune is improbable, and so are its characters, but it is emphatically enjoyable, a real page-turner. Crime fiction is a broad church, encompassing many types of stories and many types of storytelling. Jared Cade is a master of fluid, fluent prose, crafting the undemanding read that surprises and delights. Deadly Fortune’s ending is amusing yet also satisfying; it’s a canny reader who could guess the culprit.
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Reviewer: Wendy Jones Nakanishi/aka Lea O’Harra.

Jared Cade is a former tour guide for a bespoke luxury travel company, escorting parties around Agatha Christie’s former home Greenway, in Devon, which is open to the public courtesy of the National Trust. During an appearance on the British television quiz the 64,000 Dollar Question, he won the top prize on his specialist subject of Agatha Christie’s novels. Jared Cade’s writing is heavily influenced by the Golden Age of crime fiction. He has a fondness for amateur sleuths, traditional mysteries, locked-room murders, and impossible crimes. He is the creator of the crime-solving duo of actor Lyle Revel and cellist Hermione Bradbury who take centre stage in a series of British cosy murder mysteries. He shares his tips for writing on the Crime Writers’ Association website.  

Lea O’Harra.  An American by birth, did her postgraduate work in Britain – an MA in Lancaster and a doctorate at Edinburgh – and worked full-time for 36 years at a Japanese university. Since retiring in March 2020, she has spent part of each year in Lancaster and part in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island, her second home, with occasional visits to the States to see family and friends. An avid reader of crime fiction since childhood, as a university professor she wrote academic articles on it as a literary genre and then decided to try her hand at composing such stories herself, publishing the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue mystery series’ comprising three murder mysteries set in rural, contemporary Japan. She has also published two standalone crime fiction novels.

‘Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime’ by Leonie Swann

Published by Allison & Busby,
24 July 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-74903155-8 (PB)

It is midwinter in the village of Duck End, where retired policewoman Agnes Sharp shares her large home, Sunset Hall, with five other pensioners.  When the old boiler stops working, the occupants of the house face a miserably cold few days until the plumber can get to them.  Then, one of the housemates, Edwina, wins an all expenses paid trip for two to a luxury hotel, and the companions decide they will all go with her.  It will be pricey, but they’ll be warm! 

A few days later the group board a plane bound for the remote Cornish coast and within hours they find themselves stepping through the welcoming portal of Eden Hotel.  Little do the Sunset Hall six know what lies in wait for them.  Suffice to say that this Eden will be no Paradise!

The isolated resort, with its poor, sometimes non-existent, wi-fi signal, offers the perfect setting for this murder mystery.  The narrative delights with literary allusions including Agatha Christie’s A Caribbean Mystery.  Meanwhile, the plot teases with puzzling disappearances, red herrings a plenty and a rapidly rising body count.  Agnes and her intrepid friends have little option but to find and expose the serial killer in their midst.

The characters in the novel, human and otherwise, are wonderfully entertaining creations and fall into two distinct groups - the Sunset Hall holidaymakers and the hotel staff and guests.  Agnes’s extended community includes three other women. First is Edwina, who used to be a member of the Secret Services, next is Charlie who likes a tipple and adds a touch of elegance to the group, and finally there is Bernadette, a blind woman with a scandalous past.  The house share also includes two men - Winston who requires a wheelchair to get around but has excellent computer skills as well as incisive logic, and ex-military man Marshall, whose forgetfulness is more than compensated for by his valour.  Characters from the hotel group include a suspicious ‘White Widow’ and Trudy, a bubbly personality who is constantly filching food because she’s enrolled on the detox package!  Two hedgehogs also feature in the book, along with a handsome white Boa Constrictor who delivers intermittent first-person narratives throughout the story.  The unconventional cast, quirky location, and surreal events blend into a story that is delightful and, at times, riotous.

Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime is the second in the series of Agnes Sharp mysteries. The book is translated from the German by Amy Bojang.  It works perfectly as a standalone.  The author has created a witty, whacky, feelgood whodunnit that abounds with amiable and amusing characters. 

A cosy crime that keeps the reader guessing until the end and highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Dot  Marshall-Gent

Leonie Swann, is the nom de plume of a German crime writer. She was born in Germany in 1975. She studied philosophy, psychology and English literature in Munich, and now lives in Berlin. 

Dot Marshall-Gent worked in the emergency services for twenty years first as a police officer, then as a paramedic and finally as a fire control officer before graduating from King’s College, London as a teacher of English in her mid-forties.  She completed a M.A. in Special and Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, London and now teaches part-time and writes mainly about educational issues.  Dot sings jazz and country music and plays guitar, banjo and piano as well as being addicted to reading mystery and crime fiction.  

‘Deadman’s Pool by Kate Rhodes

Published by Orenda Books,
25 September 2025. 
ISBN: 978-1-916788-66-4 (PB)

The Scilly Isles are now in serious competition with Shetland, Oxford and the Peak District for the title of most dangerous of the UK’s picturesque places. The body count rises with each new book in Kate Rhodes’s gripping series, and in Deadman’s Pool the race is on to stop it growing even further. The body of a young girl is found in a shallow grave on the small, uninhabited island of St Helen’s. Then a baby only a couple of weeks old is found, barely alive, and it soon becomes plain that another girl may be trapped or imprisoned somewhere in the Scillies. The race to save a life is on for Detective Inspector Ben Kitto and his team.

To Ben’s surprise, his boss, Chief of Police Madron, starts behaving oddly. His boat was seen close to St Helen’s just before the body was discovered, but he refuses to talk about it. And it’s evident that a group of young people know more than they are saying. The same is true of several adults in prominent positions, and Ben is soon struggling to find any useful information. He relies heavily on the forensic evidence, and fortunately Liz Gannick, the irascible (and disabled, but she doesn’t let that hamper her) expert from the mainland, unearths a wealth of it.

The dead girl and the baby are related, and both have Vietnamese heritage. This opens up a whole new line of enquiry; the islands have been used by people traffickers, and Deadman’s Pool, a relatively calm stretch of water close to St Helen’s, has been the scene of dinghy-loads of people abandoned by their captors.

It all happens against a backcloth of winter in the Scillies: high winds, treacherous seas, one storm after another. Even reading during the warmest summer in decades, Kate Rhodes’s skill with atmosphere made me glad of four stout walls around me and a sweater within reach. Into that evocative background she weaves details of everyday winter life in a popular summer holiday venue: empty hotels, derelict buildings abandoned by people who thought they’d make second homes, discontented young people, protective parents.   

The characters are the kind who make you want to come back and meet them again in future episodes: Ben’s colleagues, sparky Isla, taciturn Lawrie and observant Eddie; his family, reticent Uncle Ray, calm wife Nina and adorable one-year-old Noah, who charms even short-tempered Liz Gannick. The islanders too, young and adult, are all living, breathing individuals.

Dipping into a new book in a well-wrought series is like meeting up with old friends, and there are plenty of other reasons to read the Isles of Scilly mysteries too; the twists, turns, dead ends and surprises in Deadman’s Pool are only a few of them. I’ve enjoyed watching Ben Kitto’s career and personal life develop, and the other characters grow and evolve, and look forward to meeting them all again before long. 
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Kate Rhodes was born in London. She has a PhD in modern American literature and has taught English at British and American universities. She spent several years working in the southern states of America, first in Texas, then at a liberal arts college in Florida. Kate’s first collection of poems Reversal was published in 2005, her second collection, The Alice Trap was published in 2008. The Guardian described her poems as “pared back and fast-moving, the short lines full of an energetic lightness of touch”. Kate has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship, and her poems have been shortlisted and won prizes in a number of competitions including the Bridport Prize and the Forward Prize. Crossbones Yard was Kate’s first crime novel. Hell Bay was the first of a new series featuring DI Ben Kitto, set in the Isles of Scilly. There are now eight books in the series. Kate lives in Cambridge with her husband Dave Pescod, a writer and film maker. 

katerhodes.org  

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘Knave of Diamonds’ by Laurie R. King

Published by Allison & Busby,
10 June 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-74903287-6 (HB)

Mary Russell had been a young girl when her parents and brother were killed in an accident, and she had been badly injured. Mary had been left to the care of an unloving relation who took her to live in the lonely Sussex downs. She had longed for her Uncle Jake, her brother’s younger brother, to come and claim her, but Jake was the black sheep of the family, who had been banished many years ago, and he did not come for her. But for Mary things had worked out well, because, when she was fifteen years old she met Sherlock Holmes, who had retired to keep bees in the countryside. Holmes recognised in Mary Russell an intelligence and enquiring mind to match his own and, in the same way, she felt drawn to him. Soon she became his helper in the investigations that he still undertook, despite his claims of being retired. Some years after their meeting, Holmes and Russell married, but they continue their investigations, both individually and as a partnership.

Holmes and Russell have just returned to their Sussex home after attending Holmes’ son’s wedding in France. They left France slightly earlier than planned because Holmes had been summoned to London by his brother, Mycroft, who works for the government in some very confidential and important capacity. Almost as soon as Holmes leaves home, Russell’s uncle turns up, and despite the years of abandonment, she feels instinctively pleased to see him and cannot turn him away. However, at the same time her analytical mind tells her that Jake is a rogue, who has come back because he wants something of her. In suitably oblique language, Jake tells Russell a story about the theft of the Irish Crown Jewels in 1907, a theft that Jake had helped to plan, but he made the mistake of trusting the wrong person. The whole theft was bungled, because the thieves and the official in charge of the jewels equalled each other in inefficiency, and in the end the Irish Crown Jewels had disappeared. Jake persuades his niece to relive old times and join him in an adventure. He is sure that together they will be able to locate the missing jewels.

At the same time, in London, Mycroft is attempting to interest Sherlock in the same matter: he has heard some rumours and wishes his brother to investigate the case of the Irish Royal Jewels again, as he had originally done in 1907. Holmes is adamant in refusing: he had come to his conclusion soon after the crime had been committed, and it had been suppressed by the King and his government, and the anger Holmes felt about this still smoulders. However, when Holmes gets back home to Sussex, he realises that Russell has set off on her own to search for the Irish Crown Jewels, and he deduces that her uncle has reinserted himself into her life and she has accompanied him. Holmes hurries to catch them up, to ensure his wife’s safety. The unlikely team of Russell, Holmes and Jake set off on their search for the stolen treasure, which takes them to the southwest of England and then to rural Ireland, meeting many interesting people on their journey, as well as encountering men whom Jake had once regarded as friends, but who are now proving themselves to be dangerous enemies.

Knave of Diamonds is the nineteenth novel featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, although it works well as a stand-alone novel. It is a cleverly constructed novel with the narrative of Russell and Jake told in the First Person and that of Holmes told in the Third Person. In my opinion, this works extremely well, taking the reader into the head of Russell, but maintaining the integrity of Holmes as depicted in the original stories by Conan Doyle. The three-viewpoint structure carries the action along very effectively. The central characters are all engaging, the plot is intriguing, and the historical details bring Ireland as it was in the early twentieth century to vivid life. Knave of Diamonds is an excellent read, which I recommend.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Laurie R King is a third generation Northern Californian who has lived most of her life in the San Francisco Bay area. Her background is as mixed as any writer’s, from degrees in theology and managing a coffee store to raising children, vegetables, and the occasional building. King started writing and had her first novel published in 1993. Since A Grave Talent, she has averaged a book a year, winning prizes that range from Agatha (a nomination) to Wolfe (Nero, for A Monstrous Regiment of Women.) In 1994, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was published, featuring young Mary Russell who becomes an apprentice, then partner of Sherlock Holmes in early 20th century England. There are now 18 books in the series. King also writes the occasional stand-alone novel. 

http://www.laurierking.com 

Carol Westron is a Golden Age expert who has written many articles on the subject and given papers at several conferences. She is the author of several series: contemporary detective stories and police procedurals, comedy crime and Victorian Murder Mysteries. Her most recent publications are Paddling in the Dead Sea and Delivering Lazarus, books 2 and 3 of the Galmouth Mysteries, the series which began with The Fragility of Poppies.  

www.carolwestron.com 

‘The Final Wife’ by Jenny Blackhurst

Published by Canelo.co,
17 April 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-80436511-3 (PB)

Jenny Blackhurst, a popular bestselling British writer, has fifteen titles on Goodreads. Best known for her exciting crime fiction, in her latest offering—The Final Wife—she has produced the type of story lauded as twisty and propulsive, a page-turner that is an ideal beach read. It is, indeed, unputdownable. In perfectly crafted prose, Blackhurst skilfully guides the reader down one false turning after another, gripping our attention till the surprising conclusion.  

The Final Wife concerns love, infidelity and jealousy in their many guises. The cover of the paperback version offers two clues to what lurks within. Under the photo of a woman in the distance, sheltering from a cloudy sky under an umbrella, are two phrases: ‘She wasn’t the first’ and, below that, the phrase ‘She will be the last.’ These teasers signal the story will concern a man who cheats, and women determined to stop him.

That man is Luke Whitney—a handsome, confident, and wealthy plastic surgeon—who is serially unfaithful. But he gets his comeuppance. The gruesome description of Luke Whitney’s death, planned and executed by an unnamed narrator, occupy the first pages of the book. Following that distressing scene, it appears the author gives us the perpetrator’s identity. On the arrival of the police, the victim’s second wife, Anne, freely admits that she has murdered him.

Blackhurst adopts the trendy habit of dividing her narrative between several narrators and several timelines. The perspective switches between a police officer named Rebecca Dance, the first wife, Rose Whitney, the second wife, Anne Whitney, and Pippa Kent, a much younger woman Luke has used and betrayed. The personalities of these four women contrast pleasingly. Rebecca Dance is an attractively vulnerable if prickly character who finds curious discrepancies in Anne’s confession. Anne is the young and beautiful former waitress who wants to be convicted for her husband’s murder. Rose, who’s indulged in too much plastic surgery to have retained her looks, seems devastated by his death. She and Luke had met at Oxford as fellow students and, such were his charms, despite posing beauty, intelligence and ability, she had soon abandoned any thoughts of embarking on a career of her own, devoting herself to pleasing Luke. As for Pippa, although she seems intent on becoming Luke’s third wife, we learn a past tragedy has spurred her into aiming for quite a different goal.

Nothing and nobody are what they seem. The plot skips merrily along, moving from the past to the present and back again, with memories illuminating motives, and the author throwing in one surprise revelation after another. But the novel may be a victim of its own glib cleverness. Can we care for any of these individuals so deftly described? Are we moved by their troubles? Did Luke deserve to be killed for his bad behaviour?

Blackhurst is wonderfully adept at writing in a seemingly casual style which conceals considerable effort and at managing the convoluted plot twists. It is all masterful but may defeat its purpose, if the author’s purpose is to engage our emotions and interest. When the last page is read, will the characters and their charades quickly fade from our consciousness? Still, if it’s transitory pleasure that is required, The Final Wife is highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Wendy Jones Nakanishi/aka Lea O’Harra.

Jenny Blackhurst grew up in Shropshire where she still lives with her husband and children. Growing up she spent hours reading and talking about crime novels – writing her own seemed like natural progression. Inspired by the emotions she felt around her own son’s birth, How I Lost You was Jenny’s thrilling debut crime novel. 

Lea O’Harra.  An American by birth, did her postgraduate work in Britain – an MA in Lancaster and a doctorate at Edinburgh – and worked full-time for 36 years at a Japanese university. Since retiring in March 2020, she has spent part of each year in Lancaster and part in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island, her second home, with occasional visits to the States to see family and friends. An avid reader of crime fiction since childhood, as a university professor she wrote academic articles on it as a literary genre and then decided to try her hand at composing such stories herself, publishing the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue mystery series’ comprising three murder mysteries set in rural, contemporary Japan. She has also published two standalone crime fiction novels.  

Lea O'Harra – Mystery writer 

‘A Trouble Tide’ by Lynne McEwan

Published by Canelo,
27 March 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-83598065-1 (PB)

Detective Inspector Shona Oliver is an RNLI part time volunteer and along with helmsman Tommy McCall and new recruit Sophie, are in the lifeboat at Kirkness’s inaugural event which Tommy has organised to raise money for the RNLI. They check the course and then return to shore. Two of Shona’s team are taking part, and she finds her Detective Constable Kate Irving and Police Constable Hayley Cameron, take their photographs. They then rejoin the lifeboat and take the boat out to take up their position.

To everyone’s horror, Hayley gets into difficulties and drowns, although known as a really strong swimmer. The lifeboat attends but is too late to save her.

Evidence at the postmortem shows up drugs in Hayley’s system, but everyone seems adamant that she didn’t “use”. A murder investigation is launched. This leads to an uncovering of an organised drugs gang, connected to Hayley’s family.

Things get even more personal for Shona when a girl’s body is found at a Festival her daughter Becca is attending. This death is also suspected to be due to a drugs overdose. Shona is worried. Is Becca okay? Can she be taking too?

As the investigation proceeds it becomes clear that there must be a leak within the police, but who can it be? Everyone is on tender hooks, can they not even trust their colleagues?

When another body is found at the Festival the team is really stretched. As if Shona doesn’t have enough to cope with, an incident concerning the murder of her old boss some time ago rears its ugly head again. It’s clear she has something to hide about this crime, but what?

Evidence points out meanwhile that Hayley’s father and brothers really are a force to be reckoned with, as two of Shona’s team find out to their cost. However, it’s a matter of finding proof of their involvement. Whih proves very difficult.

There are at times very moving accounts of Shona’s dedicated team coming to terms with a traitor in their midst. A very clever piece of detective work. Recommended.
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Reviewer: Tricia Chappell

Lynne McEwan was born in Glasgow. She is a former newspaper photographer turned crime author. She’s covered stories including the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the first Gulf War in addition to many high-profile murder cases. Her DI Shona Oliver series is set on the beautiful Solway Firth which forms the border between Scotland and England, and where Shona is also a lifeboat volunteer. Lynne is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Programme and splits her time between Lincolnshire and Scotland.  

Tricia Chappell. I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots of great new authors.

‘Poppy’s Plays Fair’ by Leigh Russell

Published by Crime & Mystery,
19 June 2025. 
ISBN: 978-0-85730602-9 (PB)

The quaint village of Aston Mead has welcomed a fair to its village green, and the residents are delighted – until a young lady falls from the top of the big wheel, and our heroine Emily with her dog Poppy had witnessed it.

Emily’s new friend Dana Flack, a former journalist, and former fairground worker had been seen arguing with the dead woman that fell. Tongues wag and next thing, Dana is arrested.

Emily is determined to prove Dana’s innocence, and with the help of her brave and clever four- legged companion, Poppy, they once again save the day.

This is not giving away the plot by writing this, as Poppy, rather like the fifty’s hero film dog, Lassie, always saves the day.

It is how the story is told that will keep those pages turning. And, as with all this series of Poppy and Emily tales (or should that be spelled Tails), I read it in one sitting. I just love that clever dog.

Russell is a top selling crime author with her DI Geraldine Steel series and has more than proved her place in the best sellers list with these. So, we can rely on her to take us on a crime journey that will lead us to a nail-biting finish. Add to that, her descriptive drawing of the fairground characters which are excellent and expertly drawn, her page -turning writing, and her lead character Poppy, who is one hundred percent delightful. All dog lovers will adore her.

Russell is up there with the best in cosy mystery writers. Bring on the next story please.
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Reviewer: Linda Regan
www.Lindareganonline.co.uk

Leigh Russell studied at the University of Kent gaining a Master’s degree in English and American literature. Formerly a secondary school English teacher, with the success of her Geraldine Steel series, Leigh now writes full-time. Her debut novel, Cut Short, was published in 2009 by No Exit Press in the UK, there are now 22 books in the series  featuring detective Geraldine Steel.  Leigh also has a  series featuring Lucy Hall. Her most recent series features Poppy the dog. Leigh Russell is married with two daughters and lives in Middlesex.

 leighrussell.co.uk/  

Linda Regan is the author of nine crime novels. She is also an actor. She holds a Masters degree in critical writing and journalism, and writes a regular column, including book reviews, for three magazines. She also presents the book-club spot on BBC Radio Kent. She is an avid reader and welcomes the chance to read new writers. 

  To read a review of Linda's most recent book
 The Burning Question
click on the title. 

www.lindareganonline.co.uk

Beattie Cavendish and the White Pearl Club by Mary-Jane Riley

Published by Allison and Busby,
21 August 2025.
ISBN 978-0-7490-3219-7 (HB)

London, 1948. It is the beginning of the cold war when nobody trusts anybody. Beattie is a feisty young woman. Having read languages at Cambridge and suffered enormous trauma and loss whilst working with the French resistance, she was never going to settle for an ordinary job. Working undercover for GCHQ suited her perfectly.

Her first assignment was to gain information about Ralph Bowen, the shadow foreign secretary, a powerful MP thought to have sympathies with the Russians. Beattie befriends Bowen’s son Ashley who introduces her to his sister, Felicia and her older, artist/playboy escort, Gerald Silver.  Before long Beattie is sipping cocktails in the Bowen’s posh drawing room and chatting with Ashley’s mother, Edwina. Whilst in the Bowens’ house, Beattie slips into a study where she discovers the young housekeeper, Sofia Huber, a German/Polish immigrant, with her throat cut. Somebody already hiding in the study attempts to strangle Beattie. Fortunately, a third person enters through the window and helps Beattie fight off her attacker.

The man who rescued Beattie was Patrick Corrigan, a one-eyed, highly decorated, war veteran with a gammy leg. He is now a private detective whom Edwina Bowen has employed to trail her husband. When Sofia’s murder is hushed up, Beattie ignores orders from her boss, Anthony Cooper, by joining forces with Patrick to investigate who had murdered Sofia and why.

Both Edwina and Ralph Bowen make visits to a church. Edwina plays the organ there and sings in the choir. Ralph is not religious, so why does he go? Ralph also frequents the disreputable White Pearl Club where Sofia used to work sometimes. Sofia’s brother Martin tells them his sister was writing a diary but he can’t find it now. To keep Martin safe, Beattie installs him at her parent’s house, but he is whisked away by strangers.

What is going on at the White Pearl Club? Who is watching its clients and why do seemingly harmless people get threatened or thrown in the Thames? Why does Beattie’s boss insist she concentrates on Ralph Bowen and ignore all the other odd things that worry her, and why is she being followed?

Overall, there is plenty to entertain and puzzle about in this story that is populated by a collection of well-drawn and varied characters. There are even hints of romance for Beattie. This, and future Beattie Cavendish stories would likely appeal to those who have enjoyed Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott series and Jim Kelly’s tales set in wartime Cambridge.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther.  

Mary-Jane Riley wrote her first story on her newly acquired blue Petite typewriter, when she was eight. When she grew up, she had to earn a living and became a BBC radio talk show presenter and journalist. She has covered many life-affirming stories, but also some of the darkest events of the past two decades. Then, in true journalistic style, she decided not to let the facts get in the way of a good story and got creative. She wrote for women's magazines and small presses. She formed WriteOutLoud with two writer friends to help charities get their message across using their life stories. Now she is writing crime thrillers drawing on her experiences in journalism.  

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.

‘The School Gates’ by A. A. Chaudhuri

Published by Canelo Hera,
5 June 2025.   
ISBN: 978-1-80436-983-8 (PB)

The premise is intriguing. Any woman who has escorted her child to the school gates for the first time can identify with Chaudhuri’s protagonist – Lola Martinez – an unusually attractive young woman who has moved to a leafy suburb to give Luca, the six-year-old son she adores, the best possible chance in life. Lola feels nervous and apprehensive on accompanying her boy to his first day at school, and with good reason. As she’d expected, she encounters ‘yummy mummies’ – wealthy and confident, well-dressed and apparently happily married – at the school gates of St. Xavier’s Primary who stoke her fears and insecurities, making her feel like an outsider who can never fit in. It doesn’t help that she’s a single mother on a limited income, or that she’s harboring dark secrets. To her surprise, Lola is accepted into one of the most exclusive of the cliques of school mums, but it turns out to be a mixed blessing.

The story is told in alternating timelines in the past and present and through a number of perspectives – through diaries, memories and text messages – with Lola dominating the narrative despite being killed a few pages into the book. The murder doesn’t come as a complete surprise. The reader has already learned from diary entries earlier in the text that Lola took a new name and moved to the new town with her parents to escape a sinister figure in her past who threatens her harm. The parents know nothing about Lola’s secret stalker and can’t really understand the name change. They guess she is concealing something from them but are unwilling to press her for an explanation. Living nearby, they can offer the necessary child support while she works at several part-time jobs: as a receptionist at a clinic and as a freelance copywriter.

Detective Inspector John Banner – a sensible, sympathetic and personable figure – makes his appearance when Lola’s body is discovered. Trying to piece together the events which led to her death, he quickly finds himself drawn into a maelstrom of strong characters: the five women who had accepted Lola into their clique, including Simone, Clarissa, Deirdre, Joy, and Bianca. On questioning Lola’s parents, he quickly realizes that her death was not a random killing. Luca was born out of wedlock, and the parents don’t know the real identity of his father. Interviewing the five women who had befriended Lola, he finds they are also all concealing dark secrets of their own and that some had reason to hate and fear the woman they’d welcomed into their inner circle. Banner understands he must uncover the secrets of Lola’s murky past to solve the crime.

Chaudhuri keeps up a cracking pace as she leads the reader down one twisty path after another. We are treated to glimpses of scenes of tragedy, betrayal and loss that can lurk behind the immaculately maintained gardens and homes of the rich and powerful, revealing, in the process, the motives that can drive an individual, however privileged, to that most extreme of acts: murder. It’s a whirlwind ride.
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Reviewer:  Wendy Jones Nakanishi/aka Lea O’Harra.

A.A. Chaudhuri is the author of The Scribe and The Abduction, and two psychological thrillers published by Hera, She’s Mine and The Loyal Friend. Alex recently signed with Hera for three more psychological thrillers; The Final Party will be published in May 2023. After gaining a degree in History at UCL, Alex trained as a solicitor and worked for several City law firms before turning to thriller writing. She lives in Surrey with her family.  

https://aachaudhuri.com/  

Lea O’Harra.  An American by birth, did her postgraduate work in Britain – an MA in Lancaster and a doctorate at Edinburgh – and worked full-time for 36 years at a Japanese university. Since retiring in March 2020, she has spent part of each year in Lancaster and part in Takamatsu on Shikoku Island, her second home, with occasional visits to the States to see family and friends. An avid reader of crime fiction since childhood, as a university professor she wrote academic articles on it as a literary genre and then decided to try her hand at composing such stories herself, publishing the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue mystery series’ comprising three murder mysteries set in rural, contemporary Japan. She has also published two standalone crime fiction novels.

‘Deadly Remains’ by Kate Ellis

Published by Constable,
7 August 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-349-44293-8 (HB)

The discovery of a body sends DI Wesley Peterson to the picturesque village of Little Rockingham in South Devon. The body is identified as Barry Brown, a celebrity ghost writer. The cottage had been ransacked, and his laptop is missing.  However, the sight of a Rolex watch clearly on view suggests to Wesley that the killing is not motivated by theft but may most probably lie in his work. 

Wesley’s son Michael is now thirteen and has kept quiet to his classmates about his decision to take part in an archaeological dig over the summer vacation. It’s bad enough having a father who is a police inspector, without uncle Dr Neil Watson, an unconventional Indiana Jones figure as well. When he arrives at the dig, Neil gives a speech about the World War Two plane, a Lysander that had crashed there in September 1943. The pilot had escaped but later died. As Neil talks Michael studies his fellow diggers. As well as the students there were members of the archaeology society, who were mostly in their retirement years. Also, some well-built men who he guessed were former soldiers.  Standing a little way from the rest was an elderly man wearing an old beige bucket hat. Micheal looked away, he looked the kind of man his parents used to warn him against when he was younger.

As with previous books interspersed with Wesley’s investigation there are several diary entries dating from May 1943 from the diary of Flight Officer John Carmody who flies in an unmarked black plane back and forth dropping and collecting secret agents in an isolated French field.  In a later entry he records that only half of them seem to make a return journey and often wonders what happens to them. There are six diary entries from John Carmody, and I found them all very moving. Also, during that period there are entries from the diary of young Edith Tallow whose husband has turned out not to be the nice man she thought she had married.

When DCI Gerry Heffernan and Wesley attend the postmortem, they discover that it possibly wasn’t the head wound that killed Barry Brown, more likely poison but they won’t know for sure until the toxicology results come through.

 As frequently happens at digs, people turn up interested to know what’s happening, one such is Ralph Gornay, complete with silk cravat and silver-topped walking cane. Neil remembers him from the village meeting expressing it disrespectful to dig up a crashed plane. And Michael is again aware that standing a little way off is the man in the bucket hat.  Michael mentions it to Neil and a short walk in his direction takes them to a place where someone has been amateurly digging. For what?  Neil is not happy. Even less so when human bones are discovered.

As Wesley looks deeper into the death of Barry Brown it becomes clear from the many empty files at Barry’s house that someone didn't want the book he was writing to be written. The book he was writing was linked to the crashed plane, and the possibility that the pilot wasn’t the only one on the plane when it crashed.

As Wesley continues to investigate, he discovers a sinister history surrounding the moor and the village of Moor Barton.  Who was the passenger and what happened to them?

On the personal front, one of the girls with the group of students at the dig introduces herself to Michael . ‘I’m Harriet’. Come and join us she says.  And DS Rachel Tracey, with her police career, a farm to help run and a baby who is close to celebrating his first birthday, is not getting out and about as much as she used to. Gerry aware of her circumstances is trying to make it easy for her and consequently instead of being out interviewing people with Wesley she is in the office most of the time. Not what Rachel wants.  And let’s not forget, Della, Pam’s mother., she of the weird crazes and arty clothes that prove so embarrassing to her teenage grandson, and Wesley.

This intriguing, ingeniously plotted mystery gripped me from start to finish. A real page turner. Most highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Kate Ellis was born in Liverpool and she studied drama in Manchester. She worked in teaching, marketing and accountancy before first enjoying writing success as a winner of the North-West Playwrights competition. Crime and mystery stories have always fascinated her, as have medieval history and archaeology which she likes to incorporate in her books. She is married with two grown up sons and she lives in North Cheshire, England, with her husband.  Kate's novels feature archaeology graduate Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson who fights crime in South Devon.  Each story combines an intriguing contemporary murder mystery with a parallel historical case. She has also written five books in the spooky Joe Plantagenet series set up in North Yorkshire as well as many short stories for crime fiction anthologies and magazines. Kate was elected a member of The Detection Club in 2014. She is a member of the Crime Writers Association and Murder Squad, and Mystery People. 

www.kateellis.co.uk