Review: DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN, Peter Lovesey

• first published in Great Britain in 2015 by Sphere
• ISBN 978-0-7515-5887-6
• 377 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

A nightmare discovery in the boot of a stolen BMW plunges car thief Danny Stapleton into the worst trouble of his life. What links his misfortune to the mysterious disappearance of an art teacher at a private school for girls in Chichester?

Orders from above push Peter Diamond of Bath CID into investigating a police corruption case in the Chichester force, and he soon finds himself reluctantly dealing with spirited schoolgirls, eccentric artists and his formidable old colleague, Hen Mallin.

My Take

Peter Diamond's boss Georgina Dallymore has been asked by colleague Archie Hahn to investigate corruption charges against one of his DCIs. Hen Mallin has already been suspended and Hahn wants to know what he should do next. He is expecting Dallymore to really rubber stamp his decision at the same time as making what appears to be an impartial investigation.

Georgina takes Peter Diamond to Chichester with her to assist in the investigation. She really likes the sound of Dallymore & Diamond, detectives, but she lives in false hope if she thinks she can control Peter Diamond. What she doesn't realise is how he manipulates her.  Instead of focussing on Mallin's lapse Peter tries to work out how the body came to be in the boot of the BMW and that leads him to the real cause of why Hen Mallin has been suspended.

There are lots of tongue-in-cheek moments in this novel which made it a delight to read. Even the title is tarred with an ironic brush.

And I see there is another Peter Diamond title to look for this year.

My rating: 4.7


I've also read
MAD HATTER'S HOLIDAY
SKELETON HILL
THE REAPER
5.0, STAGESTRUCK
5.0, COP TO CORPSE
4.5, THE HEADHUNTERS
4.8, THE TOOTH TATTOO

The Peter Diamond series (Fantastic Fiction)
1. The Last Detective (1991)
2. Diamond Solitaire (1992)
3. The Summons (1995)
4. Bloodhounds (1996)
5. Upon A Dark Night (1997)
6. The Vault (1999)
7. Diamond Dust (2002)
8. The House Sitter (2003)
9. The Secret Hangman (2007)
10. Skeleton Hill (2009)
11. Stagestruck (2011)
12. Cop to Corpse (2012)
13. The Tooth Tattoo (2013)
14. The Stone Wife (2014)
15. Down Among the Dead Men (2015)
16. Another One Goes Tonight (2016)
 
Inspector Hen Mallin Investigation
1. The Circle (2005)
2. The Headhunters (2008) 

Review: MISSING, Melanie Casey

• first published in 2016 by Pantera Press Australia
• source: review copy from publisher
• ISBN 978-1-921997-53-2
• 374 pages
• #3 in Cass Lehmann series
• Also available for Kindle from Amazon

Synopsis (publisher)

On any night, 1 person in 200 is homeless …

Someone is targeting Adelaide’s homeless. Men are disappearing off the streets, and body parts are turning up in a local dump.

Still haunted by her last run-in with a serial killer, Cass Lehman is trying hard to focus on the future. That’s not easy when she has the ‘gift’ of retrocognition … the ability to spontaneously re-live the last minutes of a person’s life.

Cass and Detective Ed Dyson are now trying to make a normal home together, but when she gets entangled in Ed’s latest case things are far from normal.

A twisted tale of love, desperation and murder ... When the psychic meets the psychotic, who will come out unscathed?

My take

Another novel set in Adelaide! The city is recognisable and this novel clings to the reputation that strange and gruesome murders occur in this "City of Churches".

I'm not quite sure how I have missed seeing earlier novels by this author. So I really read this as a stand alone and it worked quite well. There was enough back story for me to be able to make sense of what had happened in the past, and in previous stories.

Readers are required to suspend their disbelief in paranormal powers because Cass Lehman's matrilinear line all have "powers" of a sort. Cass has apparently used hers in the past to assist the police. The experiences are draining ones for her, and sometimes occur unpredictably.

This is a fairly grisly tale, with a number of bags of body parts being found in a dump at McLaren Vale, the wine growing district south of Adelaide. The evidence begins to point strongly to one person as the perpetrator but it is still up to Cass and Ed to prove the case.

A good read, with some fine bits of suspense.

My rating: 4.5

About the author

Melanie Casey was born and lives in South Australia with her two young children and her husband (who didn’t know he was marrying a writer when he walked down the aisle).

After studying English Literature and Classical Studies, Melanie shifted to Law, and now works in government.

A chance meeting with a highschool English teacher in the supermarket made Melanie realise that she should be doing what she’d always loved, writing! Another period of study, this time at the Professional Writing School of Adelaide’s College of the Arts ensued, helping Melanie acquire the skills she needed to put her plan into action.

Hindsight is her debut novel, the first in a crime trilogy featuring Cass Lehman and Detective Ed Dyson. The second in the series, Craven, was released in 2014. The third installment, Missing, was released in 2016.

Review: TWISTER, Jane Woodham

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 1045 KB
• Print Length: 293 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Rosa Mira Books (December 10, 2015)
• Publication Date: December 10, 2015
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0197IIIUE
• source: review copy from the publisher 

 Synopsis (publisher)


Dunedin, in the grip of an unseasonal flu, is a city under siege. Then, after five damaging days of rain, a twister rips through, exposing the body of a missing schoolgirl in Ross Creek.

Detective Senior Sergeant Leo Judd is the only one who can lead the investigation despite unresolved sorrow over the disappearance of his own daughter nine years earlier.

Sultry weather broods over the beleaguered city as suspects are sifted and pressure mounts for Leo to solve the crime. Meanwhile, his wife Kate tries to summon the courage to tell him the secrets she’s nursed for too long — including one about the disappearance of their beloved Beth.

My Take

In late February Dunedin has a flu epidemic, but also unusually muggy heat, followed by 5 days of torrential rain. And finally comes the twister, a black funnel churning in from the sea and smashing into the town. The weather brings to the surface of the local creek the body of a teenage girl who has been missing for just a few days. The chief investigator in the Wenlock case has succumbed to the flu and so the case is handed over to DSS Leo Judd. And the case brings with it the memory of his own daughter who went missing nine years earlier. Is Leo the best person for the job? That is what the local paper asks.

On the surface this is a police procedural but there is a lot going on. In the nine years since Beth disappeared Leo Judd's marriage has become increasingly sterile and his wife Kate is contemplating leaving him. Leo is unaware of this but doesn't know what to do to improve things anyway.
 
There are several leads in the Tracey Wenlock case and as they are being investigated another girl disappears. Judd's investigation keeps pointing to the same person as being involved but he seems to be well alibied.

This novel is an impressive debut by a new New Zealand author. I hope we see more of her, but it is a little difficult to see this one as the beginning of a series.

My rating: 4.8

About the author
Jane Woodham moved in 1998 from London to Dunedin, New Zealand, where she has been writing for the past nine years. Jane’s work has twice been shortlisted for the BNZ Literary Awards and has been published in New Zealand and the UK.
A New Zealand Society of Authors mentorship in 2014 allowed Jane to work with crime writer Paddy Richardson on the final draft of Twister, her first novel.
Some events in Twister occur around the Dunedin Hot Salt Water Pool, where Jane is a regular swimmer. She is also a keen gardener, cook and fair-weather surfer.

Review: Agatha Christie: THE LOST PLAYS - Audio book

• source: Audible
• Narrated by: full cast, Ivan Brandt, Richard Williams
• Length: 2 hrs and 30 mins 
• Radio/TV Program

Synopsis (Audible) 

A triple bill of archive BBC radio dramas, believed lost for over half a century and only recently rediscovered. "Butter in a Lordly Dish", written specially for radio in 1948, features Richard Williams as Sir Luke Enderby KC, whose infidelities lead him into trouble when he goes to meet his latest flame.

Williams also stars as Hercule Poirot in "Murder in the Mews", a 1955 adaptation of a short story. A young woman is found dead in her flat the day after Guy Fawkes night. Did she die by her own hand or someone else's?

In "Personal Call", also written specially for radio by Agatha Christie, a disturbing telephone call from a woman named Fay has consequences for both Richard Brent and his wife, Pam. This 1960 production stars Ivan Brandt and Barbara Lott.

My Take

I had already read Murder in the Mews as a short story, but had never heard of the other two plays. In both cases the plot was a predictable, although Personal Call has elements of the paranormal about it. These BBC radio dramas were aimed at 30 minute time slots.

This audio book also contains an interview with Agatha Christie about her writing strategies, and then another with one of the cast of The Mouse Trap.

I think what was unusual about this particular production is that two of the plays were actually written by Christie as plays, not short stories. Other BBC radio plays were actually dramatisations, not by Christie herself, of short stories. In the interview she says that she enjoyed writing plays, and disliked trying to dramatise her short stories.

My rating: 4.0

I listened to these in conjunction with the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. 

Review: THE SANTA KLAUS MURDER, Mavis Doriel Hay - audio book

• Narrated by: Gordon Griffin, Anne Dover
• Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins 
• Unabridged Audiobook


Release Date:11-25-15
first published 1936

Publisher: Soundings
Available from Audible

Synopsis (Audible) 

Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered - by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus - with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos.

Nearly everybody stands to reap some sort of benefit from his death excepting Santa Klaus, the one person who seems to have had every opportunity to fire the shot. Various members of the family have their private suspicions about the murderer, and the Chief Constable of Haulmshire wishes before long that he understood them better.

In the midst of mistrust, suspicion and hatred, it emerges that there was not one Santa Klaus but two.

My Take

A variant on a closed room murder mystery, the story is told from the point of view of a number of characters, but principally from that of the Chief Constable, a friend of the family, who seems determined to leave no investigative stone unturned. The result is a rather pedantic and plodding tale where this reader at least kept wondering when it was all going to finish. I'd come to my conclusion long before the Colonel had come to his, but his was no intuitive leap. He wanted every i dotted and every t crossed. He wasn't helped by the fact that very few of the family in residence for Christmas actually told the truth.

My Rating: 3.7


I've also read
4.0, MURDER UNDERGROUND

About the author
Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979) was a novelist of the golden age of British crime fiction. Her three detective novels were published in the 1930s and are now rare and highly collectable books. She was an expert on rural handicraft and wrote several books on the subject. 


 

Review: LONDON'S GLORY, Christopher Fowler

Subtitle: THE LOST CASES OF BRYANT & MAY & THE PECULIAR CRIMES UNIT

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• to be published March 29, 2016
• source: made available as an ARC through NetGalley by Random House Publishing Group - Alibi
• ISBN 9781101968871

Synopsis (NetGalley)

Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit are London's craftiest and bravest detectives—and there's no better pair to solve the city's most confounding crimes. In this riveting eBook collection of mystery short stories, available together for the first time, Christopher Fowler takes Bryant and May on a series of twisting adventures and brings readers behind the scenes of his beloved novels.

Includes a preview of Christopher Fowler's new Peculiar Crimes Unit mystery, Bryant & May and the Burning Man!

In “Bryant & May in the Field,” a woman is found with her throat slashed in a snowy park, yet the killer managed to escape without leaving any footprints. In “Bryant & May and the Nameless Woman,” a businessman drowns in the pool of a posh club, and the only suspect is a young woman who remains almost too calm during questioning. And in “Bryant & May Ahoy!” the pair go on holiday on a friend's yacht in Turkey, but Bryant realizes there's something fishy about their fellow passengers. From London's grandest mansions to its darkest corners, from the Christmas department of Selfridges to a sinister traveling sideshow, there's no scene too strange for the Peculiar Crimes Unit and the indefatigable detectives at its helm. 

My take

Followers of the Bryant & May series will enjoy not only these rather quirky short stories but also Christopher Fowler's introduction in which he talks about why crime fiction remains popular. In the UK crime fiction accounts for more than a third of all fiction published. He comments though that many books were "interchangeable" and lacking in originality. He discusses what he considers were the good points of Golden Age crime fiction. He gives insights into the creation of the Bryant & May series and the projects he set himself in the writing of each novel. At the end of the book we are treated to a synopsis of each of the series' titles, including the backstory that led to its creation.

The central focus of this book is 11 very individual, sometimes quirky, short stories drawn from the whole span of the sleuths' careers. Each story is preceded by a summary of why the story was written or what Fowler was trying to do. Some of the stories are very good but some challenge the bounds of credibility.

In all though, a "must have" book which gives a lot of interesting back ground material for followers of this series.

My rating:  4.4

I've also read

THE VICTORIA VANISHES
4.6, TEN-SECOND STAIRCASE
4.5, BRYANT & MAY AND THE INVISIBLE CODE
4.7, FULL DARK HOUSE
4.8, THE WHITE CORRIDOR
4.7, THE BURNING MAN - #12
4.8, BRYANT & MAY: THE BLEEDING HEART- #11

And so the list grows

TBRN - To Be Read Next - lists to give me direction
but I often ignore them :-)

I am never short of reading but the list below makes me feel a bit like a kleptomaniac! Anybody want to lend me a deserted island/

Library Book

• DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN, Peter Lovesey

from Net Galley

• MURDER AND OTHER UNNATURAL DISASTERS, Lida Sideris
• KILLING ADONIS, Josh Donellan
• KING MAYBE, Tim Hallinan
• NO FREE MAN, Graham Potts
• LONDON'S GLORY, Christopher Fowler
• THE BIG BRUSH OFF, Michael Murphy
• PAINTED BLACK, Greg Kihn
• The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O'Keeffe, J. Michael Orenduff

from my TBR

• DIE WITH ME, Elena Forbes

audio books on the go

• THE SANTA KLAUS MURDER, Muriel Doriel Hoy
• MYSTERY IN WHITE, J. Jefferson Farjeon

from my Kindle

• THE TRIGGER, L. J. Sellers
• SOURDOUGH WARS, Julie Smith
• ON THE LIP OF A LION, Roy Jenner
• KILLER'S ISLAND, Anna Jannson
• MIDNIGHT SUN, Jo Nesbo
• THE BLACK PILL, Gino Cox
• THE DYNAMITE ROOM, Jason Hewitt
• THE RESISTANCE MAN, Martin Walker
• THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB, David Lagercrantz
• THE BLACKMAIL BLEND, Livia Day
• IT HAPPENED IN EGYPT, Charles Norris Williams

review books

• BROKEN ANGELS, Russell Heath
• THE SECRET ARTS, Azmar Dar
• THE MIDNIGHT WATCH, David Dyer
• MISSING, Melanie Casey
• THE FALLING DETECTIVE, Christopher Carlsson
• TWISTER, Jane Woodham
• IN THE DARK, Chris Patchell
• LOST IN NEW YORK, J.J. Henderson
• THE GOLDILOCKS PLANET, Paula Bernstein
• GRAVEYARD OF THE ATLANTIC, Helen Goltz
• ONE TOO MANY, Maureen Jennings
• THE ABRUPT BUSINESS OF DYING, Paul Hardisty
• THE FOURTH REICH, Helen Goltz
• DEATH BY DISGUISE,, Helen Goltz