Last year I had a tie for my favourite book of the year – Clare Mackintosh’s brilliant debut I Let You Go (now nominated for the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year) and Sharon Bolton’s Little Black Lies, a superb psychological thriller set in the Falkland Islands…
Pretty Is
19 January 2016 by Leave a Comment
There’s something visceral and terrifying about the thought of children being kidnapped. As a child I remember being scared of the bogeyman who would take me away from my family and the first news stories I remember are of girls my own age going missing from home…
The Silent Dead
7 December 2015 by Leave a Comment
Last year I reviewed Claire McGowan’s The Dead Ground, the second in her Paula Maguire series about a forensic pathologist who returns to Northern Ireland from London and works with a Missing Person’s Unit to solve crimes. I enjoyed The Dead Ground…
The 3rd Woman
9 November 2015 by 2 Comments
Since 2006 Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland has been publishing thriller novels under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, using the false name to distinguish his fiction work from his journalism. I read a couple of the Bourne books…
A Killing Moon
7 August 2015 by Leave a Comment
There are some cities in the UK which make perfect settings for gritty crime thrillers – Edinburgh with its dark closes, Belfast and its sectarian divide and troubled past, my home town of Glasgow with its (now mostly outdated) reputation for hardmen fighting deprivation…
Top Ten: 2015 Reads (So far…)
30 June 2015 by 2 Comments
We’re now half-way through the year and time to have a look back at some of the great books I’ve read this year. I’ve been very lucky – so far the lowest rating I’ve given a book is 3/5 so it’s definitely been a success. About half of the books I’ve read have been 2015 releases…
Little Black Lies
29 June 2015 by Leave a Comment
Can you imagine taking the life of another person? Would you have the ability to deliberately kill someone? That’s the question that Catrin Quinn, one of the three main characters of Sharon Bolton’s Little Black Lies, asks herself on the very first page…
Top Ten: Paperback Summer Choices
18 May 2015 by 2 Comments
In a rare moment of enthusiasm I signed up to the #SummerPaperback challenge being hosted by Sophie at Reviewed the Book. The idea is simple and based on the fact that we all have massive To Be Read piles and never seem to get round to reading the books that are growing out of their space on the bookshelves…
Season to Taste
12 March 2015 by Leave a Comment
Every now and then I receive a book that makes me throw my review schedule out of the window and read it straight away rather than in strict order. The concept will just grab me and I’ll need to know more. Natalie Young’s Season to Taste: or How to Eat Your Husband was one such book…
Keep Quiet
20 November 2014 by Leave a Comment
How do parents protect their children when an innocent mistake could ruin their whole life? Even when that mistake has horrific consequences which are deserving of punishment? That’s the question at the heart of Lisa Scottoline’s new book Keep Quiet..