Peter Grainger is an under-appreciated, great writer.

Still — I couldn’t get through the second book in this series ➙ One-way Ticket.

Arcadia the 3rd book in the Willows and Lane series.

They are an unlikely couple of detectives:

Emily Willows is middle-aged, widowed, wealthy, and bored.

Summer Lane is a new neighbour. It turns out she’s a skilled former police D.I. — but wants to remain anonymous, if possible.

Emily wants to form a Detective Agency with Summer, … who is reluctant.

In this book they are somehow convinced to investigate the disappearance (?) of a wealthy couple’s daughter. She’s reportedly out of communication in an eco community on a Welsh island.

An audio only original novella by an excellent writer.

It’s 1927, and the most devastating flood in American history has swelled the Mississippi River to a width of eighty miles.

In an attempt to save a family trapped by the rising water, four men in a tiny rowboat battle the treacherous flow: three are convicts, on loan from the local prison and pressed into service; the fourth, the leader of the team, is driven by his own hidden motives.

But to their surprise upon arrival at Ballymore, an ancestral home protected by a high, circular levee, not everyone in the family feels the need to be saved.

Pride, greed, loyalty, and even love create their own complex currents behind the massive wall.

As the threat from the flood increases and time ticks away, the crew and the family must decide on a course of action, and a desperate plan is hatched to save the weakening levee and all it was built to protect.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Dervla McTiernan (born c.1977) is an Irish crime novelist.

She was a practicing lawyer before giving writing a go.

The Ruin (2018) is her debut novel.  A critically acclaimed international bestseller. It won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, the Davitt Award for Best Adult Fiction and the Barry Award for Best Original Paperback, and was shortlisted for numerous other prizes.

Cormac Reilly is about to reopen the case that took him twenty years to forget …

Responding to a call that took him to a decrepit country house, young Garda Cormac Reilly found two silent, neglected children – fifteen-year-old Maude and five-year-old Jack. Their mother lay dead upstairs.

Since then Cormac’s had twenty high-flying years working as a detective in Dublin, and he’s come back to Galway for reasons of his own. As he struggles to navigate the politics of a new police station, Maude and Jack return to haunt him. …

Betrayal is at the heart of this unsettling small-town noir and the Ireland it portrays. In a country where the written law isn’t the only one, The Ruin asks who will protect you when the authorities can’t – or won’t.

dervlamctiernan.com

Personally, I felt the story telling was not great. Too many peripheral characters. Too slow.

Burial Hour (2017) is 13th in the Lincoln Rhyme series.

And it’s as diabolical and intricate as any.

As usual, it’s the bad guy that’s most intriguing. The Composer.

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called in to investigate a bizarre murder in NY City. But Composer escapes and flees to Italy.

Lincoln and Amelia were finally planning to get married. But instead of a honeymoon, they hopped on a private jet to continue the pursuit.

They enlist the assistance of an an endearing Italian Forestry Services officer, Ercole Benelli, to help translate and navigate the Italian police system.

Another great book.

The 3rd in an entertaining series where the author himself is in the story, a dim bulb Watson to investigator Daniel Hawthorne — who’s a gruff, modern Sherlock.

It was a goal to have Horowitz the “the most stupid person in the book“. 😀

In this one Horowitz convinces Hawthorn to join him at a book festival on tiny Alderney island, just three miles long and a mile and a half wide.

… Alderney is in turmoil over a planned power line that will cut through it, desecrating a war cemetery and turning neighbour against neighbour.

The visiting authors – including a blind medium, a French performance poet and a celebrity chef – seem to be harbouring any number of unpleasant secrets.

When the festival’s wealthy sponsor is found brutally killed, Alderney goes into lockdown and Hawthorne knows that he doesn’t have to look too far for suspects.

There’s no escape. The killer is still on the island. And there’s about to be a second death…

anthonyhorowitz.com

Kids invited over 20 authors to their actual literary festival — and none responded aside from Horowitz. That visit inspired this book.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Still good — but I found this to be the weakest of the three in the trilogy.

Horowitz claims there will only be 3 books. But you never know.

I enjoyed the first book in the P.T. Marsh series — The Good Detective — and enjoyed #2, as well.

A hard-nosed real estate baron is dead, and detectives P.T. Marsh and Remy Morgan learn there’s a long list of suspects.

Mason Falls, Georgia, may be a small town, but Ennis Fultz had filled it with professional rivals, angry neighbors, and a wronged ex-wife.

And when Marsh realizes that this potential murder might be the least of his troubles, he begins to see what happens when ordinary people become capable of evil. …

Amazon

I love surprising plot twists. And John McMahon delivers more twists and turns than any other author I can recall.

HIGHLY recommended.

I finally got around to trying one of the John Connolly novels.

Best known for his series of novels starring private detective Charlie Parker.

The Wolf in Winter (2014) is 13th in the series.

Quite good.

It reminded me a bit of a Stephen King plot.

The community of Prosperous, Maine has always thrived when others have suffered. Its inhabitants are wealthy, its children’s future secure. It shuns outsiders. It guards its own. And at the heart of Prosperous lies the ruins of an ancient church, transported stone by stone from England centuries earlier by the founders of the town . . .

But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator Charlie Parker to Prosperous. …

johnconnollybooks.com

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Fugitive (2015)
The Scandal (2016)
The Accomplice (2019)

I enjoyed the first 4 books much more than the final three. Greatly amused by a 13-year-old boy who considers himself a Kid Lawyer.

5th in the series is The Fugitive. And it’s pretty good, actually.

On a Washington D.C school trip Theo spots Pete Duffy who had skipped town after his trial for murder ended in mistrial.

The Scandal was a dull plot concerning teachers manipulating exam scores to raise average grades for their school. Some kind of argument against standardized testing.

Last is The Accomplice. Didn’t really work for me.

The Skin Collector (2014) is 11th in the series. And very good, as always.

A new type of serial killer is stalking the streets of New York …

… The Skin Collector: a tattooist with a chamber of torture hidden deep underground. But instead of using ink to create each masterpiece, the artist uses a lethal poison which will render targets dead before they can even entertain the prospect of escape . . .

Drafted in to investigate, NYPD detective Lincoln Rhyme and his associate Amelia Sachs have little to go on but a series of cryptic messages left etched into the skin of the deceased. …

jefferydeaver.com

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.