The 2021 Lincoln Rhyme book is excellent, as are they all. It’s the most recent, as I post.

Another roller coaster of a plot with multiple surprise endings.

A woman awakes in the morning to find that someone has picked her apartment’s apparently impregnable door lock and, terrifyingly, rearranged personal items, even sitting beside her while she slept.

The intrusion, the police learn, is a message to the entire city of carnage and death to come.

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are brought in to investigate and soon learn that the brilliant, sociopathic intruder, who calls himself “The Locksmith,” can break through any lock or security system ever devised. …

jefferydeaver.com

The Locksmith is a terrific bad guy. AND there is a second villain in this book — an extreme charismatic blogger who’s somehow connected.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Grainger self-publishes. Kindle and Audio only, as I post.

I highly recommend the DC Smith Investigation Series;

• Book 1: An Accidental Death: A DC Smith Investigation

• Book 2: But for the Grace: A DC Smith Investigation

• Book 3: Luck and Judgement: A DC Smith Investigation

• Book 4: Persons of Interest: A DC Smith Investigation

• Book 5: In This Bright Future: A DC Smith Investigation

• Book 6: The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation

Those are the first six of 10 up to 2023. Grainger recommends you read them in series as the characters evolve. Smith keeps trying to retire.

DC Smith is one of my favourite characters in fiction. Super competent. Very funny. Dry British humour.

These are police procedurals with no profanity, sex, nor much violence.

In the peace and tranquillity of the woods at Pinehills on a Saturday afternoon, a mobile phone begins to ring. The phone belongs to DC Smith and it isn’t unusual that the call is from Kings Lake Central police station; what is unusual is the fact that he seems to be the subject of an investigation rather than taking part in one.

What can the links be between a prisoner’s violent death in another county, the disappearance of two teenagers and the highest profile case in Kings Lake for many years?

As Smith and his team begin to untangle the threads, one thing becomes clear – they are dealing with some of the most dangerous people that they have yet encountered.

Amazon

The Bat (Norwegian: Flaggermusmannen, “Bat Man”) is a 1997 crime novel by Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø, the first in the Harry Hole series.

I’ve tried a number of Nesbø books now — but just can’t get into them.

Norwegian police officer Harry Hole — (an alcoholic) — is sent to Sydney, Australia to serve as an attaché for the Australian police’s investigation into the murder of a young female Norwegian girl …

Hole is assisted by Aboriginal colleague Andrew Kensington; together they find out that they are dealing with a serial killer who strangles blonde women. …

The Bat was written eight years before The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

As I’m planning to head back to Norway this summer, I thought I’d get into this series.

And the book is quite good, as well.

It does make me wonder what’s going to happen with Harry in future.

Click PLAY or watch an interview with the author on YouTube.

Another excellent Deaver book (2018). Plenty of surprises.

In the early hours of a quiet, weekend morning in Manhattan’s Diamond District, a brutal triple murder shocks the city. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs quickly take the case.

Curiously, the killer has left behind a half-million dollars’ worth of gems at the murder scene, a jewelry store on 47th street. As more crimes follow, it becomes clear that the killer’s target is not gems, but engaged couples themselves. …

… the Promiser makes a dangerous mistake: leaving behind an innocent witness, Vimal Lahori, a talented young diamond cutter, who can help Rhyme and Sachs blow the lid off the case.

They must track down Vimal before the killer can correct his fatal error. …

jefferydeaver.com

The life story of a loveable jewel thief.

… Who is Nora Roberts?

Now 70-years-old and still publishing 4 books every year?

She writes one novel at a time. Eight hours / day, every day.

And most are huge books like Nightwork (2022). Sprawling. Emotional. Well researched.

Yes, this one is a bit of a romance novel. But Roberts’ storytelling is on par with the best: Stephen King, James Michener, John Grisham, Jeffrey Archer. Authors who keep things moving while making you care about the fictional characters.

Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother’s head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash.

When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago—but kept up his nightwork, developing into a master thief with a code of honor and an expertise in not attracting attention? … Or getting attached.

Until he meets Miranda Emerson, and the powerful bond between them upends all his rules.

But along the way, Booth has made some dangerous associations, including the ruthless Carter LaPorte, who sees Booth as a tool he controls for his own profit. Knowing LaPorte will leverage any personal connection, Booth abandons Miranda for her own safety—cruelly, with no explanation—and disappears.

But the bond between Miranda and Booth is too strong, pulling them inexorably back together. Now Booth must face LaPorte, to truly free himself and Miranda once and for all.

fantasticfiction.com

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.