It Ends Here by Heidi Perks is a twisty puzzle to-be-solved. It’s centred around a hostage situation in a coffee shop. Rather than understanding what the hostages are going through we spend time with their loved ones, as well as a police officer (DI Aaron Field) working the case. More interestingly though, our final narrator is – in fact – the person in the cafe holding the gun on fellow early morning coffee-lovers.
I received The Reckoning by Vikki Petraitis for review a while ago and dived on in shortly after it arrived. It was only then I realised I’d not read the second in the series featuring Detective Antigone Pollard and the opening pages made it seem like I’d missed some juicy stuff. So I put it aside with the intention of getting hold of book two. I’d enjoyed book one and was reminded how much I liked Antigone the first time I was introduced… but then time passed and life happened (my mum broke her hip!) and all of my writing and reading disappeared into the ether. When I finally found time nothing else on my reading list tempted me, so I returned to Deception Bay despite having missed some of the more recent happenings.
Framed in Death by JD Robb was a score from a local second hand book store. Although I was a religious reader of the series I haven’t received a lot of recent In Death books for review so my reading (from book 53 and on) has been a bit hit and miss. So I was surprised to stumble over Robb’s very-recent 2025 offering. I always find it fascinating what Robb (Nora Roberts) envisages for our future… some of the books’ inclusions have already come to life (AI etc) but others (flying cars, off-planet prisons)… not yet. Though of course we do have 30+ years to catch up.
What the Night Brings by Mark Billingham is the 19th in the series featuring Detective Tom Thorne (and Nicola Tanner). I was a latecomer to the series, kicking off with book #13 in 2015. I was relieved a few books ago when Tom broke up with this then girlfriend and fellow cop Helen and moved on with a new love interest. For reasons I now cannot remember I was not a fan of Helen. And wouldn’t you know it… he’s back with Helen here. A reunion I somehow did not share in my review of book #18 The Murder Book, though I didn’t bemoan the fact so maybe whatever irked me about her has dissipated a little. She’s left the police now so perhaps the career move has made her less-irksome in my eyes.
I very much enjoyed We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter so was even happier when I discovered it’s actually labelled North Falls #1. Slaughter does such a great job developing the characters and their lives, so it makes complete sense not to waste fabulously rounded creations on just one book. In fact, part-way through the novel it felt a bit like I was really embedded in the lives of the Clifton family and community of North Falls as if we’d been hanging out for years. It meant I was somewhat surprised when just over a third of the way through I discovered the unfolding plot (where I was happily ensconced) had been in the past and we move forward twelve years into the present.
The White Crow by Michael Robotham is the second in the Philomena McCarthy series, featuring the young cop from a family known to dabble in organised crime. Again it’s the antics of her father and uncles that put her career in jeopardy but at the same time, when the so-called rubber hits the road, Edward McCarthy will always put his daughter ahead of his own safety and any money to be made from nefarious means. And I must confess I’m a sucker for soft-hearted bad-guys.
The Unquiet Grave by Dervla McTiernan sees the return of detective Cormac Reilly along with his partner Peter Fisher, who I recall featured prominently in the last book in the series The Good Turn. Here McTiernan again throws in several plots for the price of one, mostly unconnected but all as intriguing as the main investigation involving a body in a bog. And no, NOT a typo with me erroneously typing BOG instead of BAG, and… also not something I have the chance to say often! (Also googles ‘bog’ to check exactly what it means.)
One of the things I really liked about her debut novel, The Fall Between was that it reminded me that most crimes are committed by those who are desperate or stupid rather than psychotic or plain evil. Burning Mountain by Darcy Tindale, the second in her series featuring Detective Rebecca Giles, is very much the same. It’s centred around an eighteen year old mystery—the disappearance of a teenage boy—but features those involved in the past and present and reminds us that mistakes or idiotic actions can have unexpected, and dire, repercussions.