I reviewed Alex Marwood’s The Killer Next Door just over a year ago (and enjoyed it) but the English journalist (who writes under a pseudonym) is best known from her debut novel, Wicked Girls… which I must get to at some point.
Her latest, The Darkest Secret, centres around the disappearance of a child and I must admit the 2007 case of 3yr old Madeleine McCann–who disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment while her parents dined nearby—came to mind as I tore through this novel.
It’d been a while between Tony Hill / Carol Jordan drinks for me on the book front when Val McDermid’s 9th novel in the series arrived in my letterbox.
I’m a huge fan of the series and was a lover of the TV show based on the series (though vaguely recall losing interest for some reason which now alludes me. Was there a change of characters? Or perhaps it just finished?). Anyhoo… I excitedly tuned in for the latest instalment and was (again) forced to change dinner plans so I could read the book in a night!
I really enjoyed Michael Robotham’s 2014 stand-alone thriller, Life or Death. I admitted at the time I had been struggling with his series featuring psychologist Joe O’Loughlin, so the change gave me the respite I was looking for.
I didn’t find O’Loughlin as unlikeable as Nicci French’s Frieda Klein, but I really wasn’t really engaging with his character and couldn’t get a handle on who he was.
However Robotham’s latest (and the eighth in the Joe O’Loughlin series), Close Your Eyes sees a return to the Joe I thought I once knew.
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