John Cleal


Books reviewed by John Cleal

Eight Detectives

A book published privately more than 30 years ago could contain clues to a real murder in its selection of short stories. An ambitious editor confronts its author on his remote Mediterranean hideaway.

Reviewed on 12 November 2022 by John Cleal

The Red Monarch

The Brontë sisters, together with their wastrel brother, travel to the slums of London to save the life of Anne’s former pupil, her husband and her unborn child from a vicious gangland leader and his even more powerful boss.

Reviewed on 30 September 2022 by John Cleal

21st Birthday

When reporter Cindy Thomas is approached by a distraught mother over the disappearance of her daughter and baby granddaughter, she refers the case to Sergeant Lindsay Boxer and the Women’s Murder Club starts on the trail of a psychopathic serial killer.

Reviewed on 20 August 2022 by John Cleal

True Crime Story

Zoe Nolan, a 19-year-old university student, walks out of a party in the shared accommodation where she has been living for three months – and is never seen again.

Reviewed on 22 July 2022 by John Cleal

Edge of the Grave

The brutal murder of a young boy takes cop DI Jimmy Dreghorn into the depths of the Glasgow slums in the hunt for his killer.

Reviewed on 25 June 2022 by John Cleal

The Corpse in the Waxworks

Henri Bencolin of the Seine and head of detectives for the Parisian police faces one of his most baffling cases when a young women heads into the Gallery of Horrors at a waxworks and is found murdered in the River Seine the following day, then her friend is discovered dead and garishly displayed inside the same museum.

Reviewed on 30 April 2022 by John Cleal

The Kobalt Dossier

Evan Ryder returns to Washington to find her twin sister’s two children are missing. Her secret intelligence unit has been axed, but the Nemesis organisation still wants her dead.

Reviewed on 30 April 2022 by John Cleal

The Plague Letters

With London wracked by another major plague outbreak, Rector Symon Patrick sets out to track down a medical man using plague victims for his warped experiments.

Reviewed on 26 March 2022 by John Cleal

The Graves of Whitechapel

Five years after lawyer Cage Lackmann defended a man against a murder charge, a body is found bearing the same hallmarks – and Moses Pickering, the former defendant, is missing. Lachman must prove his former client’s innocence and salvage his own ruined reputation.

Reviewed on 26 March 2022 by John Cleal

Black 13

Exiled ex-MI6 agent Scott Pearce and his friends fight a secret war to stop a right wing takeover.

Reviewed on 19 February 2022 by John Cleal

The Good Death

The story of how novice monk Oswald de Lacy became lord of Somershill.

Reviewed on 19 February 2022 by John Cleal

Before the Storm

Superintendent Bill Lorimer, head of Police Scotland’s Major Incidents team, investigates the exposure of undercover officers while at the same time facing a terrorist threat to Glasgow.

Reviewed on 22 January 2022 by John Cleal

Last Flight to Stalingrad

Propaganda journalist Werner Nehmann is sent to Stalingrad to put a gloss on the battle that marked one of the turning points of the war for the German people.

Reviewed on 22 January 2022 by John Cleal

Kyiv

A story of love, lies and betrayal set against the background of one of the most horrific events of the Second World War.

Reviewed on 27 November 2021 by John Cleal

The City Under Seige

Garda Special Branch Inspector Stefan Gillespie hunts a serial killer and becomes involved with Indian independence activists and the deadly aerial siege of Malta by Axis bombers.

Reviewed on 27 November 2021 by John Cleal

Final Cut

Successful documentary film maker Alex returns to the run-down seaside town where she was born to uncover its extraordinary and chilling secrets.

Reviewed on 23 October 2021 by John Cleal

River of Sins

The butchered body of a woman is found on an island in the Severn a few miles from Worcester. Undersherriff Hugh Bradecote and Sergeant Catchpoll are tasked with solving the mystery of her death.

Reviewed on 23 October 2021 by John Cleal

The Stoning

Detective Sergeant George Manolis is sent back to the outback town where he grew up to investigate the horrific murder of a popular local schoolteacher.

Reviewed on 23 October 2021 by John Cleal

Last Survivor

A group of ageing enthusiasts set out to recover the only example of the world’s rarest plant stolen from the private game reserve of a Kuwaiti prince

Reviewed on 25 September 2021 by John Cleal

Murder on the Moorland

Librarian-turned-detective Kitt Hartley heads for the moorland village where her boyfriend’s ex-wife was murdered five years before to solve what looks like a copycat killing – right down to the runic symbols carved into the victim’s hand!

Reviewed on 25 September 2021 by John Cleal

A Comedy of Terrors

While Roman detective Flavia Albia tries to come to terms with a new role, her magistrate husband becomes involved in a case which threatens not only the family but also the future of the empire itself.

Reviewed on 25 September 2021 by John Cleal

Blunt Force

DS Jane Tennison feels she has been left to rot in a quiet central London station until the horrific murder of a top agent plunges her into a showbiz world of exploitation, drugs and dodgy deals.

Reviewed on 21 August 2021 by John Cleal

Fatal Solution

Inspector Thomas Chard puts his own life at risk as he attempts to solve two apparently unrelated in a bustling South Wales valleys town.

Reviewed on 21 August 2021 by John Cleal

The Perfect Lie

Detective Danny Ryan jumps to his death rather than face arrest by his own colleagues. Less than two years later, his wife Erin is put on trial for her husband’s murder.

Reviewed on 21 August 2021 by John Cleal

One Half Truth

DI Zigic and DS Ferreria must investigate the late-night shooting of a young, would-be journalist and then find themselves caught in a long-running saga of revenge and high-level corruption.

Reviewed on 24 July 2021 by John Cleal

Atomic Love

Brilliant young scientist Rosalind Porter is haunted by guilt over her work on the Manhattan Project. She is also heartbroken by the ending of her love affair with a colleague. Then an FBI agent contacts her to suggest that her former lover is a Russian spy.


Reviewed on 24 July 2021 by John Cleal

The Diplomat's Wife

Eighteen-year-old Hugh agrees to drive his grandmother on a last tour of places she had lived as a young diplomatic wife and is plunged into a dark world of spying and danger.

Reviewed on 24 July 2021 by John Cleal

The Mirror Dance

Aristocratic investigator Dandelion ‘Dandy’ Gilver and her partner Alec Osborne are asked to resolve a copyright dispute which plunges them into a murder investigation.

Reviewed on 24 July 2021 by John Cleal

The Sandpit

Writer John Dyer’s meeting with an Iranian nuclear scientist, the father of one of his son’s schoolfriends, plunges him into a dangerous world of power, espionage and violence when the man and his son disappear.

Reviewed on 24 July 2021 by John Cleal

A Death at the Hotel Mondrian

When Dutch detective Lotte Meerman is approached by a man claiming to be someone who has been dead for more than 30 years, she ignores him but later regrets her decision.

Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by John Cleal

Blood Runs Thicker

Undersheriff of Worcester Hugh Bradecote and his associates, the cynical Sergeant Catchpoll and his apprentice Walkelin must solve the mystery of who killed the unpopular and bullying manor lord Osbern de Lench and left his body stripped to its underwear.

Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by John Cleal

Highland Fling

A Highland holiday to visit Superintendent Alan McGregor’s family turns into a week fraught with danger for ex-secret service sleuth Mirabelle Bevan when her arrival is greeted by the murder of a Russian/American fashion buyer.

Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by John Cleal

I Saw Him Die

Best-selling author and detective Agatha Christie is asked by the British intelligence service to investigate a series of threats to a former agent.

Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by John Cleal

Letters from the Dead

Photographer Thomas Bexley has become a drunken recluse, haunted by visions of the dead after a dreadful case in Wales. When news of a spate of kidnappings, for which his friend and mentor is the major suspect, rouses his interest, Bexley soon finds himself accused of a string of murders.

Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by John Cleal

The Cat and the Corpse in the Old Barn

Ceramic artist Clarice Beech finds herself lying on a decomposing body after a fall as she attempts to capture an escaped cat. Together with her separated husband Rick, a detective inspector, she sets out to uncover the truth behind the death.

Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by John Cleal

Private Moscow

One of PI Jack Morgan’s oldest friends is shot dead at his company’s New York public launch. In Moscow an office worker is murdered in a bomb blast. Morgan finds a link and exposes a deadly conspiracy.

Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by John Cleal

The Finisher

As teacher Maeve Kelly struggles to compete in a charity half marathon, Superintendent Peter Diamond, tasked with crowd control, spots a violent criminal he once jailed – and his suspicions are raised when a runner disappears without trace.

Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by John Cleal

A Double Life

Foreign Office counter-terrorism expert Gabriela finds her life falling apart in a web of lies, while drunken, drug-taking journalist Isobel is in danger as she investigates people trafficking and prostitution.

Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by John Cleal

A Prince and a Spy

Cambridge-based American history professor Tom Wilde investigates the death of George, Duke of Kent, brother of the King of England, in a mystery plane crash.

Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by John Cleal

Blackout

Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke is assigned to investigate the murder of a former well-known actress, but is put under immense pressure by rivalries in the Nazi hierarchy in an atmosphere where ‘disloyalty’ can mean death.

Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by John Cleal

Good Dark Night

Tatiana Goodwin, widow of crime boss Rich, has struggled to take over his business as enemies pile up. Now she must learn that power comes at a price.

Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by John Cleal

Hostage to Fortune

When the widow Worcester’s undersheriff Hugh Bradecote is to wed is kidnapped along with a group of Benedictine monks, Bradecote must fight his fears for their safety to rescue them from a psychopath who kills for pleasure.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

A Private Cathedral

Dave Robicheaux and his private investigator friend Clete Purcel become involved in Louisiana’s longest running gang feud – and must also face a supernatural threat from a centuries-old killer.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

A Song of Isolation

Rising young film star Amelia Hart is the toast of the media. She gives up her career for her accountant boyfriend. Then he is accused of child sexual abuse.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

Execution

Renegade monk, heretic and philosopher Giordano Bruno goes under cover to expose a plot to assassinate Elizabeth I.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

The Fatal Passion of Alma Rattenbury

An immaculately researched re-examination of one of the most sensational Old Bailey murder trials of the 20th century.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

The Port of London Murders

Lost cargo on the river Thames leads police and two unlikely detectives to an apparent suicide, a smuggling ring and a murderous drug importing ring.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

The Woman in the Wardrobe

The infallible amateur sleuth Mr Verity must unravel a locked-room mystery with a hotel maid found bound in a wardrobe as an unreliable witness.

Reviewed on 24 April 2021 by John Cleal

City of Vengeance

Court officer Cesare Aldo must find the killer of a prominent Jewish moneylender in a Florence riven by internal plotting, rivalries and strife.

Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

A Question of Time

Master Sergeant Kim Becker and his Special Forces ‘A’ Team are tasked to bring out a vital highly placed intelligence source from behind the Iron Curtain that divides 1979 Berlin.

Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

The Ghost Tree

Inspector Betty Church must mobilise the incompetent police she leads to investigate the disappearance of her childhood best friend and to battle several forms of discrimination as she follows a trail of murder.


Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

Greed

With the world on the brink of a new financial crisis, a Nobel prize-winning economist with a possible solution is murdered on his way to an international summit.

Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

Secret Narco

A new look at the life and death of Great Train Robber and career-criminal Charlie Wilson.

Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

Vale of Tears

A wealthy horse dealer is found dead in a mill leat. He was stabbed, but not robbed. Under Sheriff Hugh Bradecote, veteran Sheriff’s Sergeant Catchpoll and his young trainee Walkelin face a series of mysteries as their investigations go far beyond the obvious to a web of greed, obsession and murder.

Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

Three-a-Penny

A fascinating insight into a woman ahead of her time during and after World War I and how she was forced to pose as a man to establish a career as a crime writer.

Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by John Cleal

Fear for Miss Betony

Former governess Emma Betony is asked to sort out a series of strange happenings at a friend’s struggling girls’ school.

Reviewed on 16 January 2021 by John Cleal

The Scoundrel Harry Larkyns

A 140-year-old cold case investigation into a true crime of passion – the murder of bon viveur and conman Harry Larkyns by one of the fathers on modern cinema.  

Reviewed on 16 January 2021 by John Cleal

The Pottery Cottage Murders

A police manhunt across the snowbound moors. Just one survivor. This is the first definitive account of the horrifying 1977 Pottery Cottage murders that shocked the nation.

Reviewed on 16 January 2021 by John Cleal

Peaky Blinders: The Legacy

The TV series Peaky Blinders turned the fashionably dressed, charismatic, but deeply flawed Shelby family into cult anti-heroes. Now read the sordid facts behind their criminal legacy.

Reviewed on 16 January 2021 by John Cleal

A Matter of Murder

Drop-out Miff Ferguson disturbs a killer disposing of his victim and is forced to flee to escape the man who now wants to dispose of the only witness to the crime. When a second member of the dead girl’s family is found in a blazing van Detective Inspector Jess Campbell and Superintendent Ian Carter must try to solve the mystery.

Reviewed on 16 January 2021 by John Cleal

When Hell Struck Twelve

Boston detective Billy Boyle is on the track of a French traitor betraying the Resistance movement in the run-up to the liberation of Paris.

Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by John Cleal

Save Me From Dangerous Men

Private investigator Nikki Griffin takes an apparently run-of-the mill case involving tech secrets, which snowballs into murder, involvement with the FBI, and a team of hitmen.

Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by John Cleal

The Dance of the Serpents

Paranormal investigators Inspectors Frey and McGray find their lives under threat by Royal order in a Gothic world of blood, bats, folklore, superstition and murder.

Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by John Cleal

The Burying Ground

Disgraced academic Cordelia Hemlock is in the graveyard of a village in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall when a storm brings down a tree which crushes a mausoleum, revealing a fresh corpse among the crumbling bones.

Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by John Cleal

The Devil and the Dark Water

Does the devil haunt a ship bound from Indonesia to Holland? Soldier Arent Hayes must find out.

Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by John Cleal

Cast No Shadow

Young journalist Samantha investigates the story of an Indian hotelier cleared of a rape charge when he is revealed to be a she. The trail takes her into the dangerous Indian underworld, where money always talks – and life is cheap.

Reviewed on 21 November 2020 by John Cleal

The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness

Railway detective Jack Wenlock, thrown out of work by the 1947 nationalisation of the industry, searches the Far East for his mother, whom he has always believed dead.

Reviewed on 21 November 2020 by John Cleal

Faithful Unto Death

When the Prince of Powys’ messenger fails to reach his English destination, lord sheriff’s men Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin must check a dead man’s identity.

Reviewed on 21 November 2020 by John Cleal

Imposter 13

Aydin Torkal – the former terrorist known as Sleeper 13, now working with MI6 – infiltrates a sinister new terror cell that’s planning a series of devastating worldwide attacks

Reviewed on 21 November 2020 by John Cleal

Invitation to Die

DI John Redfyre discovers a body and uncovers a story of wartime betrayal and multiple murders.

Reviewed on 21 November 2020 by John Cleal

The Nemesis Manifesto

As American democracy comes under threat and her fellow agents are systematically eliminated, lone wolf black ops field agent Evan Ryder must find out why.

Reviewed on 31 October 2020 by John Cleal

The City in Flames

Garda Special Branch Inspector Stefan Gillespie goes undercover to investigate a plot inspired by the IRA and the Germans to assassinate the Irish president.

Reviewed on 31 October 2020 by John Cleal

Death of a Mermaid

Frederica ‘Freddy’ Power returns to her childhood home after 22 years and must confront her past and face unpleasant truths about her family.

Reviewed on 31 October 2020 by John Cleal

When Shadows Fall

Former policemen are being murdered across Scotland. Superintendent Lorimer must seek the motive and the mastermind behind a series of killings.

Reviewed on 31 October 2020 by John Cleal

The Perfect Alibi

Industrialist Anthony Mullins is found dead after a fire in a locked garage. All principal suspects have alibis, but all, including the victim, have something to hide.

Reviewed on 31 October 2020 by John Cleal

The Stranger

MI6 agent Jude Lyon must deal with past events which threaten the credibility of his agency – and a terrifying new threat to the whole of the British establishment.

Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by John Cleal

Wild Dog

Retired actress Lise persuades her producer husband to holiday in the wild hills of the Causse de Limogne. He must come to terms with his fear of nature and rediscover the basic instincts common to both man and animal.

Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by John Cleal

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry

Investigative journalist Gina Kane receives an email describing the abuse of a woman by a well-known figure at a television news network that’s on the verge of a multi-billion dollar stock market flotation.

Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by John Cleal

Corrupt Bodies

When the author becomes superintendent of Southwark mortuary, he walks into a corrupt world of sales of body parts, theft, bribery and kickbacks.

Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by John Cleal

Bone China

Nurse-companion Hester Why flees London for a position at the lonely Morvoren House on a desolate Cornish clifftop where she finds herself faced with a dark and dangerous situation linked to events of 40 years before.

Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by John Cleal

Death in Fancy Dress

The dissolute Sir Ralph Feltham is murdered at a fancy-dress ball at his former home Feltham Abbey. Lawyer Tony Keith and his adventurer schoolfriend Jeremy Freyne, there to investigate possible links to a blackmail ring, investigate.

Reviewed on 22 August 2020 by John Cleal

Krays: The Final Word

Madness, assault, robbery, arson, murder, protection rackets, murder – a new look at the rise and fall of the East End of London’s most notorious gangsters.

Reviewed on 22 August 2020 by John Cleal

Launch Code

An order for a nuclear first strike in the paranoia of the 1980s Cold War threatens world apocalypse. Thirty-five years later, as a writer threatens to reveal what really happened, the family of a key player in the drama is threatened by unknown forces trying to keep the incident secret.

Reviewed on 22 August 2020 by John Cleal

Criminal Britain

A look at some of Britain’s darkest criminal cases in a picture anthology from the files of the Daily Mirror.

Reviewed on 22 August 2020 by John Cleal

The Body in the Dumb River

The body of Jim Lane is found in a Cambridgeshire river with a knife wound in his back. Scotland Yard Superintendent Tom Littlejohn, in the area on another case, is asked to assist by local police and quickly discovers popular showman Lane is not who he seems to be.

Reviewed on 31 July 2020 by John Cleal

The Scorched Earth

A body, possibly connected to a killing for which a man is already in prison for his brother’s murder, is found in a churchyard. DCI Maarten Jansen, head of St Albans CID, sets out to solve the mystery – and so does the imprisoned man’s girlfriend.

Reviewed on 31 July 2020 by John Cleal

The Power Game

Ticket-of-leave gentleman convict Hugh Llewelyn Monsarrat and his fiery Irish housekeeper Hannah Mulrooney are sent to the penal colony of Maria Island to investigate the killing of the local boatman and blackmailer – and are offered a politically convenient suspect.

Reviewed on 31 July 2020 by John Cleal

Buried

DC Jack Warr discovers the truth of his own birth through links between a charred body in a burnt Victorian cottage and a series of major historical crimes.

Reviewed on 31 July 2020 by John Cleal

Grave's End

When an unidentified naked body is found in a freezer, the case is handed to DS Alexandra Cupidi. Then a second body turns up and the case gets even more complicated.

Reviewed on 31 July 2020 by John Cleal

By Force Alone

A new and very different take on the Arthurian legend that combines detective novels and thrillers with poetry, science fiction, historical, children’s stories and autobiographical works.

Reviewed on 04 July 2020 by John Cleal

Perdition's Child

Hannah Weybridge investigates the deaths of Australian men who have come to England to search for lost relatives.

Reviewed on 04 July 2020 by John Cleal

Six Wicked Reasons

A controlling father is murdered on a yacht party. All of his children, re-united for the occasion to celebrate his intended new marriage, have motives for revenge.

Reviewed on 04 July 2020 by John Cleal

It Walks By Night

Prefect of the Paris city police Henri Bencolin must solve the grisly murder of the Duc de Saligny at a fashionable Parisian gaming house.

Reviewed on 04 July 2020 by John Cleal

Fugitive 13

Aydin Torkal has spent a year on the run from western intelligence and the brotherhood of jihadi insurgents he betrayed. MI6 agent Rachel Cox, probably the only person who believes him an ally in the war on terror, receives a coded message from him warning her not to trust her own colleagues and must choose between her career and the truth.

Reviewed on 04 July 2020 by John Cleal

Murder by the Minster

Librarian Kitt Hartley is shocked to hear her closest friend has been arrested on suspicion of killing her ex-boyfriend and sets out to clear her name.

Reviewed on 13 June 2020 by John Cleal

The Art of Dying

Will Raven returns to Edinburgh a fully qualified doctor to find he must resolve his feelings for former housemaid Sarah Fisher as the pair plunge into the dark world of a serial killer.

Reviewed on 13 June 2020 by John Cleal

Deathly Affair

Detective Sergeant Geraldine Steel must discover what links the deaths of vulnerable men to uncover a vicious killer.

Reviewed on 13 June 2020 by John Cleal

Hi Five

PI Isaiah Quintabe – IQ – is coerced into trying to prove that the daughter of the West Coast’s biggest illegal arms dealer did not kill her boyfriend. But the girl has multiple personality disorder – and any of her radically different ‘selves’ could have committed or contracted out the murder!

Reviewed on 13 June 2020 by John Cleal

Knock 'em Dead

Captain Paul Darac is called to the suspicious death of a former comedy star and enters a world of chicanery, corruption and murder.

Reviewed on 13 June 2020 by John Cleal

The Dead Line

Journalist Casey Benedict, alerted to the possibility of a horrific trade in babies, embarks on a dangerous investigation.

Reviewed on 23 May 2020 by John Cleal

Deep State

Former small-town girl, ex-army boxer and now White House intern Haley Chill stumbles across a plot to assassinate the American president.

Reviewed on 23 May 2020 by John Cleal

The Stalker

Superintendent William Lorimer and his Major Incident Team track a serial killer – but Lorimer’s own wife is in danger from a madman who targets a particular type of woman.

Reviewed on 23 May 2020 by John Cleal

Blood in the Water

Gang war erupts on the Boston waterfront and Diamond, daughter of union boss Cormack McConnell, is caught in the middle.

Reviewed on 23 May 2020 by John Cleal

A Stranger in My Grave

Daisy Harker has everything: a beautiful home and a wealthy businessman husband who loves her. She also has a recurring nightmare – she sees her own grave and a date that means she has been dead for four years! On the edge of a breakdown, she hires an investigator.

Reviewed on 23 May 2020 by John Cleal

Out of the Dark

Why is the corrupt, dictatorial President of America trying to kill every member of a team of ‘deniable intelligence assets’ – assassins – he helped create? Orphan X, Evan Smoak, must find out – and stop him.

Reviewed on 25 April 2020 by John Cleal

The Bleak Midwinter

Civil war intelligence officer John Grey, now lord of an Essex manor, must discover the truth of the killing of a local lothario in order to save the life of a woman accused of witchcraft.

Reviewed on 25 April 2020 by John Cleal

The Siberian Dilemma

Investigator Arkady Renko travels to the frozen tundra to seek his on-off lover, investigative journalist Tatiana Petrovna, who has disappeared.

Reviewed on 25 April 2020 by John Cleal

The Grove of the Caesars

Flavia Albia becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer operating in the gardens left to the people of Rome by Julius Caesar. At the same time, her parallel investigation into fraudulent Greek philosophical texts leads to another killer.

Reviewed on 25 April 2020 by John Cleal

Sexton Blake and the Great War

Ace detective Sexton Blake returns in three republished stories of his activities before and during World War I.

Reviewed on 25 April 2020 by John Cleal

Kitty Peck and the Parliament of Shadows

As Kitty continues her fight against the ‘Barons’ of crime and to dismantle Paradise, her grandmother’s sprawling East End empire, she faces a series of new challenges including a fundamentalist religious sect led by a charismatic preacher.

Reviewed on 11 April 2020 by John Cleal

Lethal Agent

Anti-terrorist contractor and former CIA agent Mitch Rapp must face a bioterrorist threat to an America weakened by internal divisions.

Reviewed on 11 April 2020 by John Cleal

Night's Black Agents

When a nun is found strangled, followed by other deaths, DI Gil Markham must uncover the secrets which threaten to wreck a Catholic order.


Reviewed on 11 April 2020 by John Cleal

The New Girl

When the daughter of a Saudi Prince is abducted, he turns to the only man he can trust to find her: Gabriel Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence.

Reviewed on 11 April 2020 by John Cleal

The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective

Maud West ran a detective agency for more than 30 years. Her exploits grabbed headlines, but did she tell the truth?

Reviewed on 14 March 2020 by John Cleal

Wild Harbour

Pacifist couple Terry and Hugh flee to the Grampian wilderness to avoid Hugh being called up for a war with which they do not agree. 

Reviewed on 14 March 2020 by John Cleal

The Measure of Malice

A collection of 14 short stories illustrating how crime fiction reflected – and in some cases predicted – the use of science in crime detection.

Reviewed on 14 March 2020 by John Cleal

Galway Girl

Former cop-turned-PI Jack Taylor is pitted against a trio of young assassins who all have reasons to hate him and who are targeting Gardai as a means to destroy him.

Reviewed on 14 March 2020 by John Cleal

Under Occupation

Spying and subterfuge in occupied Paris inspired by the true story of Polish prisoners in Nazi Germany, who smuggled intelligence to Britain through the French resistance.

Reviewed on 14 March 2020 by John Cleal

Maigret Hesitates

Chief Inspector Maigret receives a series of anonymous letters threatening murder in the household of an eminent lawyer.

Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by John Cleal

Tight Lies

Daniel Ratchet, a rookie golf agent, discovers that the Russian gas company sponsoring the tournament and fixing results is also on the verge of tying up a mega deal with the British government. Lone wolf ex-SAS man Tom Hunter must save him.

Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by John Cleal

The Vanished Bride

When the three Brontë sisters hear that a young women has gone missing from her home leaving no clue but a pool of blood, they decide to investigate.

Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by John Cleal

Blood on the Law

PI Allan Linton is hired by his former wife, a top lawyer, to help prove the innocence of his boyhood friend – and the city’s major drugs dealer – found with £2 million worth of cocaine in his car.

Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by John Cleal

Hitler's Secret

Cambridge-based American history professor Tom Wilde is asked to ‘smuggle’ a mysterious package out of wartime Nazi Germany – something so secret, even Hitler doesn’t know what it is!

Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by John Cleal

Ungentlemanly Warfare

Lone wolf Captain Harry Walsh is parachuted into occupied France by the SOE to kill a German scientist and delay development of a rocket plane that could change the face of aerial warfare.

Reviewed on 31 January 2020 by John Cleal

Our Little Secrets

The ambitious and hard-bitten DI Janet Hadden seeks help from a gang boss to boost her own career. But in a fast-changing underworld there’s always a price to pay.

Reviewed on 31 January 2020 by John Cleal

Edgar Allan Poe and the Empire of the Dead

Edgar Allan Poe travels to Paris to help his friend, the detective Chevalier C Auguste Dupin, hunt down the criminal who brought his family to death and ruin. Their search takes them into the Empire of the Dead, the tunnels of the necropolis which run beneath the city.

Reviewed on 31 January 2020 by John Cleal

Westwind

Satellite surveillance monitor Martin Hepton is baffled when its pictures from space fail for a crucial period. Days later an American shuttle crashes, killing its crew bar the lone British astronaut. Martin’s attempts to discover what went wrong plunge him into a deadly international conspiracy.

Reviewed on 31 January 2020 by John Cleal

A Shadow on the Lens

Forensic photographer and investigator Thomas Bexley probes the horrifying murder of a teenage girl in an isolated South Wales village and plunges into a world of claustrophobic suspicion, mass murder and the supernatural.

Reviewed on 18 January 2020 by John Cleal

Killing With Confetti

When the son of the county’s Deputy Chief Constable marries the daughter of a gang boss, Superintendent Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, is assigned to make sure no criminal rivals can threaten the life of the bride’s father

Reviewed on 18 January 2020 by John Cleal

More Rivals of Sherlock Homes

Fifteen of the rivals of the great Sherlock Holmes – police officers, PIs and eccentric criminologists – who all had their day in the sun in the popular magazines around the turn of the century.

Reviewed on 18 January 2020 by John Cleal

Murder in the Mill-Race

When the warden of a children’s home is killed, local police can make no headway in an isolated and self-contained village. Scotland Yard is called in and Chief Inspector Macdonald sent to take over the case.

Reviewed on 18 January 2020 by John Cleal

The Room of the Dead

Inspector Betty Church finds wartime life in her sleepy hometown of Sackwater hard to bear until a bombing raid and the discovery of a body on the beach put her on the trail of a killer.

Reviewed on 18 January 2020 by John Cleal

Not Playing Fair

When seven professional footballers are killed in seven days, DCI Charlie Miskin and his team face a seemingly unsolvable problem.

Reviewed on 21 December 2019 by John Cleal

Death in a Desert Land

Agatha Christie is asked by British intelligence to investigate doubts surrounding the death of explorer Gertrude Bell, and plunges into a snake pit of passions, deception and poisonous plots in the blistering heat of the Iraqi desert.

Reviewed on 21 December 2019 by John Cleal

The Bear Pit

Captain Damian Seeker, Cromwell’s counter-intelligence ‘enforcer’ faces another assassination plot against the Lord Protector and must also solve the riddle of a murder by bear!

Reviewed on 21 December 2019 by John Cleal

The Darker Arts

Paranormal investigators Inspectors Frey and McGray face a race to save McGray’s trusted clairvoyant Madame Katerina when she is condemned to hang after being the only survivor of a séance involving three of Edinburgh’s wealthiest families.

Reviewed on 21 December 2019 by John Cleal

Ghosts of the Past

What links the cold-blooded execution of a former Australian soldier in 1906 to a modern hunt for a fortune in buried gold? Sydney journalist Nick Eatwell digs deep into his family’s past – and finds his own life is in danger.


Reviewed on 21 December 2019 by John Cleal

American Spy

FBI intelligence officer Marie Mitchell is assigned to target Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso.

Reviewed on 30 November 2019 by John Cleal

The Canary Keeper

A young woman finds a body on the banks of the Thames. When corrupt police try to frame her for involvement in the death, she retraces the dead man’s steps to the Orkneys to prove her innocence.

Reviewed on 30 November 2019 by John Cleal

The Dirty Dozen

Detective Sergeant Jane Tennison is posted to the Sweeney, the Flying Squad, rocked by corruption allegations and notoriously misogynistic. She must not only prove herself to her male colleagues, but also tackle some of London’s most vicious armed robbers.

Reviewed on 30 November 2019 by John Cleal

Witchfinder

The British Secret Service is in chaos as the hunt for traitors snowballs after the defection of Burgess, Maclean and Philby

Reviewed on 30 November 2019 by John Cleal

Death in Captivity

A suspected ‘stool pigeon’ is found dead in an escape tunnel at an officers’ prisoner of war camp in northern Italy. With the invasion imminent, the prisoners plan a mass break-out, but first amateur detective Captain ‘Cuckoo’ Goyles must solve the mystery and find out how much their captors know about the escape plot.

Reviewed on 09 November 2019 by John Cleal

Conviction

Barrister’s wife Anna McDonald tries to console herself over the loss of her husband and children to the woman she thought her best friend by investigating the death of a former friend, but in doing so must face a threat from her own past.

Reviewed on 09 November 2019 by John Cleal

The Colours of Murder

Artist Susie Mahl exploits remote aristocratic relations to get an invitation to a Norfolk country house party. When a guest dies in mysterious circumstances and police accept the obvious explanation, she sets out to uncover a killer.

Reviewed on 09 November 2019 by John Cleal

The Washington Decree

American president Bruce Jansen orders radical measures after his pregnant second wife is assassinated and the country lurches into chaos. Has he suffered a mental collapse or is he being manipulated?

Reviewed on 09 November 2019 by John Cleal

The Grid

President Robert S Thompson begins to behave increasingly illogically when he becomes convinced a series of nightmares are a warning of his approaching assassination. His doctor, Josh Cain, a military psychiatrist, must try to find a cure.

Reviewed on 09 November 2019 by John Cleal

Diary of a Dead Man on Leave

As war looms, a Soviet undercover agent faces a crisis of belief when he becomes involved with the German family he lodges with.

Reviewed on 26 October 2019 by John Cleal

The Fatherland Files

When a drowned man is found in a freight elevator in a Berlin pleasure palace, Inspector Gereon Rath faces a case which leads him into confrontation with the rising Nazi party.

Reviewed on 26 October 2019 by John Cleal

Savages 2: The Spectre

France’s first Arab president is shot on election night. As he lies between life and death, riots explode, terrorist attack threatens and political factions battle for power. Caught in the middle is a third-generation French family whose roots are in the Kabyle region of Algeria.

Reviewed on 26 October 2019 by John Cleal

Whiskey When We're Dry

Seventeen-year-old Jessilyn Harney, orphaned and alone, is desperate to fend off starvation and predatory neighbours, so cuts her hair, binds her chest flat and rides to find outlaw older brother Noah and bring him home

Reviewed on 26 October 2019 by John Cleal

The Blameless Dead

FBI Special Agent Carla Romero and lawyer Gabriel Hall are thrown together as they investigate a series of gruesome crimes that have their roots 70 years in the past.

Reviewed on 12 October 2019 by John Cleal

The Boy Who Fell

The body of a teenage boy is found outside a deserted house where he had been partying with friends. Examination suggests he was raped before being pushed through a window to his death. His alleged attacker is in custody, but DCI Tom Reynolds has doubts.

Reviewed on 12 October 2019 by John Cleal

The Crown Agent

Disgraced young Edinburgh doctor Mungo Lyon is recruited by the Crown to investigate a murder and shipwreck.

Reviewed on 12 October 2019 by John Cleal

The Last Hunt

Captain Benny Griessel of South Africa’s elite Hawks police unit and his partner Vaughn Cupido are assigned to investigate the death of an ex-policeman and uncover a plot to kill the country’s corrupt president

Reviewed on 12 October 2019 by John Cleal

To Catch A Killer

Detective Sergeant Alice Parr is first attender at the attempted murder of an unidentified woman in a London park. As the case expands, she discovers she is chasing a killer, always one step ahead, with her own life in danger.

Reviewed on 28 September 2019 by John Cleal

A Death in Chelsea

A society gossip writer is found hanged. She was hated by many and her family are convinced she was murdered. A small crime fighting team are tasked to find the truth.

Reviewed on 28 September 2019 by John Cleal

Fight Back

Former corporate lawyer Kerry Casey is slowly steering her father’s gangland empire towards legitimacy, but faces a deadly threat from a vicious Columbian drugs cartel.

Reviewed on 28 September 2019 by John Cleal

Rogue Killer

Only Detective Sergeant Geraldine Steel thinks a murder is the work of a more deliberate killer. When two more victims die in similarly indiscriminate attacks, the spectre of a serial killer stalks York.

Reviewed on 28 September 2019 by John Cleal

Hudson's Kill

As New York City expands, black and Irish gangs fight for control and speculators gamble fortunes. When a young girl is found butchered, Marshal Justy Flanagan and his friend Kerry O’Toole, penetrate a shadowy community and must fight to save the city – and their own lives.

Reviewed on 28 September 2019 by John Cleal

The New Iberia Blues

When the crucified body of a young woman is found floating on a cross near the estate of a local boy made good as a freelance Hollywood director, Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux and his new partner Bailey Ribbons, investigate.

Reviewed on 07 September 2019 by John Cleal

Mission Critical

A former Russian military intelligence chief, obsessed with the idea the British killed his wife and son, masterminds a revenge bid which could destroy the major western intelligence services. Court Gentry, ‘The Gray Man’, must stop him.

Reviewed on 07 September 2019 by John Cleal

Dark City

Muggers, rapists, gangsters, looters and killers roamed the wartime streets full of vice girls and servicemen with money to burn. Some of the most violent and spectacular crimes and criminals of the period are revisited.

Reviewed on 07 September 2019 by John Cleal

To Kill the Truth

Former White House trouble-shooter Maggie Costello struggles to foil an Alt-Right plan to destroy history.

Reviewed on 07 September 2019 by John Cleal

Date with Poison

PI Samson O’Brien is in deep trouble, framed by a gang out to destroy him. When his godson goes missing, accused of dealing drugs, can he persuade his estranged partner Delilah Metcalfe to help him find the boy?

Reviewed on 24 August 2019 by John Cleal

In the Galway Silence

Former cop-turned-PI Jack Taylor is pitted against a vigilante assassin who uses the name ‘Silence’ – and the clash quickly becomes personal.

Reviewed on 24 August 2019 by John Cleal

Crossing the Line of Duty

An account of how senior CID officers fraternised with underworld figures, paid off witnesses and struck dodgy deals to imprison innocent men.

Reviewed on 24 August 2019 by John Cleal

The Listeners

Newly appointed Detective Sergeant Carla Herron is called to a psychiatric hospital after a patient confesses to murdering of one of the psychotherapists. His confession is detailed, but impossible, as he was in a secure ward under 24-hour surveillance.

Reviewed on 24 August 2019 by John Cleal

Dangerous Deception at Honeychurch Hall

Former TV antiques show presenter Kat Stanford now has her own thriving business in the peaceful Devon countryside. But things start to go wrong with the arrival of a beautiful ex-girlfriend of her beau Piers Carew, heir to the earl of Chawley.

Reviewed on 10 August 2019 by John Cleal

A Suspicion of Silver

Sir Robert Carey, swashbuckling Elizabethan courtier and cousin to the Queen, hunts a would-be assassin of Scottish King James on both sides of the border.

Reviewed on 10 August 2019 by John Cleal

Death Has Deep Roots

A former French Resistance fighter is on trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of her wartime British SOE controller. Her hastily assembled defence team believe her innocence can only be proved by retracing events that happened in Nazi-occupied wartime France.

Reviewed on 10 August 2019 by John Cleal

The Unmourned

The brutal superintendent of a prison has been murdered and the prime and only suspect is a fiery Irish prisoner. She will hang unless ticket-of-leave gentleman convict and amateur detective Hugh Monsarrat and his clever housekeeper Hannah Mulrooney can find the real killer.

Reviewed on 10 August 2019 by John Cleal

The Darkest Place

Out-of-favour DCI Tom Reynolds gets a Christmas day call to a mass grave on an island off the Kerry coast, once the home of a controversial psychiatric institution, where there is one body too many – probably that of one of the doctors, missing for more than 40 years.

Reviewed on 10 August 2019 by John Cleal

The Death Chamber

In 1977, a 17-year-old girl was never seen again after leaving a village disco. Twenty years later, police searching for another missing teenager find her remains. Cleaning company boss and amateur detective Stella Darnell and her tube train driver partner Jack Harmon investigate.

Reviewed on 27 July 2019 by John Cleal

The Conviction of Cora Burns

Cora Burns, born in a prison and raised in a workhouse, has always struggled to control a streak of violence. A new life as a servant in the home of a scientist gives her a chance of a future, but she soon suspects that she, like a young girl she has befriended, are subjects of a living experiment.

Reviewed on 27 July 2019 by John Cleal

Dead at First Sight

A woman’s apparent suicide leads Detective Superintendent Roy Grace into the world of internet romance scams – and a gang willing to kill anyone who threatens to expose them.

Reviewed on 27 July 2019 by John Cleal

What Lies Buried

A ten-year-old girl disappears from a birthday party. Detective Inspector Lukas Mahler races against time to find her. But will her abductor stop at one child – and what is the connection with a 70-year-old murder?

Reviewed on 27 July 2019 by John Cleal

White Hot Silence

Aid worker Anastasia Cristakos is kidnapped. Her billionaire husband hires ex-MI6 man Paul Sampson, her former lover, to find and free her.

Reviewed on 27 July 2019 by John Cleal

Deadland

Two youngsters steal a phone – whose owner is willing to kill to recover it. DS Alex Cupidi, tasked with solving the mystery of a decomposing arm in an art gallery exhibition, uncovers a link between the crimes.

Reviewed on 13 July 2019 by John Cleal

Lost Creed

A child trafficking bust sets K9 handler Ryder Creed on a search for his missing sister.

Reviewed on 13 July 2019 by John Cleal

Shadow

Marc Dane and his partner, ex-Delta Force sniper Lucy Keyes, must thwart a plot by an international group to use extremist right wingers to unleash a lethal virus in a major European city.

Reviewed on 13 July 2019 by John Cleal

The Middle Temple Murder

An unidentified elderly man is found bludgeoned to death in London’s Middle Temple. The police believe it was simple robbery, but journalist Frank Spargo, who stumbles on the death scene, joins forces with a Scotland Yard detective and a young barrister.

Reviewed on 13 July 2019 by John Cleal

The Teahouse Detective: The Old Man in the Corner

A collection of short stories, each with a puzzle to solve.

Reviewed on 13 July 2019 by John Cleal

Give Up the Dead

Edwin Weaver joins the contingent of William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, as it marches for the Kent coast to prevent the reinforcement of Prince Louis’ invading French army. When a series of suspicious ‘accidents’ puts the earl’s life in danger, he soon realises the enemy is closer at hand.

Reviewed on 29 June 2019 by John Cleal

The Blue

Huguenot-descended Genevieve Planché longs to be an artist, but is sent to become a porcelain decorator and becomes involved with industrial espionage that may aid England’s enemy.

Reviewed on 29 June 2019 by John Cleal

Murder in Belgravia

A dissolute Irish aristocrat is stabbed in his own bedroom. His wife refuses to talk to a male policeman. Chief Inspector Peter Beech and his specially-formed team must sift the criminal underworld of World War 1 London to find the truth.

Reviewed on 29 June 2019 by John Cleal

Rather to be Pitied

DS Julie Kite, settling into her new job in rural Wales, is faced with a murder mystery which will test her abilities to the full.

Reviewed on 29 June 2019 by John Cleal

The Librarian of Auschwitz

The part-fictionalised story of Czech-Jewish schoolgirl Dita Polachova who spent years in the horror of Auschwitz-Birkenau where she administered a small library of smuggled books in the world’s strangest school.

Reviewed on 29 June 2019 by John Cleal

A Necessary Murder

MJ Tjia, whose father is Chinese-Indonesian and whose mother has English-Irish heritage, continues her series featuring the beautiful Eurasian courtesan/detective Heloise Chancey who this time is unwittingly dragged into a series of brutal murders which appear to have their origin in events many years ago in  the Far East.

Reviewed on 15 June 2019 by John Cleal

A Single Source

Rogue radio reporter William Carver senses a story buried behind the events of Cairo’s Arab Spring.

Reviewed on 15 June 2019 by John Cleal

Murder Mile

Newly promoted DS Jane Tennison has been posted to the tough South London borough of Peckham. Her arrival is greeted by the discovery of two women’s bodies in as many days, then a third, dismembered, corpse just three days later.

Reviewed on 15 June 2019 by John Cleal

Slow Motion Ghosts

DI Henry Hobbes, ostracised by his colleagues for reporting a racial assault, is plunged into the obsessive world of fan worship by the ritual killing of a rock singer. 

Reviewed on 15 June 2019 by John Cleal

Three Bullets

A conflicted freelance photojournalist investigates his ex-girlfriend’s supposed suicide, but while he battles his own demons he also uncovers the rotten core at the heart of JFK’s Camelot.

Reviewed on 15 June 2019 by John Cleal

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Maid Frannie Langton tells the story of her life from a slave on a Jamaican sugar plantation to her trial where she’s accused of murdering her English employers.

Reviewed on 01 June 2019 by John Cleal

The Chemical Detective

Chemical engineer Dr Jaq Silver, working on avalanche control, uncovers a problem with a consignment of explosives which leads to her life being put at risk before she is framed for murder.

Reviewed on 01 June 2019 by John Cleal

The Body in the Boat

A coffin in a boat on Dungeness beach sees the Reverend Marcus Hardcastle and his friend Mrs Amelia Chaytor investigate a huge fraud and a plot that threatens the nation.

Reviewed on 01 June 2019 by John Cleal

What Might Have Been

London, England 1916. A left-wing government is dividing the country into opposing camps. Social division, economic disaster and international humiliation follow.

Reviewed on 01 June 2019 by John Cleal

Newcomer

Detective Kyoichiro Kaga is a newcomer to the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo but proves to be very effective in unravelling secrets when a woman is found strangled.

Reviewed on 01 June 2019 by John Cleal

The Magick of Master Lilly

Master 17th century astrologer and magician William Lilly narrates the story of an England broken by religious and political intolerance as it plunges towards civil war.

Reviewed on 11 May 2019 by John Cleal

Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit

Intrepid Deputy Sheriff Constance Kopp’s help for a woman inmate in a mental home sees her targeted as a political football in a key election.

Reviewed on 11 May 2019 by John Cleal

To the Lions

Reporter Casey Benedict eavesdrops a conversation in a London club and investigates the apparent suicide of a wealthy young man. Her hunt leads her from St Tropez to the Middle Eastern deserts – and the darkest corners of the human mind.

Reviewed on 11 May 2019 by John Cleal

The American Agent

Investigator Maisie Dobbs is approached by the British and US governments to help solve the murder of an American war correspondent in London during the Blitz.

Reviewed on 11 May 2019 by John Cleal

Bertie: The Complete Prince of Wales Mysteries

Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, is a pleasure seeker, searching out the best meals, the most beautiful women, and the most lavish parties. He also fancies himself as an amateur detective and relates his ventures into crime.

Reviewed on 11 May 2019 by John Cleal

The Moscow Offensive

The Russians have reverse engineered the futuristic Cybernetic Infantry Devices which halted their advances in Europe – and now president Gennadiy Gryzlov launches hidden attacks on an unprepared America.

Reviewed on 01 May 2019 by John Cleal

A Capitol Death

Informer Flavia Albia must discover how an unpopular overseer met a death which threatens the triumphal procession of the Emperor Domitian.

Reviewed on 27 April 2019 by John Cleal

Kill For Me

Killer-for-hire Victor is hired by a drugs cartel boss to kill her own sister who she is fighting for control of their dead father’s multi-billion empire.

Reviewed on 27 April 2019 by John Cleal

The Corset

Prison visitor Dorothea Truelove hears a chilling story of brutality and the supernatural from a young seamstress accused of murder.

Reviewed on 27 April 2019 by John Cleal

Aftershock

Met detective Patrick Bailey, FBI agent Christine Ash and photographer John Wallace are reunited in the final battle against an evil organisation.

Reviewed on 27 April 2019 by John Cleal

Weekend at Thrackley

Impecunious war hero Jim Henderson is baffled to be invited to a weekend party at the country home of a famous collector of precious stones. Robbery, kidnap and murder follow.

Reviewed on 13 April 2019 by John Cleal

After the Monsoon

Security policeman Ernst Grip investigates the death of a Swedish soldier in Djibouti and enters a world of greed, intrigue and double dealing.

Reviewed on 13 April 2019 by John Cleal

Price of Duty

Renegade military contractor Scion, led by a former US president, set out to defeat a plan by Russian president Gennadiy Gryzlov to destabilise and reclaim former Soviet satellites through a wave of cyberattacks.

Reviewed on 13 April 2019 by John Cleal

The Murder Pit

Down-at-heel detective Arrowood and his assistant Barnett are hired to find out why a new bride will not see her parents, but what seems a straightforward case develops into something more sinister.

Reviewed on 13 April 2019 by John Cleal

Casanova and the Faceless Woman

Louis XV’s Inspector for Strange and Unexplained Deaths investigates the macabre death of a young whore and is drawn into a deadly web of intrigue where he is partnered with adventurer and seducer Giacomo Casanova.

Reviewed on 13 April 2019 by John Cleal

Seven Skins

Jackie Shaw, former soldier, policeman and one-time RUC undercover officer, is coerced by the security services into investigating a hit-list of retired security operatives.

Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by John Cleal

Shakespeare's Sword

Antiques dealer Simon Gold discovers an ancient sword which may have belonged to William Shakespeare and becomes obsessed with owning it. But how far is he prepared to go to get it?

Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Colour of Murder

An unhappy young man trapped in a loveless marriage faces the death penalty for a crime he claims not to remember, the brutal beating to death of a girl with whom he had become obsessed.

Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Mobster's Lament

Investigator Ida Davis is called to New York by her old partner, Michael Talbot, to investigate the brutal slaying of four people in a Harlem flophouse for which his son faces the electric chair. As they delve into the case, Ida and Michael realise the killings are part of a far larger conspiracy.

Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Selected Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Ten of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s best short stories featuring the world’s first consulting detective.

Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Wanted

A worried mother calls in PI Elvis Cole when she finds a $40,000 watch in her son’s bedroom. Cole makes a connection to a series of burglaries in the city’s poshest areas. The boy flees – and killings follow.

Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Poison Bed

Amid the religious and political rivalries of the Stuart court of James 1, Frances and Robert Carr, one of the most powerful couples in the land, face death on suspicion of murder.

Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Red Ribbon

Wiggins, once leader of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars and now an unwilling member of the fledgling security services, must run down government leaks which threaten Britain’s security while pursuing his own mission of revenge.

Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by John Cleal

When Trouble Sleeps

Lagos lawyer Amaka Mbadiwe makes herself a target for assassination when she tries to save a man from a street killing and becomes involved in political and sexual corruption at the highest level.

Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by John Cleal

The Lonely Witness

Former party girl Amy Falconetti now helps the house-bound receive communion while trying to sort out her own attitudes. When she witnesses a street murder, she fails to report it and instead trails the killer.

Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by John Cleal

Gunmetal Gray

Court Gentry is back with the CIA and his first mission is to find a defecting Chinese cyber-expert and bring him or his knowledge back to the US.

Reviewed on 23 February 2019 by John Cleal

Russian Roulette

Upper-class debt collector and amateur detective Mirabelle Bevan becomes involved with a brutal murder and must cut through an iron curtain of call girls and high stakes gambling to find the truth.

Reviewed on 23 February 2019 by John Cleal

Black Lily

Two strong women, one black, one white, fight to survive amid the depravity, prejudice and constraints of Jacobean London.

Reviewed on 23 February 2019 by John Cleal

Under the Ice

A girl’s body is found in a frozen lake. As the police investigation struggles, neighbours in a close-knit community turn against each other – and a young mother’s strange visions may hold the key.

Reviewed on 23 February 2019 by John Cleal

The Industry of Human Happiness

Max Cadenza’s dream of harnessing new technology to put the world’s greatest music onto gramophone records is threatened by a crooked theatrical impresario.

Reviewed on 09 February 2019 by John Cleal

Bloodmoon

Sister Fidelma is sent on a secret mission to uncover a rumoured assassination plot against the High King of Tara.

Reviewed on 09 February 2019 by John Cleal

The Murder of Harriet Monckton

Harriet Monckton is found dead in the privy behind the dissenting chapel she regularly attended. An inquest lasting nearly three years tries to establish if she was murdered and if so, by who.

Reviewed on 09 February 2019 by John Cleal

The Lines We Leave Behind

A young woman is incarcerated in an asylum, charged with a violent crime of which she has no memory. As she struggles to come to terms with her past an entirely different character emerges.

Reviewed on 09 February 2019 by John Cleal

The Changeling Murders

As London rebuilds after the Great Fire, thief-taker Charlie Tuesday’s former flame is kidnapped on the way to her own wedding and an actress, wearing her clothes, is found hanging from theatre scenery.

Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by John Cleal

Captive

Australian lawyer Kerry Maxwell, in Africa to volunteer alongside vet Dr Graham Baird at a wildlife rehabilitation centre, finds herself a captive in a bloody feud on the frontline of the war on poaching.

Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by John Cleal

Cold Bones

DS Aector McAvoy follows a report that an elderly woman has not been seen for days and finds her frozen in her bath, the start of a trail that reaches far into the past and uncovers a series of grisly murders.

Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by John Cleal

A Snapshot of Murder

Kate Shackleton organises a photographic society outing to Haworth, the heart of Brontë country. But when the most obnoxious member of the party is murdered, her planned break from detection comes to an abrupt end.

Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by John Cleal

Blood & Sugar

A body hanging on a hook at Deptford Dock, horribly tortured and branded with a slaver’s mark, propels American war hero Captain Harry Corsham into a dark secret at the very core of British society.

Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by John Cleal

The City of Lies

Garda Special Branch Inspector Stefan Gillespie, investigating the IRA murder of a Garda, a pitched battle between racecourse gangs and the partly burnt bodies of a family of five, is called off for a sensitive mission to Berlin, but soon discovers all the incidents are connected and that his own life is in danger.

Reviewed on 12 January 2019 by John Cleal

Beau Death

The demolition of a terraced cottage lands Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond with the coldest of cold cases when a skeleton in 18th century clothes is exposed.

Reviewed on 12 January 2019 by John Cleal

Bright Young Dead

A treasure hunt at the 18th birthday party of Pamela Mitford ends in tragedy when a guest falls to his death from a church tower. The police identify a maid as the killer, but Louisa Cannon, chaperone to the Mitford girls, sets out to clear her.

Reviewed on 12 January 2019 by John Cleal

Jess Castle and the Eyeballs of Death

Jess Castle PhD, historian and failed lecturer, returns to her home town of Castle Kidbury and becomes involved in a series of gory murders.

Reviewed on 12 January 2019 by John Cleal

Battle Sight Zero

Muslim extremists plan to smuggle assault rifles into Britain for a series of deadly attacks.

Reviewed on 12 January 2019 by John Cleal

Fall of Angels

Cambridge Detective Inspector John Redfyre investigates what appears to be the attempted murder of a female musician and is dragged into a nightmare of misogyny and murder as other killings quickly follow.

Reviewed on 08 December 2018 by John Cleal

How To Stop Time

Tom Hazard may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but he has lived for centuries. After frequently changing his identity to stay alive, he now craves an ordinary existence.

Reviewed on 08 December 2018 by John Cleal

The Confession

A man beats a disgraced banker to a pulp in front of his wife. He hands himself in, confesses the attack, but claims it was not premeditated and he didn’t know his victim. DS Alice Moody must discover whether this a random act or linked to the banker’s shady past.

Reviewed on 08 December 2018 by John Cleal

The Runagates Club

The final collection of John Buchan’s short magazine stories retold in the atmosphere of a gentleman’s club.

Reviewed on 08 December 2018 by John Cleal

A Step So Grave

When Lady Lavinia Dunnoch is found murdered in the garden of her remote Highand home, detective Dandy Gilver, a guest at the house to discuss the marriage of her son to the victim’s daughter, is faced with a tangled web of lies, deceit and superstition.

Reviewed on 08 December 2018 by John Cleal

In the Cage Where Your Saviours Hide

Young and naive private investigator Darian Ross is dragged into a world where no one can be trusted when he investigates the killing of a money launderer for his former partner, the fascinating Maeve Campbell.

Reviewed on 24 November 2018 by John Cleal

Killer Intent

What appears a failed assassination attempt on the American president on a visit to London leads three strangers into a world of political conspiracy, violence and murder.

Reviewed on 24 November 2018 by John Cleal

The Fox

A retired Cold Warrior uses the unique skills of a 17-year-old computer hacker with Asperger’s Syndrome to change the balance of world power.

Reviewed on 24 November 2018 by John Cleal

The Killing House

When a puzzling missing persons case, possibly connected to her own past, opens up in her home town, forensic psychologist Paula Maguire can’t help but return.

Reviewed on 24 November 2018 by John Cleal

Vermin

When Scottish PI Allan Linton is hired to find a missing young woman he finds himself in a world of gangsters, people traffickers and murder.

Reviewed on 24 November 2018 by John Cleal

The Mitford Murders

A war heroine nurse is murdered on a south coast train. Aristocratic Nancy Mitford investigates, aided by her one-time nurserymaid and companion Louisa Cannon.

Reviewed on 10 November 2018 by John Cleal

One Deadly Summer

Beautiful and sensual Eliane, know as Elle, is the object of the lust of every man in a small Provencal village. When she targets car mechanic and part-time fireman Fiorimond she is planning revenge for his family’s involvement a crime committed decades earlier.

Reviewed on 10 November 2018 by John Cleal

Destroying Angel

1655. Captain Damian Seeker of Oliver Cromwell’s handpicked guard has been sent north to prepare the way for stringent new anti-Royalist laws. What should be a to a routine visit to a village on the North York moors uncovers a stew of hatred, ambition and treachery.

Reviewed on 10 November 2018 by John Cleal

Tombland

Hunchback lawyer/sleuth Matthew Shardlake is sent by Princess Elizabeth to investigate a murder of which a distant Boleyn relative is accused and finds himself unwillingly caught up in the East Anglian rising which became known as Kett’s Rebellion.

Reviewed on 10 November 2018 by John Cleal

A House of Ghosts

Kate Cartwright, a woman with special gifts, is invited by armaments millionaire Lord Francis Highmount and his wife to join a party on their isolated island to take part in a seance to contact their sons killed in World War I. As the guests arrive, it becomes clear each has something to hide – and soon one will be savagely murdered.

Reviewed on 10 November 2018 by John Cleal

Murder at the Bayswater Bicycle Club

Frances Doughty is asked to keep any eye on goings-on at a posh West London cycle club by a mysterious government agency and enters a world of corruption, murder, espionage and personal danger.

Reviewed on 27 October 2018 by John Cleal

The Helicopter Heist

A gang sets out to commit Sweden’s biggest ever cash robbery.

Reviewed on 27 October 2018 by John Cleal

Betty Church and the Suffolk Vampire

Partly disabled Met sergeant Betty Church avoids being invalided out when her godmother March Middleton arranges a transfer to the Suffolk force. She returns to the town where she grew up to find a police station in chaos and a murderer dubbed the Suffolk Vampire on the loose.

Reviewed on 27 October 2018 by John Cleal

Breathe

Dick Bourton is not like other probationer policemen. He makes connections his superiors don’t want to see, linking a series of deaths as the fogs of the 1952 winter stop the city in its tracks.

Reviewed on 27 October 2018 by John Cleal

Mr Godley's Phantom

Martin Heath is struggling to settle after the horrors of the World War Two. When an old comrade tells of a position with elderly Harold Godley in a lonely part of Devon, he is plunged into a dark mystery.

Reviewed on 27 October 2018 by John Cleal

The Hunger

A California-bound waggon train is trapped by winter in the Sierra Nevadas. In an atmosphere of superstition, fear and mutual loathing, some members resort to cannibalism to survive.

Reviewed on 13 October 2018 by John Cleal

The Cull

Former mercenary Sonja Kurtz, given the chance to lead Southern Africa’s first all-woman anti-animal poaching unit, becomes involved in a bloody confrontation with an international criminal gang.

Reviewed on 13 October 2018 by John Cleal

Blood Feud

Corporate lawyer Kerry Casey is pitchforked into taking over her father’s gangland empire when her brother is assassinated, and then her mother killed at his funeral.

Reviewed on 13 October 2018 by John Cleal

1974

While investigating a missing girl, journalist Eddie Dunford stumbles into a sordid conspiracy involving local officials and police.

Reviewed on 13 October 2018 by John Cleal

The Way of All Flesh

Young women are dying in agony and Edinburgh medical student Will Raven, personally connected to one such death, sets out to discover why, aided by an intelligent and ambitious housemaid Sarah Fisher.

Reviewed on 13 October 2018 by John Cleal

Kin

When the adult sons and daughter of Viking chieftain Unnthor Reginsonn are drawn back to the isolated family farm in search of his fabled wealth, murder follows. Adoptive daughter Helga Finnsdottir must find the killer to save an innocent.

Reviewed on 15 September 2018 by John Cleal

The Secrets of Vesalius

Daniel Amat returns to Barcelona after the death of his father and is plunged into dark mystery of murder and scientific experimentation.

Reviewed on 15 September 2018 by John Cleal

Liar's Candle

Penny Kessler becomes an international symbol when she survives a terrorist bombing, then is forced to go on the run to stay alive

Reviewed on 15 September 2018 by John Cleal

The Martian Girl

Failing journalist Jean becomes obsessed with the mystery disappearance of a rising Victorian music hall star. As she pursues her investigation, the lives of the two women begin to blur together and plunge her into danger.

Reviewed on 15 September 2018 by John Cleal

Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru

Edgar Allan Poe believes his family may again be under threat from the past as an influx of immigrants disrupts traditional city life. When a young heiress he is reluctantly helping disappears, he is forced to call for help from his French detective friend the Chevalier C Auguste Dupin. 

Reviewed on 15 September 2018 by John Cleal

Money in the Morgue

A government paymaster is trapped overnight at an isolated hospital. With the telephones out and the nearby river about to burst its banks in a storm, the payroll disappears from a locked safe. When bodies follow, Scotland Yard Inspector Alleyn must investigate.

Reviewed on 01 September 2018 by John Cleal

Box of Bones

A man suffers a fatal fall at the Nice carnival, the first in a series of suspicious deaths. Captain Paul Darac of the Brigade Criminelle investigates.

Reviewed on 01 September 2018 by John Cleal

Wrong Way Home

DI Grace Fisher of the Essex Major Investigation Team re-opens a 25-year-old cold case in which a girl was raped and killed. The possible involvement of a local hero and a young true-crime podcaster hampers her investigation.

Reviewed on 01 September 2018 by John Cleal

Truth Stone

DCI Rachel Stone puts her job on the line when she allows a child killer to lead her to a second body.

Reviewed on 01 September 2018 by John Cleal

Smoke and Ashes

Drug addict war veteran Captain Sam Wyndham, now a senior officer in the British-India police, is surprised in an opium den by a vice squad raid. During his escape he finds a mutilated body and then stumbles into a plot to disrupt a royal visit.

Reviewed on 01 September 2018 by John Cleal

The Last Hour

Marcus Clodius Ballista, the Romanised Angle princeling, uncovers a plot to assassinate the Emperor Gallenius, but has just 24 hours to warn his friend.

Reviewed on 18 August 2018 by John Cleal

Date With Mystery

Private eye Samson O’Brien and dating agency boss Delilah Metcalfe are reunited in what seems a simple case which uncovers secrets some would far rather stayed buried.

Reviewed on 18 August 2018 by John Cleal

Ghost

Marc Dane and his partner, ex-Delta Force sniper Lucy Keyes, must call on all their skills to track down a worldwide series of devastating cyber-attacks. 

Reviewed on 18 August 2018 by John Cleal

A Brush with Death

Artist Susie Mahl is a guest at the country seat of the Earl of Greengrass when her host is murdered in the parish churchyard. With the local police baffled, she applies her eye for detail and her natural inquisitiveness to uncover the killer.

Reviewed on 18 August 2018 by John Cleal

The Reckoning

Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood’s investigation of a prostitute’s death leads him into a world of espionage – and danger.

Reviewed on 18 August 2018 by John Cleal

Truly Evil

A 50-year-old establishment conspiracy casts a long shadow over a present day murder investigation.

Reviewed on 04 August 2018 by John Cleal

The Good Mothers

The story of three women born into the claustrophobic world of the Calabrian mafia and the battle of Alessandra Cerretti, the Sicilian-born prosecutor who has devoted her life to bringing down the ‘Ndrangheta, the world’s most powerful crime syndicate.

Reviewed on 04 August 2018 by John Cleal

The Searcher

A child is found dead on wasteland in the London Liberty of Norton Folgate. ‘Searcher’ Adah Flint must examine the little girl’s body to discover her identity and how she died.

Reviewed on 04 August 2018 by John Cleal

Loch of the Dead

Paranormal investigators Inspectors Frey and McGray, lured to a lonely Highland manor by a promise of a cure for the mad sister of ‘Nine-Nails’ and a threat to the estate’s young heir, enter a Gothic world of blood, bats, folklore, superstition and murder.

Reviewed on 04 August 2018 by John Cleal

Yellowhammer

DI Nick Lowry faces a unique problem when two bodies are found within minutes on an Essex farm. One has clearly been murdered. The other appears to be a suicide. As he probes deeper a strange and horrifying tale appears.

Reviewed on 04 August 2018 by John Cleal

Robicheaux

Sheriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux hits the bottle after his wife Molly is killed in a road crash and wakes from a ‘lost’ night to find his hands cut and bruised and the man who killed her beaten to death.

Reviewed on 21 July 2018 by John Cleal

Agatha Raisin and the Witches' Tree

A vicar and his wife driving home from a dinner party find the body of a wealthy spinster hanging from a lightning-blasted ‘Witches Tree’. When more deaths follow, it’s another case for former PR expert-turned detective Agatha Raisin.


Reviewed on 21 July 2018 by John Cleal

All the Beautiful Lies

Harry Ackerson, on the verge of graduation, is called home to Maine after the death of his father in a mystery fall. As he learns more about his father’s life – and the various women involved – he becomes convinced the death was no accident.

Reviewed on 21 July 2018 by John Cleal

Fire in the Thatch

When a man’s body is found in the burned-out shell of a cottage, it is assumed it is that of ex-navy officer Nicholas Vaughan and that his death was due to an accident. His former CO refuses to believe the verdict and Inspector Macdonald is sent to re-examine the case.

Reviewed on 21 July 2018 by John Cleal

Berlin: The Downfall

The story of the Red Army’s capture of the German capital in World War II’s final stages.

Reviewed on 07 July 2018 by John Cleal

The Kremlin's Candidate

Double agent Dominika Egorova will lose her love and her life unless she can uncover a Russian mole who may become America’s most senior intelligence operative.

Reviewed on 07 July 2018 by John Cleal

Black Water

Ten-year-old Jig is recruited into a vicious Dublin street gang. Undercover Garda Shay seeks to save the boy, but puts his own family at risk.

Reviewed on 07 July 2018 by John Cleal

Five Days That Shocked the World

First-person accounts of the famous, soon-to-be-famous and the unknowns who lived through the dramatic days from April 28 to May 2 1945, covering the deaths of the Fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler, the fall of Berlin and the end of the six-year war.

Reviewed on 07 July 2018 by John Cleal

Afraid to Death

Joe Egan has been on the run since childhood from a mysterious blonde vision who appears to him whenever someone close to him dies.

Reviewed on 23 June 2018 by John Cleal

South Atlantic Requiem

War is building in the South Atlantic as Argentina prepares an invasion of the British Falkland islands. Conflicted MI6 man William Catesby is loyal to his country but will do anything he can to stop hostilities breaking out.

Reviewed on 23 June 2018 by John Cleal

A Talent for Murder

Successful murder mystery author Agatha Christie is blackmailed into committing a murder on behalf of a controlling madman.

Reviewed on 23 June 2018 by John Cleal

A Brush with Death

Artist Susie Mahl is a guest at the country seat of the Earl of Greengrass when her host is murdered in the parish churchyard. With the local police baffled, she applies her eye for detail and her natural inquisitiveness to uncover the killer.

Reviewed on 23 June 2018 by John Cleal

A Fine Ambition

A chambermaid’s body is discovered on Instow beach. It appears she drowned, but Abigail March who, with detective Theo Newton is among guests at the hotel where she worked, is suspicious.

Reviewed on 09 June 2018 by John Cleal

Bats in the Belfry

A group of successful professionals jokingly share ideas on how to commit the perfect murder. When one of them disappears under mysterious circumstances Chief Inspector Macdonald is called in.

Reviewed on 09 June 2018 by John Cleal

Pandora's Boy

Flavia Albia investigates the suspicious death of a young girl on the Quirinale Hill, home of Rome’s wealthiest and most aristocratic and ancient citizens

Reviewed on 09 June 2018 by John Cleal

A Lesson in Violence

An 11-year-old girl is unexpectedly reunited with her father, but this is only the beginning for them.

Reviewed on 26 May 2018 by John Cleal

Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions

Constance Kopp, New Jersey’s only female deputy sheriff, faces new challenges as America prepares to enter the first world war.

Reviewed on 26 May 2018 by John Cleal

Zen and the Art of Murder

An injured Japanese monk appears in a small Black Forest village. Tracking the man leads Chief Inspector Louise Boni to an international child sex and smuggling ring.

Reviewed on 26 May 2018 by John Cleal

Star of the North

A young black Korean-American woman disappears without trace from a South Korean island. Her twin sister refuses to believe she may be dead and is herself later recruited by the CIA to find the truth and go undercover into the world’s most secretive state.

Reviewed on 26 May 2018 by John Cleal

The Brother

Yasmine broke her promise to protect her little brother, but when she realises he is still alive, she is determined to make amends.

Reviewed on 12 May 2018 by John Cleal

The Holywell Dead

When a secretive parish priest is murdered against a background of the return of the plague, the coroner presses John the Carpenter into service yet again to discover why.

Reviewed on 12 May 2018 by John Cleal

The Wrong Child

Twenty-one of 22 children in an isolated village die in a disaster. Dog Evans is the only survivor. Abandoned by his parents and shunned by those left behind for whom he is a daily reminder of loss, the situation inevitably builds toward violence.

Reviewed on 12 May 2018 by John Cleal

Undertow

An Irish detective’s suicide leads PSNI Inspector Celcius Daly across the border into a labyrinth of lies, corruption and murderous violence.

Reviewed on 12 May 2018 by John Cleal

Damnation

Former Swiss police special ops detective Tom Winter faces an international plot to dominate the world’s financial markets and opponents who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.

Reviewed on 12 May 2018 by John Cleal

Gravesend

Ray Boy Calabrese is released from prison 16 years after a queer-bashing incident led to the death of a young man. Consumed by guilt and despair, he seeks street justice – a revenge killing from one of the dead boy’s relatives.

Reviewed on 28 April 2018 by John Cleal

Date With Malice

When elderly Alice Shepherd tries to convince detective Samson O’Brien someone is trying to kill her, he dismisses her fears as the ramblings of a confused old lady. Then a series of incidents at her retirement home launches him into a complex investigation.

Reviewed on 28 April 2018 by John Cleal

Red Right Hand

When a family video captures an Islamic terror attack, it also reveals a key organised crime witness the FBI long thought dead. Special Agent Charlie Thompson turns to former CIA assassin Michael Hendricks for help to trace the man they called the Red Right Hand.

Reviewed on 28 April 2018 by John Cleal

Midnight Blue

A young widow leaves her home in the Dutch polders for a life in Amsterdam. But she must move on when the past threatens to catch up with her.

Reviewed on 28 April 2018 by John Cleal

Fire

In 1666 England is at war with Spain and France. A massive blaze destroys much of London. Lawyer John Grey is tasked with discovering whether a Frenchman is to blame and is plunged into danger that threatens both himself and the nation.

Reviewed on 28 April 2018 by John Cleal

Kill Me Twice

Investigative freelance writer Morgan Vane takes up the case of a woman jailed for the arson murder of the abusive father of her child – then sees the ‘dead’ man outside her own home.

Reviewed on 14 April 2018 by John Cleal

The Silent Companions

Widow Elsie Bainbridge is held in an asylum, pending possible trial for murder by arson. A doctor attempts to unravel her mental problems and finds a link to her home’s dark past.

Reviewed on 14 April 2018 by John Cleal

Nucleus

The year is 1939 and war is imminent with a race under way between the allies and the Nazis to produce an atomic bomb. Cambridge lecturer Tom Wolfe knows the city’s Cavendish research laboratory is a prime target for German attacks.

Reviewed on 14 April 2018 by John Cleal

Body and Soul

Retired Met detective Frank Elder knows something is wrong when his estranged and troubled daughter turns up. When someone she has had a relationship is murdered, he must try to prove her innocence at the same time as protecting both of them from a deadly threat from the past.

Reviewed on 14 April 2018 by John Cleal

She Be Damned

Prostitutes are turning up dead, their sexual organs mutilated and removed. Courtesan and detective Heloise Chancey investigates.

Reviewed on 31 March 2018 by John Cleal

The Coven

Widowed Beatrice Scarlet loses her son to Red Indian raiders and returns to England to help at a home for ‘fallen girls’, but finds there are as many savages in 18th century London as in the wilds of colonial America.

Reviewed on 31 March 2018 by John Cleal

Exile

Disgraced former MI6 man Marc Dane faces a threat to the world when a Somali warlord acquires a nuclear weapon.

Reviewed on 31 March 2018 by John Cleal

Only the Dead Can Tell

Superintendent William Lorimer and his Major Incident Team uncover links between an apparent domestic murder and a vicious team of people traffickers.

Reviewed on 31 March 2018 by John Cleal

Soot

Fletcher Rigge, languishing in a debtor’s prison, receives a bizarre proposition. Find the killer of a prominent silhouette artist in one month and have his debts paid off, or return to jail possibly for the rest of his life!

Reviewed on 17 March 2018 by John Cleal

The Girl in the Green Dress

Transgender teenager Allie Kennaway is brutally murdered at her school’s prom night. As Manchester police face the most vicious of hate crimes, two parents must decide how far they will go to protect their own child.

Reviewed on 17 March 2018 by John Cleal

Girl in Snow

Golden girl Lucinda Hayes is found murdered. Three small town misfits record their reactions as the hunt for the killer continues.

Reviewed on 17 March 2018 by John Cleal

The Prince and the Whitechapel Murders

Jack the Ripper is murdering and mutilating prostitutes. Zulu Hart is called back to England by the Duke of Cambridge, his natural father, to investigate evidence which seems to point to Prince Edward as the mad killer. 

Reviewed on 17 March 2018 by John Cleal

Remember No More

City DS Julie Kite starts a new job in rural Wales, is plunged straight into a murder mystery and discovers life in insular Powys is nothing like Manchester.

Reviewed on 03 March 2018 by John Cleal

The Habit of Murder

Matthew Bartholomew, Brother Michael and Master Langelee travel to the Suffolk town of Clare for the funeral of the wealthy Elizabeth de Burgh in the hope she has left a legacy to near-bankrupt Michaelhouse college. Several people have met odd deaths and a dangerous situation threatens more killings.

Reviewed on 03 March 2018 by John Cleal

Seven Dead

Small-time crook Ted Lyte stumbles on a locked room containing the bodies of six dead men and one woman, and launches DI Kendall and journalist Thomas Hazeldean into an investigation which has its roots deep in the past.

Reviewed on 03 March 2018 by John Cleal

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The homecoming daughter of an aristocratic house is shot dead – every night! One of the guests must solve this mystery, but is handicapped as he wakes up in a different body, either guest or staff, each day.

Reviewed on 03 March 2018 by John Cleal

Rusty Puppy

Hap and Leonard investigate the murder of  a young black man and uncover the dirty underbelly of a town.

Reviewed on 17 February 2018 by John Cleal

The End of the Web

When a philandering, middle-aged antiques dealer is found dead next to the body of a beautiful younger girl, his widow asks ex-detective Ed Buchanan, a family friend, to investigate.

Reviewed on 17 February 2018 by John Cleal

The Cuban Affair

Afghan combat veteran Daniel ‘Mac’ MacCormick, now a charter boat captain, refuses a fishing trip to Cuba, but reconsiders when offered a small fortune and sets sail on his most dangerous cruise.

Reviewed on 17 February 2018 by John Cleal

Marked To Die

A mysterious archer leaves a string of corpses in his wake as he leads attacks on the salt road from (Droit)Wich. When a local lord falls victim, the Sheriff of Worcester dispatches Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll to put a stop to the attacks.

Reviewed on 17 February 2018 by John Cleal

A Damned Serious Business

MI6 officer Edwin Coker known as Boot for his obsession with the Duke of Wellington and Waterloo, puts together a daring plan to combat Russian cyber terrorism and recruits a British mercenary to carry it out.

Reviewed on 03 February 2018 by John Cleal

Scorched Earth

A former Mozambican guerrilla fighter enters England illegally bent on revenge – and DS Aector McAvoy is plunged into a case where present crimes lead him to an enemy from his past.

Reviewed on 03 February 2018 by John Cleal

All the World's a Stage

A friend asks Erast Fandorin to look into apparent threats to Moscow’s favourite artiste, a talented and beautiful actress, but the detective compromises his quest by falling in love with her.

Reviewed on 03 February 2018 by John Cleal

The Force

Detective Sergeant Danny Malone leads an elite unit fighting drugs, guns and gangs in Manhattan at the heart of a criminal justice system riddled with corruption, cronyism and lies.

Reviewed on 03 February 2018 by John Cleal

Rooted in Evil

When a man’s body is found in a Cotswold wood, it looks like suicide, but DI Jess Campbell and Superintendent Ian Carter soon discover looks can be deceptive.

Reviewed on 20 January 2018 by John Cleal

The Painted Queen

Amelia Peabody and her archaeologist husband Radcliffe Emerson are again in danger as they search for a priceless, stolen bust of legendary Queen Nefertiti.

Reviewed on 20 January 2018 by John Cleal

Sleep No More

Six inventive, occasionally witty and convincing scenarios involving murder, its motives and the course of natural justice from one of crime fiction’s greatest writers.

Reviewed on 20 January 2018 by John Cleal

The Hit

Reporter Rosie Gilmour, investigating the disappearance of an accountant and the killing of his wife’s lover, becomes involved in an international crime ring which steals and sells babies as well as trafficking people.

Reviewed on 20 January 2018 by John Cleal

Dark Pines

Tuva Moodyson, a deaf local paper reporter, dreams of a story that could make her career. Two bodies, their eyes cut out, copies of three unsolved murders 20 years before, give her the chance – and plunge her into secrets and fear in the dark forests.


Reviewed on 20 January 2018 by John Cleal

Prague Nights

Ambitious young doctor Christian Stern arrives in Prague and stumbles on the dead body of  the mistress of the Holy Roman Emperor and is plunged into a world of intrigues and rivalries in a court and country on the verge of a religious war.

Reviewed on 06 January 2018 by John Cleal

The Assassin of Verona

The young Will Shakespeare faces personal tragedy and political intrigue.

Reviewed on 06 January 2018 by John Cleal

The Eye of the Beholder

An end-of-his-rope private eye becomes obsessed with a beautiful female killer and pursues her for more than 20 years.

Reviewed on 06 January 2018 by John Cleal

Death in the Stars

As eclipse fever grips Britain, music hall star Selina Fellini hires investigator Kate Shackleton to accompany her to a viewing party. But Kate finds herself trying to solve three possible murders among the cast.

Reviewed on 06 January 2018 by John Cleal

An English Murder

In the cut-off ancestral home of Warbeck Hall, the dying Lord assembles his closest relatives for what will be their last Christmas together. One is murdered and it falls to another guest to find out why.

Reviewed on 16 December 2017 by John Cleal

Portrait of a Murderer

Adrian Gray was an unpleasant man, greedy, capricious, bullying. Each of his six children had reason to want him dead. During their annual Christmas visit to his lonely manor house, one of them acts.

Reviewed on 16 December 2017 by John Cleal

Death Makes a Prophet

The cult of Coo, a quasi-Egyptian religion, is riven by jealousies, greed and ambition which lead to murder.

Reviewed on 16 December 2017 by John Cleal

Ravenhill

Former UDA tearaway Jackie Shaw, who disappeared during the Troubles, returns to Belfast after 20 years for his father’s funeral and finds his past coming back to haunt him.

Reviewed on 25 November 2017 by John Cleal

So Say The Fallen

DCI Serena Flanagan follows her instincts as she investigates the apparent suicide of a wealthy disabled man.

Reviewed on 25 November 2017 by John Cleal

None So Blind

The remains of a young woman are found buried beneath tree roots. Harry Probert-Lloyd, a barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has been dreading this. He knows whose bones they are and is determined to expose the guilty

Reviewed on 25 November 2017 by John Cleal

Cambridge Black

A young woman sets out to prove her father’s innocence of an arson blaze in which two people died and her inquiries lead DC Gary Goodhew to two more connected crimes, including the death of his own grandfather.

Reviewed on 11 November 2017 by John Cleal

The Long Arm of the Law

CWA chairman Martin Edwards introduces 15 short stories by some of the great novelists from the golden age of crime writing.

Reviewed on 11 November 2017 by John Cleal

The Baltimore Boys

Three brilliant young men from different branches of a Jewish family all have dazzling futures until their close world collapses amid lies, jealousy and betrayal.

Reviewed on 11 November 2017 by John Cleal

Hoffer

Suave William Hoffer is a fixer for the super rich. When a girl is found murdered in his flat, his past seems to be catching up with him – and he must revive old instincts to survive.

Reviewed on 11 November 2017 by John Cleal

Deposed

Blinded and imprisoned Nero, god and Emperor of Rome, is helped to escape by a frightened little slave boy and plots his revenge.

Reviewed on 28 October 2017 by John Cleal

A Grave Concern

With passions over the election of a replacement for its murdered chancellor running high and a killer at large, physician/detective Matt Bartholomew and Brother Michael fear for the future of Cambridge University.

Reviewed on 28 October 2017 by John Cleal

City of Masks

Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, is in Venice on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On a night of carnival, he finds a dead man and is plunged into the secrets and intrigues of the City on the Sea.

Reviewed on 28 October 2017 by John Cleal

The Soldier's Curse

Gentleman convict Hugh Monserrat must solve the murder of the young wife of his penal colony’s commandant to save the life of his friend, falsely accused of the killing.

Reviewed on 28 October 2017 by John Cleal

Falling Creatures

Country girl Shilly finds love with the strangely gifted Charlotte Dymond on an isolated Cornish farm. When Charlotte is murdered she sets out to find the truth.

Reviewed on 14 October 2017 by John Cleal

A True and Faithful Brother

A wealthy philanthropist disappears from a locked Masonic hall. Lady Detective Frances Doughty is drawn into a case that involves her own family and puts her life at risk.

Reviewed on 14 October 2017 by John Cleal

Red Earth

A South African woman is carjacked. Police are dealing with the assassination of the American ambassador by a suicide bomber and cannot respond, so helicopter pilot Nia Carras and wildlife researcher Mike Dunn are called in to pursue the vehicle.

Reviewed on 14 October 2017 by John Cleal

Fever

In a world where the majority of the population has been destroyed by a pandemic, an altruistic academic sets out to build a society free from the pressures of South Africa’s past.


Reviewed on 14 October 2017 by John Cleal

Unforgivable

Terrorists hit a multicultural event in Cardiff and follow up with more bombings. With police resources stretched, DC Will MacReady is unhappy to be assigned to investigate the murder of a girl, but soon realises there is a link between the events.

Reviewed on 14 October 2017 by John Cleal

The Wychford Poisoning Case

French-born Mrs Jacqueline Bentley is to hang for the poisoning of her husband. Novelist, amateur criminologist and psychological detective Roger Sheringham sets out to prove even her own lawyers wrong and unmask the real killer.

Reviewed on 30 September 2017 by John Cleal

The Zealot's Bones

A Canadian academic, seeking the bones of the apostle Simon the Zealot, hires a discredited and psychologically damaged Afghan war hero as his bodyguard. When a woman who briefly brought peace to the soldier’s troubled mind is murdered, he sets out to bring her vengeance.

Reviewed on 30 September 2017 by John Cleal

Time To Win

When local crime boss Rich Goodwin is pulled from the river, it looks like suicide. But Goodwin had many enemies and as his widow Tatiana struggles to take over his business, she quickly learns that power comes at a price.

Reviewed on 30 September 2017 by John Cleal

The Coroner's Daughter

A nursemaid conceals her pregnancy then murders her newborn, but before an inquest can be held, she is found dead. Abigail Lawless, daughter of Dublin’s coroner, investigates and is drawn into a world of zealotry and danger.

Reviewed on 16 September 2017 by John Cleal

The Dark Isle

Sam returns to the island of Hoy, scene of her childhood holidays, to uncover the facts surrounding the death of her undercover policeman father.

Reviewed on 16 September 2017 by John Cleal

Dark Asylum

The principal physician at Angel Meadow asylum is found brutally murdered. The police concentrate on the inmates, but apothecary Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain believe it an act of vengeance.

Reviewed on 16 September 2017 by John Cleal

Dark Dawn Over Steep House

After the daughter of a respected naval captain, is ‘outraged’ on the dirty and dangerous streets of Limehouse and her attacker vanishes, a chance encounter in a cafe brings a new victim to light, and sets March and Grice on the trail of a serial offender.

Reviewed on 02 September 2017 by John Cleal

Blackwater

A shipment of amphetamines lands on the Essex coast and sparks a series of killings. An unproven team of detectives must solve the problem – while they also learn how to work and get on with each other

Reviewed on 02 September 2017 by John Cleal

A High Mortality of Doves

Scotland Yard Inspector Albert Lincoln, a scarred survivor of the war on the Western Front, is sent to a remote Derbyshire village to solve a series of bizarre killings.

Reviewed on 01 September 2017 by John Cleal

The Women of Baker Street

Holmes’ landlady, Mrs Hudson, is in hospital, and thinks she sees a murder, but cannot be sure. Dr Watson’s wife Mary investigates a number of missing young boys. Gradually the two inquiries are drawn together and their lives are put in danger.

Reviewed on 19 August 2017 by John Cleal

The Irregular

When a friend is murdered, Wiggins, once leader of Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars, seeks revenge and becomes involved with Britain’s emerging security services.

Reviewed on 19 August 2017 by John Cleal

Kitty Peck and the Daughter of Sorrow

Kitty Peck has inherited Paradise, her grandmother’s sprawling criminal empire in the Thames docklands. But the past casts a long shadow and she must face a criminal cabal intent on her humiliation and destruction.

Reviewed on 19 August 2017 by John Cleal

The Sinking Admiral

Admiral Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, landlord of a failing coastal pub, is found dead in his boat, an apparent suicide. Bar manager Amy Walpole refuses to believe the obvious and sets out to investigate.

Reviewed on 05 August 2017 by John Cleal

The Incredible Crime

Spirited, beautiful, and unconventional Prudence Pinsent, daughter of the Master of a Cambridge college, hears of a drug smuggling ring which implicates a close relative and sets out to discover the identity of the gang who will kill to protect their secret.

Reviewed on 05 August 2017 by John Cleal

The Child

The discovery of a baby’s skeleton on a building site reveals a decades old tragedy which means different things to three women.

Reviewed on 05 August 2017 by John Cleal

Good Friday

Detective Constable Jane Tennison is a key witness to the IRA bombing of a tube station. As she fights to forget the dreadful scenes, a chance sighting exposes a terrorist plot to strike a deadly blow at London’s police.

Reviewed on 02 August 2017 by John Cleal

Elementary Murder

A would-be teacher is found dead inside a locked classroom. DS Michael Brennan suspects her death is not the suicide it seems.

Reviewed on 22 July 2017 by John Cleal

Framed

Snooker hall owner Frankie James sets out to prove his wild younger brother’s innocence of a gangland murder and must face the police, gang bosses and warped killers.

Reviewed on 22 July 2017 by John Cleal

Retribution Road

East India Company Sergeant Arthur Bowman is sent on a secret mission. Years later as a drink and drug addicted policeman, he stumbles on a vile murder and knows only someone who shared his Burmese prison could have committed the crime.

Reviewed on 22 July 2017 by John Cleal

The Magician's Lie

The Amazing Arden, the most notorious female illusionist of her day and renowned for sawing a man in half, is questioned by a small-town policeman over the apparent murder of her husband.

Reviewed on 22 July 2017 by John Cleal

Death Trap

Reporter Rosie Gilmour, investigating a white slavery ring, is hunted by a sadistic killer.

Reviewed on 08 July 2017 by John Cleal

The Boy Who Saw

An old Jewish tailor, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, is tortured and killed. He leaves a cryptic message for his granddaughter who is forced to flee with her young son in the company of the mysterious Solomon Creed who believes he must save the boy in order to save himself.

Reviewed on 08 July 2017 by John Cleal

The Dead Woman of Deptford

Scotland Yard Inspector Ben Ross is summoned to the battered body of a moneylender in south London’s old naval dockyard. He soon discovers the last person to see the dead woman alive was a feckless young doctor – who is almost a part of his own family!

Reviewed on 08 July 2017 by John Cleal

Trespass

Inspector Celcius Daly investigates the abduction of a boy by a group of travellers suspected of smuggling and organised crime and uncovers a link to an unsolved ‘disappearance’ during the Troubles.

Reviewed on 08 July 2017 by John Cleal

Murder in Disguise

Hollywood script girl Jessie Beckett investigates the killing of a cinema projectionist and finds a link to crimes committed half a world away.

Reviewed on 05 July 2017 by John Cleal

Bright Shiny Things

Former soldier-turned-PI Lee Arnold enlists his Muslim assistant, Bangladeshi psychiatry graduate Mumtaz Hakim, in a daring deception to bring a self-confessed ISIS terrorist to the West.

Reviewed on 24 June 2017 by John Cleal

Fireside Gothic

A trio of supernatural, eerie and haunting Gothic novellas.

Reviewed on 24 June 2017 by John Cleal

Puritan

Mercia Blakewood hopes her search for Charles II’s missing paintings, which has taken her to America, has gained enough leverage to reclaim her family home. But when a new friend is murdered, she will not leave until the killer is found.

Reviewed on 24 June 2017 by John Cleal

The Last Days of Night

Brilliant novice lawyer Paul Cravath must help his first client withstand a $1 billion dollar patent suit – with the very future of electric light itself at stake.

Reviewed on 24 June 2017 by John Cleal

Sympathy for the Devil

A prostitute with an influential client list is murdered. DS Cathal Breen finds himself blocked as the case assumes international importance. Meanwhile, his pregnant girlfriend, former WDC Helen Tozer, brings her intuition to the investigation – wanted or not!

Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by John Cleal

The Salt Marsh

Sam Coyle’s father lived and died in the shadows of undercover policing among the criminals, spies and radicals of Cold War London. He left nothing to his daughter but tradecraft, paranoia and enemies.

Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by John Cleal

Mississippi Blood

Dr Tom Cage is on trial for the murder of his former black nurse and lover, but refuses help from his lawyer son Penn. Meanwhile the whole Cage family is under threat from the Double Eagles, a savage KKK splinter group.

Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by John Cleal

Reconciliation for the Dead

Former SADF paratrooper Claymore Straker returns to South Africa to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and seek absolution for his unwitting part in a horrifying act of inhumanity.

Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by John Cleal

Arrowood

A missing-person case for down-at-heel private eye William Arrowood and his friend Norman Barnett spirals into an investigation of sexual exploitation, perversion, murder and terrorism.

Reviewed on 27 May 2017 by John Cleal

Black Night Falling

Reporter Charlie Yates answers a plea from a former colleague and is plunged into a stew of small town corruption and murder.

Reviewed on 27 May 2017 by John Cleal

Mask of Shadows

London’s top luvvies bring the Scottish Play – and its curse – north of the border and create a scene of chaos and corpses for paranomal investigators Inspectors Frey and ‘Nine Nails’ McGray.

Reviewed on 27 May 2017 by John Cleal

Mistress of the Just Land

Jean Brash, a child of the streets, now madam of Edinburgh’s finest brothel, sets out to discover who killed an unpopular judge and left his body in her cellar.

Reviewed on 27 May 2017 by John Cleal

Rogues' Holiday

Inspector David Blest, unhappy when his superiors curtail his investigation into the apparent suicide of a young man-about-town, takes a break at a posh seaside hotel, where the distinguished lawyer, whose account of events leaves him dissatisfied, is also staying

Reviewed on 27 May 2017 by John Cleal

Murder on the Serpentine

An ageing Queen Victoria asks Special Branch Commander Thomas Pitt to look into the strange death of one of her closest confidantes who, on her behalf, had been investigating the influence of a wealthy playboy on the Prince of Wales.

Reviewed on 13 May 2017 by John Cleal

Conspiracy

Renegade monk, philosopher and heretic Giordano Bruno is caught in the middle of political and religious strife when he investigates the murder of a friend.

Reviewed on 13 May 2017 by John Cleal

The Blood Card

On the eve of the Coronation, DI Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto uncover an anarchist plot while they attempt to find the killer of their wartime commander.

Reviewed on 13 May 2017 by John Cleal

An Empty Coast

Semi-retired mercenary Sonja Kurtz is on a mission of personal revenge, when her daughter in Namibia sends a call for help. The student archaeologist has discovered a body which sparks a hunt for the location of a treasure that people will kill for.

Reviewed on 13 May 2017 by John Cleal

Burned and Broken

A DI, the subject of an internal investigation, is found burned to death. A vulnerable young woman, fresh from the care system, tries to discover the truth about the death of her friend.

Reviewed on 29 April 2017 by John Cleal

Hawkwood

After the two great battles of the 100 Years War, newly-knighted Sir John Hawkwood, hoping to make his fortune, joins a mercenary band.

Reviewed on 29 April 2017 by John Cleal

Murder Never Knocks

Out-of-town killers seem to be lining up for a crack at tough PI Mike Hammer as violence follows him and his beautiful partner Velda into the poshest of all crime scenes.

Reviewed on 29 April 2017 by John Cleal

The Royal Ghost

A scandalous booklet attracts the attention of spiritualist Arthur Wallace Hope – and also young Mina Scarletti, a writer of horror stories and investigator of psychic phenomena, who suspects fraud.

Reviewed on 29 April 2017 by John Cleal

The Third Nero

Flavia Albia must expose a plotter at the heart of Rome’s government who could plunge the city and empire into civil war.

Reviewed on 29 April 2017 by John Cleal

Living Death

Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire and her team are stretched to their limit. Illegal drugs in Cork are at an all-time high. A gang of dog-nappers are terrorising kennel owners. A girl leaves a nightclub – and disappears. Katie realises the three crimes may be connected.

Reviewed on 14 April 2017 by John Cleal

Modern Crimes

WPC Lottie Armstrong, one of Leeds’ first women officers, battles prejudice and ignorance and she struggles to find a missing girl and solve a murder.

Reviewed on 14 April 2017 by John Cleal

The Dead Shall Be Raised and Murder of a Quack

Two stories featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Littlejohn, the first a very cold case which springs to life with the discovery of a body on a lonely moor, and the other the killing of a homeopathic practitioner in a Norfolk village.

Reviewed on 14 April 2017 by John Cleal

The Fourteenth Letter

A girl is murdered at her engagement party. William Lamb must keep a deadly secret and deliver a cryptic message, but finds a morass of madness, crime and murder.

Reviewed on 14 April 2017 by John Cleal

The Perils of Command

Pressed man John Pearce, now a Lieutenant, faces scheming and possible death as he continues his feuds with senior officers and pursues his pregnant lover across Italy.

Reviewed on 14 April 2017 by John Cleal

Murder by Ghostlight

Journalist, social reformer, novelist and actor Charles Dickens returns to the theatre where he has been appearing to find a member of the cast shot dead and a weapon on the stage – and is arrested as prime suspect with a smoking gun in his hand.

Reviewed on 01 April 2017 by John Cleal

Striking Murder

An unpopular mine owner is murdered at the height of a strike. Detective Sergeant Michael Brennan discovers that with a town full of suspects there are more questions than answers.

Reviewed on 01 April 2017 by John Cleal

War Hawk

Ex-Ranger Tucker Wayne helps a former army colleague on the run from assassins hunting her and her son and enters a hi-tech world of conspiracy, obsession and murder.

Reviewed on 01 April 2017 by John Cleal

All Things Cease To Appear

A college professor discovers his wife as the victim of an axe-killer in their farmhouse near Albany and his three-year-old daughter alone – the second tragedy in an apparently cursed house.

Reviewed on 01 April 2017 by John Cleal

Blood Symmetry

A woman and her son are abducted. The boy is found wandering and, soon after, a pack of the woman’s blood is left on a doorstep. Forensic psychologist Alice Quentin must help the traumatised child uncover his memories.

Reviewed on 01 April 2017 by John Cleal

Highbridge

Janey Carlton has been killed by her own car, stolen by a junkie mugger. When her murder remains unsolved after three years, her brothers and her widower set out to gain revenge.

Reviewed on 18 March 2017 by John Cleal

The Ashes of Berlin

Inspector Gregor Reinhardt, back in Berlin after the war ends, must track down a serial killer, but his investigation is interfered with by the political interests of the occupying powers and a group of ex-Nazis.

Reviewed on 18 March 2017 by John Cleal

The Death of Kings

Retired Chief Inspector John Madden re-examines a ten-year-old murder amid fears that the wrong man was hanged for the crime.

Reviewed on 18 March 2017 by John Cleal

You Were Never Really Here

Joe, a former FBI agent and Marine, is a gun for hire. He’s employed to rescue a senator’s daughter from a Manhattan brothel, and stumbles into a deadly web of conspiracy.

Reviewed on 18 March 2017 by John Cleal

The Sign of Fear

As London cowers under German aerial bombardment, Doctor John Watson must solve the kidnap of leading government officials and the mystery of a lost ambulance ship.

Reviewed on 04 March 2017 by John Cleal

Lawless and the Flowers of Sin

As a reluctant Inspector of Vice, Campbell Lawless must make a reckoning of London’s houses of ill repute. His inquiries draw the attention of powerful men, merciless in defending their reputations.

Reviewed on 04 March 2017 by John Cleal

Quarry's Deal

Quarry follows a killer from a steamy Florida singles resort back to his own territory. But this killer is a beautiful woman and the ex-Marine wonders if he may have met his match.

Reviewed on 04 March 2017 by John Cleal

Brighton

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Pearce learns an old friend is prime suspect in a string of murders. He heads home to protect the secret they share and face both an elusive killer and his own conscience.

Reviewed on 04 March 2017 by John Cleal

Beloved Poison

St Saviour’s Infirmary in London awaits demolition. Apothecary Jem Flockhart uncovers six tiny coffins and her search for their meaning reveals a long forgotten past and sparks a series of murders.

Reviewed on 18 February 2017 by John Cleal

Birthright

Widowed Mercia Blakewood must gamble everything she loves to save her family and inheritance. Her quest takes her to the New World at a time of historic change.

Reviewed on 18 February 2017 by John Cleal

Blood For Blood

Criminal brain Red Dock steals a policeman’s daughter to begin a carefully planned, brutal and barbaric revenge on the family who put him and his twin brother into care.

Reviewed on 18 February 2017 by John Cleal

Lady Cop Makes Trouble

Constance Kopp, America’s first female deputy sheriff, discovers her position may be in jeopardy because of the law. When a German conman escapes her custody, she must find him to save the job she loves.

Reviewed on 18 February 2017 by John Cleal

The Devil's Feast

Afghan war hero Captain William Avery, a reluctant sleuth, investigates a horrible death at the Reform, London’s grandest gentleman’s club – a death the club is desperate to keep quiet.

Reviewed on 18 February 2017 by John Cleal

Mister Memory

In post-Commune Paris, in the last year of the 19th century, a man with a perfect memory murders his wife. But that is just the start of the story.

Reviewed on 04 February 2017 by John Cleal

The 3rd Woman

When her younger sister is found dead, apparently from an OD, investigative reporter Madison Webb refuses to accept the official verdict and begins her own inquiries. These lead her into a dangerous web of state and international politics, greed and corruption.

Reviewed on 04 February 2017 by John Cleal

The Age of Treachery

When a close friend is accused of murder, Oxford fellow and wartime SOE agent Duncan Forrester sets out to prove his innocence, following the trail of evidence from the ruins of Berlin to the forests of Norway – and discovers, that for some, the war is not over.

Reviewed on 04 February 2017 by John Cleal

The Black Friar

Damian Seeker, captain of Cromwell’s guard, faces sedition, armed rebellion, a Royalist spy in his own ranks and the threat of a Stuart invasion.

Reviewed on 04 February 2017 by John Cleal

The Chelsea Strangler

Thomas Chaloner investigates murder, plots and robbery while the plague rages in London.

Reviewed on 04 February 2017 by John Cleal

Corpus

American lecturer Tom Wilde, a specialist in Elizabethan espionage history, is dragged into political conspiracies as Communists and Nazis vie for influence over the English throne.

Reviewed on 04 February 2017 by John Cleal

Cut Me In

No-one liked tough literary agent Del Gilbert – not those he did business with, the women he cheated on, not even his partner in the agency. But when he is found shot in his office, Josh Blake must find the killer – and a missing contract potentially worth millions.

Reviewed on 21 January 2017 by John Cleal

Little Deaths

Ruth Malone wakes one morning to find a window wide open and her two young children missing. It’s every mother’s nightmare – but Malone is not like other mothers.

Reviewed on 21 January 2017 by John Cleal

Ordeal by Fire

Veteran Sheriff Sergeant Catchpoll must catch a 12th century arsonist who has set fires which have killed two people – and at the same time cope with a keen, but inexperienced, new Under Sheriff.

Reviewed on 21 January 2017 by John Cleal

The Mystery of the Three Orchids

As models parade her new creations, fashion house owner Cristiana O’Brian discovers the body of one of her staff on her own bed. Commissario Carlo De Vincenzi  must untangle a web of deceipt and blackmail to find the killer.

Reviewed on 21 January 2017 by John Cleal

The Secret of High Eldersham

The East Anglian village of High Eldersham is unwelcoming to strangers. Several have suffered catastrophic accidents. But when a new landlord is found stabbed in his own pub, Scotland Yard are called in.

Reviewed on 21 January 2017 by John Cleal

Pale Horse Riding

Police financial detective August Schlegel and his partner, the enigmatic SS officer Morgen, are assigned to investigate corruption at a Nazi death camp and are plunged into a hell of treachery, debauchery and murder.

Reviewed on 20 January 2017 by John Cleal

Fifth Column

A young woman is found dead on a bomb site, but she is no air raid victim. A post-mortem shows she was strangled. DI John Jago is called in and uncovers a trail of deception, betrayal and theft.

Reviewed on 07 January 2017 by John Cleal

Quarry's List

Hitman and ex-Marine Quarry finds himself a target when the would-be successor to the man he worked for – and in whose death he was involved – tries to take over.

Reviewed on 07 January 2017 by John Cleal

Sons of the Blood

What is the meaning of the mysterious map entrusted to his bastard son Jack Wynter by Yorkist courtier Sir Thomas Vaughan before his execution?

Reviewed on 07 January 2017 by John Cleal

The House of Smoke

Killer Simeon Lynch, incarcerated in London’s foul and filthy Newgate prison, counts the days to his execution – for two crimes he did not commit.

Reviewed on 07 January 2017 by John Cleal

Crime and Corruption at the Yard

DI David Woodland’s 19 years service covers the growing pressure on the capital’s police, its major scandals, and the current problems faced by a depleted, demoralised force hamstrung by gutless bosses and the effects of PC and ‘human rights’ on the preservation of law and order.

Reviewed on 24 December 2016 by John Cleal

Death in the Tunnel

Sir Wilfred Saxonby is found dead on a train, alone in a locked first class carriage with a gun close to his body. There is no reason for suicide and a baffled Inspector Arnold calls on Desmond Merrion – a criminologist and amateur detective – to help him untangle the puzzle.

Reviewed on 24 December 2016 by John Cleal

The Fatal Flame

‘Copper star’ Timothy Wilde chases down an arsonist and violence and murder follow as he and his brother follow the trail around the dangerous and corruption-filled streets of a pre-civil war New York.

Reviewed on 24 December 2016 by John Cleal

The Plague Road

Who killed actor/spy Charles Fincham? And what is the secret of the letter he was carrying from Charles II’s brother to the French ambassador? In plague-hit London, rising young lawyer and civil war intelligence officer John Grey must find out.

Reviewed on 24 December 2016 by John Cleal

To Fight For

Former Para and bare knuckle fighter turned-assassin Joe seeks vengeance on those who killed the woman he loved.

Reviewed on 24 December 2016 by John Cleal

Ash and Bones

A plain clothes officer is shot dead in a raid and the original suspect left in a coma. CID trainee Will MacReady is desperate to help, but ignored by his colleagues, follows his own leads that lead the detectives down a dark path.

Reviewed on 10 December 2016 by John Cleal

Cold

Former IRA bombmaker Joe Tiplady, on the run from his former colleagues, becomes a target in a worldwide chain of events he does not understand.

Reviewed on 10 December 2016 by John Cleal

Death at the Seaside

War widow turned private investigator Kate Shackleton takes an overdue holiday to visit an old school friend and her goddaughter and discovers a body – and a wall of silence.

Reviewed on 10 December 2016 by John Cleal

The Cheapside Corpse

Intelligencer Thomas Chaloner must solve the killing of an unpopular banker in a Restoration London threatened by war, civil unrest and plague.

Reviewed on 10 December 2016 by John Cleal

Thunder of the Gods

Marcus Aquila and his Tungrian cohort are sent east on a desperate mission to save a key fortress and halt a war which could destroy the Empire.

Reviewed on 10 December 2016 by John Cleal

Pain Killer

Monica Wood lives with chronic pain after an accident. Drugs blur her memories. But when she finds what appears to be her own suicide note, which she has no memory of writing, she wonders who did – and why?

Reviewed on 07 December 2016 by John Cleal

Camille and the Lost Diaries of Samuel Pepys

Bawdy Restoration England is threatened by a renewal of the war between King and Parliament. A chance meeting between the beautiful Camille, a fugitive French actress and Royal advisor Samuel Pepys leads to an improbable love story in an atmosphere of  political intrigue and danger.

Reviewed on 26 November 2016 by John Cleal

Cuckold Point

River policeman Tom Pascoe tries to track down a consignment of stolen silk and becomes involved with brutal criminals and international espionage in a case which threatens his life, his family and his country.

Reviewed on 26 November 2016 by John Cleal

Kill Me Twice

Reporter Rosie Gilmour investigates a trail of abuse and murder from the sink estates of Glasgow to the corridors of Westminster.

Reviewed on 26 November 2016 by John Cleal

The Promise

Maverick DC Gary Goodhew returns to duty after injury to help investigate the strange killing of a down-and-out and part-time informant and finds a chain of events which all point to an obsessed killer.

Reviewed on 26 November 2016 by John Cleal

An Honest Man

Criminal barrister Charles Holborne has escaped being framed for murder, but his life and career are in ruins. A major brief offers him a lifeline, but drags him into London’s shadowy underworld.

Reviewed on 26 November 2016 by John Cleal

Beneath the Surface

A minister’s aide is murdered in the Irish parliament building. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team must uncover the truth in a sea of lies, corruption and secrets.

Reviewed on 12 November 2016 by John Cleal

By Gaslight

American detective William Pinkerton is in London following up his father’s obsession with ‘phantom’ crook Edward Shade. So is gentleman thief Adam Foole, responding to a letter from a long lost love. The woman is brutally murdered – and when Foole discovers Pinkerton was one of the last to see her alive, their paths are bound to cross.

Reviewed on 12 November 2016 by John Cleal

Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel

The true story of the arrest and trial of Soviet spy Colonel Rudolf Abel by the man who defended him – and his eventual exchange for shot down U2 pilot Gary Powers.

Reviewed on 12 November 2016 by John Cleal

The Amber Shadows

Honey Deschamps works at Britain’s wartime top secret intercept and decoding centre. Somebody starts to send her parcels of amber, apparently from a looted Russian palace. Who is responsible, and in a place where everyone keeps secrets, who can she trust?

Reviewed on 12 November 2016 by John Cleal

The Dead House

The discovery of a woman’s body, dressed in white and laid out in a candle-lit ‘death house’ in a Welsh valley church sets Detective Sergeant Fiona Lewis on her most baffling case.

Reviewed on 12 November 2016 by John Cleal

Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevo Street

A prostitute, a Flemish painter and a tower watchman all die after claiming to see a ghost. Apothecary and assistant bailiff Melchior Wakenstede sets out to find the truth behind these seemingly supernatural, but unconnected, murders.

Reviewed on 29 October 2016 by John Cleal

Blind Arrows

English journalist Martin Kant has a chance encounter with a mysterious woman in a Dublin wracked by violence, treachery and spies as the Irish fight for independence gathers momentum.

Reviewed on 29 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Angel of Highgate

Victorian rakehell Lord Geoffrey Thraxton cares only for his own amusement and boasts his contempt for mortality. But in humiliating a literary critic, he creates an enemy who will change the rest of his life.

Reviewed on 29 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Monster's Daughter

A British concentration camp doctor carries out eugenics experiments on Boer prisoners. A hundred years later, a young policewoman discovers a woman’s body, burned beyond recognition, a crime that leads her into her country’s violent past – and her father’s part in it.

Reviewed on 29 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Secrets of Gaslight Lane

‘Personal’ detective Sidney Grice and his ward March Middleton struggle to unravel the mystery of two killings of members of the same family in the same house, but ten years apart.

Reviewed on 29 October 2016 by John Cleal

Fade To Black

The apparent return from the dead of a cult film icon forces media man Root Wilson – who wrote his obituary – to search for the truth. A series of twists ensure Root becomes a suspect for murder himself – as well as a possible next victim.

Reviewed on 15 October 2016 by John Cleal

Fear the Darkness

Retired FBI undercover agent Brigid Quinn is settling into marriage and a slower life as a private investigator. When her niece comes to live with her and she reluctantly takes on a case of what looks like accidental drowning, her world turn upside down.

Reviewed on 15 October 2016 by John Cleal

Missing Pieces

Journalist Sarah Quinlan investigates a decades old mystery that has forced her husband to live a lie.

Reviewed on 15 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Girl In Green

Journalist Thomas Benton is persuaded by ex-US soldier Arwood Hobbes to return to the Middle East to atone for their failure to save a girl in the aftermath of  Operation Desert Storm 20 years before.

Reviewed on 15 October 2016 by John Cleal

Edgar Allan Poe and the London Monster

Edgar Allan Poe summons his detective friend C Auguste Dupin to London to solve a mystery.

Reviewed on 11 October 2016 by John Cleal

A Death at Fountains Abbey

John Aislabie, one of the wealthiest and most hated men in England, has been threatened with murder. Thomas Hawkins is blackmailed into investigating and must hunt those responsible, or lose the woman he loves.

Reviewed on 01 October 2016 by John Cleal

A Poisonous Plot

Tensions between town and gown threaten full scale warfare in 1350s Cambridge as physician/corpse examiner Matthew Bartholomew and senior proctor Brother Michael try to solve a series of murders and mysterious deaths.

Reviewed on 01 October 2016 by John Cleal

Buried

The mummified bodies of a family and their pets found beneath the floorboards of a cottage point to an execution during the Troubles.

Reviewed on 01 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Detective and the Devil

Constable Charles Horton of the River Police investigates the brutal killing of a clerk and his family in London’s East End and is drawn into the secretive world of the East India Company and a confrontation on a lonely South Atlantic island with a killer who seems to be the very Devil.

Reviewed on 01 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Silent Ones

Father Anselm is approached by the head of a minor Order to trace a missing priest who ran from a police station while being questioned over an allegation of child abuse. Anselm finds he must again defend a man who is the only link to others who have chosen silence over their right to justice.

Reviewed on 01 October 2016 by John Cleal

The Singer From Memphis

Athenian investigator Nicolaos and priestess wife, Diotima, are hired by would-be historian Herodotus to guard him on a research trip to war-torn Egypt.

Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by John Cleal

Zambezi

Special Forces Master Sergeant Jed Banks flies to Africa to find the truth about his conservation researcher daughter, supposedly killed by a man-eating lion, and finds himself in the frontline of the war against terror.

Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by John Cleal

Darktown

When a young black girl, last seen in the car of a white man, is found dead, new black Atlanta policemen Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith go against the rules to investigate.

Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by John Cleal

Easy Motion Tourist

Guy Collins, a British journalist visiting Lagos, stumbles into a brutal killing. A mutilated female body is discovered and Collins is picked up as a suspect.

Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by John Cleal

So Nude, So Dead

Former pianist and heroin addict Ray Stone wakes up in a cheap motel with a dead girl in his bed. The only way he can stop the police charging him with her murder is to find the real killer.

Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by John Cleal

The Last Good Kiss

Montana private eye CW Sughrue is hired to track down a failing alcoholic author, but winds up searching for a girl missing for ten years whose trail leads him into a world of sex and crime.

Reviewed on 03 September 2016 by John Cleal

Dear Daughter

A technical miscarriage of justice frees wild child Janie Jenkins from prison where she is serving life for killing her socialite mother and she sets out to discover the real murderer.

Reviewed on 03 September 2016 by John Cleal

Silence

Inspector Celcius Daly investigates the car crash death of a priest and is dragged back into deadly history of the Troubles – and the death of his mother.

Reviewed on 03 September 2016 by John Cleal

The Rat Stone Serenade

The board of one of the world’s biggest private companies is the target of an ancient cult bent on revenge. DCI Jim Daley and DS Brian Scott must find the killers.

Reviewed on 03 September 2016 by John Cleal

Crisis

Sent to Colombia to investigate the murder of a British intelligence officer, Spanish-speaking former SBS man Luke Carlton is caught in a revenge plot with international dimensions – and London as its target.

Reviewed on 03 September 2016 by John Cleal

Operation Goodwood

Mirabelle Bevan escapes a fire in her block of flats, but her racing driver neighbour is found hanged. When it is established he was murdered, Mirabelle investigates – and meets a wall of lies and evasion.

Reviewed on 30 August 2016 by John Cleal

Dead Man's Blues

A group of Chicago city leaders is poisoned; a white gangster found dead and mutilated in a poor black area; an heiress vanishes. Pinkerton detectives Michael Talbot and Ida Davis must find the links between the three events which threaten to shake America’s most corrupt city.

Reviewed on 20 August 2016 by John Cleal

In the Heat of the Night

When a well-known musician is found robbed and clubbed to death in the small city of Wells, the first suspect picked up is black. The local police chief is embarrassed to discover the man is a homicide detective and reluctantly enlists his help.

Reviewed on 20 August 2016 by John Cleal

Paradise Sky

A young black man escapes lynching and is pursued across America’s south west by a vicious racist in a chase to the death.

Reviewed on 20 August 2016 by John Cleal

Quarry

When successive contract killings go wrong, his partner is killed and he injured, Vietnam vet-turned-assassin Quarry loses trust in the ‘Broker’ who sets up his ‘jobs’ and sets out to deliver his own brand of justice.

Reviewed on 20 August 2016 by John Cleal

The Children of Silence

A body is found in the Paddington canal basin and a woman with a hearing impairment claims it is that of her husband, who disappeared three years before. She appeals to Frances Doughty, the lady detective, to help her prove her case.

Reviewed on 20 August 2016 by John Cleal

The Unseeing

In 1837 Sarah Gale was sentenced to hang for her part in her murder of another woman. An idealistic young barrister is appointed to determine if the sentence is appropriate.

Reviewed on 06 August 2016 by John Cleal

The Body on the Doorstep

Reverend Marcus Hardcastle is pickling himself in beer and port in a lonely parish on the Romney Marshes. When a man is shot on his doorstep, he is plunged into a plot involving espionage, treason and betrayal.

Reviewed on 06 August 2016 by John Cleal

Lawless and the Devil of Euston Square

Scotsman Campbell Lawless has ambitions to be a Scotland Yard detective. His assignments soon lead him into a dark world which threatens the very future of the Empire.

Reviewed on 06 August 2016 by John Cleal

The Spy of Venice

Caught in a seduction too many, young William Shakespeare flees Stratford. He falls in with a band of players, but others have their eye on the young wordsmith. England’s survival is in the balance and soon he is sent to Venice as part of a crucial embassy – and into deadly danger.

Reviewed on 06 August 2016 by John Cleal

Eden Burning

A story of love amid the violence and death of the Troubles, centred on two families on either side of the sectarian divide, who share a dark secret.
 

Reviewed on 06 August 2016 by John Cleal

Death of a Scholar

Once again Cambridge is full of murdered clerics and scholars. Physician/detective Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael must sort out their latest mystery.

Reviewed on 23 July 2016 by John Cleal

Goodbye to the Dead

Lieutenant Stride is investigating a street killing, and discovers a link to a murder in which he found himself on the opposite side to his late wife years before.

Reviewed on 23 July 2016 by John Cleal

Hidden

A gunman stalks the wards of a hospital. Two members of a police firearms unit assigned to find him are recently reinstated after being investigated for shooting a teenage boy. The third has his own problems. As the stress mounts, death is only the pull of a trigger away.

Reviewed on 23 July 2016 by John Cleal

The Hotel of the Three Roses

Commissario Carlo De Vincenzi receives an anonymous tip that a crime is to be commited at a louche hotel.

Reviewed on 23 July 2016 by John Cleal

No Harm Can Come To A Good Man

Senator Laurence Walker is set to win his party’s nomination for President until a family tragedy, followed by what appears a rogue prediction from the mathematically-based algorithm on which America has come to rely, sparks a dramatic collapse.

Reviewed on 09 July 2016 by John Cleal

She Who Was No More

Salesman Ferdinand Ravinel and his lover, Lucienne, an ambitious doctor, plan to murder his wife for the insurance money. When her body disappears Ferdinand is plunged into a nightmare world of self doubt.

Reviewed on 09 July 2016 by John Cleal

Shot Through The Heart

A gunman kills five people, including the policeman boyfriend of his former wife, on Christmas Day, before turning the gun on himself. DI Grace Fisher traces the illegal weapon and discovers a web of police corruption, vendettas and revenge.

Reviewed on 09 July 2016 by John Cleal

The Ashes of London

The body of a murdered man is found in the ruins of St Pauls after the Great Fire. Minor civil servant James Marwood, son of a Protestant extremist, is dragged into treacherous waters where he crosses the path of a determined, but vengeful young woman.

Reviewed on 09 July 2016 by John Cleal

The Incorruptibles

Army scouts Fisk and Shoe are assigned to guide a Senator on a hunting trip, but face supernatural as well as human enemies.

Reviewed on 09 July 2016 by John Cleal

Art in the Blood

Sherlock Holmes is approached by a beautiful French cabaret star when her illegitimate son by an English aristocrat goes missing.

Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by John Cleal

Called Back

A blind man stumbles on a murder. Because he cannot see, the assassins allow him to go. He later recovers his sight and falls in love with a mysterious girl who is in some way involved in the crime.

Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by John Cleal

Runaway

Five young Scots run away to swinging 60s London. Their adventure turns sour when they find few people can be trusted and favours always expect returns. Fifty years later three return to solve a mystery killing.

Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by John Cleal

Scarlet Widow

Orphaned at 16, Beatrice Scarlet marries a Proestant preacher and emigrates to America. When animals are found slaughtered, with indications of satanism, she suspects a human rather than a supernatural hand.

Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Printer's Coffin

Blake and Avery are back in England and charged by philanthropist and social reformer Lord Allington with investigating the strange murders of two printers – which London’s new police force seems determined to ignore.

Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by John Cleal

Rough Cut

Reporter Rosie Gilmour becomes suspicious after a young Pakistani bride falls to her death.

Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Art of Killing Well

Cookery writer Pellegrino Artusi is invited for a weekend at a Tuscan villa. When the butler is killed and the owner shot, the celebrity chef with a liking for Sherlock Holmes helps the police discover why.

Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Butcher Bird

Monastery-raised Oswald de Lacy must grow up fast as lord of Somershill Manor. When two newborn babies are found impaled on thorn bushes, a strange story of a giant killer bird threatens chaos.

Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Girl With A Clock For A Heart

The girl George Foss fell in love with in college faked suicide so she could disappear. Twenty years later she walls into a bar with a new name to tell George she is in trouble and he is the only one who can help.

Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Graveyard of the Hesperides

Flavia Albia is preparing for her wedding. But when workmen uncover six bodies in the backyard of a downmarket bar, she and husband-to-be Manlius Faustus must unravel a dark secret.

Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Paris Architect

An architect, desperate for work, accepts a commission to design hiding places for wealthy Jews in occupied Paris. When one dramatically fails, he unwilling becomes a Resistance hero.

Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal

The Red House

Imogen is obsessed with finding her young brother from whom she was separated by adoption. Her fiancé Maxwell comes to believe he could be the boy.


Reviewed on 28 May 2016 by John Cleal

A Death in the Dales

Investigator Kate Shackleton is loaned a cottage in a Dales village by her suitor – and plunged into a decade old mystery by documents suggesting a man hanged for murder was innocent.

Reviewed on 28 May 2016 by John Cleal

Spy Out The Land

Double agent Paul Dark hides his own past, but when his family is kidnapped, he discovers his wife has also been living a double life – and one which may hold the key to the future of war-torn Rhodesia.

Reviewed on 28 May 2016 by John Cleal

A Fever of the Blood

Mismatched detectives ‘Nine Nails’ McGray and Ian Frey, on the track of a patient who has escaped Edinburgh’s asylum where a nurse has been murdered, follow a psychopath across the border to the shadow of Pendle Hill, home of the Lancashire witches.

Reviewed on 28 May 2016 by John Cleal

The Lie Tree

Faith’s scientist father is found dead under strange circumstances. In his belongings she discovers references to a tree which feeds off lies and bears fruit revealing secrets.

Reviewed on 28 May 2016 by John Cleal

On the Bone

A man collapses and dies on a busy street. His stomach contains human flesh. Inspector Cetin Ikmen and his squad must unravel the mystery.

Reviewed on 14 May 2016 by John Cleal

House of the Rising Sun

Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland struggles to be reunited with his estranged son, but his efforts are imperilled by the possession of a precious artefact he stole during the Mexican revolution.

Reviewed on 14 May 2016 by John Cleal

Endangered

Game warden Joe Pickett takes the law into his own hands when his adopted daughter is beaten close to death and his main suspect has an unshakeable alibi.

Reviewed on 14 May 2016 by John Cleal

A Fatal Freedom

Would-be PI Ursula Grandison and her friend and former detective Thomas Jackman face a maze of blackmail and murder as they track a clever and ruthless killer.

Reviewed on 14 May 2016 by John Cleal

The Serpentine Road

The heiress of a billionaire industrialist is murdered in an apparent race-hate crime. Colonel Vaughn De Vries of the Special Crimes Unit investigates and finds a morass of  corruption – and a link to an event in his own past he would rather forget.

Reviewed on 23 April 2016 by John Cleal

The Fifth Heart

Sherlock Holmes, under cover following his alleged death at Reichenbach Falls, prevents American author Henry James from commiting suicide and enlists him to investigate a suicide and a plot to destablise the United States.

Reviewed on 23 April 2016 by John Cleal

With Our Blessing

The body of an elderly woman is found crucified in a Dublin park and DI Tom Reynolds must solve a killing which has its roots in Ireland’s darkest past.

Reviewed on 23 April 2016 by John Cleal

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Albino's Treasure

Holmes and Watson are asked to investigate the vandalising of a picture at the National Portrait Gallery and are sucked into a morass of politics, crime and killings.

Reviewed on 23 April 2016 by John Cleal

His Bloody Project

A triple murder in a remote Scottish village leads a 17-year-old to trial. He admits the killings, but motive remains the question, and his fate is unclear.

Reviewed on 02 April 2016 by John Cleal

The Protector

William Falkland is again pressed into service by Oliver Cromwell, this time to find a kidnapped woman whose return is seen as vital to the parliamentary cause.

Reviewed on 02 April 2016 by John Cleal

The Mayfair Mystery

The body of a society doctor is discovered by his valet who hurries to inform a lifelong friend of the dead man. They return to find the body gone.

Reviewed on 02 April 2016 by John Cleal

A Shadowed Livery

Lady Isabelle Barleigh shoots her disabled son on his wedding eve, then turns the gun on herself. An hour later his distraught fiancée commits suicide. DI James Given, assigned to re-examine the case, soon finds all is not as it seems.

Reviewed on 02 April 2016 by John Cleal

Dead Pretty

One girl is missing, another dead. DS Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Serious and Organised Crime Unit can’t let the memory of either go.

Reviewed on 12 March 2016 by John Cleal

Death Descends on Saturn Villa

March Middleton is invited to meet her only living relative, a previously unknown uncle. She wakes the following morning to find her uncle dead and a bloody axe in her hand.

Reviewed on 12 March 2016 by John Cleal

Every Night I Dream Of Hell

With its boss in prison, hard man Nate Colgan is named ‘security consultant’ to the Jamieson criminal empire, his job to track down an outside challenge and deal with internal power bids.

Reviewed on 12 March 2016 by John Cleal

The Girl Who Couldn't Read

A man calling himself Dr John Shepherd arrives to take up a post at an isolated women’s mental hospital in New England and becomes involved with a young amnesiac who is fascinated by books, but cannot read.

Reviewed on 12 March 2016 by John Cleal

Paternoster

When a client mysteriously dies, private investigator Eden Grey is plunged into a web of evil while her own past threatens to come back to haunt her.

Reviewed on 27 February 2016 by John Cleal

Rust

From childhood, Alfred Hastings Rust has an obsession with owning Ridley Hall, a Victorian mansion. Driven by this and greed, he cheats, lies and betrays his way towards his goal.

Reviewed on 27 February 2016 by John Cleal

Shadow of The Hangman

Thief-taker twins Peter and Paul Skillen battle escaped American prisoners seeking revenge and French spies intent on assassination.

Reviewed on 27 February 2016 by John Cleal

Manhattan Mayhem

Seventeen short stories from members of the Mystery Writers of America to celebrate the organisation’s 70th anniversary.

Reviewed on 13 February 2016 by John Cleal

Preserve the Dead

Detective Sergeant Lucy Black and her reformed alcoholic DI Tom Fleming become involved in a series of apparently unconnected events which eventually lead them to corruption and murder.

Reviewed on 13 February 2016 by John Cleal

Sarah Canary

A mysterious white woman appears in a Chinese railway camp in the winter of 1873. Ordered by his uncle to return her to the white world, a young Chinese man begins a quest for right and good.

Reviewed on 13 February 2016 by John Cleal

The Unburied

Academic Dr Edward Courtine visits a former college friend with whom he had lost touch, but becomes involves in a 200-year-old murder mystery  – and a very modern killing.

Reviewed on 13 February 2016 by John Cleal

The Traitor's Mark

Goldsmith Thomas Treviot awaits a design for an important commission from Hans Holbein, Henry VIII’s court artist. When it fails to arrive Treviot is sucked into the murky and murderous world of Tudor politics.

Reviewed on 30 January 2016 by John Cleal

Deadly Election

When a body is discovered in a chest at one of Falco’s auctions, his private-eye daughter Flavia Albia uncovers a trail of revenge and hatred set amid the politics of Domitian’s Rome.

Reviewed on 30 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Devil's Daughters

Scientist Dr James Murray returns from his father’s funeral to find a letter from the woman he loved begging him to return to Turin to find her missing cousin and plunging him and his sister Lucy into a world of danger and evil.

Reviewed on 30 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Royalist

Royalist Dragooner William Falkland awaits death in Newgate. But an incident in his past has reached the ears of Oliver Cromwell, who sends him to investigate a series of mysterious deaths inside his New Model Army.

Reviewed on 30 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Dead Pass

PI Dan Starkey is hired by a former political activist to find her missing criminal son who she believes has been killed. When she is murdered, Starkey’s investigation takes him into Derry’s underworld, dominated by a new generation of gangster-terrorists.

Reviewed on 16 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Disappearance of Signora Giulia

When the much younger wife of an eminent lawyer disappears, Commisario Corada Sciancalepre must trace her, but finds himself deep in a tangled mystery.

Reviewed on 16 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Nightmare Place

DI Zoe Dolan is hunting the attacker branded The Creeper, whose violence is escalating, but she has no clue how he has been getting into the victims’ homes, no pattern to his attacks or no idea who could be next.

Reviewed on 16 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Valley

With a past that haunts him and a dead-end admin job, US Lieutenant Black is sick of the army. Then he is tasked with a minor investigation in a desolate northern Afghan valley – and is plunged into a whirlpool of lies, madness, drugs and killing.

Reviewed on 16 January 2016 by John Cleal

Emperor's Silver

Roman investigator Cassius Corbulo, his bodyguard and Christian slave must track down a gang of counterfeiters threatening the economic stability of the Empire.

Reviewed on 02 January 2016 by John Cleal

Tabula Rasa

Legion doctor Gaius Ruso and his wife Tilla must solve the mystery of a missing military clerk and a local boy to avoid threatened rebellion during the building of Hadrian’s Wall.

Reviewed on 02 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Deadliest Sin

In the Murderers’ tribute to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a group of pilgrims on their way to Walsingham tell their stories of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Reviewed on 02 January 2016 by John Cleal

The Price of Blood

Queen Emma of Normandy, threatened by Viking invasions, a brutal and unstable husband and enemies at court, struggles to defends both her children and her crown.

Reviewed on 02 January 2016 by John Cleal

A Study in Murder

Major John Watson is a prisoner of the Germans. A former adversary of Sherlockj Holmes, seeking revenge, vows to make him suffer and Watson is sent to a vicious PoW camp in the Hartz mountains. There he uncovers a murderous racket among the prisoners and puts his own life, as well as that of Holmes at risk.

Reviewed on 12 December 2015 by John Cleal

Sherlock Homes and A Scandal in Batavia

Holmes and Watson are begged by Prince Alexander, heir to the Dutch throne, to investigate his fears of a plot to steal his inheritance and an attempted poisoning.

Reviewed on 12 December 2015 by John Cleal

The Dark Meadow

Afra has returned to the poverty-stricken Bavarian home she left as a 14-year-old. Her pregnancy places intolerable strains on her staunchly Catholic family. When she and her son are murdered, her father is convicted, but 18 years later the case is reopened.

Reviewed on 12 December 2015 by John Cleal

The Death's Head Chess Club

An SS officer’s attempt to boost morale among death camp guards leads to an impossible friendship which bears fruit many years later.

Reviewed on 12 December 2015 by John Cleal

The Blooding

Matthew Hawkwood, former soldier, Bow Street Runner and spy, attempts to escape America, with which Britain is at war, but uncovers a plot to invade Canada.

Reviewed on 21 November 2015 by John Cleal

The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins

Gambler and rake Tom Hawkins has survived Marshalsea prison only to be convicted of a murder he did not commit. He’s mixed up in the affairs of two ‘courts’, that of George II and the criminal overlord of London’s grim St Giles. Can any of his friends or patrons save him?

Reviewed on 21 November 2015 by John Cleal

Death of an Airman

An Australian bishop, on leave in England, decides he must learn to fly to get around his huge bush diocese. When an instructor crashes and is killed he suspects there is more to it than accident and with the help of a local policeman and a Scotland Yard detective, uncovers an international drugs ring.

Reviewed on 21 November 2015 by John Cleal

The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne

The torture and brutal killing of a wealthy spinster in a quiet Scottish seaside town baffles police.

Reviewed on 21 November 2015 by John Cleal

Perfidia

As tension in Los Angeles explodes with the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, its corrupt rulers bid to exploit the situation for their own profit.

Reviewed on 07 November 2015 by John Cleal

The Bone Tree

Dr Tom Cage is on the run, charged with the killing of the woman who was once his nurse. In his attempts to find him, his son Penn stirs up dark secrets from Louisiana’s and America’s violent and racist past.

Reviewed on 07 November 2015 by John Cleal

Through The Evil Days

During an ice storm, police chief Russ Van Alstyne and his wife, Episcopal pastor Clare Fergusson, battle a brutal drugs gang and corrupt law enforcement officers in a deadly chase to track down a seriously ill little girl, kidnapped from the scene of a double killing.

Reviewed on 07 November 2015 by John Cleal

Kill Me Darling

PI Mike Hammer, on a massive drinking binge after girlfriend/secretary Velda leaves him, apparently for a gang boss, heads for Miami after the murder of the police captain who brought them together.

Reviewed on 05 November 2015 by John Cleal

Blood Salt Water

The body of a woman surfaces in Loch Lomond. DI Alex Morrow must tie the crime to a drugs and money-laundering ring, the disappearance of a second woman and deadly tensions in what seems a chocolate-box town.

Reviewed on 24 October 2015 by John Cleal

Dark Heart

A former British Army doctor and two of his lovers, a South African photographer and an Australian lawyer, were all damaged by their experiences of the Rwandan genocide. Years later, a mystery photograph puts them at risk.

Reviewed on 24 October 2015 by John Cleal

Dead Girl Walking

Disgraced journalist Jack Parlabane is hired to find a missing pop diva. His search takes him across Europe, into the murky backstage world of rock – and into danger.

Reviewed on 24 October 2015 by John Cleal

The Father

Sean Rooney, an alcoholic and mentally-disturbed former forensic profiler, is dragged out of retirement by his DCI ex-wife to help her solve the gruesome murders of a whole family.

Reviewed on 24 October 2015 by John Cleal

A Cold Killing

Crime reporter Rosie Gilmour, back from hiding in Bosnia, investigates the murder of a retired university lecturer who was far more than he appeared.

Reviewed on 10 October 2015 by John Cleal

River of Souls

A minister’s wife calls in forensic psychologist Alice Quentin to reopen the case of the attack which left her daughter mutilated and half drowned. A priest and a policewoman die the same way and Alice must get inside the mind of a madman obsessed by the River Thames.

Reviewed on 10 October 2015 by John Cleal

Solomon Creed

A plane crashes in the Arizona desert and a lone figure emerges from the blazing wreck. He has no memory of his past, no idea of his future. He only knows he must save a man – a man who is already dead.

Reviewed on 10 October 2015 by John Cleal

The Suicide Club

British forces are mired in the bloody stalemate of Passchendaele. Prime Minister Lloyd George is unhappy with progress and soldier-spy Sandy Innes, sent to report on the divided headquarters of commander-in-chief Sir Douglas Haig, soon suspects treachery.

Reviewed on 10 October 2015 by John Cleal

At the Ruin of the World

The western Roman empire is collapsing with its rulers relying on unstable alliances with barbarians while fighting among themselves. Three young people hang on the dream that Rome can be great once more, but how can they save it, or themselves?

Reviewed on 26 September 2015 by John Cleal

The Case of the Hail Mary Celeste

Railway detective Jack Wenlock sets out to solve the 30-year-old mystery of a party of missing nuns and finds love – and problems with the secret state.

Reviewed on 26 September 2015 by John Cleal

The Seeker

Damien Seeker is a mystery. His family and past are unknown, but as an enforcement agent for Oliver Cromwell he is known and feared as a ruthless investigator, sworn to protect the ruler of England at any cost.

Reviewed on 26 September 2015 by John Cleal

The Thief Taker

As the plague wracks London, thief taker Charlie Tuesday reluctantly takes on a murder investigation and becomes involved in a world of intrigue and witchcraft in which he is the hunted as well as the hunter.

Reviewed on 26 September 2015 by John Cleal

A Very British Ending

Senior MI6 officers Catesby and Bone try to outwit a cabal of power-hungry plotters on both sides of the Atlantic trying to overthrow the British Prime Minister.

Reviewed on 12 September 2015 by John Cleal

Darkness, Darkness

Charlie Resnick, in semi-retirement, is called back to help with the investigation into the killing of a young woman during the miners’ strike of 30 years before.

Reviewed on 12 September 2015 by John Cleal

Marston Moor

Five armies meet outside York in July 1644 in a brief, but bloody battle which changed the course of history. Battle-scarred Royalist Major Innocent Stryker must call on all his experience to survive the Parliamentary assault and treachery from his own side.

Reviewed on 12 September 2015 by John Cleal

The Lord Bishop's Clerk

No-one is sorry when the Bishop of Winchester’s manipulative, spying, clerk is found bludgeoned to death before the altar at Pershore Abbey. But Serjeant Catchpoll, thief-taker to Worcester’s Sheriff, must discover who did it and why.

Reviewed on 12 September 2015 by John Cleal

The Fifth Season

A woman’s mutilated body found in a forest shows signs of the most appalling torture. Inspector Malin Fors sees similarities to the case of a young woman found raped and beaten years before and still in a psychiatric unit.

Reviewed on 29 August 2015 by John Cleal

The Invention of Fire

Sixteen corpses have been dumped in a London midden bearing wounds not seen before. John Gower, poet and trader in secrets, investigates despite official reluctance and struggles against failing vision, deception and treachery to prevent an even more devastating massacre.

Reviewed on 29 August 2015 by John Cleal

The White Van

Drifter Emily Rosario is plunged into a world of confusion and fear when she is used as a pawn in a bank raid. As she struggles to escape, she is pursued by a desperate policeman who sees the stolen money as the solution to his own problems.

Reviewed on 29 August 2015 by John Cleal

Ugly Bus

Newly-promoted young sergeant Martin Finch struggles to control a group of veteran policemen under the pressures of a football riot and violent demonstrations.

Reviewed on 29 August 2015 by John Cleal

The October List

A mother waits with a bodyguard for news of her kidnapped six-year-old daughter. Then the kidnapper walks in, gun in hand. What happens next? How did they all get there? Can anything or anybody be believed?

Reviewed on 15 August 2015 by John Cleal

The Tapestry

Against her will, former novice nun Joanna Stafford is dragged back into the plotting and brutality of Henry VIII’s seething court – and becomes the target of a killer.

Reviewed on 15 August 2015 by John Cleal

The Whispering City

When a prominent socialite is murdered, young journalist Ana Martí Noguer gets her first chance at a big story – and enters a ruthless world of corruption and violence which lies behind the glitz and glamour of Barcelona’s Fascist power brokers.

Reviewed on 15 August 2015 by John Cleal

King of the Weeds

PI Mike Hammer and secretary and partner Velda are planning a long overdue wedding when he is targeted by a hitman. At the same time, the couple’s friend Captain Pat Chambers, nearing retirement, finds his whole career under threat when a man he and Hammer helped convict years before is freed – and policemen start to die.

Reviewed on 15 August 2015 by John Cleal

A Book of Scars

DS Cathal Breen is recovering at the Devon farm of his former partner Helen Tozer, whose sister was murdered five years before. When a second killing copies the style, Breen and Tozer investigate – and uncover secrets from the past.

Reviewed on 01 August 2015 by John Cleal

Hangman

A serial killer murders a prison officer and returns to the scene of his crimes to kill again. Detective Abbie Kearney must somehow halt his rampage.

Reviewed on 01 August 2015 by John Cleal

Ruthless

DC Janet Scott and DC Rachel Bailey investigate after a man’s body, shot to death, is found in a blazing and abandoned chapel.

Reviewed on 01 August 2015 by John Cleal

The House on the Hill

A young runaway who contacts disillusioned DCI Billy McCartney brings back memories of his most traumatic case – and a renewed pursuit of a ruthless drugs gang.

Reviewed on 01 August 2015 by John Cleal

Kitty Peck and The Child of Ill Fortune

Kitty Peck is the reluctant heiress to Paradise, the criminal East End empire of her grandmother Lady Ginger. She is reunited with her estranged brother in Paris, and is persuaded to take a child back to London – but it is soon clear someone is determined to kill the little boy.

Reviewed on 18 July 2015 by John Cleal

One Boy Missing

Detective Sergeant Bart Moy returns to his fading outback home town after the accidental death of his son and becomes involved with a child abduction and murder investigation while trying to work out his own problems.

Reviewed on 18 July 2015 by John Cleal

The Quick

When Charlotte Norbury travels to London to find her younger brother who has disappeared, she finds herself involved with a mysterious vampire society.

Reviewed on 18 July 2015 by John Cleal

Wolf Winter

Finnish immigrant Maija and her daughters are left alone on a grim mountain. The girls find a murdered man, but locals and the authorities dismiss it as a killing by animals.

Reviewed on 18 July 2015 by John Cleal

Robin Hood Yard

Reporter John Steadman and his lifelong friend Detective Constable Matt Turner investigate a series of brutal sexually perverted killings against a background of approaching war.

Reviewed on 04 July 2015 by John Cleal

The Norfolk Mystery

Wounded Spanish Civil war veteran Stephen Sefton accepts a job as assistant to the eccentric ‘Professor’ Swanton Morley who is writing a county-by-county guide to traditional England. Starting in Norfolk, they discover a vicar hanging by his church’s bell rope.

Reviewed on 04 July 2015 by John Cleal

The Winter Foundlings

Psychologist Alice Quentin is doing research at a high security hospital, when a copycat killer begins kidnapping and murdering young girls – apparently in tribute to a prolific child killer who is a patient there. Alice must establish a relationship with the charismatic killer to find the link to these new murders.

Reviewed on 04 July 2015 by John Cleal

This Thing of Darkness

DC Fiona Griffiths uses her unique talents to link three apparently unconnected events involving two deaths and a massive international conspiracy.

Reviewed on 04 July 2015 by John Cleal

The First Horseman

House of Commons member Robert Packington became the first man in London to be murdered with a pistol when he was shot dead while walking to Mass.Thomas Treviot, a close family friend, sets out to investigate his killing amid the corruption and conspiracies of Henry VIII’s court.

Reviewed on 20 June 2015 by John Cleal

The Man Who Loved Dogs

A Cuban writer meets a man with two Russian wolfhounds while walking on a beach. He gradually learns the man’s story – he is the exiled killer of Leon Trotsky.

Reviewed on 20 June 2015 by John Cleal

The Strings of Murder

Victorian Inspectors Ian Frey and ‘Nine Nails’ McGray must solve the gruesome killing of an Edinburgh violin virtuoso. Their inquiries take them into a world of music, madness and devil worship.

Reviewed on 20 June 2015 by John Cleal

Inquest

Coroner Dr Mike Wilson is dragged into a morass of corruption and killing as he conducts an inquest into the apparent suicide of the drug-addicted son of a government minister.

Reviewed on 20 June 2015 by John Cleal

A Man's Head

Chief Inspector Maigret embarks on an audacious scheme to prove the innocence of a man awaiting execution and must confront a killer convinced of his own intellectual superiority.

Reviewed on 06 June 2015 by John Cleal

Face Off

Eleven short stories featuring some of the best known protagonists and authors in the field, set mainly in America and covering most types of crime with the occasional twist of horror or the supernatural.

Reviewed on 06 June 2015 by John Cleal

Loser's Corner

Policeman and club boxer George Crozat, facing to the end of his career in the ring, accepts an offer to make a profit with his fists – and becomes a pawn in a dangerous game where powerful men will go to any lengths to hide the past.

Reviewed on 06 June 2015 by John Cleal

Dodger of the Dials

Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger, is making his living running what remains of Fagin’s gang of pickpockets and thieves. But he is forced to accept a junior partnership in a bigger and more brutal operation which leads him – and his mistress – into a situation where their lives are at risk.

Reviewed on 06 June 2015 by John Cleal

The Tower

A giant tower in the desert will hold digitalized versions of all the world’s publications – including unpublished texts by the 16th century philosopher and genius Giordano Bruno. When those texts go missing, investigator Peter Sims and literary scholar, Giulia Ripetti are called in to find them. But someone is determined to stop them at any cost.

Reviewed on 23 May 2015 by John Cleal

Blood Whispers

Rising criminal lawyer Keira Lynch can break a vicious Eastern European prostitution ring – if she can keep her client alive long enough to give evidence. But those behind the whoremasters will kill to protect their secret.

Reviewed on 23 May 2015 by John Cleal

Gone For Good

When Elizabeth’s mother is murdered and her Down’s Syndrome brother accused, her bid to clear his name uncovers dark family secrets.

Reviewed on 23 May 2015 by John Cleal

Quarry's Choice

Ex-marine sniper Quarry has to infiltrate a crime syndicate in 1970s Mississippi.

Reviewed on 23 May 2015 by John Cleal

The Murder of Harriet Krohn

Charles Torp has problems. He misses his dead wife and his gambling addiction has driven his teenage daughter away. His plan to solve his problems and win her back goes horribly wrong.

Reviewed on 08 May 2015 by John Cleal

Whited Sepulchres

Edwin Weaver must solve the killing of the earl’s household marshal which threatens to disrupt plans for the wedding of his sister. But there appears to be no motive and Edwin soon suspects there are other targets for the killer.

Reviewed on 08 May 2015 by John Cleal

An Appetite For Violets

Irrepressible under-cook Biddy Leigh wants only to wed her sweetheart and set up a tavern. But when her elderly master marries a much younger woman, Biddy is swept in a world of secrets and lies.

Reviewed on 08 May 2015 by John Cleal

Kingdom

Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, fights to throw the English occupiers out of his country.

Reviewed on 08 May 2015 by John Cleal

A Scream in Soho

Detective Inspector Patrick McCarthy is preparing for bed in his Soho flat when he hears a scream. Stumbling through the 1941 blackout, he discovers clear evidence of a murder – but no body.

Reviewed on 18 April 2015 by John Cleal

Betrayed

Investigative reporter Rosie Gilmour senses there is more to the fading story of a missing barmaid – and finds herself drawn into the brutal and violent world of Glasgow’s Ulster Volunteer Force.

Reviewed on 18 April 2015 by John Cleal

The Cunning House

A raid by the Bow Street Runners on a notorious male brothel, an attack on the Duke of Cumberland at nearby St James’ Palace and the alleged suicide of a valet …What links the three events? Lawyer Wyre must find out.

Reviewed on 18 April 2015 by John Cleal

The Man From Berlin

German intelligence officer Gregor Reinhardt, a former Berlin detective, is assigned to investigate the killing of a German officer and a beautiful young Croat filmmaker against a background of internal rivalries, partizan attacks and growing anti-Nazi feeling.

Reviewed on 18 April 2015 by John Cleal

Nunslinger

Visitandine nun Sister Thomas Josephine is a survivor of an attack on a California-bound wagon train, in 1864. She goes on the run, building a legend as the Six Gun Sister as she flees across the south west.

Reviewed on 04 April 2015 by John Cleal

The Frozen Shroud

DCI Hannah Scarlett joins forces again with historian Daniel Kind to investigate a third killing – all following the same MO and spread over a hundred years – in a small and isolated community on the shores of Ullswater, reputedly haunted by the ghost of the first victim.

Reviewed on 04 April 2015 by John Cleal

The Kill Switch

Undercover operative Tucker Wayne and his dog Kane must get a Russian pharmaceutical magnate, who may hold the key to a bio-weapon which threatens a global apocalypse, out of the country.

Reviewed on 04 April 2015 by John Cleal

Watching You

Marnie Logan, a single mother since her gambler husband disappeared, often feels she’s being watched. She turns to clinical psychologist Joe O’Loughlin for help, but when she discovers a book her husband was preparing for her birthday, her situation quickly spirals into one of fear and horror.

Reviewed on 04 April 2015 by John Cleal

Savage Magic

Constable Charles Horton and magistrate Aaron Graham must solve a string of horrific murders of depraved aristocrats in 19th century London.

Reviewed on 21 March 2015 by John Cleal

The Anatomy of Murder

A re-examination of some the world’s most notorious murder mysteries by seven of the greatest classic crime writers of their age.

Reviewed on 21 March 2015 by John Cleal

This House Is Haunted

Eliza Caine arrives at a remote hall to take up a position as governess to two children. From her arrival she is subjected to a series of strange and terrifying events as she struggles to unlock the secrets of their home.

Reviewed on 21 March 2015 by John Cleal

Head of State

With Britain on the edge of a political precipice, two bodies discovered in London, one a young investigative reporter, the other – minus head and hands – arouse little interest. There appears no connection, but both are part of a shocking secret at the heart of government.

Reviewed on 21 March 2015 by John Cleal

If I Should Die

Afghan veteran Joe Stark is recovering from physical and psychological wounds while trying to qualify as a Met detective. The TA soldier and policeman is assigned to investigate a series of apparently random attacks on down-and-outs, but as Stark struggles to deal with his own problems, the case explodes into murder.

Reviewed on 07 March 2015 by John Cleal

Forty Acres

Rising lawyer Martin Grey comes to the notice of a group of black powerbrokers. They invite him to join them, but when he visits their secretive headquarters he discovers an alternative world which challenges most deeply held beliefs.

Reviewed on 07 March 2015 by John Cleal

Mallory's Oracle

When child thief Kathy Mallory was rescued from the streets by Sergeant Louis Markowitz, he and his wife reshaped her life. When he is butchered, Mallory, now a detective herself, sets out to trap his killer.

Reviewed on 07 March 2015 by John Cleal

Sleeping Dogs

Gangland boss Harry Larkin, dying after being shot, begs DI Leo Woods to find his missing daughter. Woods is drawn into the dysfunctional Larkin family – including Harry’s wife with whom he had an affair.

Reviewed on 07 March 2015 by John Cleal

Orkney Twilight

Jim is a great storyteller, whose stories get wilder with each glass of whisky. Teenage daughter Sam tries to find out the truth about her undercover cop dad.

Reviewed on 27 February 2015 by John Cleal

A Killing of Angels

Someone tucked a picture of an angel and a handful of white feathers into a banker’s pocket before pushing him in front of a Tube. It appears that a killer is stalking the Square Mile.

Reviewed on 21 February 2015 by John Cleal

Cemetery Girl

The disappearance of Tom and Abbey Stuart’s 12-year-old daughter shatters their marriage and their lives. Four years later she is found. She refuses to say anything about the time she has been missing and when the police arrest a suspect, she will not give evidence. The Stuarts face a choice: let the man who has destroyed their lives go free – or take matters into their own hands.

Reviewed on 21 February 2015 by John Cleal

Death of an Avid Reader

Detective Kate Shackleton is hired by a titled lady to find her illegitimate daughter and her inquiries take her into the quiet of a Yorkshire library, the poverty-stricken back streets of Leeds, a series of murders – and a meeting with a very clever monkey!

Reviewed on 21 February 2015 by John Cleal

Galveston

Gangland enforcer Roy Cady has been sentenced to death twice – by cancer and by his own boss. He escapes a murder set-up, rescues a young prostitute and the pair, together with her little ‘sister’, go on the run from New Orleans through Louisiana and Texas.

Reviewed on 21 February 2015 by John Cleal

Lawless

Journalist Campbell McBride’s true crime book is a success, but at a signing in his home town he is confronted by the father of one of the killers he featured who swears his son’s innocence. McBride re-examines the case when instinct tells him the man is telling the truth.

Reviewed on 07 February 2015 by John Cleal

Never Go Back

Jack Reacher goes back to visit his old Military Police unit on a whim. But its new woman commanding officer, whose voice he liked on the phone, has gone missing and he’s arrested on charges relating to old events.

Reviewed on 07 February 2015 by John Cleal

Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil

Sleuth Reverend Sidney Chambers and his friend DI ‘Geordie’ Keating face four more mysteries.

Reviewed on 07 February 2015 by John Cleal

The Silent Boy

The son of Edward Savill’s estranged wife has been brought to England by French émigrés fleeing the bloody excesses of the Revolution. But the horrors he has witnessed – and a terrible secret he holds – keep the boy from speaking.

Reviewed on 07 February 2015 by John Cleal

A House of Knives

DS Cathal Breen and DC Helen Tozer investigate the death and mutilation of an MP’s son in swinging – and corrupt – London in 1968.

Reviewed on 24 January 2015 by John Cleal

Gun Machine

A disenchanted New York detective is jolted into life when his partner is killed and during a search of the murder building he stumbles on a room containing hundreds of guns arranged in a bizarre pattern – each used in a recent killing and each matched with a weapon used in a historic murder.

Reviewed on 24 January 2015 by John Cleal

Roseblood

England is poised on the brink of civil war in 1455. Former soldier Simon Roseblood, a sworn Lancastrian supporter, faces growing threats to his position and businesses – and a fanatical group seeking revenge for a massacre in which he had no part.

Reviewed on 24 January 2015 by John Cleal

The Kill Room

An outspoken critic of US foreign policy is assassinated in the Bahamas. All routes lead to a shady government agency. Lincoln Rhyme and his partner Amelia Sachs investigate.

Reviewed on 24 January 2015 by John Cleal

A Spider in the Cup

Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands, investigating the body of a young woman found in the Thames mud and also charged with protecting a powerful American senator who’s in London for a key economic conference, discovers the two are linked – and that far more is at stake.

Reviewed on 10 January 2015 by John Cleal

Leaving Everything Most Loved

Maisie Dobbs is asked by an Indian war hero, who believes the English police have let him down, to investigate the killing of his charismatic sister. When a second girl is killed in exactly the same way, Maisie must explore a sub-culture she finds fascinating to get at the truth.

Reviewed on 10 January 2015 by John Cleal

Pascal Passion

The headmistress of a village Church of England school is horribly murdered. DI Harry Falconer and Sergeant Davey Carmichael investigate, but their inquiries are interrupted by a second killing.

Reviewed on 10 January 2015 by John Cleal

The Dead Can Wait

Dr John Watson is back from the trenches, trying to help soldiers affected by shellshock. With Holmes unavailable, he is tasked with solving the mysterious deaths of seven men at a secret establishment where a new weapon which could shorten the war is being developed, but must battle Army indifference as much as German agents.

Reviewed on 10 January 2015 by John Cleal

Angel of Death

An abused woman seeks revenge on the ring of middle-class professionals who turned her into a drug-addled whore, while a disillusioned veteran detective tries to exploit her quest to bring down a vicious criminal gang.

Reviewed on 27 December 2014 by John Cleal

Blue Is The Night

Ulster Attorney General Lance Curran faces huge political pressures over his decision to prosecute a young man for a brutal killing where a conviction and death sentence threatens to rip the Province apart. At the same time he must deal with an increasingly unstable wife and a rebellious adolescent daughter.

Reviewed on 27 December 2014 by John Cleal

Carolina Skeletons

A 14-year-old black boy follows two white schoolgirls into the woods. Later they are found brutally murdered.  In an atmosphere of racism and possible Klan violence, he is sentenced to death. Forty years later his nephew tries to find out what really happened.

Reviewed on 27 December 2014 by John Cleal

Jack-Knifed

When a gay man is found butchered in his own kitchen there appears to be no suspects and no motive. DCI Martin Phelps and his team must probe the man’s disturbed past to uncover a sinister chain of events – and more killings.

Reviewed on 27 December 2014 by John Cleal

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

Mary Russell comes of age. In London she meets an old university friend who introduces her to a charitable women’s organisation run by the charismatic Margery Childe. But when several of its wealthier members are murdered, Mary’s involvement becomes her first solo investigation – with a little help from her mentor Sherlock Holmes.

Reviewed on 13 December 2014 by John Cleal

Gods of War

Watson is re-united with Holmes on a rare visit to his retirement home and the pair plunge into a whirlpool of ambition, obsession and murder when Holmes is engaged by a powerful industrialist to prove his son’s death was a suicide.

Reviewed on 13 December 2014 by John Cleal

Plague Land

Monastery-raised teenager Oswald de Lacy, lord of the manor after the plague deaths of his father and brothers, must battle greed and superstition to solve the brutal murder of a young girl.

Reviewed on 13 December 2014 by John Cleal

Warlord's Gold

Captain Innocent Stryker is dispatched to the Scilly Isles in search of treasure hidden by a Royalist supporter.

Reviewed on 13 December 2014 by John Cleal

Enemies At Home

Investigator Flavia Albia is hired to discover who killed a newly-wed couple. The main suspects are their slaves, but they have sought sanctuary in a temple. Together with aedile Manlius Faustus, Falco’s adopted daughter sets out to uncover the truth.

Reviewed on 29 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Rising Tide

Tom Pascoe is drinking himself to death grieving for his murdered wife. His last chance to save his job with the River Police is to investigate the death of an MP found floating in the Thames. His inquiries leads to a ruthless ring of slavers determined to preserve their trade at any price – even treason.

Reviewed on 29 November 2014 by John Cleal

The View from the Tower

Helen di Stasi is in a Rome hotel with her lover, when her husband Federico, a senior civil servant, is assassinated. In trying to discover why, she finds herself in a murky world of half truths and betrayals – and must face her own past.

Reviewed on 29 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Winter Siege

As the Empress Matilda, only surviving child of Henry I, and her cousin Stephen battle for the English throne, two women from very different backgrounds struggle to survive as bands of mercenaries burn, rape and loot their way across the country.

Reviewed on 29 November 2014 by John Cleal

Chamber Music

Henry Bane, on his way up in Manchester’s gangland, must face the challenge of Yardie Hagfish and his dreadful ally Mary. At the same time a woman from his past has reappeared, bringing even more trouble with her in the shape of a new boyfriend.

Reviewed on 15 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Lost Abbot

Physician/sleuth Matt Bartholomew travels to Peterborough to investigate the disappearance of the Abbot and his friend, the town’s only doctor. They ride into a web of ambition, avarice, lies, rivalries and deception.

Reviewed on 15 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Tudor Conspiracy

Disgraced spymaster William Cecil recalls Brendan Prescott to his service to uncover a plot to destroy Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth. But Brendan finds himself a double agent, working for the Catholic Queen Mary in a court filled with intrigue, treachery and death.

Reviewed on 15 November 2014 by John Cleal

The False Virgin

A young Saxon aristocrat is found murdered in the chapel where she kept a nightly vigil. The killing is attributed to Norse raiders and the butterflies found on her body to divine recognition of her martyrdom.

Reviewed on 15 November 2014 by John Cleal

Complex 90

When a PI is shot dead at a society party where he and Mike Hammer are providing security, Hammer takes on his job accompanying a conservative Senator to Russia. Kidnapped, he shoots his way out, leaving a trail of bodies and returns to America to find he is wanted by both sides in a Cold War threatening to heat up.

Reviewed on 01 November 2014 by John Cleal

Knife Music

When a bright, attractive teenager hangs herself after her mother discovers her diary in which she confesses to sex with the surgeon who saved her life, Detective Hank Madden must decide whether her death was suicide – and prove whether the doctor was involved or not.

Reviewed on 01 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Guillotine Choice

Mohand Saoudi, a 20-year-old Berber in French-dominated Algeria faces an impossible choice. Found with his dying French employer, he must name the killer or face a never-ending sentence in the dreaded Devil’s Island. Can he send a member of his own family to the guillotine?

Reviewed on 01 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Tilted World

Two prohibition agents are sent to a small Deep South town to investigate the disappearance of their predecessors.

Reviewed on 01 November 2014 by John Cleal

The Night the Rich Men Burned

Two young friends try to escape a pointless life on Glasgow fringes and become involved in the loan-sharking and collection rackets. One rises quickly up the ranks. The other becomes a victim of growing debt and addiction.

Reviewed on 19 October 2014 by John Cleal

Blink

DI Gavin Sexton is looking into a spate of teenage suicides when he meets a young girl paralysed by 'locked-in' syndrome. Communicating by blinks, she tells him: 'I hired a hitman'.

Reviewed on 18 October 2014 by John Cleal

Walking With Ghosts

Hotel owner ‘Honey’ Driver, police liaison officer for her association, becomes involved in a murder and a hunt for a priceless artefact when a woman is killed on a ghost walk.

Reviewed on 18 October 2014 by John Cleal

Young Philby

Kim Philby fled Beirut aboard a Russian ship that sailed so hurriedly it left much of its cargo on the dockside. Cleared by a British inquiry through lack of evidence, the former senior intelligence liaison officer in Washington had spied for the Communists for more than 30 years. 

Reviewed on 18 October 2014 by John Cleal

The Fourth Motive

When Judge Callen’s daughter Paige suffers multiple attacks the reasons may lie with her work as an assistant DA, or perhaps her father did something in the past to seriously offend someone…

Reviewed on 04 October 2014 by John Cleal

The Gods of Guilt

Mickey Haller is surprised to discover that a cyber-pimp accused of murder was recommended to him by his alleged victim – an escort girl Haller represented years before. His decision to defend the man pits Haller against corrupt lawmen who will stop at nothing to cover up their crimes.

Reviewed on 04 October 2014 by John Cleal

The Innocence Game

Three graduates set out to examine a cold case involving the kidnap and murder of a young boy as a possible miscarriage of justice.

Reviewed on 04 October 2014 by John Cleal

The Unquiet Grave

Maverick DI Damen Brook is back from suspension and exiled to the cold case squad. He’s eager to escape this backwater, but his attitude changes when he spots a pattern in a series of murders that began in 1963.

Reviewed on 04 October 2014 by John Cleal

Silent as the Grave

Former TV correspondent Adam Bailey is asked to investigate the mystery of a curse on the aristocratic Rowe family over a Christmas at their isolated Yorkshire home. Cut off by a snow storm, Bailey must try to resolve rumours of madness in the family – and deal with new violence and more killings.

Reviewed on 04 October 2014 by John Cleal

Carnival of Shadows

A travelling carnival with acts of inexplicable paranormal magic and illusion appears in a small town. But when an unidentified man’s body is discovered beneath the carousel FBI agent Michal Travis is sent to investigate.

Reviewed on 20 September 2014 by John Cleal

Getting Warmer

Senior detective Cato Kwong is back in the city after his ‘exile’. He finds himself in danger when he tries to deal with a missing girl, a manipulative killer, growing gang violence – and faces doubts over the motives and honesty of some of his colleagues.

Reviewed on 20 September 2014 by John Cleal

The Axeman's Jazz

1919 and a mad axeman is terrifying New Orleans, America’s most racially mixed and vibrant city. Three very different individuals – a police Lieutenant with his own secrets, a disgraced ex-detective and the mixed-race secretary of a detective agency – set out to track him down.

Reviewed on 20 September 2014 by John Cleal

The Bloody City

Edwin Weaver, son of the former bailiff of Conisbrough Castle, has already bailed his devious lord out of trouble once. When William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, decides to change sides – again – in the civil war ripping England apart, he volunteers Edwin for a dangerous mission.

Reviewed on 20 September 2014 by John Cleal

The Edge Of Normal

Recovering kidnap survivor Reeve LeClaire is asked to help a young girl rescued from a similar situation and unintentionally becomes involved in the hunt for a vicious sexual predator who may be holding other girls captive.

Reviewed on 06 September 2014 by John Cleal

The Mangle Street Murders

Noted ‘personal’ detective Sidney Grice begrudgingly accepts help from his ward March Middleton to solve a series of brutal knife murders which are terrifying the East End of Victorian London.

Reviewed on 06 September 2014 by John Cleal

The Queen's Man

John Shakespeare is ordered to investigate a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots, but discovers its roots go deep into his native Warwickshire and threaten his own family. How far will he go to protect them?

Reviewed on 06 September 2014 by John Cleal

A Letter of Mary

Mary Russell Holmes and her husband Sherlock’s retirement is interrupted when a figure from Mary’s past arrives with a gift – an inlaid box containing a stained papyrus which could prove a biblical bombshell. When the visitor is run down a day later, the Holmes investigate her murder and its motives.

Reviewed on 06 September 2014 by John Cleal

Artefacts of the Dead

Critically injured DI Bob Valentine is recalled from convalescence to investigate two horrifying murders. His investigations are hampered by an anxious by-the-book divisional commander and a series of ‘visions’ that leave him doubting his own sanity.

Reviewed on 23 August 2014 by John Cleal

Black Chalk

Six new Oxford students form an instant friendship. At the Freshers’ Fair they sign up with the mysterious Games Society and The Game – an elaborate mixture of luck and consequences emerges. Early penalties are trivial but become more humiliating as they are played out against a background of changing relationships which inevitably lead to tragedy.

Reviewed on 23 August 2014 by John Cleal

Someone To Watch OVer Me

Reykjavik lawyer Thora Gudmundsdottir is hired by a deeply unpleasant and manipulative child sex offender with a view to overturning the conviction of a fellow inmate in his secure unit. Her investigations are hampered by lies, half-truths and cover-ups.

Reviewed on 23 August 2014 by John Cleal

You Will Never Find Me

The headstrong teenage daughter of freelance kidnap expert Charlie Boxer and his DI former wife disappears only hours after running away to Madrid. At the same time the young son of a Russian businessman is kidnapped in London. Is there a link between the two events?

Reviewed on 23 August 2014 by John Cleal

Ruthless

Deputy police chief Jess Harris continues her pursuit of serial killer Eric ‘The Player’ Spears who continues to haunt her life. But her task is complicated when someone starts sending her the exhumed bodies of girl children killed years before.

Reviewed on 09 August 2014 by John Cleal

The Alvarez Journal

Detective Gabe Wager and his rookie partner get a tip-off which puts them on the trail of a massive shipment of heroin, but the smugglers are smart and Wager must use all his skills to close the case.

Reviewed on 09 August 2014 by John Cleal

The Devil's Ribbon

Underfunded Victorian forensic scientist Professor Adolphus Hatton and his assistant Albert Roumande are battling to identify the cause of a cholera outbreak. At the same time they must deal with a series of apparently politically motivated brutal murders all connected to an isolated Irish village.

Reviewed on 09 August 2014 by John Cleal

The Sudden Arrival of Violence

As the bosses of rival Glasgow gangs manoeuvre for control, killer Calum MacLean has had enough. He seizes his chance to quit, but cannot anticipate the effect this decision will have.

Reviewed on 09 August 2014 by John Cleal

Revenger

When ex-marine Samuel Carver finds himself in the middle of a riot in South London he has to fall back on his instincts and years of training as the riot turns into a battleground

Reviewed on 26 July 2014 by John Cleal

The Curse of Babylon

Amid the plotting, revolts and wild hedonism of the remains of the Roman empire at the beginning of the seventh century, English adventurer Aelric faces his hardest challenge as he tries to stop a Persian invasion – and deal with a determined and dangerous woman.

Reviewed on 26 July 2014 by John Cleal

The Truth About The Harry Quebert Affair

Best-selling young author Marcus Goldman turns to his former professor to overcome a bad case of writer’s block only to discover that his mentor has been hiding an affair with a 15-year-old girl for more than 30 years. When the girl’s remains are found, Goldman, with the help of a determined detective, sets out to investigate.

Reviewed on 26 July 2014 by John Cleal

Theft of Life

A former West Indies slaver is found dead in the grounds of St Paul’s Cathedral. Gabriel Crowther and Harriet Westerman find themselves investigating wealthy and influential traders in human misery who will do anything to protect their trade and their profits.

Reviewed on 26 July 2014 by John Cleal

Natchez Burning

Klu Klux Klan killings from the 1960s resurface to claim new victims and leave ex-prosecutor Penn Cage facing a son’s worst nightmare with his father accused of murder. Attempts to clear his name unearth new secrets, and in a town where the past is never truly buried, those secrets turn lethal.

Reviewed on 12 July 2014 by John Cleal

Original Skin

DS Aector McAvoy of the Humberside Serious and Organised Crime Unit finds a mobile phone which leads him to believe a young homosexual’s death, ruled a suicide, may be more. Already in the middle of a drugs war, he must now plunge into a world of sleazy and violent sex to uncover to uncover the truth.

Reviewed on 12 July 2014 by John Cleal

Shiver

Single mum Samantha drives a repo truck to keep a roof over her son’s head. When she hooks up a BMW, she finds a beaten and shot man in the boot and when she is taken hostage by him is dragged into a fight to survive.

Reviewed on 12 July 2014 by John Cleal

Appetite

Nino Latini has a unique gift, a massively heightened sense of taste and a desire to create the perfect feast that will make his name as a chef in some of the most magnificent houses of Renaissance Italy. But his gift leads him into trouble and physical danger.

Reviewed on 28 June 2014 by John Cleal

The Killer Next Door

As London swelters in a stifling heatwave, the tenants of a bedsit and its landlord each try to hide their own secrets, but one, an obsessed serial killer, must try more than most.

Reviewed on 28 June 2014 by John Cleal

White Bones

The dismembered bones of 11 women whose skeletons bear the marks of a careful butcher are found on a Cork farm. A young American hitch-hiker goes missing, and Ireland’s first senior female detective, Superintendent Katie Maguire, must solve the ancient murders to find a link to a terrifying modern killer.

Reviewed on 28 June 2014 by John Cleal

Broken Faith

Jimmy Costello, a corrupt ex-Met detective, and now a ‘fixer’ for the Vatican, is sent to Spain to check a story that a senior cleric is involved with the Basque terrorist movement. The man he must talk to is killed and Jimmy has to solve the mystery – and also deal with some unwelcome reminders of his violent past.

Reviewed on 26 June 2014 by John Cleal

Let It Burn

Alex McKnight, invalided out of the Detroit police and retired to Michigan’s Lakeland, is tipped off that a killer he helped convict is due for release – but McKnight is now having some doubts about the man’s guilt.

Reviewed on 14 June 2014 by John Cleal

Rubbernecker

Student of anatomy Patrick Fort is a young man with a mission – to find out what happens when people die. His Asperger’s Syndrome means he will pursue that to extremes – and those extremes will lead him to a possible murder.

Reviewed on 14 June 2014 by John Cleal

The Last Winter of Dani Lancing

Student Dani Lancing was brutally raped and murdered. Twenty years on, her death is still affecting the lives of her parents and the man who had loved her since childhood.

Reviewed on 14 June 2014 by John Cleal

Dominion

Churchill has lost his bid to lead the wartime government and Britain surrenders. Resistance to the German masters slowly builds.

Reviewed on 10 June 2014 by John Cleal

Good People

When the tenant of the flat below dies and leaves almost $400,000 in cash, Tom and Anna Read think their problems have all been solved. But their decision to keep the cash involves them with ruthless men who believe they have been double-crossed and will stop at nothing to gain revenge.

Reviewed on 31 May 2014 by John Cleal

The Convictions of John Delahunt

Amoral student John Delahunt is waiting to hang for the killing of a young boy which shocked Victorian Dublin. He looks back over a life of betrayal in which he sacrificed friends, family, love and ultimately himself in pursuit of easy money and self-interest.

Reviewed on 31 May 2014 by John Cleal

The Siege

The Spanish port is under siege from a French army, but within the city a brutal serial killer of young girls is threatening to overturn the delicate balance of public order in a hotbed of change.

Reviewed on 31 May 2014 by John Cleal

Treachery

Renegade monk, philosopher, spy, poet and detective Giordano Bruno, is in Plymouth with his friend, Sir Philip Sidney, on a diplomatic mission. Bruno’s investigations into a murder on Drake’s flagship uncover some of the city’s darkest secrets, but expose him – and the country itself – to mortal danger.

Reviewed on 31 May 2014 by John Cleal

The Devil's Revenge

Occult murder mystery.  Ritual, witchcraft, revenge, alchemy, murder. Portland, Maine. Series. Deputy Archie Lean must discover why someone murdered a thief, then disinterred his body to burn it, leaving occult symbols on nearby walls.

Reviewed on 03 May 2014 by John Cleal

The Helper

A murder victim in a shabby bookstore appears to be a message for Detective Callum Doyle. In mysterious phone calls Doyle is told he will be given clues to more deaths – provided he keeps them to himself. Should he conceal knowledge that could stop these vicious and apparently random killings?

Reviewed on 03 May 2014 by John Cleal

This Dark Road To Mercy

Easter Quillby and her sister are in a state foster home after the overdose death of their mother. Their feckless father, who has stumbled on a cache of stolen money, reappears to claim them and they go on the run pursued by a disgraced former detective and a psychopathic with his own score to settle.

Reviewed on 03 May 2014 by John Cleal

Wolf

Two teenage sweethearts are horrifically murdered in a Mendip wood. The prime suspect confesses, but 14 years later the nightmare returns to haunt a family trying to put their memories behind them.

Reviewed on 03 May 2014 by John Cleal

Graveland

A Wall Street investment banker is shot dead. That night a hedge fund manager is killed. Investigative journalist Ellen Dorsey follows a hunch and opens the door to a world of fabulous riches and staggeringly amoral political and financial manipulation.

Reviewed on 19 April 2014 by John Cleal

Lexicon

The Australian mining town of Broken Hill has been wiped out. The government blames environmental disaster, but a few people know the truth.

Reviewed on 19 April 2014 by John Cleal

River of the Dead

A serial killer who mutilates his victims has been operating for more than 20 years, targeting ten-year-old boys. The killings continue, and then homicide detective Alex Hemingway herself becomes a target.

Reviewed on 19 April 2014 by John Cleal

Tatiana

Senior investigator Arkady Renko, investigating the execution of a Moscow mob boss, finds a connection to the apparent suicide of a female investigative reporter.

Reviewed on 19 April 2014 by John Cleal

Hearts of Darkness

With the Great Plague having burnt itself out in London, Harry Lytle is ordered by spymaster Lord Arlington to an Essex village where the disease is still breeding to track down a traitor and bring him back alive.

Reviewed on 05 April 2014 by John Cleal

Seven for a Secret

Timothy Wilde is a copper star in the newly-formed NYPD, and is dragged into the world of the blackbirders, semi-legal slave catchers, when a beautiful black woman reports her free family has been kidnapped.

Reviewed on 05 April 2014 by John Cleal

The Devil and The River

When John Gaines is called to the discovery of a girl’s body on the riverside of the small Mississippi town of which he is sheriff, he stumbles into a nightmare of murder, violence, corruption and superstition.

Reviewed on 05 April 2014 by John Cleal

The Witness

As a teenager, Abigail was witness to a brutal mafia double murder and the killing of two US marshals. She has been on the run from the killers for twelve years. Now she believes she is finally safe and has settled in a small town in the Ozarks. Then she meets the local chief of police – and her whole life changes.

Reviewed on 05 April 2014 by John Cleal

A Union Not Blessed

Boston lawyer Jean Marie McLeod, worried about his marriage and his young wife, seeks advice from a friend. A chance meeting drags him back into the world of espionage to foil a plot which could change the whole future of America.

Reviewed on 22 March 2014 by John Cleal

A Burnable Book

John Gower, poet and dealer in information is asked by his confidant Geoffrey Chaucer, to recover a missing book. The apparently mundane task leads him into a conspiracy to kill the king of England and destroy the Plantagenet dynasty.

Reviewed on 22 March 2014 by John Cleal

The Devil in the Marshalsea

Marshalsea Prison, Southwark. Country parson’s son Tom Hawkins, a gambler and rake, is thrown into a debtors’ prison where he must share a cell with a man inmates call a devil – and solve a murder or lose his own life.

Reviewed on 22 March 2014 by John Cleal

Touchstone

American Bureau of Investigation agent Harris Stuyvesant arrives in 1920s London on the trail of an anarchist bomber responsible for the death of his fiancée.

Reviewed on 22 March 2014 by John Cleal

The Game

A killer for hire completes an assignment in Algiers to execute another assassin, then is coerced into posing as the dead man to identify his victim’s latest client. Events spiral out of his control and he must choose between doing the right thing and losing his own life.

Reviewed on 08 March 2014 by John Cleal

Trespasser

Game warden Mike Bowditch, sent to a collision between a car and a deer on a lonely road, is surprised when he finds the car and blood on the road, but at first, no driver and no deer. When the woman is later found dead, things get dangerous for Bowditch.

Reviewed on 08 March 2014 by John Cleal

How a Gunman Says Goodbye

Hitman Frank McLeod has a problem. After decades at the top of his profession he has bodged a job – and had to be rescued by the young killer he recruited. What does a gunman do in retirement? Can he quit or is he a danger to himself and his former bosses?

Reviewed on 08 March 2014 by John Cleal

The Jackal's Share

Corporate investigator Ben Webster is hired by a billionaire Iranian expat to quash rumours about his asset management business and is plunged into the murky world of lies, greed and betrayals that is international finance – and the even more dangerous one of Middle Eastern politics.

Reviewed on 08 March 2014 by John Cleal

All I Did Was Shoot My Man

Private investigator Leonid McGill helped frame an innocent woman for a huge robbery at an insurance company. When he regrets his actions and decides to free her from prison, he sets in motion events which threaten her, himself and his family.

Reviewed on 22 February 2014 by John Cleal

Dark Dawn

A teenager is found kneecapped and killed in a luxury development on Belfast’s River Lagan. Acting DS John O’Neill faces a wall of silence, indifference and a hostile senior officer as he enters the world of violence, drug dealing and corruption that is post-Troubles Belfast.

Reviewed on 22 February 2014 by John Cleal

The Dead

Gang boss David Blake is back on top until the arrest of his accountant for child murder sparks a chain of events which put Blake’s empire – and life – at risk.

Reviewed on 22 February 2014 by John Cleal

Penance

When an elderly woman is shot dead by a sniper after leaving the confessional, Chicago detective John Lynch is assigned to investigate and enters a murky world of political ambition and double cross.

Reviewed on 22 February 2014 by John Cleal

The King's Deception

Ex-Justice Department agent Cotton Malone is on his way to Europe with his teenage son when he agrees to escort a young fugitive wanted in England. He is plunged into the heart of a growing international incident – and forced to attempt to solve a shocking Tudor mystery.

Reviewed on 08 February 2014 by John Cleal

The Cherry Pages

Sam Cooper, chief of police of a small Gulf coast town, doesn’t have a lot to do until an old friend asks him to fill in as bodyguard for the most envied and seductive movie star of the age who has received threatening e-mails. Cooper is delighted with his client and the job – but it soon becomes apparent he faces a very real threat from a maniacal serial killer.

Reviewed on 08 February 2014 by John Cleal

Murder at Wrotham Hill

The year is 1946. Britain is struggling in post-war austerity. Dagmar Petrzywalski, a middle-aged, gentle, eccentric spinster, is found strangled at the side of a main road in Kent. Britain’s first celebrity policeman, Chief Inspector Robert Fabian – Fabian of the Yard – investigates

Reviewed on 08 February 2014 by John Cleal

Stone Bruises

Sean is on the run in a stolen car. He eventually ditches the vehicle, but blunders into a man-trap on a lonely French farm. Rescued by the elder of the farmer’s daughters, he realises he has blundered into a realm of dark secrets which at least one of the family is willing to kill to protect.

Reviewed on 08 February 2014 by John Cleal

The Devil's Recruit

College lecturer Alexander Seaton investigates the disappearance of a Highland clan chieftain's son and the death of a teenage girl, and is drawn into a web of lies and betrayal linked to his own past.

Reviewed on 25 January 2014 by John Cleal

Ratlines

When a murdered German businessman is found in a Galway B&B with a note addressed to former SS paratroop commander Otto Skorzeny pinned to his body, Lieutenant Albert Drake of the Directorate of Intelligence is assigned to find the killer.

Reviewed on 25 January 2014 by John Cleal

Wrapped in White

PI John Craine takes on the case of the brutal homosexual killing of a young Somali which the boy’s aunt insists the police are trying to cover up. He’s plunged irretrievably into a world of drink, drugs, corruption and violence – before coming face to face with a dark spectre from his past.

Reviewed on 25 January 2014 by John Cleal

Fireproof

A serial arsonist is haunting the American capital. Local investigators target a young, white male giving in to anger or sexual impulse. But FBI agent Maggie O’Dell believes this is the work of someone far darker.

Reviewed on 11 January 2014 by John Cleal

Clean Burn

Former police detective Janelle Watkins breaks her vow never to touch a missing child case and returns to her home town to look for two kids. There she must face her past – and the sheriff whose marriage she broke up when they were police partners in San Francisco.

Reviewed on 11 January 2014 by John Cleal

In the Darkness

Eva is walking by the river with her seven-year-old daughter when they discover a man’s body. She leaves the girl telling her she will call police – then rings her father instead. Why? Inspector Sejer and his team must catch a violent killer, but face a cold trail.

Reviewed on 11 January 2014 by John Cleal

Rage Against the Dying

Retired FBI agent Brigid Quinn is trying to build a life apart from the human trafficking and sex predators she acted as bait for in her undercover career, but she is dragged back into this sordid and brutal world when a man confesses a notorious string of sex killings – including the murder of a young agent she had trained.

Reviewed on 28 December 2013 by John Cleal

The Cold Nowhere

When teenage streetwalker Cat arrives at Lieutenant Jonathan Stride’s home drenched, covered in blood and begging protection from an unknown killer, the detective is plunged back in time to the killing of her mother and his discovery of a terrified six-year-old child.

Reviewed on 28 December 2013 by John Cleal

Eleven Days

DI Carrigan and DS Miller are assigned to investigate a fire that has gutted a small West London convent. The bodies of all ten nuns are found inside, apparently willing victims as they have made no attempt to escape. Then an eleventh body is discovered and what began as a fatal mystery becomes a full-scale murder.

Reviewed on 28 December 2013 by John Cleal

The Backs

Unorthodox Cambridge DC Gary Goodhew stops at a roadblock for a burning car and finds a dead man tied to a tree with wire. A shoplifter is arrested in Leeds, a paramedic attacked at a murder scene. These incidents tie into a complicated web of sex, student prostitution and killing.

Reviewed on 14 December 2013 by John Cleal

Where the Devil Can't Go

Janusz Kiszka, unofficial ‘fixer’ for East London’s Polish community, finds himself caught in a web of politics, murder, religion and drugs when he sets out to investigate the disappearance of a young girl.

Reviewed on 14 December 2013 by John Cleal

A Song from Dead Lips

DS Cathal Breen is assigned to the murder of a young girl near the famous Abbey Road recording studios. He is given a young and impulsive temporary female DC as an assistant and together the pair follow a series of clues which lead them from the Beatles’ fan club to an African conflict in which millions are dying.

Reviewed on 14 December 2013 by John Cleal

Hit Me

John Keller’s new business restoring houses in post-Katrina New Orleans bombs in the US sub prime crisis and economic downturn. He now has a new name, a home, wife and baby to support plus his expensive hobby of collecting rare stamps. Then a phone call draws him back into his old business – killing for money.

Reviewed on 30 November 2013 by John Cleal

Black Irish

Detective Absolom Kearney faces the problems of her own past and the closed and secretive Irish community in which she grew up as she attempts to unravel a series of gruesome killings where the murderer’s calling card is a plastic toy monkey.

Reviewed on 30 November 2013 by John Cleal

I Am Pilgrim

A killing in New York leads the man codenamed Pilgrim – a former undercover agent – to a sinister plot to destroy America.

Reviewed on 30 November 2013 by John Cleal

The Scent of Death

In 1778, New York is under siege by the armies of George Washington. Edward Savill has been sent by the English government’s American Department to resolve property issues among loyalists. He stumbles onto a murder, which sparks a trail of deceipt, corruption and lies.

Reviewed on 16 November 2013 by John Cleal

Sycamore Row

When a reclusive multi-millionaire businessman with terminal cancer hangs himself, he leaves a hand-written will cutting out his family and leaving the bulk of his money to his black housekeeper. Jake Brigance is appointed to represent his estate, provoking a controversial trial and forcing Ford County to face its unsavoury past.

Reviewed on 16 November 2013 by John Cleal

The Silent Wife

Todd and Jodi have been together for more than twenty years. He is a small, but successful, property developer, she’s a counselling psychiatrist. But life for the long-time lovers is souring. How far is either of them prepare to go?

Reviewed on 16 November 2013 by John Cleal

Poppet

A series of horrifying, possibly supernatural, incidents shake both patients and staff at a secure mental unit. DI Jack Caffery, still looking for the body of a missing woman, is dragged into the hospital mystery.

Reviewed on 01 November 2013 by John Cleal

The Racketeer

Lawyer Malcolm Bannister is serving a ten year sentence after being railroaded by the FBI for a crime he did not commit. When a Federal judge and his lover are murdered and the investigation stalls, Bannister tells the agency he knows the killer – and launches a brilliantly conceived plot to gain revenge.

Reviewed on 01 November 2013 by John Cleal

A Taste for Malice

Dysfunctional Glasgow DI Ray McBain gets involved in a case of child abuse by a woman who had been entrusted with their care.

Reviewed on 29 October 2013 by John Cleal

The Red Road

A compelling, uncompromising and morally complex look at child abuse, police and institutional corruption

Reviewed on 18 October 2013 by John Cleal

An Act of Kindness

In the east end of London, private investigators, Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim are caught up in protection rackets, sex-trafficking and the problems caused by slum landlords and moneylenders.

Reviewed on 18 October 2013 by John Cleal

Savage Spring

Detective Inspector Malin Fors is called to the devastating scene of a bombing that has killed two little girls. Although still plagued with questions about her past, secrets her mother never revealed and doubts about her own future, Fors must bury her the pain if she is to find the killer before he strikes again.

Reviewed on 17 October 2013 by John Cleal

The Chalice

Former novice nun Joanna Stafford again risks everything she loves when she is caught up in a conspiracy against Henry VIII.

Reviewed on 04 October 2013 by John Cleal

Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders

Teenage music hall seamstress Kitty Peck is blackmailed into a career as an aerial artiste but in return for freedom for the brother she thought dead, Kitty must also find out why girls are going missing from the music halls Lady Ginger controls.

Reviewed on 04 October 2013 by John Cleal

The Heresy of Dr Dee

Queen Elizabeth I’s Astronomer Royal, mathematician and mystic John Dee travels to his father’s Welsh home in search of a fabulous ‘shewstone’, a crystal said to have supernatural powers.

Reviewed on 04 October 2013 by John Cleal

The Start of Everything

A woman’s body is found in a flooded Fenland sluice. The daughter of a Cambridge don attempts to trace a student who seems not to exist. DCI Morris Keene and his partner DI Chloe Frohmann are led to an isolated country mansion where they uncover a web of horror.

Reviewed on 20 September 2013 by John Cleal

City of Devils


Young Edinburgh doctor James Murray travels to Italy to study with Cesare Lombroso, the controversial late 19th century criminologist and is plunged into a series of sadistic and ritualistic killings which threaten his mentor.

Reviewed on 20 September 2013 by John Cleal