‘Whoever did it must have read it.’ When local author and recently retired teacher Liam Allerton is found drowned in Barnes Pond, just like the retired teacher in his debut novel, it’s a curious case of life imitating art – or rather, his death imitating his art – but when DI Garibaldi reads Allerton’s novel, it seems this is only the first of some startling coincidences… What’s it about? The eerie similarity between the deaths of Alex Ballantyne and his author, Liam Allerton, begins with a drowning. Alex dies the night of his retirement drinks at The Sun pub; Liam dies the night of his book t ..read more

I love books that are completely real whilst also being darkly comic. Welcome back to the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team, now on their fifth outing in a fictionalised, mid-Virus-epidemic-Edinburgh. Bernard is still surprised daily by the demands of his job, (which is supposed to be about healthcare but is really a sort of police team used by their boss to try to hush up political scandals that they’ve been instructed to smother by their boss,) but now he’s got a new boss, he hopes his work life might calm down long enough for him to go out to dinner with his girlfriend’s parents ..read more

Short version: this wasn’t for me. Longer version: ‘The Wife Upstairs’ suffers from a few plot holes, to put it mildly, and despite being promoted as a modern re-telling of Jane Eyre, bears very little resemblance to that classic. Both books contain an orphan whose name is Jane, and even that isn’t true (Jane Bell reveals early on that this is not her real name); both books contain an unwanted wife – except that isn’t true either, as ‘Eddie’ Rochester definitely isn’t done with Bea Rochester; and while the original novel ends with everyone suitably chastised, this story doesn’t care for moral ..read more

King Lear is meant to die – but the actor performing the title role isn’t. When Sir Nigel Viliers collapses and dies on stage during the opening night of King Lear, everyone around him appears to be startled: Sir Nigel is a leading light of the London stage – so it’s even more startling when it seems his death may be due to unnatural causes. When Doctor Alexander Gregory is asked to advise the police regarding the mind of the deceased actor and any potential killer, he soon realises that all the evidence is pointing to an event from Sir Nigel’s past. Perhaps he wasn’t universally loved after a ..read more

The strapline promises a perfect family with a devastating secret. We know these tropes: we know that this family will turn out to be anything but perfect; we know there will be multiple secrets that emphasise just how broken their family unit truly is; and we know that Lucy will find herself in danger, likely from whoever she least suspects; but we hope that the story telling will fuse these well known elements into a transfixing tale that captures us from the discovery that ‘may contain human bones’ until the final chilling denouement, when we learn just who transformed a human into the remn ..read more

Today I’m excited to be part of the cover reveal for L. C. North’s new thriller ‘Clickbait’  Isn’t it pretty? But of course, we shouldn’t judge a book purely by its cover, so here’s the blurb to tempt you further: ​——————————— ‘We’re not famous anymore. We’re notorious.’ For over a decade, the Lancasters were celebrity royalty, with millions tuning in every week to watch their reality show, Living with the Lancasters. But then an old video emerges of one of their legendary parties. Suddenly, they’re in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons: witnesses swore they’d seen missing ..read more

‘Medicine was harder to leave than O2 or Virgin Active gyms.’ Adam Kay is back with his second memoir, reflecting on his experiences not just as a student and doctor within the NHS but with his own mental and physical health. What’s it about? Kay’s adult debut, ‘This is going to hurt’, was sad and funny. Built primarily from at least semi-humorous anecdotes collected during his career as a gynaecologist, the final painful chapter was quite a harsh break from the preceding material. (Much like his live stand up show, it’s all funny, albeit dark humour, until the painful event that terminated hi ..read more

How do you stop a murder when it’s already happened? I was hooked by the tagline and reassured from reading previous McAllister books that such a brilliant premise wouldn’t fizzle out or otherwise disappoint. This, I was certain, would be a brilliant read – and it was. What’s it about? Jen is waiting up for her teenage son one dark October night when she witnesses him stab a complete stranger. This isn’t the Todd she knows, but before Jen can get any information out of her son, the police arrive, Todd confesses and he is taken away to be charged. Full of questions, Jen and her husband fol ..read more

A murdered woman. A missing husband. An impossible crime scene. The strapline sounded a bit like a locked room mystery, but this is a police procedural with a purpose. When a wealthy woman is found dead in her locked London mansion by her cleaner, the key questions that arise are: what is the meaning of the 4 objects deliberately posed surrounding her body? Who hated her enough to commit this level of violence? And where is her husband? Although these questions are addressed, there’s a stronger focus on a series of historic crimes, which resulted in damage to our new heroine, Laughton Rees: th ..read more

Imagine that you have ended up in prison, as a result of poverty and constrained life choices. Now imagine being told that you will serve out the rest of your prison sentence on the other side of the world – and you are unlikely to ever find your way home. Such is the fate facing Hannah Tyrell in Katharine Quarmby’s first fiction work. Hannah is only a teenager but a teenager who had the misfortune to be convicted of a crime when the threat of transportation to Botany Bay was still a very real one and to be an unprotected woman of any age was almost synonymous with degradation. But first matte ..read more