A solid police procedural with more twists and turns than some of Scotland’s dangerously narrow roads.
A police officer is so sure a man’s getting away with murder that she quits to investigate on her own.
Even though the traffic police have given him a perfect alibi, DI Costello knows in her bones that George Haggerty murdered his wife, Abigail, and their son, Malcolm. Her partner of 20 years, Colin Anderson, has been dealing with problems of his own ever since he discovered he had a daughter he’d never known and a grandson with Down syndrome, Baby Moses, who's now under his care (The Suffering of Strangers, 2018). Haggerty is taunting Costello, and Anderson worries about how far she’ll go now that the case has been passed on to Complaints and Investigations, where nasty DCI Mathieson seems more interested in police wrongdoing than murder. Instead of Haggerty, some of Costello’s mates suspect Abigail’s sister, high-functioning alcoholic lawyer Valerie Abernethy. After first trying to kill herself, Valerie decides that revenge is a better choice. An accidental meeting with Costello, who’s been beaten and lost part of her memory, gives Valerie her chance. Meanwhile, in a wild area north of Loch Lomond now popular as a tourist hiking destination, DCI Alastair Patrick, a cop with a mysterious sideline, finds the body of a savagely beaten man clinging to life. When another police officer goes missing in the same area and his blood is found mingled with that of Costello, she’s suspected of his murder. Anderson is working on cold case rapes, and information from a police officer who works not far from the hiking area unites the cases in surprising ways. Desperate to prove Costello innocent, Anderson can do so only by figuring out how Haggerty could have been in two places at the same time.
A solid police procedural with more twists and turns than some of Scotland’s dangerously narrow roads.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7278-8808-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Fluke lavishes so much attention on the mechanics of location shooting that there’s scant time for the murder, much less its...
Even the murder of its cranky director can’t stop the filming of Crisis in Cherrywood or halt the snooping of Lake Eden’s premier baker.
Just when Hannah Swenson’s decided to accept neither of the marriage proposals tendered at the end of Peach Cobbler Murder (2005)—turning down both sweet-tempered dentist Norman Rhoades and hot-blooded lawman Mike Kingston—another suitor turns up. Her old college classmate Ross Barton, now a Hollywood producer who thinks Lake Eden is just the spot to shoot his new movie, recruits Hannah’s mom Delores as set designer, her younger sister Michelle as production assistant and her middle sister Andrea as an extra. He even casts Andrea’s five-year-old, Tracey, to play heroine Lynne Larchmont as a child and presses Hannah’s cat Moishe into service as her childhood pet. For Hannah he reserves the role of constant companion, escorting her to dinner, inviting her to view the dailies and letting her watch the filming—which gives her a front-row seat as Dean Lawrence, instructing leading man Anson Burke on how to use a prop pistol, shoots himself fatally instead. Since Mike has made it clear to Hannah that she must leave investigating to the professionals, she can’t investigate, she can only snoop—much to the delight of Andrea, Norman and Lake Edenites everywhere.
Fluke lavishes so much attention on the mechanics of location shooting that there’s scant time for the murder, much less its solution.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7582-0294-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Familiar thrills lashed to a razor’s edge.
A Spanish cop, incurring a crime lord’s vengeful and wholly unearned wrath, is saddled with a new partner she’s not crazy about herself.
Agreeing to take a late-night call to cover for a colleague who wants to go home to his wife and baby, Officer Cristina Sánchez Pradell, of Marviña’s Policía Local, finds herself face to face with a man she takes to be an armed intruder. Before he can identify himself as Ian Templeton, who broke into his own house after he forgot his keys, he’s startled by a dark figure behind him and fires three shots, killing Angela Fry, the pregnant girlfriend who’d returned with him. Templeton, who’s actually Jack Cleland, a British fugitive widely sought for drug trafficking and killing a cop, blames Cristina’s presence for Angela’s death and swears revenge against her whole family. That includes her husband, Antonio; their 10-year-old son, Lucas; her cancer-stricken sister, Nuri; Nuri’s husband, fellow police officer Paco; and Ana, Cristina’s deaf, blind aunt, whose role will be pivotal. Cleland’s threats ring hollow as long as he’s in custody, but on the journey to transfer him to the custody of John Mackenzie, a disgraced ex-cop on his first day as an investigator for Britain's National Crime Agency, Cleland’s underlings break him out, killing one cop and shooting Paco nonfatally so that he can relay the news to Cristina. Mackenzie, a Scot who has long-standing issues with authority figures of all kinds, is ready to take the next flight home, but Sub-Inspector Miguel López, the chief of Marviña Station, insists that he stay and help Cristina, who clearly needs all the help she can get, however antipathetic its source. As the unwilling partners track down leads to Cleland’s present whereabouts, Cleland, effortlessly outmaneuvering them, zeroes in on one soft target after another. May (I’ll Keep You Safe, 2018, etc.) keeps a few surprises in reserve but not enough to prevent you from thinking you’ve seen this all before.
Familiar thrills lashed to a razor’s edge.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78429-498-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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