Crime

The Mad Days of March

The Mad Days of March
Title: The Mad Days of March
ASIN: B092TQCTWP
Published: April 17, 2021
Author's Twitter: @PhilipCatshill
This is the daily diary of Terry March whose single act of kindness leads to a month of madness and mayhem. After helping an old guy dispose of a blood-stained carpet at the local tip, Terry rescues his old TV remote and while driving home, he uses it to zap phantom aliens! This leads him to an encounter with Police Sergeant Susan. His new resolution to be helpful leads to his first opportunity to be unfaithful to his wife of nineteen torturous years. A soon-to-be divorced Lauren offers her favours to thank Terry for his kindness, but Terry declines the invitation. Within days, another opportunity arises, and Terry can’t convince himself that those phantom aliens haven’t spirited him away to a parallel universe. Before that first week is over, Terry faces redundancy from his mundane job at the local council. In order to tackle the backlog of paperwork, the council employs a temporary typist, Ashley, who closely resembles Terry’s 19-year-old daughter, Megan. Terry’s wife, Brenda disappears and Carol, her twin sister moves in. When a body is found in his garden, Terry is arrested for murder and Carol adds to his torment by accusing him of rape! While in a police cell, Terry encounters further problems as Lauren’s police sergeant husband is the custody officer! But all is not lost! Police Sergeant Susan persuades Carol to withdraw the charge and mysteriously, that old guy from the tip makes a deathbed confession to the murder! But the mad days of March are not yet over. Ashley disappears. Terry’s daughter Megan suffers traumatic memories from her past. Lauren’s house is set ablaze, and a mysterious detective Dave is concerned that Megan too has disappeared! All this in a month of the Mad Days of March! Warning: Sexually explicit content. For adult reading only.

Assessed for Awesome Indies Book Awards

Heads You Lose

Heads You Lose
Title: Heads You Lose
ASIN: B00RO9RN78
Categories: ,
Tag:
Published: December 31, 2014
Author:
Author's Twitter: @RobJohnson1000
The assignment in Greece might have been the answer to Trevor and Sandra's problems except for one thing. Someone was trying to frame them for murder... with a watermelon. 'Money for old rope,' Sandra had said when they accepted the job of looking after the ageing Marcus Ingleby at his villa in Greece, but when a neighbour brings a gift for the old man, the prospect of spending most of the rest of their lives in a Greek prison becomes a terrifying reality. Meanwhile, Ingleby has problems of his own. During his seventy-odd years, his cupboard has accumulated plenty of skeletons, one of which is about to be rattled by a couple of ex-cons and a retired police inspector from his murky past. Heads You Lose is the sequel to Lifting the Lid and the second book in the 'Lifting the Lid' series, featuring Sandra Gray, Trevor Hawkins and his incorrigible dog, Milly.

Assessed for 

Blood Read: Publish And Be Dead

Blood Read: Publish And Be Dead
Title: Blood Read: Publish And Be Dead
ASIN: B01M34XDT7
Publisher:
Published: November 18, 2016
Author's Twitter: @simonjtownley
When investigative journalist Tom Capgras finds his literary agent hanging from an oak beam in her West End office, an immaculately tied noose around her neck, his dreams of a non-fiction book deal appear dead in the water. Joanne Leatherby’s death looks like suicide but Capgras suspects murder. Nonsense, say police, who dismiss him as a conspiracy crackpot. Capgras uncovers links to a string of untimely deaths – editors, publishers, reviewers, even book bloggers, killed for an unkind word. All the evidence points to one man – a mid-list author of detective tales with a career on the skids. Cast adrift by agents and publishers alike, his dreams thwarted, Arthur Middleton has gone to the dark side and embraced self-publishing. He may be crazed with ambition, but how mad would a man have to be to kill for publicity, for book sales? Mad enough to admit everything on the pages of his latest blockbuster? As the body count mounts, and the police refuse to take him seriously, Capgras must act alone, defy his critics and get to the truth fast – before the killer gets to him.

Assessed for 

A Fair Wack

A Fair Wack
Title: A Fair Wack
ASIN: B00K02EXQU
Categories: ,
Published: April 27, 2014
Author:
Author's Twitter: @PeterTrewin
Explicit Language and Violence. Fresh scratches in old scar tissue. Old burn scar tissue. That’s got to hurt. Paul Eston has blown the whistle on some bad people in Liverpool and gone to ground with vital evidence in the North East of England Wacker Hughes must track him down. He has not been involved in the violent side of the operation for years but now everything that he has worked for is under threat. But what made Eston blow the whistle? Will he find out the truth behind his father’s murder? And how did he get those scratches on his back? Only a woman’s fingernails could do that much damage. Ouch.

Assessed for 

 

 

Blood-tied

Blood-tied
Title: Blood-tied
ASIN: B079T7M83J
Categories: ,
Publisher:
Published: February 13, 2018
Author's Twitter: @wendy_percival
A desperate crime, kept secret for 60 years. But time has a way of exposing the truth. And the repercussions are only just beginning. Esme Quentin is devastated when her sister Elizabeth is beaten unconscious, miles from her home. Two days later Esme discovers that Elizabeth has a secret past. Desperate for answers which the comatose Elizabeth cannot give, Esme enlists the help of her friend Lucy to discover the truth, unaware of the dangerous path she is treading. Together they uncover a trail of unresolved bitterness, blackmail and dubious inheritance and, as the truth emerges, Esme exposes evidence of a harrowing and pitiful crime. Realising too late the menace she has unwittingly unleashed, Esme is caught up in a terrifying ordeal. One that will not only test her courage and her sanity, but force her to confront her perception of birth and family.

Assessed 

 

Material Evidence

Material Evidence
Title: Material Evidence
ASIN: B003FMV644
Category:
Published: July 11, 2007
Author:
Author's Twitter: @carver25
This is the first in a series of police procedurals set in North-East Scotland and featuring DCI Jack Carston. A woman’s body is found at her home. She died of a gunshot wound, had been brutally raped and all the clues point to the husband being the culprit. As Carston investigates, however, the main puzzle facing him is who the woman really was. Husband, colleagues and acquaintances variously picture her as a frigid menopausal woman, a highly-sexed lover, a shrewd investor and manipulator, a valued financial adviser, an embarrassment to her employers, a sad, unstable person. Before he can solve the crime, he must first reconcile all these images to establish her real identity.

Assessed for Awesome Indies

Wrinkled Heartbeats

Wrinkled Heartbeats
Title: Wrinkled Heartbeats
ASIN: B016X4TMUK
Published: October 19, 2015
Author's Twitter: @templewms
A war hero stumbles into a web of money-laundering, lies, and deadly secrets, including the “Gator Pole,” a painful way to make people disappear in Florida’s famous River of Grass, the Everglades. A very generous offer to buy the hero’s luxury home includes an expiration date on his life. The only person who can save him is the person hired to kill him. For the warrior, one of the bloodiest battles in the history of the Marine Corps becomes a life-threatening allegory in the tropical paradise of the Palm Beaches.

Assessed for Awesome Indies

 

Time Lapse

Time Lapse
Title: Time Lapse
ASIN: B00TS7P0TC
Category:
Published: February 18, 2015
Author:
Author's Twitter: @PeterTrewin
A despicable crime carried out twenty years ago by a teenage gang. The proceeds of a heist hidden away. Chris Crosby was involved and could have intervened but he didn’t. So he is just as guilty. But where to hide? How about the most obvious place.  He is a surveillance expert investigating organised crime in Merseyside – in particular the activities of an outfit led by Alison Mason who has had to take control when her partner was drowned in a botched drug smuggling operation. Chris is also a rock climber with ambitions to solo the hardest and most dangerous climb in the area, ‘Time Lapse’. Talk about not attracting attention to yourself. But the ghosts from his past have been awakened. Can Chris avoid exposure? Can he shop the gangsters? Can he climb – and survive – the route?

Assessed for Awesome Indies

No Stranger to Death

No Stranger to Death
Title: No Stranger to Death
ASIN: B00GS1GF0E
Author's Twitter: @JanetOkane
A Scottish village. A burning corpse. Some very dark secrets. Can recently-widowed Doctor Zoe Moreland discover who’s killing her patients in time to save herself from becoming the next victim? Recently-widowed Doctor Zoe Moreland moves from an English city to a village in the Scottish Borders for a fresh start among strangers unaware of her tragic past. However, any hopes she had of a quiet life are dashed by her dog finding a woman’s body in the remains of a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Although the last thing Zoe wants is to get caught up in a murder investigation, this changes when someone else dies unexpectedly and she herself narrowly escapes death. Determined not to become the killer’s next victim, she digs beneath the tranquil surface of the close-knit community to find out who is committing these horrible acts. And discovers that some secrets can be deadly.

Assessed for