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To hell with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens –
these are a few of MY favourite things –

IF A FACE COULD KILL . . . Between the covers

Brigid Quinn is a former FBI agent. She and her husband Carlo have retired to the rural community of Catalina in Arizona. At the end of their street is a property used by the authorities to house paroled offenders, one whom is a woman called Nicki, who went down for manslaughter after killing her abusive husband. The book begins with a botched burglary at this group house, which ends when the hapless was shot dead by a SWAT team after they were alerted by a 911 call from Nicki.After she retired from the FBI Brigid volunteered at Desert Doves, a refuge for victims of domestic violence, which is where she met the traumatised Nicki Gleason. There, she taught Nicki the basics of self defence, and it was that knowledge which resulted in jury foreman stating:

“We find Nicole Gleason guilty of one count of involuntary manslaughter, your Honor.”

One of Brigid’s neighbours, an unpleasant busybody called Dorita, is organising a petition to have the occupants housed elsewhere. Dorita is as unpleasant looking as her behaviour is ugly:

“It struck me that her large face wasn’t so much like the Red Queen’s as like a painting of Martin Luther..”

Dorita and Brigid are destined not to get on well together, but the neighbourhood spat ends violently when Dorita is found dead in her garden. It seems as though she has been held down in a barbecue fire pit. Face down. The result is graphically not pretty, but then there are few beautiful people in this novel.
This is Nikki’s probation officer/mentor:

“She was the ugliest butterfly you’d ever seen, startlingly ugly. She didn’t have a moustache, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.A long, gaunt face with uncooked dumplings under her eyes to make up for the lack of flesh elsewhere. Her lipstick appeared to be a gallant attempt at redeeming her face, but even that failed as the shade contrasted severely with the colors in her top. An overbite. That was my three-second observation, but I don’t think I’m missing anything.”

For those who enjoy such things, we witness the exquisitely grisly autopsy on poor Dorita Gordano. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the face, and a gasoline soaked plug of rag was forced into her throat. The facial burning was clearly post mortem, and some kind of statement. But of what, and by whom? Neither does Becky Masterman spare us the details of what a vile specimen Nicki’s husband was. Vincent was obsessed with video games to the extent that one afternoon, anxious to get to his games console, he left daughter Ramona strapped into her car seat one blazing Arizona afternoon. He was also casually brutal about where he stubbed out his cigarettes. There is, obviously, a broader moral argument about whether such men deserve to be killed with a two litre vodka bottle, but this book is crime fiction, not a philosophical treatise, so we can roll with it.

After some humming and hahing, the local police, led by Sheriff Max Coyote, a former friend of Brigid’s (they have fallen out, big time) decide that Nicki is a person of interest in the murder of Dorita Gordano. The pathologist believes that the initial injuries to Dorita’s face were caused by a large concrete block, and in the garden of the group house is a recently built wall. And one of the concrete blocks bears blood traces.

Masterman’s prose is as sharp as tacks. Sometimes, American CriFi can be too slick, too polished, and too predictable. Quinn’s observations are frequently acerbic, and scatter broken glass for us to tread on. Here, she catches the over-effusive Eleanore Turner in an unguarded moment.

“She looked like hell. She tried to sit up straighter and force the corners of her mouth into her standard smile, but the corners twitched with the effort, like those of a politician being asked the one question they could not answer. None of it worked. She was smaller than I’d seen her in our last several encounters, some giant thumb pressing down on her for too long, and she could no longer resist.”

The action accelerates. First, someone firebombs the group home, and one of the residents, a young man called Jackson is killed in the resultant explosion. Then, a local Home Owners Association meeting is called and, despite Max Coyote trying to reassure residents, the mood turns ugly. Brigid’s rather strange niece Gemma Kate is attacked as she sits watching a horror movie in a theatre where she and her attacker are the only customers.

There is a narrative shift late in the book. Hitherto, everything we have read is through the eyes of Brigid. Then, quite abruptly, we have a chapter describing the thoughts of Nicki Gleason, followed by those of Eleanore, abducted and imprisoned in a locked casita. Becky Masterman ends the novel with horror and violence, but also redemption. It is certainly a visceral read. If a Face Could Kill will be published by Severn House on 3rd March.

March 1, 2026 0

SHARKS . . . Between the covers

In April 2024 I reviewed The Kitchen (same author, same central character) and I was impressed. If you click the title, you can read why. Now, Hamburg prosecutor Chastity Riley returns, and we are wading through gore from page one, as Fraulein Riley views the bodies of an elderly American couple – Walt and Lorraine Tucker – in their run-down villa in the suburb of Wilhemsburg. The book blurb describes the district as troubled, while an AI response on Google says it is “no longer considered “rough” in the sense of being dangerous, but rather in the sense of being an “up-and-coming” edgy, urban, and authentic district”. I think I trust Simone Buchholz rather than corporate PR-speak.

“All I see is a muddle of ghetto and nature. I see run down tower blocks, gloomy pubs, grey streets, and growing right next to them are birch birch trees and willows and rose bushes. Sometimes there’s a little canal or a meadow.There are even old farms a bit further from the S-Bahn tracks. I get the idea things could be really nice here. But it doesn’t work.The problem is this part of town has problems and its emotional core is dreariness.There’s no new dawn in the air.There’s a rot, a lack of prospects. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Flee while you have the chance. And the only people who come here are those who can’t afford anything else, or not anymore. People don’t look like they’re here of their own free will.”

Near the Tuckers’ house is the Rote Flora, something of a Hamburg institution. A former theatre, it has been occupied since 1989 by alternative-lifestyle squatters, and some of them tell Chastity that Tucker hated them with a vengeance, and never lost an opportunity to be offensive towards them.Genuine Noir is about despair. It is about people living on the edge. Here, Chastity’s old chum, Haller, describes a woman he has met while (unofficially) investigating the Tucker murders.

“She told me that since her husband died, she’s been going for walks. For seven years, she’s been walking 16, 18, 20 hours a day. She only goes home to sleep. But she says she doesn’t sleep all that much anymore. Sometimes she doesn’t sleep at all. She thinks she’ll die sooner if she stops going for walks and starts sleeping. When she said that, I thought, she’s sly. She’s running away from death.”

It is through this little old lady that the break comes. On one of her endless walks she spotted two men leaving the Tucker house and driving away in an old Ford Taunus, a gold one. Presented with, first, a photofit, and then a subsequent ID parade, she picks out two ‘guns for hire’ called Caltzo and Rubsch. But who has done the hiring?

Commenting on the style of a translated novel is something of a leap of faith, but we have to trust Rachel Ward. Buchholz punches the narrative forward with short sentences, often containing fewer than a dozen words. Even when Chastity is thinking about her past, pondering ‘what ifs’ or speculating on the future, there is still a powerful sense of immediacy, and the forward movement barely falters. A word of advice. Unless you are German speaker, or know Hamburg, you will need your ‘phone at hand, and Google primed to go. Buchholz peppers the narrative with Hamburg cultural references. For example, Chastity meets her former colleague, the recently retired Haller, in a bar called The Haifisch. Apparently, ‘Haifisch’ was a hit for the German band Rammstein, but it also translates as ‘shark’.

Buchholz keeps the mood relentlessly downbeat. Riley’s BFF Carla has to have a termination. They go together to the clinic and, waiting outside while Carla recovers, Riley observes the day:

“The sky has spread over the city like a blanket, or maybe like a lid. In Hamburg, you can never be certain what the day is going to make of it. Sometimes a low-hanging sky like that seems almost comforting, loving, lulling. And sometimes it just eats everything up. The only thing you can be sure of is that it’s not lightening up again today.”

I am not sure if Noir novels can sparkle, but this one does – with snappy dialogue, vivid locations – and a brilliant solution to the murder. Sharks is published by Orenda Books and is out now.

February 25, 2026 0

THE LOST WOMEN . . . Between the covers

The latest David Raker thriller from Tim Weaver is true to form. Raker, a widowed former journalist, is an expert finder of missing persons, and the author’s speciality is setting up situations where the impossible has occurred – and then, eventually, presenting us with an explanation that fits, rather like in that classic crime fiction staple, the locked room mystery.

Here, the first mystery is what to make of the two apparently unrelated plot strands. First, we are told of the unexplained disappearance, almost two decades earlier, of a trio of women film makers who vanished while working on a story about Porthtreno, an abandoned Cornish village. More immediately, Raker is hired by a wealthy actress, Ellie Snyder to find out how and why her husband has disappeared from an exclusive private clinic where he was undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Both Raker and his assistant, ex Met Copper Colm Healy labour under the shadow of personal grief; Raker for his wife Derryn, taken by cancer, and Healy for his daughter Leanne, slain by a serial killer. Readers familiar with Tim Weaver’s style have come to expect seemingly unconnected and unexplained changes in narrative. Here, on page 125 of 437, after a second-by-second account of Raker and Healy investigating the disappearance of Preston Stewart, we are introduced, seemingly out of nowhere, to Zauna and Marco. Who they? You might well ask, but you will just have to strap in and wait for all to be revealed. This, of, course is the essential segue between the abducted surgeon to the missing women of Cornwall. Is it clunky? Yes. But does it work? Affirmative, likewise. The clincher comes when Raker and Healy are searching Preston Stewart’s house and they find a book, and a link to a YouTube video, both called The Lost Women of Porthtreno.

Central to the plot is a jailed serial killer known as Dr Glass.”It was in that forest, out in east London, that six women had been found in clear plastic coffins filled with liquid formaldehyde. A seventh had been found in a wall cavity nearby, and Glass had kept all of them hidden in a disused sewer network 30 feet under the earth.” Along the way, we also learn that on one drunken occasion, out of nowhere, Preston Stewart had confessed to Ellie that he had been involved in a murder, back in his student days in Bristol. We also know that the mysterious Marco, also a student in Bristol, went missing, never to be found. And one of the Porthtreno film makers was …. wait for it …. His sister Zauna.

A policeman who has been involved in the case sums up everything that is implausible about David Raker, and yet he also puts his finger on why the books are best sellers.

“From what I know about you, from what I’ve seen myself, you’re smart, intuitive, and I genuinely believe you’re a good man. But you’re out of touch. It’s been a long time since you worked within any kind of structure, and when the only person you have ever had to be accountable to is yourself, you forget what it’s like in the real world.”

Yes, Raker’s adventures can sometimes verge on comic strip implausibility, but, in the end, this is why we love crime fiction.Tim Weaver goes to the cupboard where crime fiction tropes are stored, and he leaves very few hanging on their pegs. We have corrupt cops, a serial killer with an astonishing ability to create murderous conspiracies from within his jail cell, drugged coffee, devastating explosions triggered by mobile ‘phones, private investigators hired by clients who are actually the principal villains and, last but not least, a central character physically immune to knives, choke holds and high explosives. The Lost Women is, however, a superb thriller, full of twists, turns, red herrings, and great dialogue. It will be published by Michael Joseph on 26th February.

February 24, 2026 0

TOMBSTONING . . . Between the covers

“Dazzling debut” has the tawdry connotations of tabloid alliteration, but sometimes clichés earn their keep. In 2006 we were in the high summer of New Labour but with Gordon Brown scheming away to get the top job, Arsenal moved from Highbury to The Emirates, and Doug Johnstone’s first novel ‘Tombstoning’ was published by Penguin. Successful and highly regarded at the time, it is now republished in a twentieth anniversary edition by Orenda Books.

The best books have central characters we care about, and Johnstone did this in spades. David Lindsay and Nicola Cruikshank were at school together in Arbroath, she a glacial beauty, he a skinny and rather clumsy lad too self-conscious to ask her out. Their final school days were shadowed by tragedy – a fellow school chum called Colin died after plunging from a cliff. Now, fifteen years on, Nicola has been asked by an alumni group to help organise a reunion, and she emails David, finding him on the website of his employer – a struggling web design firm in Edinburgh. Fatefully, David is persuaded by Nicola to rendezvous at the reunion in Arbroath, where he meets one of his former teachers in the pub after a dismally skill-free, but entertaining Third Division football match (Arbroath 1 – Montrose 1)

Mr Bowman reveals that far from being forgotten, Colin Anderson has been adopted by some local teenage boys as a macabre folk hero, and they have taken up the suicidal practice of jumping off the cliffs at high tide in honour of their hero. The activity is known, with bizarre irony, as Tombstoning but, thus far, no-one has died. Doug Johnstone was not the first (nor will he be the last) writer to explore the trope of the school or college reunion. The potential is for old jealousies to surface, historic slights to become even more barbed as the years have gone by, and it becomes probable that teenage rivalries can be revived by men and women now in their thirties, and much more capable of inflicting damage. So it is here.

The ghost of Colin Anderson is, like that if Banquo, the spectre at the feast, and it is not long before things begin to unravel.The mood darkens dramatically, when David receives the news that Gary Spink, an old chum with whom he had gone to the football match, has been found at the foot of the Arbroath cliffs. He and Nicola had been the last people to see him after the three of them had been thrown out of the nightclub hosting the school reunion.

About the half way mark, Johnstone introduces another figure from David’s past – Neil Corrigan. He had been the fourth member of the teenage quartet at school. Now, Colin and Gary are dead, but what became of Neil? Not as bright as his three pals, he was, however, powerfully built and aggressive. He seemed a perfect fit for the Royal Marines, but after serving in the Gulf War, he left to become a policeman. But now? Who Knows? Rumour has it that he has been seen in Arbroath.

Johnstone was brought up in Arbroath, and he describes his home town with affection, but doesn’t spare us the reality of the rather run-down former fishing port and the rusting hulks of trawlers decaying in its harbour. More potently, he describes the human tensions and sense of unease between locals who were never bright or ambitious enough to move away, and former friends like David and Nicola who have seen something of the world outside.

My only quibble with this book is a slight one, and it lies with the introduction, which seems to suggest that the novel is Tartan Noir. Noir, Tartan or otherwise suggests a bleak and monochrome vision of a society devoid of hope and optimism, where human venality tramples on love and human decency. If the writer of the intro wants genuine Noir, then I suggest he reads Derek Raymond’s I Was Dora Suarez. Ted Lewis’s GBH or Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me. Instead, Tombstoning has romance, genuine affection, decency, optimism and, above all, the power of love. Yes, it has its dark moments and is a terrific thriller, but the bond between David and Nicola is what lifts it above Noir’s slough of despond. This edition will be published by Orenda Books on 26th February.

February 23, 2026 0

MRS HUDSON AND THE SPIRITS’ CURSE . . . Between the covers

The canonical 56 short stories and four novellas featuring Sherlock Holmes have left so-called ‘continuation’ authors with plenty of subordinate characters to draw on. Dr Watson, inspector Lestrade, Moriarty and brother Mycroft have each been the central character in novels. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Mrs Hudson took centre stage. Martin Davies took up the challenge in 2002 and this book was reissued at the end of last month. It came up as available on my Netgalley account, and as I enjoyed Mrs Hudson and the Capricorn Incident, I decided to go back to the beginning of what is obviously a popular series.

The book is narrated by a young street urchin called Flottie (Flotsam) who has been taken under Mrs Hudson’s wing and, together, they take up new employment as housekeepers for two rather unusual gentlemen who have just moved into a house on Baker Street.The thrust of the main plot is this: a young man named Moran, with three colleagues, Neale, Postgate and Carruthers, was unwise enough to venture to an insanitary patch of jungle in Sumatra, in pursuit of an ambitious business scheme. As ever, the oppressive heat and rain wore them down, but their fatal error was, to paraphrase the punchline of a venerable joke, to “tell the local witch doctor to ‘fcuk off'”. Postgate never made it out alive.

Now, Neale, Moran and Carruthers have retreated in fright to England, convinced that they have been doomed by an ancient curse. Moran seeks the help of Holmes, and when Carruthers is found dead in his London hotel, his face (inevitably) contorted in an expression of terror, the game, as someone once said, “is afoot.”

At one point, another celebrated fictional character – gentleman thief Arthur Raffles – joins in the fun. Incidentally, Raffles’ creator, EW Hornung, was married to Conan Doyle’s sister Connie, although the two authors were said not to be bosom pals.

Without giving too much away, it transpires that Mr Moran has been a little economical with la vérité, but to little avail, as Mrs Hudson’s perspicacity and Flottie’s determination bring him down. Martin Davies doesn’t quite slam his four aces down on the table by introducing Moriarty, but he does the next best thing by acquainting us with a criminal mastermind called Fogarty who, while posing as a gentleman’s butler, presides over a violent and lucrative criminal empire.

Subsequent recreators of Sherlock Holmes have to get round the problem of the brevity of the 56 original short stories. Even the four novels were not long by contemporary standards. So, what is the problem? It is that in the short stories, Conan Doyle can keep a tight focus. There is one mystery, one closely linked set of characters and, usually, just two locations – Baker Street and wherever the crime was committed. In contrast, the modern homages have to fill out many more pages in order to give their readers a sense of money well spent. Whereas in the originals, Watson can feasibly go wherever Holmes does, be it Sussex, Dartmoor or Shoscombe Old Place, it stretches the readers’ credulity to have domestic servants travel far and wide with their employer, so Martin Davies get round the problem by sticking mostly to London locations.

Flottie is a plausible heroine, Holmes and Watson are faithful reproductions, and while Mrs H is nothing like the rather meek and put-upon woman in the original stories, she is perfectly credible. Canonical diehards will find the cosy fireside chats between Holmes, Watson, Hudson and Flottie, discussing the finer points of the case, utterly implausible, but we need to remember that Conan Doyle’s genius made Holmes invincible, impregnable and inviolate. No matter how many imitators take their turn, the canonical stories will always be there for us, pure and perfect. Martin Davies gives us an enjoyable and absorbing version of the old tropes and, although no-one can embellish the originals, this book doesn’t diminish them. This is an entertaining and absorbing melodrama, republished by Allison & Busby and available now.

February 22, 2026 0

BEATTIE CAVENDISH AND THE HIGHLAND HIDEAWAY . . . Between the covers

The book is set in the Britain of 1949. A strange place and no mistake. Strange? We had won the war, hadn’t we? To the victor the spoils? The reality is very different. The country is spent. Exhausted. Food and comfort are as scarce as they were six years earlier. Clement Attlee’s Labour government is trying to rebuild a country brought to its knees by five years of bombs, rationing, death and destruction. International politics and diplomacy are chaotic. America is, on the one hand, busy rounding up the less egregious former Nazi scientists and intelligence agents to work for them while, on the other, fiercely fighting the growing influence of the not-so-avuncular ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin.

Caught up in this is British intelligence agent Beattie Cavendish. She works for the embryonic ‘listening agency’ GCHQ, and is sent up to Kilbray in the Scottish Highlands, posing as a secretarial instructor, to investigate a suspected leaking of information to the Russians. Readers new to the series will be unaware of Beattie’s recent history, of her time with the resistance in Occupied France, of her older brother, missing presumed dead, and her relationship with the battle-scarred Irish private investigator Corrigan. Rest assured, the author inserts these ‘catch-ups’ into the story smoothly and without disrupting the drive of the narrative.

When she arrives at Kilbray, Beattie expects to be reunited with her paternal uncle Howard, something of a family black sheep, but not unconnected with the intelligence community and international subterfuge. When she arrives at his loch-side cottage, he is not there. It is, however, something of a Marie Celeste situation. Whisky glasses are on the table, and food is in the cupboards. Also AWOL is Commander Henry Swaffer, the officer in charge of Kilbray. Local rumour has it that the thrice-married gentleman has gone on a fling with his latest girlfriend, a young German woman called Klara. That theory is severely tested when a dog-walker (where would crime fiction be without them?) finds Swaffer’s body washed up on the beach. It appears he has been strangled and his body cast into the waves.

Swaffer’s German friend Klara makes herself known to Beattie, but is then fatally stabbed in broad daylight in what appears to be a professional hit, and there is still no sign of uncle Howard. Beattie senses that the answers may lie in a mysterious establishment at Balgowrie, a place known as ‘the cooler’. During the war it was a sinister mix of refuge and prison, a place where agents who had lost their nerve, or escaped from failed missions, were confined. Beattie and Corrigan finally break into Balgowrie, and their invasion precipitates a violent and exciting dénouement.

Ann-Marie Riley also hints at the eternally fraught relationship between Britain and the Irish Republic. Thousands of men from southern Ireland gave their lives for Britain in The Great War, but by 1939, Ireland was resolutely neutral. Or was it? In the real world, men like Corrigan who had fought against the Nazis would be subsequently marginalised and denied pensions. Post 1945, committed Nazis like Célestin Lainé and Otto Skorzeny would be welcomed by the Irish state, and sheltered from the retribution facing fellow former Nazis. Riley isn’t trying to right ancient wrongs. She is merely setting out the sometimes unpleasant aspects of history and they actually happened.

You would be wrong to assume from the alliterative title and the cover graphics that this is a cosy crime story. Yes, Beattie is a perfect ladies’ book-reading-circle heroine. Certainly, there are occasional ‘Boys’ Own’ elements to the story, and perhaps the damaged PI Corrigan – who won his medals and his scares in the sheer hell of Monte Casino – can sometimes be too gung-ho for his own good, but Mary-Jane Riley takes a long hard look at a Britain struggling for identity, self-preservation, and searching for old certainties that have been blown away by the strong winds of a brutal post-war world. Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway will be published by Allison & Busby on 19th February.

Fancy a mint hardback copy of this book? Make a note of this code, and follow me on social media to enter the competition. UK addresses only, closes 10.00pm 22nd February.

February 17, 2026 0

PIGEON-BLOOD RED . . . Between the covers

Frank Litvak is a Chicago loan shark. Rico and Jerry are his enforcers. Jerry is relatively mild mannered, but Rico is the alpha male. Killing and wounding those who are fellow bottom-feeders doesn’t stop him sleeping easy at nights. When Litvak gives them an expensive necklace to look after, it seems all in a day’s work, but accidents happen. While Rico is messing around with his girlfriend Jean on the back seat of Jerry’s car, the pouch containing the jewellery falls out of his pocket, and is later retrieved by the fourth passenger in the car, a deeply-in-debt businessman called Robert McDuffie.

McDuffie flees to Honolulu with his wife Evelyn, pursued by Rico. Also in the resort is Paul Elliott, a Chicago lawyer, taking an enforced break and still grieving for his wife, killed by a drunken driver months earlier. The best thrillers always have an instance of separate worlds colliding, and boy oh boy, how they collide here.

Arriving in Hawaii, Rico wastes no time in sourcing weapons, and follows Robert and Evelyn to a nearby Luau (a traditional Hawaiian feast, but now tailored to tourists). He is bemused that the McDuffies are now part of a foursome, but puts it out of his mind. As readers, we know that Paul Elliott is part of the group, and that he knew Evelyn from student days. The fourth person is Rachel Givens, a professional colleague of Evelyn’s, with whom Mrs McDuffie had intended visiting Hawaii. Robert has produced the necklace – made of priceless ‘pigeon-blood red’ rubies, and presented it to his wife in an effort to repair their marriage.

Hidden in the trees outside the Luau, Rico shoots Robert, and then Evelyn. Moving in between the panicking party-goers, he reaches down to retrieve the necklace from Evelyn’s neck, but it is not there. Making his escape, Rico later learns that the woman he shot was not Evelyn, but Rachel, and Evelyn still has the necklace.

Rico, Evelyn and Paul return to Chicago leaving the funeral directors to repatriate the remains of Robert and Rachel. Litvak, of course remains seriously unhappy, as he still wants the necklace back. His mistake is to present a binary choice to Rico: either Rico kills Paul and Evelyn and retrieves the necklace, or Jean will suffer the consequences. There is a messy finale involving the brother of a man Rico killed just before leaving for Hawaii is seeking revenge, but Rico’s rather unusual moral compass remains stable.

The ‘killer with a conscience’ trope is certainly nothing new in crime fiction. If there is any remote moral argument for killing, I suppose it is best encapsulated in the still flourishing admiration for long-dead British gangsters, the Kray Twins. The logic runs something along these lines: yes, they were brutal, but never harmed ordinary people; their victims were always fellow criminals, or rivals; and, of course, they loved their dear old mum. Amazon has this to say about the author:

“Ed Duncan is a graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University Law School. He was a partner at a national law firm in Cleveland, Ohio for many years. Ed currently lives outside of Cleveland, OH and recently completed the third installment of the Pigeon-Blood Red trilogy, Rico Stays.

Pigeon-Blood Red is a fast-paced and convincing noirish thriller, with a complex central character. It is published by Next Chapter, and is available now.

February 1, 2026 0

MAN ONE . . . Between the covers

Loren D Estleman’s Detroit PI Amos Walker is reassuringly traditional. It is close to a century since Dashiell Hammett introduced us to Sam Spade, and his legacy includes such gentlemen as Messrs Marlowe, Archer, Hammer, McGee and Spencer. I must add Janet Roger’s little known Newman (Shamus Dust 2019) into the mix, as that was the best non-Chandler PI novel I have ever read (and re-read).

Walker’s latest prospective client is Sage Holland, a woman dubbed by the tabloid press as The Black Widow. She has been tried and convicted of poisoning her husband, but on appeal, the conviction, for ‘Man One” ( first degree manslaughter) has been overturned on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. Now, she is being pursued and harassed by her late husband’s brother Greg, and she wants Walker’s help. He is partly convinced, despite this gem of an exchange:

“Why did Dave’s brother suspect you poisoned him?”
“He hates me. He always did.”
“He needed more than that to go on to arrive at poison. Ricin is only detectable during autopsy. Until then, it looks like a stroke or a heart attack.”
“Well, there were my first two husbands. They were about the same age as Dave when they died.”

Estleman never wastes an opportunity to remind us that Walker is a low budget operator:

“I tipped a hand toward the customer’s chair. She went to it, slinging a glance around the luxury accoutrements, the obsolete file cases, the Sunday school desk, a piece of reclaimed carpet from a five-year-old auto show. The much older and even more obsolete party, making himself uncomfortable behind the desk.”

Walker’s eye for detail is downbeat buy brutally accurate. He describes a neighbourhood loan shark:

“You had to look beyond the green plaid jacket and pre-tied bow tie, the baggy grin and the barber school haircut to see the dead eyes of an eel. And behind them, the brain that worked on a system of gears and pulleys like the machine on his desk.”

Walker enlists the help of his occasional assistant, Rafael Mesquino, an illegal immigrant who made it to America ‘with the bananas and tarantulas’. Mesquino fails to make a meeting. Worried, Walker finds the little man shot dead in his meagre lodgings, and begins to to comprehend just how much trouble Sage Holland is bringing into his life.We briefly meet Greg Holland when, fed up with being stalked, Walker invites him inside for a chat. The next time we see him, he is still in his car, but slumped over the steering wheel, dead from a small calibre gunshot to the head.

Following the furrow ploughed by writers such as Chandler and Robert B Parker should, in theory, be easy, but it has its pitfalls. Readers are well versed in the tropes, the seasoned dialogue and the cynical observations. Write something slightly out of tune, and you will be found out. Estleman sticks to the script, and even manages to bring his own nuances to this well established genre. The plot is every bit as complex and circuitous as that of The Big Sleep, but Estleman doesn’t leave us wondering who killed the chauffeur. Man One will be published by Severn House on 3rd February.

January 28, 2026 0

MURDER IN THE READING ROOM . . . Between the covers

In his preface, author Con Lehane says that this is the last book in what seems to have been a well-received series featuring Raymond Ambler, the curator of a New York library devoted to crime fiction. Ambler’s personal life seems messy. He has an adult son, a grandson, and a new baby daughter with on/off partner Adele.

A researcher, Dr Robin Cartwright, had been using the library, and when she is found dead in a pay-by-the-hour hotel room, the police find Ambler’s details on her cell phone.The police are reluctant to treat the death as homicide. Yes, she died of suffocation, but there is no evidence of extreme violence. They even speculate that it might be a case of over-adventurous love making gone wrong.

It seems that Dr Cartwright, in researching past cases for her thesis, had come up with the name of someone from her past. Was her killer trying to prevent his (or her) name from being made public? The first thing that will strike even the doziest reader early in the book is its title and, by contrast, the less-than-salubrious hotel bedroom where the body was found.

Lehane throws in an early suspect, the over unctuous and pettifogging librarian Blake Beasley (rhymes with Weasly) but surely it is too soon in the narrative for the villain to be identified? Ambler works his way through Dr Cartwright’s case files of killers who escaped justice. There’s Ricardo Diaz, a charismatic lawyer who may have murdered his girlfriend with drugs; Cartwright had highlighted a decorated serviceman who was suspected of causing the death of one of her best friends; then there’s ‘Pastor’ Kilgore, a bogus small town preacher, at the wheel of the car that ended the life of teenager Anna Paxton, rumoured to have been seduced by him Also in the frame is Robin’s former husband George Nagy, terminally attracted to younger women, but with a renewed fascination for his former wife.

As with all amateur sleuths since the dawn of crime fiction writing, the abiding implausabiity is that of just how much time folk who are neither retired nor independently wealthy manage to devote to their investigations. Ray Ambler manages to hold down his job at the 42nd Street library despite frequent highway trips or flights to various parts of America. That said, this is a convincing, quirky and well written whodunnit with just enough of that ‘extra something’ to keep us interested. It will be published by Severn House on 3rd February.