There’s no competition, I don’t have a prize to offer, but there are are certainly no losers. like many other amateur book reviewers I can only be grateful to publicists, publishers and, of course, writers, who trust me with their work. Here are five of the best books of 2019 – feel free to agree or disagree with my thoughts.
Val McDermid’s wonderful odd couple Tony Hill and Carol Jordan don’t have it in them, for a variety of complex reasons, to love each other in any conventional sense, and How The Dead Speak finds their relationship more fractured than ever. Tony is in prison and Carol’s bosses have finally lost patience, and she is left to pace the moors around her solitary home. Tony’s venomous mother makes an appearance as she coerces Jordan into investigating a fraud case, while the equally abrasive Bronwen Scott seeks her help as she tries to put together a case for an appeal against a murder conviction. Back in Bradfield, Jordan’s former team are almost literally knee deep in the mysterious case of dozens of skeletons found in the grounds of a former Roman Catholic care home. As ever, McDermid puts in front of us a plate full of delicious mysteries and a few elegantly salted red herrings – crime fiction haute cuisine at its best.
James Lee Burke celebrated his eighty third birthday earlier this month and, thankfully, shows no sign that his powers have deserted him. His brooding and haunted Louisiana lawman Dave Robicheux returned in The New Iberia Blues with another adventure set in the humid bayous and crumbling colonial mansions of Acadiana. Dave – with, of course, his long-time offsider Clete Purcell – tries to solve a series of grisly killings involving a driven movie director deeply in hock to criminal backers, a preening and narcissistic former mercenary and a religious crazy man on the run from Death Row. We even have the return of the bizarre and deranged contract killer known as Smiley – surely one of the most sinister and damaged killers in all crime fiction. As ever, there’s a deep vein of morality and conscience running through the book, amid the corpses, shoot-outs and hot spoonfuls of Southern Noir.
There is an understandable temptation to lionise a book, irrespective of its merit, when it is published posthumously, the last work of a fine writer who died far too soon. Metropolis, by Philip Kerr, however, is a bloody good book irrespective of any sentiment the reader may have about the passing of its author. Kerr’s Bernie Gunther, has traversed the decades – and half the globe – in his adventures. Peron’s Argentina, the cauldron of Nazi Germany, Somerset Maugham’s Riviera in the 1950s and the haunted Katyn Forest. Now, though, Kerr puts Gunther firmly back where it all started, in 1920s Berlin. While Gunther poses as a crippled war veteran in an attempt to catch a serial killer, we rub shoulders with the likes of Otto Dix, George Grosz and Lotte Lenya. Philip Kerr is gone, but Bernie Gunther – cynical, brave, compassionate and resourceful – will live for ever.
Sometimes, the sheer bravura, joy and energy of a writer’s work makes us happily turn a blind eye to improbabilities. Let’s face it, Christopher Fowler’s Arthur Bryant and John May have been solving crimes since the Luftwaffe was raining bombs down on London and, by rights, they should be, like Betjeman’s Murray Posh and Lupin Pooters “Long in Kelsal Green and Highgate silent under soot and stone.” But they live on, and long may they defy Father Time. In The Lonely Hour, in this case the haunted moments around 4.00 am, they try to track down a killer who is using an arcane and archaic weapon – a surgical device called a trocar. The trocar was a tube devised to allow the body to be punctured in order to facilitate the escape of gases or fluids. There is comedy both high and low, a mesmerising journey through hidden London – and just enough darkness to remind us that murder is a serious business.
Click the image above to read my full review
al McDermid was anxious that over-enthusiastic reviewers and fans might give away the ending of her previous Carol Jordan and Tony Hill novel, 
After the events of which we will not speak, Jordan’s Regional Major Incident Team has been disbanded while the woman who was its beating heart and soul keeps her fragile psyche from harm by continuing to renovate her home, a former barn on a heather covered northern hillside. Visitors are few and usually unwelcome, but none more so than Tony Hill’s vindictive and manipulative mother Vanessa who, after inflicting her abrasive personality on her son in a prison visit, coerces Jordan into using her investigative skills to track down a fraudster who has conned her out of a small fortune. Only slightly less welcome is Bronwen Scott, Tony Hill’s solicitor. She also has a job for Jordan, but this time it is to establish grounds for an appeal against a murder conviction handed down to a gay man who, the jury believes, has murdered a rent boy.
eanwhile, back in the fictional city of Bradfield (which I have always assumed to be Leeds/Bradford) Jordan’s old ReMIT has been given the kiss of life. Its first post-resuscitation job, under the ambitious but box-ticking leadership of DCI Ian Rutherford, is to investigate the gruesome discovery of dozens of human remains in the grounds of a former Roman Catholic children’s home. I am not privy to Val McDermid’s religious beliefs, if she has them, but she certainly gets stuck into the darker side of Roman Catholicism’s social policy. OK, perhaps it’s something of an open goal these days, but as the RMIT try to discover the why and when of the St Margaret Clitherow Refuge skeletons, we learn some dark and unpalatable truths about the ‘Brides of Christ’ whose singular duty is to obey, no matter what the command.
nd there is a bonus. McDermid – who, as fans of her band will know, is no mean singer – might just be performing a cover version of one of my favourite songs Save The Best For Last (below). If any potential readers are sentimental old (or young) sods like me, you will be permitted a little sniffle and a dab at a moist eye when you read the final pages.
o, it’s not the headed notepaper of a firm of dodgy solicitors, but the names of five authors whose latest books have been brought to FullyBooked Towers just in time for the holidays. OK, I’m only kidding, I’m always on holiday, but the books look pretty special.
Is Tartan Noir a thing? Publicists say it is, so let’s go along with it for now. The investigations of forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod have proved hugely popular since her debut in 2003 with Driftnet, and now she returns for hr fifteenth outing in Time For The Dead. Readers and publishers obviously love a title which contains the ‘D’ word, and this is the seventh title in a row for Ms MacLeod which taps into this. Although Anderson was born in Greenock and now lives in Edinburgh, she loves the rugged possibilities of Scotland’s wilder places. On the Isle of Skye, it seems as though a group of army Afghanistan veterans may have gone rogue in the dark shadow of The Cuillin. A series of brutal killings – and the vanished army unit – make for Rhona’s most challenging case yet. Time For The Dead is published by Macmillan and will be on sale 
Never forget that the ability to get pleasure from books is a tremendous gift. In the world of CriFi and thrillers some like nothing better than a gritty police procedural which could be happening right on their doorstep, while others yearn for something which takes them away from the daily grind into a world which they can only imagine. Jack Leavers does just that in his tale of a former Royal Marine who has found that his particular skill-set is not much in demand at home. Instead, he goes back to the blood-soaked sands of Iraq and becomes involved in a fight to the death. This is nothing new to the battle-hardened John Pierce, but his world is turned on its head when he realises exactly who his enemies are. If you fancy this, you only have a day to wait as Book Guild Publishing will be putting it on sale 
I hope we don’t take Val McDermid for granted. She has millions of fans worldwide and has the gift of writing novel after novel, each one of which unfailingly hits the spot. This may be genius, but it’s also the result of bloody hard work and a refusal to accept second best. Like many other readers, I first came to her work via the edgy and distinctly discordant partnership of Tony Hill and Carol Jordan. Both are damaged, and both need something more than each other, but together they make a compelling CriFi partnership. This is the eleventh in the series, and begins when human remains are found in the grounds of a former convent. Apologies in advance to devout Catholics, but for me, Convents are always deeply sinister places, even without dead bodies. In order to find the truth about what appears to be a vile series of murders, Hill and Jordan are left with no alternative but to interrogate and give voice to the dead themselves. This will be available 
Scragg’s debut novel What Falls Beneath The Cracks introduced us to Detective Inspector Jake Porter and Sergeant Nick Styles. You can click on 
fullybooked2017 