murder

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS . . . Between the covers

“May you be in heaven half a full half hour before the devil knows you’re dead”
(Traditional Irish toast)

In this thriller, FBI partners Gus Wheeler and Vanessa Lambert travel to rural Maine to investigate the death of a teenage boy, whose shallow grave has been discovered by scavenging animals. His face is unrecognisable and, lying on his chest inside the rough pine coffin is a cross made of lead. He is eventually identified as Adam Carson. On arrival in Maine, the two agents, who might actually be on the young side to get the movie reference, realise that they are about to drive into what we older mortals might call ‘Deliverance Country’.

Fans of John Connolly’s superb Charlie Parker novels will be familiar with the forests of Maine, with its decaying cemeteries, isolated communities and memories of ancient evil. The author gives us little opportunity to draw breath. Adam Carson’s girlfriend has also gone missing, but neither her parents or their neighbours seem particularly bothered. Then, two more bodies are discovered. One is male, purely skeletal, and has been dead for some time. The second, a woman is equally unidentifiable, but for a different reason. Her corpse is charred beyond recognition, but the pathologist delivers a disturbing conclusion. She was standing while she burned.

If there was any lingering doubt in the minds of Wheeler and Lambert that they are – literally – in a dangerous place, their motel room is firebombed and they are lucky to escape with their lives. Stories of unspeakable deeds committed by religious zealots, using their faith as an excuse, are nothing new in crime fiction. An essential staple of such plots is the existence of a spiritually powerful central figure, revered but his or her congregation. The minister of the Slaves of the Secret Heart of Jesus is a forbidding character called Father Benedict, a former Jesuit now excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church.

Few thriller writers can resist the trope of a bad guy hiding within the ranks of the good men and true. The trope works best when it comes as a complete surprise, with readers being given few if any clues, and so it is here. Authors with musical axes to grind can be mildly irritating. The late Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks had a very individual CD collection and, of course, Morse was a music lover. Mark Billingham’s Tom Thorne’s almost perpetual depression was usually accompanied by the lonesome tenor of Hank Williams. Gus Wheeler, however is a jazz man, and a string bass player. He even takes a rather dismal fold-up bass with him on his assignments. In my (probably limited) view, jazz died with Bix Beiderbecke, and so I couldn’t connect to Wheeler’s obsession, but that didn’t ruin a good novel, which has a captivating blend of menace, human frailty and the power of landscape.

R. John Dingle lives and writes from a restored 200 year-old house, on a small island in Mid-Coast Maine. The often-haunting themes of the rocky coast, as well as a lifetime of experiences in and around New England’s small towns, farms, and cities, provide excellent inspiration for the tones and moods reflected in Dingle’s mysteries and psychological thrillers. The two previous novels in this series are Karma Never Sleeps and Wings of Madness. Before The Devil Knows will be published by Tule Publishing on 29th July

The book will be available from Tule Publishing from 29th July.

July 28, 2026 0

CRIME IN THE GYM . . . Between the covers

The best fictional detective pairings are usually chalk and cheese, Yin and Yang, oil and vinegar – choose your own metaphor. DI Gilbert ‘Gil’ Markham and George Noakes fit the bill. Markham is subtle, erudite, good looking, and conflicted in love. Former Sergeant, now civilian consultant Noakes is blunt, uncouth, dressed like a nightmare – and is happily married. In their latest case, a celebrity Paralympic athlete is found battered to death in the weights room at the local Fitness For All gym. Jack Donahue, despite being confined to a wheelchair, was handsome, charismatic, and something of a poster boy. To some. To others, he was egocentric, vain, controlling and irretrievably damaged by a poisonous childhood. Donahue was doing a PhD at Bromgrove University and there is an extensive list of people who Donahue had upset, in one way or another.

Bedwell, Eloise – Secretary to the University Sociology dept.
Chase, Douglas – a right wing activist and post-graduate student
Crozier, Neil – gym manager
Cunningham, Deirdre – Donahue’s former personal trainer
Dade, Camilla – Donahue’s psychotherapist
Dawson, Vergie – Donahue’s alcoholic estranged mother
Dempser, Mr – former solicitor and gym member
Dixon, Poppy – ghostwriter of Donahue’s proposed autobiography
Eliot, Valerie – supermodel, and Donahue’s former girlfriend
Eyre, Dr Peter- Deputy Head of Sociology
Fairbairn, Isobel – ‘Silverfit’ gym member
Gage, Diana – disability rights campaigner
Gannon, Professor – Head of Sociology
Gillespie – piano accompanist for Silverfit dance classes
Goodwin, Richard – Donahue’s agent
Grosser, Michael – elderly gym member

I normally like to have a sense of place in crime novels, but I am not sure where we are here. The town is called Bromgrove but, even with a missing ‘s’ we are not in Worcestershire. There is a Medway Medical Centre, so perhaps we are in Kent, but the author gives us few clues. Markham’s love life is temporarily on hold. His long term relationship with his former lover Olivia, a vivacious but edgy woman, had ended, but they have established an uneasy platonic friendship. Meanwhile, he has distinctly unprofessional thoughts about his colleague Kate Burton, woman who is as cool and enigmatic as Olivia is emotional and impulsive.

When two older women connected with gym are also found murdered, the case becomes even more complex. I checked the sequence of Gil Markham novels, and it looks as if this is the 24th in the series since 2019, with some years producing four episodes. This may not be what it seems, as Joffe Books sometimes republishes novels under different titles. Despite the remarkable quantity of novels, here, at least, the writing is excellent throughout, with Catherine Moloney adopting a cool, almost sardonic tone and, wisely, underpinning Noakes’s near-clownish persona with hints that he is a serious copper and a decent family man. She has a wicked sense of humour as she describes Georges wife:

“Mrs Noakes, as ever when entertaining Markham, was dressed as if she expected to be photographed for Country Life, modelling a satin floral dress that made Olivia think of somebody’s missing curtains.”

Markham has a parallel case to contend with, that of a sexual predator who is targeting women at a local beauty spot known as Black Wood, but when a local journalist who has been helping the police is found dead, Markham feels surrounded by death, with no clue in sight, and no sign of a breakthrough. The sexual assaults and the murders are eventually solved, but I have a confession. In the end, I wasn’t that bothered who killed Jack Donahue. He seemed to be self-obsessed and abrasive. Not that those deficiencies should earmark someone for death, because someone, somewhere, loved him.

The reason for my lack of interest? The sheer quality of the writing describing Markham’s team and its inner dynamics made me laugh, made me think, and made me glad I was a fly on the wall. Forget who committed what, but revel in the superb characterisations that Mooney brings to the table. This is high quality writing – observant, witty, subtle and engaging. Crime In The Gym will be published by Joffe Books on 27th July.

July 24, 2026 0

THE QUIET KILL . . . Between the covers

London, early December, 1987. Detective Constable Jamie Day has been transferred from his relatively peaceful Suffolk home town to work with the Met, and his introduction to the decadent grimoire of the capital couldn’t be more horrific. He is first on the scene at Leyton railway station in east London, where the station master (with the help of urban foxes) has discovered body parts dumped in bin liners. It turns out to be the remains of Callum Michaels, a young man from Yorkshire who had recently arrived to begin work on a construction site.

It transpires that Callum was gay, and had effectively been kicked out of home by his rather puritanical father, after Callum and another lad had been rather indiscreet in a local park. Then, the frozen body parts of a middle aged homosexual, Johan Hendriks, is found in his chest freezer. The link between Callum and Johan is that they both had copies of the same ‘Tart Card’ (a business card advertising sexual services of all kinds, mostly to be found in public telephone boxes back in the day)

A third young man meets his maker, while police Top Brass are trying to keep a lid on things, due to Johan Henriks’ connection to people in High Places. In his innocence, Jamie Day is tricked into revealing details of the case to an unscrupulous journalist (is there any other kind?) and is suspended.

Robert Bryndza, like Jamie Day, is a native of Lowestoft. The Suffolk coastal town was once a thriving port but, even in 1987, it was beginning its downward spiral into being considered a significantly deprived town, with some areas ranked among the 10% most deprived in England, particularly regarding education, skills, and income. Like its near-neighbour, Yarmouth, it is a shadow of its former self.

It needs saying that this book is not a murder mystery, in the sense that there is any doubt over the identity of the killer is resolved fairly quickly. The tension comes from wondering just how the police are going to find him. It needs to be emphasised that the storyline is centred on the Gay scene in 1980s London and, in places, it is very graphic. Robert Bryndza spares us none of the gory details, but he always tells a good story, and you can read my thoughts on his earlier books by clicking this link. The Quiet Kill is published by Raven Street Books and is available now.

July 9, 2026 0

WHAT THE DYING SEE . . . Between the covers

Manchester. The present day. The central character is DI Thomas Ridpath, and member of the Major Incident Team (MIT), who doubles as Coroner’s Officer. He is a widower with a teenage daughter about to face her GCSEs. We learn right from the start that a serial killer is at large. He specialises in a warped version of Assisted Dying, and injects his elderly victims with fatal doses of pain relieving drugs. We know this. The police have no idea.

Central to the narrative is Margaret Challinor, the Coroner. She has returned to work after being debilitated by a savage random assault, which resulted in her being in a coma for many weeks. She has recovered. But has she? Thundering headaches suggest that all is not well, but she is a formidable woman, and battles on through the pain.

MJ Lee clearly has experience of being the subject of word-salad management speak. Here, a new commander (recently promoted from Traffic) gives the team an inspirational address:

“The Chief has asked me to bring managerial systems and competence to the organisation of the solution of crimes, to be data-driven in this age of AI, computers and complex analytics, an approach that builds on our core competences and resilience, but takes advantage of the sizeable opportunities afforded by this new technology and analytics to create a force that is forward-thinking, creative rather than reactive, one that uses its resources to the limits of their capabilities to serve the people of Manchester, ensuring they feel secure and protected as they go about their daily lives.”

Ridpath is resolute, persistent, and no-one”s fool. Those three qualities make him a thorn in the side of his pusillanimous senior managers who are bitterly resentful that a spreadsheet macro cannot bring to justice the person who is taking such obvious delight in ending the lives of Ill and vulnerable old people. Ridpath’s dogged attention to detail closes the case, but not before his own life is put on the line.

Apart from his scathing caricature of Ridpath’s boss and his oleagenous lanyard – class pomposity, MJ Lee doesn’t preach or wave any particular banner. The story – an excellent police procedural – did make me wonder about the overly politicised leadership of our police forces. I am not a Londoner, but the replacement of the ineffectual Cressida Dick with the operational paralysis induced by Mark Rowlands is a case in point. It you can hear my sigh of impotent despair, then it will be momentary. This particular rant is for another day. What The Dying See is published by Canelo and is out now.

July 7, 2026 0

A WASP IN THE BEEHIVE . . . Between the covers

The Brigid Reardon Mysteries by Mary Logue are historical mysteries centered on an Irish immigrant navigating the American West in the 1880s. Starting with The Streel (2020) and followed by The Big Sugar (2023), the series features a determined, independent protagonist who solves murders in places like Deadwood and Cheyenne while seeking a better life. This is the third in the series, and begins in Salt Lake City where the eighteen year-old Brigid is applying for a job in a bookstore owned by a Mr Cutter.

We know from a brief preface that this gentleman has five wives, but this is, after all, Mormon central. Mr Cutter is something of a nasty piece of work. Not content with his five wives, he has his eyes on a sixth, Amelia. Normal terms for relatives become a problem in pluralistic marriages, but I think Amelia is his step daughter, as she is the daughter (by a previous marriage) of his second wife, Sarah. Unfortunately for Cutter’s equilibrium, sixteen year-old Amelia has fallen in love with Brandon, Cutter’s son by his first wife, Eliza.

When Mr Cutter is found dead in the sewing room of their house – a room he never has reason to visit – Brigid is reacquainted with Dr Kohler, a man she met in the bookstore. Doctor K has little to do with live patients – he is the city coroner. Cutter’s demise ushers in a delightful (for us readers) whodunnit, as a longish list of suspects is instantly available. Was it one of the wives, driven by jealousy? Brandon – or even Amelia – angered by his refusal to countenance their affection for each other? Or is it someone outside the family with a grudge against Cutter due to some slight or grievance borne out of the complex local religious politics? Whoever, the relationship between Kohler and Brigid is a CriFi match made in heaven.

At 200 pages, this is more of a novella, but none the worse for that. Spoiler alert – we are introduced to the murder weapon early in the piece, but as to who wielded it, that is rather more nuanced. There is one trivial, but unfortunate, research error. Dr Kohler refers to the methods of Sherlock Holmes. This is 1881, and it would be another six years before the character would appear, in A Study In Scarlet.

Written in the first person, the narrative of A Wasp In The Beehive ensures that we know plenty about Brigid. She is a bright, resourceful and courageous heroine. Categories are subjective, I suppose, but they are useful for tags, so I class this as Cosy Crime. Not my chosen genre, for sure, but I enjoyed this tale. It is published by The University of Minnesota Press and is available now.

June 30, 2026 0

A MURDER IN SPRINGTIME . . . Between the covers

Bruno Courrèges is the Chief of Police of the Vézère Valley in the Périgord region of France. It is springtime in the little market town of St Denis. The genial Bruno does have a past, and it is somewhat darker than the constant sunlight if St Denis. He was raised in an orphanage and, as a young soldier, experienced the mind numbing brutality of the Balkan wars in the 1990s. When his friend Pamela, who runs a riding stables, returns to her house and finds her lodger, Josette Quirit, battered to death on the patio, he is informed, but is forced to recuse himself from the investigation due to his friendship with Pamela. Instead, an old friend Jean-Jacques Jalipeau from Périgeux attends, along with his colleague Fabien Panton.

There are two subplots. The gentler of the two is Bruno’s concern for the declining fortunes of St Denis in commercial terms. The weekly market is shrinking: stallholders are relocating to a nearby town, and shops are losing footfall. I realise that a picturesque Dordogne town is very different from where I live – a hard-scrabble town in one of England’s more deprived areas, but at least St Denis seems to have escaped the dubious pleasures of fake barber shops, nail bars, money laundering ventures posing as vape stores, and a proliferation of bookmakers. Bruno hatches a rejuvenation plan.

As to the second, we have a mysterious prelude, apparently unrelated to St Denis or the murdered woman. I am not keen on this literary device, and I think it is over-used, but that’s just a personal grouch. In an unidentified school, a young boy is made to stand for ages, holding heavy books on his outstretched arms. Then he falls, cracks his head, and all hell breaks loose. We come to believe that this is the same Catholic boarding school that Fabien Panton was sent by his parents. The mysterious prelude makes sudden – and rather grim – sense, when it is revealed that the school matron who inflicted the fatal punishment on the schoolboy was Joséphine Tauton, convicted of manslaughter. On her release from prison she became Josette Quirit.

Bruno and Fabien have another lead. Vehicles captured on CCTV in the vicinity of the murder site are connected to a Netflix crew filming a historical drama series in the area.In the end, it is a curious blend of of technical data – the readings from a FitBit watch – and Bruno’s very human intuition that brings the killer to justice, and the novel ends on a festive note, if not for the victim and her killer, but for the market stallholders of St Denis.

This is, of course, cosy crime, but of a superior nature. Bruno is a confirmed gastronome, and the book is full of descriptions of meal preparation, rural charcuterie delicacies and, of course, delicious local wines. Bruno”s world is, of course pure fantasy, albeit of a delightful kind. Despite its perceived decline, St Denis has a proper boulangerie and a shop where a Belgian chocolatier creates his own irresistible treats. There is, of course a high class butcher, from whom Bruno thinks nothing of ordering a 35 kilo lamb in order to treat his friends to an Easter méchoui. Even the rather reduced market has stalls selling proper farm-made cheeses, and the hills around the town are still peopled by small vineyards, each producing delicious – and affordable – wines. This is heady stuff, especially for British readers in provincial towns where genuine locally produced food is either hideously expensive, or completely unavailable.

Martin Walker writes of what he knows, as in 2013, he was made a chevalier of foie gras, in the confrérie of paté de Périgueux, and also an honorary Ambassador of the Périgord, which means he gets to accompany the traveling exhibition of the Lascaux cave as it goes on display at museums around the world. He also helps promote the wines of Bergerac at international wine fairs, and was chairman of the jury for this year’s Prix Ragueneau, the international culinary prize. A Murder in Springtime is as light as one of Bruno’s superior souffles, but very entertaining. It will be published by Quercus on 18th June.

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June 17, 2026 0

THE DEFENCE . . . Between the covers

In the unlikely event of anyone reading this being unaware of Rob Rinder, please stay tuned. Rinder is a Mancunian barrister who made his name as TV presenter of popular TV shows based on trials and other legal matters. He turned his hand to writing, and I normally shun crime novels written by TV celebrities, on the grounds that when these books top the book sales charts, it will invariably be because of the fame of the author, rather than the quality of the writing.

That said, Rinder’s The Defence is very readable. A (perhaps autobiographical) barrister, Adam Green, a Jewish lad from Manchester (with no known girlfriends) is engaged to help defend Juliet Quentin, personal assistant to a wellness-guru, Adrian Wells, who died while publicly demonstrating his latest herbal panacaea. He died because his miraculous bath elixir contained fatal doses of monkshood, an ancient and deadly poison.

Juliet Quentin has ‘a past’, most significantly being her involvement in a prime time reality TV show, where she was cast as a despicable and malevolent villain, responsible for evicting some of the viewers’ favourites from the TV set. As a potential witness, she is every defence barrister’s nightmare. She is dowdy, sarcastic and surly, and seems to have every available motive for killing Adrian Wells, who was an a manipulative and opportunist chancer. While he was still an MP, he spearheaded legislation aimed at the big pharma companies who were making millions out of anti-cancer drugs. He persuaded several of his stricken constituents to abandon the NHS drugs in favour of herbal remedies which he was developing. The premature deaths of these people gives Adam a bewildering choice of people who might have had reason to kill Wells.

It would be easy to dismiss this novel as just another potboiler by a media celebrity, a book aimed at the book racks in ASDA and TESCO. It is probably guilty on both those charges, but it is better than that. It covers many complex issues. Adam Green is likeable, but he is naive and easily taken in, and his ambivalence at having to stand up in court and be clever in defending unpleasant criminals weighs heavily on him. It seemed to me that Adam is unsure about his own sexuality, but his social and professional circumstances prevent him from addressing the issue.

Rinder provides us with a few memorable characters, including the flamboyant and abrasive KC Ursula Elder, and the fractious father and son duo, one of whom is woker than woke, while the other is strict huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’.

Courtroom dramas are not normally my thing, but Rob Rinder, with his vast experience, keeps the tension bubbling. At times he is a bit preachy when talking about LGBTQ issues, but this was a minor irritation. I could also have done without. Adam Green’s cartoon Jewish mother (does anyone have Maureen Lipmann on speed dial?) but The Defence is an entertaining and immersive addition to the CriFi genre. It will be published by Century on 18th June.

June 15, 2026 0

GRAVE INTENT . . . Between the covers

We are in New England, and it is the present day. Carla James, an academic and archaeologist, is about to begin a week’s summer school at an annexe of Jericho College (American for university), an establishment for well-to-do youngsters from connected families. The first few pages of the book, however, take us back to 1870; same place, but we observe a small but significant domestic tragedy involving a woman called Meg Woodthorpe.

For Carla, well known locally for using her archaeological skill to help in criminal cases, the mysteries are not long in arriving. One attendee, a mature student called Melissa, had not arrived. Then, Carla is called in by the local pathologist (an old friend) to examine the body of a woman whose face had been hacked into shreds by a metal weapon. That weapon seems to be a geological hand pick, found near the corpse. On the wooden handle is stamped ‘Anthropology Department Jericho College’.

Finally, what is the significance of the antique framed embroidered picture in Carla’s room, which shows a hare in full flight, above the stark warning, ‘Beware’? The significance of the brief prologue is soon explained, as some of the course members have picked up on a local rhyme:
“Poor little Meg, who wouldn’t stay dead,
They buried her under a tree.
She threw off her stone and chewed on a bone
Until her spirit was free”

Bear in mind that the course Carla is running is a commercial venture, and open to all. The participants are a mixed bunch. There is Trudy Cai, a property lawyer from Chicago; Annie Lockley, an administrator at Jericho, and Belle, an older woman with iron grey hair. The missing Melissa is a care home worker who feels she missed out on a college education. Riley runs a bar somewhere, and his luggage includes cases of beer and wine. Shawn and Lauren are a younger ‘pair’, but Shawn is possessive and edgy. Another older man is Scott, “a tall laconic man with a ponytail, who gave off an ageing hippy vibe.” Jack Caron is another academic, who is co-tutor on the course, and has chosen to live off-site in an attempt to breathe life into a troubled marriage.

The missing Melissa is found, but in a place that neither she, Jericho College nor her nearest and dearest would have chosen. The plot is deliciously twisted, and takes us through the highways and byways of New England history, legends of witchcraft and the truly complex folklore surrounding Lepus Europeanis – the hare. This delightful animal is almost certainly entirely innocent of supernatural qualities but, over the centuries, country people have ascribed to it all manner of wizardry, ranging from a harbinger of fertility, being a feminist symbol and a creature in touch with the world of The Dead.

Eventually, the body of the woman whose face was so brutally obliterated is Identified as that of Jacky Ek, a local woman well connected to the College and also to the Lepus Society. Clare also learns that the field where her body was found is known locally as the Strevens Land. Catherine Strevens was a near contemporary of the unfortunate Meg Woodthorpe, and there is a strict deed of covenant attached to land, which states that it can never be built on.

Carla James is a convincing central character, even if she too often emulated the scantily clad young women much used in Hammer films, who ill-advisedly ventures in the dark crypt in the dead of night, armed only with a flickering candle. Fans of the Ruth Galloway novels by Elly Griffiths, will enjoy this. Grave Intent will be published by Canelo Books on 11th June.

June 10, 2026 0

DEATH AT THE CASTLE GATES . . . Between the covers

We are back on duty with Nick Oldham’s gutsy Lancashire cop, Sergeant Jessica Raker. We are in the unpretentious town of Clitheroe, and Raker’s colleague DC Doolan is in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, but is determined to do his job until the – literally – bitter end.

They are hunting a local low-life called Rory Walton, now wanted for murder, after he fire bombed his girlfriend’s house. She subsequently died while in intensive care. Although a raid on Walton’s hideout goes pear-shaped, the police discovered a cache of cannabis and firearms. More importantly, it triggers a memory in Doolan’s mind – the shadow of a twenty year-old unsolved murder case, which Oldham gives us a glimpse of in a brief prologue.

Hanging over the book, the series even, is the baleful shadow of Mags Horsefield (nee Goss) a once beautiful but always formidable woman who ruled with a local criminal reign of terror, but has now disappeared, along with her daughter Caitlin, a great friend of Jess’s daughter Lily.

We soon learn that Mags is alive and well. With Caitlin, she is living in a secure villa in Malta, protected by bodyguards and the same ferocious XL Bully dogs who terrorised her Lancashire scrapyard. Her criminal web is largely intact, and she sits at its centre, like a malevolent spider, controlling her empire via burner phones.

Back in Clitheroe, Jess Raker’s life becomes ever more complex. Her absent – and errant – husband, living away because of work, seems likely to become very ‘ex’. Rory Walton has teamed up with his equally-criminal brother, and she has to concoct a plan to take them down.

Her Boss, DI Price is determined to belittle her at every opportunity and is (unknown to her) in the pay of serious criminals. Added to those problems, she has encountered the spirits of two children murdered in Victorian times. It is unusual for Nick Oldham to venture into supernatural territory, and I was intrigued to see how this thread would be resolved.

As one might expect from an ex-copper, Oldham makes the policing details utterly utterly convincing and, as with his long running and much loved character Henry Christie, he makes Jess Raker very human and totally believable. Death at the Castle Gates will be published by Severn House on 2nd June. To read my reviews of earlier novels in this series, click this link.