I'm A Voracious Reader : crime

Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Welcome to Cottonmouth by Jay S. Bell ~ Audiobook Review

What does the US government do with spies and special operators when they pass their expiration date? They retire them to a small town deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas, where they’re certain to cause no trouble.

A collection of broken spies, former double agents, and retired operators lives in secrecy, under the watchful eye of the government in the small, deep-woods town of Cottonmouth, Texas.

Devlin Mahoney is the de facto mayor of these special citizens, charged with keeping them in seclusion, hidden from the world, which he does from the office of the town’s only motel.

But the peace of this sleepy village is shattered when a pair of women, on the run from a vicious criminal, drops into Mahoney’s lap and he’s forced to choose between doing what’s right and doing what he’s told.

The Write Reads Ultimate Blog Tour Review ~ Generations by Noam Josephides

For eight generations, the Thetis has been a peaceful haven, carrying the last remnants of humanity on a journey to resettle on a new planet. Nearing its final destination, Thetis is seemingly a egalitarian, tolerant and united. A society ready for a new beginning.

But when a strange extortion attempt targets the ship's leader, that idyllic façade begins to crack. And when SANDRINE LIET, the introvert Archivist tasked with investigating the case starts poking around – the prime suspect mysteriously disappears.

Nobody disappears on the Thetis.

Sandrine is pulled into a web of intrigue and deception, sending her on a direct collision course with the most powerful people on the Thetis. Every step she takes, her suspicions of a grand and far-reaching conspiracy grow - as are the personal consequences for her future if she keeps pursuing the investigation.

Nocturne With Gaslamps ~ Book Review

A historical crime fiction novel set in Victorian London’s gaslit theatre scene, where ghosts lurk in the shadows and murder takes centre stage.

Gaslight. Ghosts. Murder.

Hastings Wimbury has always dreamt of playing Hamlet, but for now he works as a theatre gas-boy. Here, he tends to a gas chandelier so powerful it creates its own weather, and limelight machines that can throw a shadow onto a wall ten miles away.

When Hastings suddenly disappears, his fiancée Flora sets out to find him with the help of Cassie, her rival in love who is more preoccupied with the ghosts terrorising the streets of London. Soon total darkness is imposed upon the city, and they realise that something far more sinister is at hand…

Ladies aren’t supposed to solve mysteries, but this is a matter of life and death.

The Grass Widow ~ Book Spotlight

Ditched by her married lover Hugh on the day she was made redundant, Leonie plans to make life difficult for Hugh while she searches for a new job. She inveigles her way into his house as a cleaner, intending to plant fake clues to his new liaison for his wife Amanda to find. But instead she discovers real clues to Amanda’s secrets.

Meanwhile, fellow cleaners Brenda and Tina also have hidden agendas as they Brenda is counting on a spot of blackmail and Tina is looking for financial information to sell to her dodgy brother-in-law.

At the centre of this web is Amanda’s gardener handsome, ruthless and plausible, with a shady past and lofty ambitions.

A death in an apparent accident arouses Leonie’s suspicions. Can she put aside her animosity towards Amanda and use her impressive – if sometimes unorthodox – investigative skills to find the truth before someone else dies?

Saturday Spotlight ~ TWR Ultimate Blog Tour: The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon

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Friday Featured Spotlight ~ TWR Ultimate Blog Tour: Faith of Their Fathers

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The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon ~ Book Review

Zohaib, Misha and Nadia believed they would be in each other's lives forever. As children they played, argued, teased and loved one another. Yet nothing could have prepared them for the tragic turn of events one fateful afternoon in Karachi, Pakistan, when the divisions and differences between them are revealed.

Years later and they are still trying to piece their lives back together, still trying to make sense of what happened. Zohaib is living in London, haunted by the ghosts of the past. Nadia has escaped the household where she first met Misha and Zohaib but finds fate delivering her back to their door…

The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon is a beautifully rendered portrait of love, healing, and long-buried pain, digging deep into the nature of trauma and class division.

Faith of Their Fathers ~ Book Review

False God.

At the dawn of the 11th Century in a small Icelandic settlement, these words, daubed in blood, herald the arrival of a killer. Soon, a spate of murders threatens the fragile peace between pagans and a growing Christian minority. Arinbjorn, a young pagan farmer resolves to track down the killer before the community is permanently torn apart. His investigations draw in Freya, an isolated housewife whose secrets could either condemn or free her. Meanwhile in Norway, King Olaf Tryggvason has his own designs upon Iceland and its people. War is rife in Scandinavia, and a Christian Iceland would bolster his control over the region.

Only one thing is certain: these murders will change Icelandic society forever.

The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon ~ Spotlight Blitz

Years later and they are still trying to piece their lives back together, still trying to make sense of what happened. Zohaib is living in London, haunted by the ghosts of the past. Nadia has escaped the household where she first met Misha and Zohaib but finds fate delivering her back to their door…

The Idle Stance of the Tippler Pigeon is a beautifully rendered portrait of love, healing, and long-buried pain, digging deep into the nature of trauma and class division.

And Then There Were None

A killer stalks a group of ten total strangers on an isolated island off the Devon coast, in a suspenseful story of murder and retribution, set to a sinister nursery rhyme.

Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie

At a remote little inn not far from the Kansas homestead of Laura Ingalls Wilder lived the Bender family. These pioneers welcomed unwary visitors with jackrabbit stew and a sledgehammer to the skull.

In time, their apple orchard gave up its secrets—a burial ground for their mutilated victims, each stripped of their possessions. The devilish enterprise on “Hell’s Half-Acre” would earn the Bloody Benders an undying place in the annals of American infamy. But it was the mysterious fate of eldest daughter, Kate, that would make them the stuff of mythic campfire prairie tales.

Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie is part of Bloodlands, a chilling collection of short page-turning historical narratives from bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter. Spanning a century in our nation’s murderous past, Schechter resurrects nearly forgotten tales of madmen and thrill-killers that dominated the most sensational headlines of their day.

Hit Man

Keller is an assassin - he is paid by the job and works for a mysterious man who nominates hits and passes on commissions from elsewhere. Keller goes in, does the job, gets out: usually at a few hours' notice ...Often Keller's work takes him out of New York to other cities, to pretty provincial towns that almost tempt him into moving to the woods and the lakeshores. Almost but not quite. But then one job goes wrong in a way Keller has never imagined and it leaves him with a big problem. Finding himself with an orphan on his hands, Keller's job begins to interfere with his carefully guarded life. And once you let someone into your life, they tend to want to know what you do when you're away. And killing for a living, lucrative though it is, just doesn't find favour with some folks.

Under the Bridge

2004 - The discovery of a skeleton in the Liverpool docklands unearths long buried secrets. Reporter, Anne McCarthy, is keen to prove herself and dives into the case with abandon where she finds Michael, an old Irish caretaker who knows far more than he’s letting on and may have a connection to the body.

Meanwhile, Vinny Doyle, is starting a postgrad degree, researching Liverpool’s immigrant history and a burgeoning Scouse identity. But Vinny has been neglecting his own family history and stranger Michael might know about his father's disappearance in the 70s.

1955 - Escaping violence in Ireland and fresh off the boat, Michael falls in with Wicklow boys Jack Power and Paddy Doyle, who smuggle contraband through the docks putting them at odds with unions while they rally the dock workers against the rackets and the strikebreakers. A story of corruption, secret police, and sectarianism slowly unravels. But will the truth out?

As the conflict heightens, Michael questions the life sprawling out ahead of him. In the present, Anne races to solve the mystery, but is she prepared for what she’ll find?