The Judas Sheep

A woman has been kidnapped at gunpoint, and her chauffeur murdered.  DI Charlie Priest is now wanted by the Assistant Commissioner to come off his sick leave and take over the investigation.  Priest questions the husband and he states that the wife isn't missing, just gone.  He also tells Priest that he had the car the chauffeur had been driving given a thorough cleaning because it was muddy.  It seems a little suspicious to the reader, but Priest does nothing about it.

Later, bullets from the same rifle that killed the chauffeur turn up in the body of a lorry driver.  His lorry had been burned in the hopes of hiding the evidence, and had been carrying a load of cigarettes for the south of France.  Meantime, Priest is bored with sick leave, so he accepts an assignment to spy on a drug ring.  Later Priest and his girlfriend are followed after the house next door to where he was doing surveillance from burns.  Fortunately his high powered Jaguar allows him to make an escape.

As the police investigation progresses, they are able to tie the kidnapping and some murders together with the highjacked lorry.    Author Stuart Pawson puts together a gripping conclusion to this murder mystery thriller.  A very good read.

At the Dying of the Year

Richard Nottingham, Constable of Leeds, has just returned to work after several months of convalescence.  He finds that things have changed.  Meantime, one of his deputies, Rob Lister has been called to where the bodies of three children have been found.  The three were vagabonds, no wonder no one had raised an alarm about them being missing.  When Nottingham cleans them up, he comes to the realisation that they had each been brutalised.

Talking to young waifs, Nottingham finds out that there are at least two other children that have disappeared, and that there is a man calling himself Gabriel, offering children food and a place to stay.

A servant offers up the name of his master before the city offers a reward.  Nottingham knows that the reward will spell trouble.  Nottingham approaches the man in question, and after questioning him, he is sure that he has found the guilty party.  It will just be a matter of proving it now.  However, one of the waifs that Nottingham had spoken to earlier states that this man wasn't Gabriel.  It isn't long after that, that the waif is killed.

Nottingham is now sure of who the culprit is.  However, once again, he doesn't have the evidence.  John Sedgwick, another of his deputies does manage to get some, which Nottingham presents to the person in question on the sly.  Unfortunately it results in the murder of his wife.  Sedgwick and Lister vow vengeance on behalf of their boss.  However, Nottingham won't have it.  He wants justice served properly.

Author Chris Nickson's portrayal of eighteenth century is very good.  The story is intriguing and chilling.  An excellent read.

A Wreath for My Sister

It has snowed overnight and DI Joanna Piercy receives a call about a woman who didn't return home from a date the previous night.  The body is found on the moors two days later when rain washes away the snow.

The woman was raped and then garrotted.  The pathologist was able to get semen, so DNA profiling could be used to point to the culprit.  Piercy is of the opinion that the woman had been set up.  Using the police computer, Piercy is sure the culprit has killed before.  DNA testing proves her hunch is true.  However, the DNA doesn't bring the police any closer to the culprit.

Piercy brings in two suspects because of their close connection to the victim.  However, a chance incident leads her to believe neither was responsible.  Author Priscilla Masters throws three likely culprits up, but only one is guilty, and suspicion of that one person isn't presented until late in the story.  A good, quick read.

Stolen Souls

Galya Petrova has been brought to Belfast by a human smuggling ring to become a prostitute.  She has been warned that the police would return her to the ring.  After making her escape, who is she to turn to?  On her first night she had been put with a Baptist pastor, who gave her a number to call him if she ever escaped. 

Meantime, DI Jack Lennon and Sergeant Connolly have been called out to investigate a body found by the harbour.  In the morning Lennon is called by another DI, who informs him of two more bodies, which seem to have a connection to the one he is investigating.  The question is, how are their deaths tied together?  Within a short time another body is found, it turns out to be the brother of one of those recently killed.  How are their deaths tied to Galya?  Lennon needs to find out and fast.

Author Stuart Neville builds the action and tension page-by-page in this thriller, so much so that I could not put it down until I got to the ultimate conclusion.  I am looking forward to the next book by Neville.

The Railway Viaduct

It is 1852 and a man has been hurled from a train crossing the Sankey Viaduct.  Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming have been sent from Scotland Yard to Liverpool to investigate.

An artist, Ambrose Hooper, was painting the scene at the time of the incident.  He shows Colbeck his painting.  Colbeck also discovers from the victim's jacket that he came from France.  It is some time later when a woman comes to Colbeck at Scotland Yard to suggest a name for the victim.  Colbeck feels that she is leaving something out, so he asks his girlfriend, Madeleine Andrews, to help him.  What she finds out results in Colbeck and Leeming going to France to continue the investigation.

While there, Leeming goes undercover to work on the railway an English entrepreneur is building.  Meantime Colbeck discovers that the victim had been married and had been involved in a number of affairs.  Is a jealous husband at the heart of the matter?

Damage to a French railway by Irish navvies helps Colbeck discover who the murderer is and who was behind the scheme.  Author Edward Marston has written an intriguing historical murder mystery.  A good, quick read.

I Hear Sirens in the Street

DI Sean Duffy, and DC McCrabben have found a torso in a suitcase in an abandoned plant in Belfast.  Dr. Laura Cathcart, after doing the autopsy, informs the detectives that the man had been poisoned and his body kept in a freezer.

Duffy finds out that the poison used is very toxic, acting in a matter of minutes.  Is this death associated with "The Troubles"?  If so, it has come at an inopportune time as the Argentines have just invaded The Falklands.  In order to deal with that, Thatcher will have to pull troops out of Northern  Ireland.

An identity card in the suitcase leads Duffy to a farm in search of the owner.  He finds out that the owner had been gunned down by the IRA sometime earlier.  However, the circumstances of his death don't sit well with Duffy.

A break in the investigation gives the team a possible name.  The victim appears to be an American.  Unfortunately the information is of no help, nor is the funny phone call and note Duffy receives.  This leads Duffy off to the U. S. A.  What he finds leads to more mayhem and violence.

Author Adrian McKinty has written another excellent thriller, hard to put down.

Music of the Distant Stars

Lassair has gone in the early hours to pray at the grave site of her grandmother.  She is shocked to see that the stone slab atop the grave has been moved.  When she peers into the grave, she discovers a second body inside.

When Lassair and her aunt Edild investigate the grave, they find the body is that of a young woman, and that she was pregnant at the time of her death.  Lassair rushes to the manor to tell Lord Gilbert and Lady Emma of the body.  Here she finds out that the young woman was a seamstress. 

Lassair returns to her aunt and the body with the justicair, Sir Alain de Villequier.  Edild, in the meantime, has determined that the young woman was strangled with a leather thong of some sort.  Lassair is determined to find out the story behind the young woman's pregnancy.  She and her frien Sibert head out to investigate.

Lassair later learns from Gurdyman that the victim had known Sir Alain earlier.  She is now sure that he had impregnated the young woman, that they had fallen in love when when he found himself betrothed to an unattractive woman.  She is sure that he is the murderer, but could he really have killed the woman he loved?  Why then was Sir Alain attacked in the night when he visited her grave?

Edild, based on evidence, is positive that there could be two different attackers in the area.  Author Alys Clare presents one suspect after another in this murder mystery only to reveal that they aren't the criminal.  It isn't until the very end of the book that the reader finds out who it really is.  A good, quick read.

Blood Atonement

In the sequel to "Blood Detective" we find DCI Grant Foster back on the job six months after suffering grievous injuries.  He and DI Heather Jenkins are investigating the death of a young woman whose throat was slashed.  Her 14 year old daughter is also missing.  Due to the fact that the victim was very private about her personal past, Foster and Jenkins turn to Nigel Barnes to research her past.

A profiler, Susie Danson, is brought in to help with the investigation.  She is of the opinion that the daughter was the real target.  A hair found on the body provides some DNA that points to a man who could possibly be related to the victim.  Foster once again turns to Barnes.  His research provides them with a number of names, one of which indicates that a family member had also gone missing on fourteenth birthday. 

Barnes finds that the DNA sequencing points to a North American Indian.  It is shortly after this that a family distantly related to the first victim is murdered in their beds.  Barnes' research leads him to a dead end, but information that there is a group attempting to do away with this family.

Evidence points to a cult that may be involved in the murders and abductions.  There seems to be a connection to the Latter Day Saints.  Barnes and Jenkins travel to Salt Lake City, Utah to make use of the Mormon Library.  Unfortunately they run into roadblocks, but they do discover that a splinter group exists; one with history to the victims back in England.

Author Dan Waddell has written another exciting thriller that I was unable to put down.  For those readers interested in genealogy, murder mysteries and history this is an intense read.  I can only hope that sometime in the near future Waddell will write a third in the series.

Eleven Pipers Piping

Father Tom Christmas is attending a Robbie Burns meal in a hotel during a snowstorm in the village of Thornford with eleven others.  They are joined, unexpectedly, by a woman hoping to get a room before the full force of the storm hits.  All of the guests are shocked when the host, Will Moir,  is found dead after the meal.  No help is available due to the snow.

A post mortem indicates that Will was poisoned.  The poison was taxine, a product of the yew berry.  Could the tartlets sent to the Burns meal by Christmas' housekeeper been the cause?

Later Father Christmas learns that Will had taken out a new life insurance policy on himself.  Did he know that death was imminent?  Another question arises as a result of the inquest; could the poison have possibly been meant for someone else?

Things take a tragic turn at the Wassail ceremony, when a woman standing beside Father Christmas is shot and killed.  How is her death linked to the first? Or is it? 

Author C. C. Benison offers up a number of possible suspects throughout this murder mystery before presenting the real culprit, which at no time did this reader suspect.  A good read.

Hands Like Clouds

Ira Connaught has been found hanging from a tree in the forest above Tofino.  The coroner, Elias McCann , needs to determine why. His girlfriend, Vhanna is convinced that Ira's death is not a suicide, but rather a homicide. She is convinced that he must set an inquiry into the death into place.  The RCMP must be persuaded to open an investigation.

The autopsy reveals that Ira had been strangled almost to the point of death before being strung up in the tree.  McCann doesn't want the pathologist to tell the RCMP immediately.  He wants to start his own investigation before they are brought in.

As McCann begins to piece the evidence together, he believes that he can not yet involve the RCMP because they will have their hands full shortly escorting a visiting American senator.  That evening a young woman and her daughter die when their boat catches fire.  McCann is convinced that it is no accident.  Sergeant Gary Danchuk of the RCMP is upset with McCann because he has been conducting an unauthorised investigation on his own.

McCann and Vhanna find a store of dynamite in a cabin on a remote island.  Based on the numbers on the dynamite boxes, McCann is able to trace it back to a logging company.  He later finds out that the company's owner had sold it to Connaught.  How is the dynamite tied to the death of three people?

Matters turn for the worse when an attempt is made on McCann and Vhanna's life, which results in the death of an innocent victim.  Who is the real target?

Author Mark Zuehlke provides the reader with a few possible suspects, and a thrilling conclusion.

Blood Detective

A man has been murdered in a London graveyard.  DCI Grant Foster, DS Heather Jenkins, and  DI Andy Drinkwater are investigating.  They are shocked to learn that the victim's hands have been removed, post-mortem.

Nigel Barnes is a genealogist whom the police want to use them to possibly solve the case, because DS Jenkins feels that there is a possible link to the past.  A reference number had been carved into the victim's chest.  Would it be enough for Barnes to get what the police need?  What they discover is that a person died on the same spot on the same date in 1879.  Barnes also finds, in old newspapers that there were three murders.  The one question was the second.  Has someone already been gruesomely murdered and is there going to be a third?

Foster finds a body in a mortuary that indicates the victim is part of the group.  A third victim is found, a woman this time, savaged and her eyes removed.  Foster is taken off the lead investigation by his superior when things hit the fan.  Shortly afterwards a suspect is collared, however Foster has his doubts, and is sure that the killer will strike within the next 48 hours.

Foster and Barnes have come to the conclusion that the murders are revenge killings for the wrongful conviction of an innocent man in 1879.  Can they prevent more murders, and how will they catch the current culprit?

What an excellent read!  This has been one of the best murder mystery thrillers I have read in a long time.  Author Dan Waddell has woven modern policing with genealogy and history to create a real page turner.  I am looking forward to sequels.

The Mushroom Man

Eight year old Georgina Dewhurst has gone missing.  D. I. Priest has been tasked with finding her.  Sometime later a ransom note appears.  Is it truly from the kidnapper, or simply someone making mischief?

The investigating team is startled to learn that Georgina is not the biological daughter of her father, which DNA tests indicate, and that her late mother left her business to Georgina.  Why is her father attempting to sell the business, against the terms of the will, when the police will provide traceable bills for the ransom money?

Meantime, DI Peterson has his hands full with the suspicious deaths of three vicars.  He has also received a collection of clippings of articles about the deaths with a picture of a mushroom pinned to the articles.  What is the meaning behind that?  As Peterson's investigation progresses, it leads him to where Priest is busy with the kidnapping.

When the body of the girl is found, a man steps forward in another jurisdiction confessing to the murder.  However, before he can be transferred back to Priest's jurisdiction, he commits suicide.  Priest is not convinced he was guilty, so he goes after the father of the girl.

As luck would have it, at this time, a friend of Priest's provides him with concert tickets.  He takes his girlfriend to the concert, and as they walk out of the auditorium, she is blasted by a shotgun.  Some of Priest's colleagues are convinced it is the Mushroom Man, as it is the same modus operandi that has been used in the murder of a number of vicars.  However, Priest is convinced that the shotgun blast was meant for him.

Author Stuart Pawson brings this thriller to an exciting and scary conclusion. An excellent read and I am looking forward to the next in the series.