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When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound, and dumped in water around London.
When a woman's body is discovered in a cathedral and hours later a young man is found hanging from a tree outside his home, Detective Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. Both bodies have the same distinctive tattoo clumsily inscribed on their legs. It's clear the pair are connected, but how? The trail leads Lottie to St Angela's, a former children's home, with a dark connection to her own family history. Suddenly the case just got personal.
thriller with a nightmare scenario: a parent who loses her child in a bustling international airport. Young Jimmy Higgins is snatched from an airport security checkpoint while his guardian watches helplessly from the glass inspection box. But this is no ordinary abduction, as Jimmy is no ordinary child. His mother was Scarlett, a reality TV star who, dying of cancer and alienated from her unreliable family, entrusted the boy to the person she believed best able to give him a happy, stable life: her ghost writer, Stephanie Harker.
Five figures gather 'round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult-sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken, but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood. Years later a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders that shock the Black Country.
The only person who might have the answers to a baffling murder case is the victim's seven-year-old daughter, found hiding in the room where her mother died. And she's not talking. Newly-promoted, out of his depth, detective Huldar turns to Freyja for her expertise with traumatized young people. Freyja, who distrusts the police in general and Huldar in particular, isn't best pleased. But she's determined to keep little Margret safe. It may prove tricky. The killer is leaving them strange clues: warnings in text messages, sums scribbled on bits of paper, numbers on the radio.
Mia Hamilton lived the perfect life with her husband, university teacher Zach, and their two-year-old daughter. But everything changed when Zach committed suicide on the same night one of his students vanished. Five years later, just when Mia is beginning to heal, stranger Alison walks into her life, saying her husband didn't kill himself. Fragile, slight Alison leads Mia on a path into Zach's past, and Mia begins to think she never really knew her own husband.
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound, and dumped in water around London.
When a woman's body is discovered in a cathedral and hours later a young man is found hanging from a tree outside his home, Detective Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. Both bodies have the same distinctive tattoo clumsily inscribed on their legs. It's clear the pair are connected, but how? The trail leads Lottie to St Angela's, a former children's home, with a dark connection to her own family history. Suddenly the case just got personal.
thriller with a nightmare scenario: a parent who loses her child in a bustling international airport. Young Jimmy Higgins is snatched from an airport security checkpoint while his guardian watches helplessly from the glass inspection box. But this is no ordinary abduction, as Jimmy is no ordinary child. His mother was Scarlett, a reality TV star who, dying of cancer and alienated from her unreliable family, entrusted the boy to the person she believed best able to give him a happy, stable life: her ghost writer, Stephanie Harker.
Five figures gather 'round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult-sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken, but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood. Years later a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders that shock the Black Country.
The only person who might have the answers to a baffling murder case is the victim's seven-year-old daughter, found hiding in the room where her mother died. And she's not talking. Newly-promoted, out of his depth, detective Huldar turns to Freyja for her expertise with traumatized young people. Freyja, who distrusts the police in general and Huldar in particular, isn't best pleased. But she's determined to keep little Margret safe. It may prove tricky. The killer is leaving them strange clues: warnings in text messages, sums scribbled on bits of paper, numbers on the radio.
Mia Hamilton lived the perfect life with her husband, university teacher Zach, and their two-year-old daughter. But everything changed when Zach committed suicide on the same night one of his students vanished. Five years later, just when Mia is beginning to heal, stranger Alison walks into her life, saying her husband didn't kill himself. Fragile, slight Alison leads Mia on a path into Zach's past, and Mia begins to think she never really knew her own husband.
Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution.
DI Nikki Galena: A police detective with nothing left to lose, she's seen a girl die in her arms, and her daughter will never leave the hospital again. She's gotten tough on the criminals she believes did this to her. Too tough. And now she's been given one final warning: make it work with her new sergeant, DS Joseph Easter, or she's out.
A Greek tragedy in modern England, A Place of Execution is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know.
The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the accident at Bennington, the two friends - once inseparable roommates - haven't spoken in over a year. Lucy - always fearless and independent - helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country. But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice - she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice's husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her.
Stavern, 1983. After a brutal robbery, a young policeman named William Wisting is edged off the investigation by more experienced officers, but soon he is on another case that has not even been recognised as murder. Forgotten in a dilapidated barn stands a bullet-riddled old car, and it looks as if the driver did not get out alive. This case will shape William Wisting as a policeman and give him insight that he will carry with him for the rest of his career.
A young woman's body is discovered on a deserted footpath. It seems like a simple crime for DCI Sophie Allen and her team to solve. But not when the victim's mother is found strangled the next morning. The case grows more complex as DCI Sophie Allen discovers that the victims had secret histories, involving violence and intimidation. There's an obvious suspect, but Detective Allen isn't convinced. Could someone else be lurking in the shadows, someone savagely violent, looking for warped revenge?
Meet Roy Ballard, freelance videographer with a knack for catching insurance cheats. He's working a routine case, complete with hours of tedious surveillance, when he sees something that shakes him to the core. There, with the subject, is a little blond girl wearing a pink top and denim shorts - the same outfit worn by Tracy Turner, a six-year-old abducted the day before. When the police are skeptical of Ballard's report - and with his history, who can blame them? - it's the beginning of the most important case of his life.
The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim. A game has begun for the hunter and the hunted.
They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he's also passing through. Yet she stays, and he stays - drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other - dangerous, even lethal secrets. Then someone dies. Was it an accident or part of a plan? By now Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other's lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away.
Mordecai Tremaine, former tobacconist and perennial lover of romance novels, has been invited to spend Christmas in the sleepy village of Sherbroome at the country retreat of one Benedict Grame. Arriving on Christmas Eve, he finds that the revelries are in full flow - but so too are tensions amongst the assortment of guests. Midnight strikes and the party-goers discover that it's not just presents nestling under the tree...there's a dead body, too. A dead body that bears a striking resemblance to Father Christmas.
A brutal crime. The ultimate cover-up. How do you solve a murder with no useable evidence? Private detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighboring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible.
A killer is on the loose, blurring the line between fact and fiction. His prey - the writers of crime novels who have turned psychological profilers into the heroes of the nineties. But this killer is like no other. His bloodlust shatters all the conventional wisdom surrounding the motives and mechanics of how serial killers operate. And for one woman, the desperate hunt to uncover his identity becomes a matter of life and death.
What Ian Rankin is to Edinburgh David Mark is to the seaport of Hull in Northern England. This is the beginning of a dynamic, thrilling series featuring detective Sgt. Aector McAvoy, a psychologically-probing investigator who finds patterns and motives in seemingly unrelated deaths in his hardscrabble town.
First question - why can't we see all the reviewer ratings like we used to? According to the page this recording is on there are between 5 and 8 reviews, yet I cannot see all of them. Why not an option on the drop down menu for "all" versus the options there now which I could care less about. I am writing this review because of the 1 negative and 1 positive we are allowed to see and feel that this book is well worth a listen. I really enjoyed the story and the narrator. The main character is described as a shy, uncommunicative type of guy and I think the reader really captured that. This protagonist is more of a real person versus the tough guy cops often depicted. The only character I felt was underdeveloped was his wife, who, although described as wonderful, is portrayed only as a sex object. She herself, in late term pregnancy, is also quite the minx. I doubt that a female writer would have created this character, but since she is not key to the story line, this weakness (clearly my view only) did not effect my overall appreciation of the book.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
At last, another reliable mystery author! Modest Scottish detective solves crimes in Hull. He loves his wife. He is rightly suspicious of his collegues. Lots of atmosphere.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
I love mysteries, especially those set in the British Isles. This book is a bit slow in parts (I didn't care for all of the scenes of domestic bliss) and I would I have like the minor characters to be more fleshed out. However, the story is gripping (once you make it past the introductory chapters.) I will definitely "read" the other entries in this series.
John Curless gives a great performance, making the characters distinct and voicing the women as well as the men.
8 of 9 people found this review helpful
There's a new cop in the English city of Hull. No sooner does he start his job than he views a 15 year old Somalian adopted girl being slash down in their central church. He has even seen the hooded slasher. But is he a serial killer? Seems that survivors of fatal incidents are being murdered. Thus starts this gruesome murder mystery with a unique plot for a murderer.
Perhaps some of the best parts are the development of the characters. Aector McAvoy is definitely an experienced cop, and rumors abound about his past with a dirty cop and a paid killer. Now he's supposed to be relegated to computer work because of his unique talents in finding information from a desk. His female supervisor tries to untangle his skills through his quiet personality. Aector is profoundly in love with his beautiful wife and young son. Through all this is the description of a dank and wet city of Hull.
This was a great start for a continuing mystery series. Aector is not reminiscent of any policeman that I've previously read about. I also appreciated the twisted motive that was also unique to this story. Definitely will read more from this author. Listened to this on Audible and really appreciated the dramatic affect, especially Aector's Scottish accent amongst the English.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
I was looking forward to the beginning of a new series with a great new character to follow This ain't it. The main character, DS McAvoy, is nothing but a politically correct wuss who is supposedly crazy in love with his wife, but lusts after his female boss. Huh??? I've never read a book who's main character has less personality than McAvoy. And as a previous reviewer commented, the story could indeed do with a bit less domestic bliss. It added little to the plot and made me question just how much McAvoy loves his wife if he's conflicted about wether or not to kiss his overtly sexual boss.
I did a quick google search and found that the population of Scotland is over 5 1/4 million people. That said, could they not have found a narrator who can convincingly voice a Scottish character? Why do audiobook publisher's not check first to see if the chosen narrator can actually deliver a convincing accent? Why is it so hard to find narrators who can "speak Scots"? I've lost count of the times I have been disappointed in a narrator because of this. It really ruins the listening experience. Mr. Curless may be quite good at various English dialects, but he is AWFUL with the Scots accent. It was so bad that I couldn't wait for this book to end. This, coupled with the fact that his voice is SO gravelly, grated on my nerves so badly that I ended up listening on 3X speed just to get this book finished.
My advice is to save your credit. I won't be listening to anything else by this author or narrator.
11 of 14 people found this review helpful
What disappointed you about The Dark Winter?
The protagonist, Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy is such a craven, irredeemably moronic figure that one cannot even appreciate the genuinely intriguing elements of the mystery as they come together. And due to the fact that it is he who interacts with some genuinely interesting characters throughout the narrative, one cannot help but long for a different story, involving the latter, but absolutely lacking DS McAvoy.
Did John Curless do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?
Curless is exceptional; unfortunately, since he spends most of the story narrating from McAvoy's perspective, one must listen to the pusillanimous, weepy, submissive voice he uses for McAvoy for most of the audiobook.