Aline Templeton

Cradle to Grave

Detective: Marjorie Fleming

Setting      Galloway

Time        Current

Genre       Police Procedural

This is the seventh of the Templeton Marjorie Fleming series with a complex, intriguing and well structured plot. 

 Events centre on a wealthy man's intention to allow the peninsula/headland where he lives to be the venue for an open air pop concert. In torrential weather the bridge to the peninsula collapses, the phone line goes down  (and it's a dead spot for mobiles) and a coastal landslip destroys a ow of cotages on the beach. Fleming and her Sergeant, McNee, are  trapped on the headland as the bridge collapses under their car.

Amongst the people on the headland there is a young woman from the cottages  who has had the good fortune to avoid the landslip. There is something strange about her and something she is apprehensive about. there's the wealthy man of course and his drug dependent daughter and her husband, still in anger mode about the death of their baby daughter, and their spoiltt and obnoxious son. One of his guests is a well known pop star who embarrassingly features in Fleming's past. 

Eventually the bodies start piling up and there's some serious criminal activity surrounding the wealthy man and word s that a hit man has been despatched but to get rid of who?

To add to the complications, Fleming and McNee, normally close colleagues are estranged. McNee develops a bad working relationship with a new fenmale detective who is keeping her personal life quiet. At the same ime McNee is arring his own personal problem.

It all unravels rather nicely.

A

Aline Templeton's Website

Previously read novels 

Cold in the Earth

The Darkness and the Deep

Lying Dead

Lamb to the Slaughter

Evil for Evil

Michele Giuttari

The Black Rose of Florence

Detective: Michele Ferrara

Setting     Florence

Time        Current

Genre      Police Procedual

This is the fifth of Guittari's novels featuring Michele Frrrara, the head of the Florentine Flying Squad. As this was a position that Guitarri had himself held, the first books, dealing with the Mafia and other crime syndicates seemed based on Guittari's own career. It's not so certasin abot this one. Instead of dealing with a Mafia type organisation, Ferrara is up against a masonic/black magic cult and he very nearly steps into Dan Brown territory.

The opening murder which gives the book it's title involves the death of a wealthy businessman's daughter whose body has been left carefully arranges with a black rose between her legs although there has been a previous incident where a woman's body has been disfiogured while she lies in the morgue and soon after there's a riutual murder in a decnsecrated church. various clues at the crimes and a warning note left at his home lead Ferrar to believe he is being sent a message from the killer, or killers.

The novel ends with more than a hint that there will be sequels until the Back Magic group is brought to book.

Previously Read

The Death of a Mafia Don

A Florentine Death

Death in Clabria

A Florentine Deatrh

 Michele Guitari's website

Mons Kallentoft

Savage Spring

Detective: Malin Fors
Setting:      Linkoping, Sweden
Time:         2010
Genre:       Scandi Noir

This is the fourth of the Malin Fors sequence. As with the previous three, the novel is as much about Malin Fors coping with her personal issues, her recovery from alcohilism, her relationship with her daughter and father and coping with her mother's death.  The crime to be solved is a bombing in the middle of Linkoping resulting in the death of two children. Fors and her colleagues pursue investigations into the possibility of terrorist activity, including a brief consideration of an Islamist threat, before the reasons for the explosion take a darker tuirn.

As in the earlier books Kallentoft uses the device of the murder victims  observing  Malin Fors as she pursues her enquiries: a strange perspective but an eerily effective one.

Rating A

Mons Kallentoft's website

Previous novels
Midwinter Sacrifice
Summertime Death
Autumn Killing

R C Bridgestock

Deadly Focus

Detective Jack Dylan
Setting     Urban England, possibly Yorkshire
Time         Current
Genre       English Police Procedural

This is the first of Bridgestock's Jack Dylan novels. I suspect it will be the last I read. The prose is over fulsome and immature and filled with trivial decriptions.

The plot itself is reasonable, concerning the apparently unrelated murder of two school children. Eventually a connection is made between the two crimes which ultimately leads to the arrest of the murderer. This happens relatively early and much of the later half concerns the interview to get a confession. Tackled at length it has some intersst.

Dylan's relationship with his partner is explored in too much detail.

Web referece to author

Alison Bruce

The Calling

Detective: Gary Goodhew
Setting      Cambridge
Time         Current
Genre       British Police Procedural

This is the third in the Alison Bruce/Gary Goodhew series and although Bruce claims in the afterword to be pleased with the plot she has constructed, there are times when it gets a little too convoluted to follow. A serial killer leaves women unmolested, fully clothed, trussed up in remote locations leaving them to die of starvation or exposure to the elements. The likely identity of the killer is revealed early one and the main puzzle in the readers mind is whether or not a key young woman is his victim or his accomplice. This one doesn't quite work. 

Rating B

Alison Bruce's website

Previously read
Cambridge Blue
The Siren

Quentin Bates

Chilled to the Bone

Detective:  DS Gunnhildur Gisladottir
Time          Present
Setting       Reykjavik, Iceland
Genre        Scandi Noir

This is the third in the Gunna Gisladottir Series and is a well crafted novel. A victim of a scam run by a dominatrix dies gagged and tied to a bed. Other victims of the scam are discovered, all too embarrassed to have reported it to the police.  As Gunna and her team try to identify the dominatrix so does an ex-con just returned from prison in Lithuania although his ultimate client is somewhere hidden in the background.  At the same time a Civil Servant is under pressure to find a missing laptop. before compromising Government secrets leak out. To add to the complications a woman is mysteriously following the Civil Servant.

In the backplot, Gunna's son, who works away on the fishing fleet, advises hi mother that he has two women pregnant simultaneously.

Rating A+

Quentin Blake's Blog

Previously read novels in the series
Frozen Assests (1)
Cold Comfort (2)
Winterlude (4)

Aline Templeton

Evil for Evil

Detedtive: Matjorie Fleming
Setting       Galloway
Time          Present
Genre        Police Procedural

The crime that triggers the story is the discovery of a relatively recent skeleton in a cave on an island just off the Galloway coast.  In the local village there is resentment shown to the "incomer" who has inherited a local farm and the island.  The opening of the novel is a bit confused as a cast of characters is introduced including a woman from Mancheste, with something in her past who cladestinely leaves her husband and takes up residence in a holiday chalet nearby.

Once the characters are established hoever the plot builds nicely and as Fleming and her team investigate various options open up and the novel is well crafted although when the villain is revealed I'm not too sure of the credibility of the rationale.

In the backstory the rivalries amongst Fleming's team continues and her personal life is complicated by her daughter's first disastrous experience of university and the pressures her demanding job place on her family in general

Rating A

Aline Templeton's website

Previously read
Cold in the Earth
The Darkness and the Deep
Lying Dead
Lamb to the Slaughter