NOVEMBER 2021 - ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY - 6 OF THE BEST!

Another half dozen into the collection ....

Colin Conway (ed.) - A Bag of Dicks (2021) - review copy from author

A collection of shorts related to Colin Conway's 509 series and featuring some authors who's work I've enjoyed in the past.

With scorching tales from Jonathan Brown, Sarah M. Chen, Bill Fitzhugh, Scott Kikkawa, Nick Kolakowski, Debbi Mack, Kat Richardson, Brian Thornton, Sam Wiebe, Jim Winter, and Frank Zafiro.

Detective Jim Morgan just gave Roy Utt the opportunity of a lifetime. What happens next is the stuff of legend.

In an instant, Roy Utt’s life changed, and it happened at Dick’s Hamburgers.

A guy ran from the parking lot with a bag of burgers clutched to his chest. To Roy, it was life on the street—weird things happen, and wondering why is wasted time.

But today is no ordinary day because Detective James Morgan was also there. Unlike Roy, Morgan isn’t in the habit of dismissing bizarre events. Instead, he wants to know what was in the bag, and he’s giving Roy the incentive to find it—a Get Out of Jail Free card.

If Roy knows one thing, it’s that Morgan’s word is better than the dry sandwiches and mushy apples in lock-up.

With the clock ticking on the deal, Roy is already sharing too much information. The allure of a Get Out of Jail Free card attracts the smart, the cunning, and the stupid. An all-out scavenger hunt is underway in the criminal underworld.

Will Roy earn his Get Out of Jail Free card, or will he become a footnote in the legacy of the streets?

A Bag of Dick’s is a collection of twelve short stories from crime fiction’s liveliest voices.  Get your copy today and experience the 509 in a way you never expected.

Mark Brandi - The Rip (2020) - purchased copy

Aussie crime and a further chance to enjoy Mark Brandi's work again. Into the River was a cracking read back in 2019.

A young woman living on the street has to keep her wits about her. Or her friends... but when the drugs kick in that can be hard.

Anton has been looking out for her. She was safe with him. But then Steve came along.

He had something over Anton. Must have. But he had a flat they could crash in. And gear in his pocket. And she can't stop thinking about it. A good hit makes everything all right.

But the flat smells weird.

There's a lock on Steve's bedroom door.

And the guy is intense.

The problem is, sometimes you just don't know you are in too deep, until you are drowning.

Georges Simenon - The People Opposite (1933) - Net Galley reviewer site

A prolific author who  I should have read more of. Only the one so far - Maigret's Dead Man.

'You'll get used to things, you'll see. But you have to watch very carefully what you say and what you do.'

Adil Bey is an outsider. Newly arrived as Turkish consul at a run-down Soviet port on the Black Sea, he receives only suspicion and hostility from the locals. His one intimacy is a growing, wary relationship with his Russian secretary Sonia, who he watches silently in her room opposite his apartment. But this is Stalin's world before the war, and nothing is as it seems. Georges Simenon's most starkly political work, The People Opposite is a tour de force of slow-burn tension.

'Irresistible... read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss' Sunday Times

Carl Nixon - The Tally Stick (2020) - Net Galley reviewer site

A bit of New Zealand crime from a new-to-me author.

Lost in the wilderness: subjugation, survival, and the meaning of family

Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tire tracks in the mud leading into an almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other cars passed that way until after dawn. By that time the tracks had been washed away by the heavy rain. After being in New Zealand for only five days, the English Chamberlain family had vanished into thin air. The date was 4 April 1978. In 2010 the remains of the eldest child are discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father’s watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of scored wood marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died in such a way? Where is the rest of the family? And what is the meaning of the tally stick?

Frank Zafiro - Dirty Little Town (2021) - review copy from author

Latest offering in Frank Zafiro's River City series.

Times are tough for the River City Police Department. The city budget is collapsing, forcing an already understaffed department to contemplate laying off cops. The community is upset over the handling of recent events, and their anger is impacting the agency from the ground up. Negotiations with the police union are somehow both heated and stagnant at the same time. To "fix" the problem, the mayor appoints a new chief, but the cure may be worse than the disease.

Worse yet, a killer is stalking the streets of River City, targeting vulnerable women. Rookie detective Katie MacLeod is assigned to assist in the effort to stop him but the case is stymied.

Somehow, the men and women of RCPD have to put aside all of the distractions and focus on their jobs – to serve and to protect.

Takes place in 2003.

Rod Reynolds - Black Reed Bay (2021) - purchased copy

Another author who's books I seem to collect but have never read, despite loads of great reviews. What's the matter with me?

‘Urgent, thrilling and richly imagined. Without doubt his best yet' Chris Whitaker, author of We Begin at the End

‘Reynolds captures the claustrophobic feel of a small town  … a tense slice of American noir’ Vaseem Khan, author of Midnight at Malabar House

'If you were hooked on Mare of Easttown, this will be right up your street … I read this obsessively' Nina Pottell, Prima

‘Rod Reynolds makes the most of this desolate, windswept location … a thrillingly complex narrative develops at speed … his superior cop saga is just the first instalment of a projected series’ The Times

____________________

Don’t trust ANYONE…

When a young woman makes a distressing middle-of-the-night call to 911, apparently running for her life in a quiet, exclusive beachside neighbourhood, miles from her home, everything suggests a domestic incident.

Except no one has seen her since, and something doesn’t sit right with the officers at Hampstead County PD. With multiple suspects and witnesses throwing up startling inconsistencies, and interference from the top threatening the integrity of the investigation, lead detective Casey Wray is thrust into an increasingly puzzling case that looks like it’s going to have only one ending…

And then the first body appears…