MIKE GRIST - SAINT JUSTICE (2019)

Synopsis/blurb.....

Justice will be done

When rogue DELTA operator Christopher Wren uncovers a vast human trafficking operation in the deserts of Utah, he aims for the payback to be fast and righteous.

But Wren soon learns there's more than thousands of caged humans at stake - this conspiracy threatens to destroy the very idea of the United States itself - and Wren will never allow that. Not on his watch.

Wren enlists the help of his off-book vigilante 'cult', the Foundation, but that only brings all the heat of the CIA down on his head. Now hunted on all sides and fighting for his life, Wren must race across the country and against the clock to take the terrorists down, before the country he loves blows apart at the seams.

Saint Justice is "as urgent and gripping as it gets" (bestselling thriller author Oliver Harris), packed with rollercoaster twists that will leave you hungry for just one more page.

Perfect for fans of action thriller heroes like Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, Mitch Rapp and Jack Bauer.

Saint Justice is the first in author Mike Grist's Christopher Wren series. I already had a copy on my kindle but was happy to take up the offer of a free Audible download code. The book would probably have gathered dust on the device otherwise, whereas I had the commute to and from work and a few solitary hours each day in my workplace to blast through it. It was an ideal companion in that respect.

More thrillerish in tone and pace and content than my usual reading, I quite liked it without ever feeling stunned or amazed. There's a requirement for some suspension of disbelief going in, but nothing totally outlandish or ridiculous.

We have the main character Christopher Wren trying to prevent an all out race war in the US. Wren is a conflicted character. As we get some of his back story through the book, we learn he himself heads a cult, he previously escaped from a cult and he has some severed links and acrimonious history with some alphabet soup intelligence agencies. He's ex-military, I think and has worked undercover in a variety of hostile overseas environments, aided by his darker than white skin tone.

In a nutshell, Wren has to take down a biker gang in order to get closer to the man pulling the strings and trying to manufacture a racial civil war in the states. Part of our villain's masterplan involves abducting homeless citizens en masse from the streets and re-educating/brainwashing them with his white suprecamist dogma before lighting the spark. Wren with law enforcement on his back, tries to utilise his own network to foil the plot.

Quite gung-ho and violent, decent pace and a fairly topical plot line in respect of the increasing radicalisation of people fostering Alt-Right sentiments in both Europe and the US and our hero's efforts to thwart them.

Cults, bikers, beatings, a race war, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, the dark web, a fugitive, the homeless, PTSD, abduction, brain washing, friendship, loyalty, trust, a coin system, suspicion, beatings, murder, executions, past histories - personal and political, a hunt, sacrifice, fire, death, etc etc... more of the same - then an outcome.

I wasn't totally blown away by the book and it might have been prudent to have had a few large pinches of salt close to my earphones on occasions, but overall I was entertained and the time spent immersed in the book flew by. Lots of excitement throughout and there was some elements of humour sown into the dialogue and interactions with Wren and both friend and foe. Definitely there was a lot more to like than take issue with. The book succeeded in it's purpose of entertaining.

I'd be curious to see what mischief Wren gets up to in the second installment of Grist's series - Monsters.

Overall 3.5 from 5

Read - (listened to) April, 2020
Published - 2019
Page count - 480 (8 hrs 26 mins)
Source - Audible download code received from the author
Format - Audible

BRIAN GARFIELD - THE HIT (1970)

Synopsis/blurb....

Simon Crane retired from the police force after a crooked cop tried to kill him. He was broke, out of work and thankful to be alive. It wasn't the end of the world -- until she appeared.

She was Joanne Farrell, Crane's ex-girlfriend. Her boss, a top Mafia man, was dead and nearly three million dollars was missing. She knew she was the prime suspect. What she didn't know was that the Mafia had two other suspects: Mike Farrell, her ex-husband, an organization fall-guy with a chip on his shoulder... and Simon Crane.

From then on Crane was on his own with forty-eight hours to turn over the three million or the real thief... or to find a quiet place to die...

An okay book from Garfield, which means I enjoyed it, not as much as I had hoped to and not as much as previous books I've read from him - Deathwish, Hopscotch and What of Terry Conniston?

A mob boss gets killed and his safe which holds cash and secrets of his fellow mobsters - papers and blackmail material is ransacked and the victim's secretary is a suspect. She runs to ex-cop Simon Crane, a man she previously had a relationship with before working for crims and now Crane is the fall guy unless he finds who did the killing and stealing, and returns the goods and he's on a deadline.

An investigation, a few visits from some mob bruisers, a dirty cop with a hard-on for our man, a beating, a bit of love interest, an ultimatum, time pressures, some likely suspects, a few Q+A sessions with them, an ex-con ex-husband soon expired, and a bit more.

It's a book I read over a month ago and to be honest, already some of the finer details are evaporating from my memory. Not a particularly memorable read obviously, but once I got into the story I was interested enough to find out what happened. No real dislike for anything in the book, I probably just didn't particularly warm to the main character Crane or the woman he was trying to save. If they had ended up dead in a ditch rather than the eventual outcome, I doubt I would have shed a tear.

Setting, pace, story. resolution - all okay. I quite liked the ending. Decent writing, decent action and dialogue.

An okay read which passed some time and put another tick on the scoreboard.

3 from 5

Read - March, 2020
Published - 1970
Page count - 200
Source - owned copy
Format - hardback omnibus edition with The Marksman

MATTHEW ROSS - DEATH OF A PAINTER (2020)

Synopsis/blurb.......

IN THE BUILDING GAME TIME IS MONEY AND MONEY IS EVERYTHING. UNFORTUNATELY FOR MARK POYNTER, HE’S RUN OUT OF MONEY AND HE’S FAST RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

When Mark Poynter discovers a murder on his worksite all of his financial problems suddenly seem a lot closer to home: was this a warning his debts are overdue?

Suspected of being the killer and worried at being the intended victim, the murder only makes Mark’s money problems worse, leading him to turn to the local villain, Hamlet, who has his own unique repayment plan in mind for Mark.

When two more deaths plunge him even further into debt, Mark finds himself faced with a choice – help the police and clear his name or help the villain and clear his debt.

Set in the Medway Towns on the grey margins of criminality, where no job’s too big, no dodge’s too small …

Death Of A Painter is the first in a new series of darkly comic crime fiction novels featuring the beleaguered builder Mark Poynter, aided and hindered in equal measure by his trusted crew of slackers, idlers and gossips, and the lengths they go to just to earn a living.

A debut novel which I really enjoyed.

Mark Poynter's best friend Tommy is murdered with one of Mark's hammers on one of his sites and the police fancy him for the crime. He's in a spot of bother financially and owes a lot of people a lot of money, including Tommy. Motive, means and opportunity - tick, tick, tick.

I quite enjoyed this outing. I liked the main character Mark and his mostly solo efforts to extricate himself from more than one tricky situation. These efforts are at various times helped and hindered by the police, another couple of deaths - one violent, one just suspicious, an annoying uncle, some angry skint builders, the local kingpin villain who's clutches Mark is trying to stay out of and the curious, fleeting reappearance of his long-lost brother, as well as the interesting arrival of a sexy new neighbour, annoyed clients, negative cash flow and a wish to do the best for his dead friend's family.
I had fun when Mark interacted with the police. The various encounters with the lead detective and Mark's verbal jousting with him were entertaining.


Secrets, an amateur investigation, compromises, conflicts, reluctant alliances, big cash money, schemes, ambitions, friendship, support, assault, threats, muted conversations with a much missed parent, family history, rivalries, a possible romance, funerals, threats, deadlines, money woes, robbing Peter to pay Paul and eventually answers and a satisfying outcome.

I enjoyed the Kent setting with the action taking place in and around the Medway towns of Rochester, Chatham, with Gillingham also putting in an appearance. It's not really a part of the county I've visited - I'm more familiar with Tunbridge Wells and Canterbury.

There's a lot of the everyday and ordinary life challenges of the building trade thrown into the narrative.... the struggles with money, the juggling of jobs and difficult clients, the absolute necessity of finishing a job first time out, no snags, no costly re-visits, the camaraderie of the trade, the contacts and the end of the day pub culture, the critiquing of other people's skills and practices and the fleeting pride in completing a job satisfactorily, before the next obstacle is quickly encountered.

All the above helps the flow of the story as the mundane mixes with Mark's more pressing worries. In a crisis, everyday life has to continue as best it can. There's no madcap relentless pace to the narrative, but neither does the story really stagnate or slow. There are elements of humour in the novel, though I would hesitate to call it comic. The deaths occur off-page, but there is some violence in the book with some disputes becoming physical, nothing gratutitous though.

We get answers to the deaths and the guilty are identified and we also have some more unanswered questions over Mark's relationship with his estranged and once feared dead brother. Questions I hope get answered in a future Poynter book, which I'll look forward to.

A great read once I got into it and had some uninterrupted time with the book. 

4 from 5

Read - April, 2020
Published - 2020
Page count  - 378
Source - review copy from publisher Red Dog Press
Format - paperback

*The buy link for all formats is mybook.to/DOAP

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET: V IS FOR..... VEGAS, VALIN, VOICES

On the home stretch now on my Alphabet journey - week 22 and V

V is for.......

Vegas....... Las Vegas, setting of a few novels on the Kindle and probably on the physical shelves though I can't lay my hands on any immediately. Probably a place I'm only interested in visiting via my reading.

Joey's Place was a cracking Vegas novel I enjoyed back in 2013 by author J.W. Nelson.

From my Kindle Vegas selection, I'll pick author P Moss, who I think hails from the city.

Vegas Knockout (2013)

The fight of the century is almost here, and everyone in Sin City feels the buzz. The young journalist on the make. The lovesick con man. The rich man’s daughter with a very dirty secret. The king of Vegas nightlife. A clown who wants waffles. As the frenzy builds and the stakes—financial, emotional, moral—get higher, these and other indelible Vegas characters will put everything on the line. In these linked stories, the one and only P Moss shows you a darker, wilder, more uproarious side of this neon paradise.

V is for.....

Valin.... Jonathan Valin,

Valin wrote an eleven book long series from the early 80s to the mid 90s featuring Harry Stoner. I read the first a few years ago and rated it a 5 STAR read - The Lime Pit. Not sure why I haven't got back to it. Extenuating Circumstances is the ninth in the series.

Extenuating Circumstances (1989)

Fully realized characters, complex plots and excellent writing are the qualities that attract readers to Valin's series about Harry Stoner, private eye. In his eighth appearance, Stoner describes his assignment to find missing Ira Lessing, a businessman from Cincinnati, Ohio, beloved for his generous help to troubled teens. The detective is with Lessing's childlike wife Janey, and his partner, Len Trumaine, when they learn that Lessing's body has been discovered, brutally beaten. A punk teenager, Terry Carnova, not only confesses but boasts of killing Lessing, but Stoner isn't convinced. Terry's pathetic lover Kitty insists the murderer is ''Tommy T,'' a male hustler who caters to masochists. With this information, the detective gropes his way through the fog that shrouds the facts about the victim and several suspects in the case. The story stands as a ''mainstream'' novel as well as a fine mystery. Mystery Book Club alternate. (Publishers Weekly)


V is for.... 


Voices

Arnaldur Indridason and one from his Inspector Erlendur series.
The Draining Lake  was enjoyed back in 2013.

Voices (2006)

The third novel in the award-winning Reykjavik Murder Mysteries.

The Christmas rush is under way in a big Reykjavik hotel when the police are called to the scene of a murder. The hotel doorman (and long-time resident of its basement) has been stabbed to death. With the hotel fully booked, the manager is desperate to keep the murder under wraps and his reputation intact.

Detectives Erlendur and Sigurdur Oli discover that the dead man had had a childhood brush with fame and that two old 45s on which he had sung have become prized collectors' items. Estranged from his family for decades, why had the man continued to pay secret visits to his boyhood home?


As Detective Elinborg investigates a separate case of child abuse, and Erlendur continues to struggle both with his troubled family relationships and the ghosts of his own youth, their parallel stories probe deeper into the riddle of this latest Reykjavik Murder Mystery.

V is for......

more Voices and Seymour Shubin. Shubin is an author I have yet to try.

Voices (1985)

With an alias and a confidential address, Lynn Shephard feels safely removed from the clients of her phone sex service, but a dangerously unstable caller is obsessively seeking her true identity



Next week ........ back with some Ws....... can't wait can you?


Previous Alphabet entries........

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - A IS FOR.... AX, ABBOTT, ABERDEEN

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - B IS FOR ....... BOSTON, BIRD, BONES

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - C IS FOR.........CAPE TOWN, CONFIDENCE MEN, CROSS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - D IS FOR ....... DETROIT, DISHER, DEAD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - E IS FOR ....... EDINBURGH, EXCESS, ELLIS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - F IS FOR ....... FLORIDA, FRANCIS, FLOATERS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - G IS FOR ....... GALWAY, GUNS, GRAFTON

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - H IS FOR ....... HAMBURG, HAMMETT, HIDDEN RIVER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - I IS FOR ....... ICE, ICELAND, IZZO

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - J IS FOR ....... JAPAN, JACK CARTER. JELLO SALAD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - K IS FOR ....... KING, KOREA, KEEPER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - L IS FOR ........ LE CRIME, LEONARD, LOS ANGELES 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - M IS FOR ........ MIAMI, MACKAY, MUCHO MOJO 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - N IS FOR ........ NORWAY, NISBET, NEMESIS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - O IS FOR ........ OWEN, ONE NIGHT STANDS AND LOST WEEKENDS, OXFORD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - P IS FOR ........ PARKER, PHILADELPHIA, PAYDIRT

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - R IS FOR ........ RAYMOND, ROGUE COP, RUSSIA

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - S IS FOR ...... SWEDEN, SMITH, SILENT JOE

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - T IS FOR ...... THOMPSON, TEXAS, TOWER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - U IS FOR ...... UHNAK, UTAH, UNDER THE BRIGHT LIGHTS

2 BY N.J. CRISP

A couple from the 70s and another new-to-me author - N.J. Crisp

Not an author I had previously heard of until a recent charity shop find. I do like old 70s crime fiction.

From the inside cover of THE GOTLAND DEAL
N.J. Crisp started his writing career in the fifties when he published a number of short stories. He quickly moved on to television drama and has become well known for his contribution to series including Dixon of Dock Green, Doctor Finlay's Casebook, Spytrap and Colditz. With Gerard Glaister he co-devised The Expert, The Brothers and Oil Strike North. This is his first novel.

According to his page at Fantastic Fiction, N.J. Crisp wrote nine novels in his career.

He died in 2005.




The Gotland Deal (1976)

THE MURDER
of a prostitute in Notting Hill...

THE TERROR
of a Foreign Office girl convinced she's ebing watched by the KGB...

THE DEATH
by bombing of a young policeman...

THE SPECTRE
of a Nazi revival in Germany...

For Detective Inspector Kenyon these apparently unrelated events hold the key to a conspiracy that threatens the balance of East/West detente, and lead to an electrifying climax in the pine forests of a remote island off the coast of Sweden.


"Intriguing plot.... high espionage and a riveting chase."
WESTERN DAILY PRESS

"Grips tight."
THE OBSERVER


The London Deal (1978)

KENYON'S BACK - WITH A VENGEANCE...

A child molester, badly beaten and drowned in a blocked-up lavatory basin; a nightclub boss,
dismembered and fed to a garbage shredder; the wife of a gangland leader who snares Detective Inspector Kneyon in a glamorous game of feath...

From the glittering roulette tables of the West End clubs, where fortunes and lives are won and Lost, to the bleak wasteland of the Essex marshes, every amn is his enemy, every enemy has a hand in

THE LONDON DEAL

And for Kenyon, survival is the stake.

R.C. HARTSON - FATAL BEAUTY (2015)

Synopsis/blurb.....

Ex-con Bart Hodgkins is abducting women at random in the windy city. A man without conscience; bold and high on drugs and alcohol, he is self-assured when he manipulates girls like Chelsea Rohrman into his web of evil and certain death.

His "silent partner" in subsequent serial killings is a former Cook County judge and university professor Lewis Lisecki, who is bald, unflappable, and soft-spoken. Plagued at birth, given a dumpy fat boy's body, one with flaccid arms, a short neck, and bad eyesight, he's forced to wear thick, round glasses that make him look like a goldfish staring out from a fish tank.

Ex-Chicago homicide cop and private eye Cleve Hawkins is a hard-boiled former Marine hired by Betty Rohrman to help in finding her missing sister. Through treacherous twists and turns, Hawkins works to solve the case of the missing woman but finds a clandestine world of evil.

An okay mystery but not without a few issues for me.

Decent enough storyline, interesting enough main character, fairly well-written scenes, with okay dialogue and action and build-up, but a plot twist which was telegraphed and no big surprise and almost seemed like an bolted on afterthought as opposed to part of the original tale the author might have envisaged. Maybe I'm wrong, but I was unconvinced by this turn of events and it somewhat marred my enjoyment.

I've read better, I've read worse and I don't leave the book behind ever regretting the time spent reading it. Elements were enjoyable. I like a Chicago setting. I liked the PI main character, Cleve Hawkins, though some of his intuitive investigative leaps also seemed a bit contrived. I think if he'd have bought a lottery ticket, he'd have come up trumps. Ching, ching!

The support cast was ok and there was a bit of an on/off love and romance angle which didn't annoy me. The villains were odious, but that was okay. There's a bit of graphic sex which didn't bother me either.

A lot of reviewers on Amazon rate this higher than me, but it's all about opinions, everyone's got one.

3 from 5

This is the first in R.C. Hartson's Cleve Hawkins series. Triple Crossed and Shadows of Sin follow this one.

Read - April, 2020,
Published - 2015
Page count - 241
Source - copy received from publisher Black Rose
Format - MOBI read on laptop Kindle app

PABLO D'STAIR - MAN STANDING BEHIND (2011)

Synopsis/blurb.....

Leaving work on a nondescript evening, Roger is held up at gunpoint when he stops at a cash machine. He attempts to hand everything in his bank account, but robbery isn’t on the gunman’s mind.

Roger is told simply to walk.

The gunman takes him on a macabre odyssey―from city pubs to suburban neighborhoods to isolated homes in the country―and as the night presses on, a seemingly not-so-random body count grows around him.

A moment-by-moment exploration of moral paralysis, Man Standing Behind charts the psyche of a random man caught in the roils of a mortal circumstance nothing to do with his own life. Is he a witness, a victim…or something altogether worse?

Praise for MAN STANDING BEHIND:

“This is where D’Stair shines. He has the ability to take a situation, one which might traditionally be addressed emotionally, and analyze it to the point of emotional emptiness. Life and death…is not a fight or flight, subconscious decision, but is one to be pondered, examined, weighed against context.” —Caleb J. Ross, author of Stranger Will, I Didn’t Mean to be Kevin, and The Soul Standard

Different, strange, puzzling yet curiously satisfying.

A man is forced to bear witness to another's controlled rampage of murder and an obvious settling of old scores, grudges and grievances. The fact that this is recounted in a matter of fact monotone makes it all the more disturbing.

Roger is abducted at gunpoint from a cashpoint and is forced to accompany the gunman on a long night of terror. Fear, paralysis, curiosity, apathy, resignation, hope, loneliness are ever changing companions during the evening that passes.

Fear - of robbery, of violence inflicted on him, of death.

Paralysis - opportunities present themselves at various times, to escape, cry for help, fight back ..... none are seized, all are over-thought, over-analysed and as the moment passes, ultimately avoided

Curiosity - who are the gunman's victims, what have they done to deserve their fate, why is Roger party to this, how's it all going to end.

Apathy - I can't influence this

Resignation - I think I'm going to die

Hope - maybe there's a way out

Loneliness - who will miss me

There's a starkness and reality to the scenes described that you don't often encounter in crime fiction. Death and extreme fear of death can provoke bowel loosening and voiding and it's not pretty. There's nothing exploitative here or titillating........ just pared down prose and an interesting drama played to a conclusion.

Pablo D'stair - he's a bit of a cult. Maybe 40 or 50 novels to his name. This was my first of his, but not my last. Originally published in 2011and recently brought to a new audience by All Due Respect Books

4.5 from 5

Read - March, 2020
Published - 2011 (2019)
Page count - 112
Source - copy received from Chris at the publishers
Format - paperback