Review: A Cold Heart

A Cold Heart by Doug Sinclair
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

A small crime with potentially deadly consequences. Elizabeth Dunn is a care worker with a husband suffering from MS and a daughter with mental health issues. When she discovers her daughter is being bullied by the rich girls at her school for not having the latest designer jumper, Elizabeth will stop at nothing to help her daughter, even if it means shoplifting a £300 jumper.

Unfortunately, a security guard sees Elizabeth and chases after her, straight into traffic where he is hit by a car, with fatal consequences. Elizabeth scurries off into the night bumping into DS Malkie McCulloch on her way, he was on the way to meet his twenty-six year old daughter Jennifer for the first time until the RTA derailed his plans.

Although full of guilt, Elizabeth is happy to have made her daughter smile, until it transpires that the dead security guard was a member of the notorious Jessop family and Elizabeth is abducted from her home in broad daylight.

Can Malkie and his team find Elizabeth before Stevie Jessop returns to Scotland to extract his revenge?

Over and above the mystery we also have the overreaching arcs of Steph's rapist sperm donor and drug pushing step father (luckily Doug has toned down her constant harping on about it), Malkie's romance with the wounded former pilot Deborah, and the investigation into his mother's death, which Malkie now believes was murder, as well as Malkie meeting his daughter for the first time. TBH, I think these four overarching arcs are too much, at least one of them needs to fade away quickly because they detract from the current mystery in each book.

As always, this is on the high side of violence in what I like in my detective stories (ie one below serial killer in terms of violence and gore), I tend more towards the procedural and cosy but for others this is probably just right.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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Review: Something Blue

Something Blue by Emma Jameson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The third in the series featuring Anthony Hetheridge, chief superintendent for New Scotland Yard and ninth baron of Wellegrave, and his fiancée Detective Sergeant Kate Wakefield as well as Detective Sergeant Deepal ('Paul') Bhar.

Its three weeks before Tony and Kate get married, then Michael Martin Hughes, disgraced CEO of Peerless Petrol Co which caused an ecological disaster, is found murdered (strychnine poisoning) at the exclusive Nonpareil Hotel, which just happens to be the current residence of Lady Isabel Bartlow and her brother, Sir Duncan Godington (Tony's arch-nemesis, he is believed to have murdered his father and brother in cold blood but got away on a technicality).

What with all the eco-warriors who considered Hughes the anti-Christ, his estranged wife and son, his fiancée, and girlfriend, there's no shortage of suspects and all of them were present on the evening as Hughes was hosting a fundraiser for Peerless Petrol.

Meanwhile, the gutter press are digging dirt on Kate and her less than squeaky-clean family, threatening to ruin the wedding.

As I believe I said in my last review, Godington is such a pantomime villain he taints everything. Allegedly so charismatic he can charm people into committing murder on his behalf he has apparently also developed a taste for bathing in his victims' blood whilst in South America.

Also, there are so many illegitimate children flying around (not literally you understand) that it seems that no-one is really the child of their parents (that got away from me a bit but you know what I mean).

This was okay, but I don't think I need to continue reading the series.

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Review: A Judgement of Powers

A Judgement of Powers by Benedict Jacka
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book 3 in the Inheritance of Magic series and looks like there are a few more to come.

Stephen Oakwood is just an ordinary young man living in Plaistow, London. He just happens to be one of the people who can use magic (Drucraft). His mother left when he was small, his father disappeared when he was a teenager. Since then he's been surviving on low-paying monotonous jobs, scraping enough to pay his rent and feed his cat.

Then he discovered his mother is the daughter of Charles Ashford, head of House Ashford. Charles can bequeath the House to whoever he chooses as his heir and there is fierce (deadly) competition between his grandchildren for that privilege. Apparently Stephen could be in the running, if Charles didn't seem to hate him.

Anyway, Stephen is perfecting his Drucraft, trying to get together a team of raiders to drain C+/B class magic wells without being caught, whilst also acting as quasi-bodyguard for the Ashford heir, his cousin Calhoun.

Meanwhile a group calling themselves the Winged are alternatively trying to recruit or kill Stephen.

It seems like Stephen might have three choices: join House Ashford; join the Winged; or go it alone ...

I am enjoying this series but I also feel it has very similar vibes to Benedict's Alex Verus series, where Alex started out as a nobody and gradually became inveigled into politics and warring factions, forced to pick a side (surprise he chose his own). But hey, this is clearly a middle book and they progress the arc while not resolving much.

I received an ARC from the publisher.

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