Category Archives: Thriller

Let the Dead Speak – Jane Casey

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Let the dead speakThe story:
When eighteen year old Chloe Emery returns to her house to find it covered in blood and her mother missing, and DS Maeve Kerrigan and the murder investigation squad are called to investigate. While investigating the various shady neighbours living on the street, all of whom seem to be hiding something, they uncover a complicated web of lies, deceit and deeply buried secrets.

My thoughts:
If you’ve read the previous books in the series, you’ll already be familiar with the main players. As always, the investigation, processes and team dynamics were totally believable. Maeve’s own relationship with Derwent and the rest of the team has also evolved from the earlier books in the series. She’s now a Detective Sergeant and an integral member of the team with a junior to manage. Continue reading →

The Chemist – Stephanie Meyer

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the-chemistStephanie Meyer’s first foray out of the supernatural/science fiction genre was always going to get mixed reviews, but I thought it was a good read and a decent thriller. It’s also worth saying that I listened to this as an audiobook – I always think thrillers work particularly well in this format and The Chemist was no exception.

The story:

An ex-government interrogator is living in hiding, in fear of her life, when her old employer draws her in for one last job that could mean the difference between life or death for thousands of people. But when it becomes clear that her target may not be who she thought he was, she has a decision to make. The situation escalates fast, the stakes are high and it’s not only her life that hangs in the balance.

My thoughts:

There’s nothing too deep about The Chemist – it’s just an easy, entertaining read. There’s a good amount of action – but also quite a lot of description for a thriller. This is all backed up by a decent back story and a bit of romance. It’s quite predictable, if you read thrillers regularly then you’ll be able to see the main story arcs coming together easily. I kept seeing plot twists where they weren’t any and expecting characters to be hiding secret agendas when they weren’t – things were actually just that easy to guess!

I wasn’t overly keen on the romance aspect. The love interest seemed way too nice and just didn’t seem to have much of a personality at all. I kept waiting for him to show hidden depths and double-cross her. Continue reading →

‘A Lovely Way to Burn’ by Louise Welsh

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A Lovely Way to BurnAny regular readers of my blog will know that I have a thing for dystopian fiction. I also love a good crime novel. Louise Welsh’s new novel, ‘A Lovely Way to Burn’, is a mash up of these two genres and so was always going to be hit in my book.

Stevie Flint is horrified when she discovers the dead body of her boyfriend, Simon. But having reported it to the police, she’s immediately struck down by a debilitating flu-like illness. When she recovers, she emerges to find that people across the country are being struck down by a mysterious, and in most cases fatal, sickness known as the ‘sweats’. It soon becomes clear that people are dying in droves – and there’s nothing that the doctors can do.

Despite everything that’s going on, Stevie is determined to find out what happened to Simon – and when she finds a package addressed to her hidden in Simon’s flat, she is convinced there’s more to the story. Continue reading →

‘Camille’ by Pierre Lemaitre

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CamilleThis is the third novel in a series from Pierre Lemaitre focussing on Camille Verhoeven, a detective with the French police, of which I’ve only read one – ‘Alex’.

When Camille’s lover, Anne, is caught up in what seems to be a jewellery store robbery gone wrong and left with horrific injuries, he immediately breaks all the rules to take on the case. But what seems to have seen a simple robbery soon takes a more serious turn, as the perpetrator sets out to remove all witnesses who could tie him to the crime – including Ann.

As he attempts to keep Anne safe, Camille’s attempts to hide his involvement with her from his colleagues grow more and more frantic. He comes under increasing scrutiny from his team and his senior officers, threatening to derail his career and destroy his friendships. Despite this, he preserves on regardless, throwing caution to the wind as he grows more and more desperate. Continue reading →

Jane Casey’s ‘After the Fire’

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After the fireA fire rips through the top two floors of a tower block, leaving three people dead. One of the dead happens to be the controversial right-wing MP Geoff Armstrong – one who has no business being in those flat that night, so far from home. Of those who made it out before the blaze took hold, a young boy is separated from his mother, an illegal prostitute flees the scene with nothing but the clothes on her back and a child from one of the block’s more dubious families suffers horrific burns.

To make things worse, it soon becomes clear that the fire is arson and Geoff Armstrong may not have jumped to his death to avoid the flames – he may have been murdered. With such a high profile death, the force are under increasing scrutiny and pressure to get to the bottom of the situation as fast as possible. But with any number of motives, potential suspects and possible intended victims, narrowing down the search is an enormous ask. Continue reading →

‘The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August’ by Claire North

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first 15livesofharryaugustIn the First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, author Claire North plays with our concept of time. In her vision, time runs over and over on a constant loop. Some people have the ability to retain their consciousness from one life to the next, and are born again and again – always in the same time, in the same place and to the same parents, but with the knowledge of the lives lived before.

Here, being reborn isn’t reincarnation, it’s more like doing endless laps around a track. People like Harry cross paths with the same acquaintances every life, and develop relationships that span more lifetimes than they can remember. Major events and landmarks pass by again and again, and even with their extensive knowledge, there’s nothing they can do to stop or change them.

For Harry and those like him, life is both a constant experiment and a bit of a bore. Childhood is a chore to get through. Death isn’t final and is sometimes, in extreme cases, welcomed. But then news of a disaster starts to filter through from the future. The end of the world is coming, and it’s getting closer with every generation. Someone is disrupting the balance, inventing technology far before its time with devastating consequences. When people start disappearing, murdered in the womb before they can be born and breaking the cycle for good, it becomes obvious that this threat is very real. Continue reading →

‘Written in the Blood’ by Stephen Lloyd Jones

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Written in the Blood‘Written in the Blood’ is the sequel to Stephen Lloyd Jones ‘The String Diaries’. If you want to catch up on the plot, you can find my review here.

Set fifteen years after the first novel in the series, the main protagonist in ‘Written in the Blood’ is Hannah Wilde’s daughter, Leah. Last seen as a nine year old girl on the run with her mother from the dangerous Jakab, she is now 24 and on a mission to help save the future of her race – the Hosszu Eletek.

Fertility among the remaining Hosszu Eletek is failing, and Leah is one of the youngest in a declining society. Together with her mother, Leah is helping to run a highly controversial fertility programme to give women the chance to have a child. But the upper echelons of the Hosszu Eletek society aren’t keen on diluting their race with the human blood that runs through Hannah and Leah’s veins. And when they decide that it’s necessary to reach out to the banished Kirekesztett, their fertility programme is soon seen as something that needs to be stopped at any cost. Continue reading →

Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’

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the martianFollowing an aborted Mars mission, NASA astronaut Mark Watney is left behind. His team think he’s dead. He has no way of communicating with them or with Earth The next mission to Mars is over 4 years away. Its proposed landing site is thousands of kilometres away. But all of that pales in significance beside the more immediate problem – Mark will run out of food long before the next mission arrives and will starve to death.

He has a limited amount of supplies and has to figure out how he can use them in a way that will sustain his life, taking each day as it comes and hoping that a solution to what seems like a completely impossible, hopeless task. He seems doomed to fail and die alone on Mars. But the ways that he finds to survive in such a bleak and inhospitable environment are ingenious. He continues to defy expectations and relies pretty much entirely on his own logic and common sense to carry on.

Be warned, there is a lot of technical detail about the systems for life support in Mark’s makeshift home, and a lot of maths and scientific detail as he attempts to work out how he can survive! I didn’t understand a fair few of the finer points, but it didn’t take anything away from the reading – as long as Mark understood it, that’s all that matters! Continue reading →

‘The Girl with All the Gifts’ by M. R. Carey

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The girl with the giftsTen-year-old Melanie’s world consists of the four walls of her room, the corridor and the schoolroom. She loves school, and even more so if it’s Miss Justineau’s day to teach. To all extents and purposes, Melanie seems just like any other little girl, but it soon becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Every time Melanie leaves her room, she’s strapped into a wheelchair, unable to move or even turn her head. Her classmates have a habit or disappearing and never coming back, and the guards never relinquish their grip on their guns.

It’s hard to go much further without giving away spoilers, but we soon find out that Melanie and her classmates are anything but normal children. In the wake of an unexpected and deadly event, society is struggling to survive. Melanie’s schoolroom is on a scientific army base, where people are desperately searching for solutions, whatever the cost. Continue reading →

Koethi Zan’s ‘The Never List’

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The Never ListBest friends Sarah and Jennifer list by the ‘Never List’ – a set of rules which dominate their lives. Above all, never take risks. But despite all their planning, the worst happens, and the girls are thrown into the middle of their worst nightmare.

Ten years later, Sarah is trying to move on with her life. But she’s still tormented by the past and trapped in a prison of her own making, and it seems that her persecutor hasn’t forgotten her. To give herself any chance of having a normal future, Sarah must face up to her demons. But is she putting herself back in harm’s way? And will what she is about to discover destroy her forever?

Koethi Zan’s The Never List was quite readable, but to me, it didn’t feel like it really offered anything new to the genre. The characters are described as going through some intense emotions, but they never really came alive to me and fell a little flat. The story trundles along well and picks up pace with some well-placed action scenes towards the end, but the twists were disappointingly predictable.

The author plays on society’s fears of hidden sociopaths disguised in plain sight. Continue reading →