Book reviews

While this is the 8th book in the Nosey Parker mystery series, you can quite happily jump into The Cornish Castle Murder whether you have read any or not. Saying that, it probably adds to the charm if you're at least a little familiar with the main cast.In this book,...

Dissolution is a mind-bending science fiction thriller, largely told through interviews and flashback, that's ultimately about love and memory.It begins with Maggie Webb, an elderly woman whose ailing husband Stanley is struggling with memory loss. She's trapped in a...

An utterly bizarre book that takes the premise 'what if the moon turned into cheese?' and runs away with it, to both logical and hilarious extremes (albeit not always both at once).It's written as a series of interconnected short stories and the points-of-view are...

Another solid entry in the 'Forgotten Victims' series.This time a body is discovered in an old farm silo when some teens crash into it. The victim is a young girl who went missing years ago with only a single and contentious eye witness for her last sighting.As DCI...

Tchaikovsky is incredibly prolific and blessed with ideas, as shown here, in Shroud.If I was pitching Shroud to a friend, I might say it's a mix of The Martian with a futuristic space horror.We start with a team of scientists investigating a dark and mysterious...

Nobody's Fool reminded me why I've enjoyed reading Coben so much over the years. A strong premise, a pacy beginning, and some interesting twists and turns even when you are beginning to put things together yourself.Here, ex-copper Sami Pierce flashes back almost 25...

Heartstrings features a cute concept - a young girl rings up a romance hotline on a radio station looking for advice for her mum. A clip of it goes viral and soon the mum and one of the main characters (Lucie) is invited onto the show for a regular segment on her...

The first properly good thriller I've read in ages! Famous Last Words starts on a relatively ordinary day: Camilla's going back to work after maternity leave. But when she wakes up, her husband has already headed out without saying goodbye. It's a little odd, but she...

Instructions for Heartbreak is a well-written book about friendship, very specifically focused on how you deal with difficult breakups. That specific focus gives it power but also a slightly repetitive feel on occasion. It's pinpointed at that stage of life where...

Silver is a sweet and thought-provoking science fiction YA book. Silver is also the name of our main character, a young alien come to Earth to spy on humans and see if their world is ripe for takeover. Her job is to 'inhabit' the first human she meets and learn what...

I'm fully invested in this Whity-based crime series now, featuring DCI Frank Black and DI Gerry Carver. Each one (so far) explores a case featuring an old body - the forgotten bodies of the series name. Frank fights hard to do what's right by each one. In this case,...

There are so many interesting ideas in Interstellar MegaChef. Glance at the cover and read the blurb, and you may think this will be a cosy SF story about a woman in an intergalactic version of the Great British Bake Off. There's certainly a (small) element of that,...

Forgotten Lives is the second of the Whitby's Forgotten Victims series, and I've seen enough now to think I'll probably be on board for any additions - it's a good read.In this volume, a body is found in the walls of a pub that's about to be torn down, and DCI Frank...

I always enjoy a crime book that makes you feel like you're reading something fresh and interesting, rather than a retread of everything that's gone before, even when there are familiar elements. That was certainly the case for me in One of Us Is Dead.It begins with...

This was a fun read, albeit one that took a little while to get into.It opens with the birthday party - and death - of the wealthy Anthony Wistern. Impaled on a spike in a pool, his death draws interest and suspicion from far and wide. If he was murdered, who did it?...