📚’This series just keeps on getting better.’ Sandra reviews Scottish #crimefiction Dead Man’s Stone by @tgreidbooks, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT📚

Today’s team review is from Sandra. She blogs here https://www.firthproof.co.uk/index.php/book-reviews

Sandra has been reading Dead Man’s Stone by T.G. Reid.

DCI Duncan Bone is still on sick leave recovering from injuries sustained in the previous book, and finally getting treatment for his longstanding PTSD, when a sadistic killer who is dying in prison insists on speaking to him about a forty-year-old cold case. Once again, not sure that he is quite ready, he is drawn back into the heart of an investigation linked to high-ranking and well-respected individuals who are prepared to kill to stop the truth from coming out.

The book opens with a horrific prologue that has the reader hooked right away. The deeper the detectives dig, more secrets are uncovered, and witnesses start dying in suspicious circumstances before they can shed any light on what happened. Can DCI Bone and his team find the killer before anyone else has to die?

The characters are well drawn and easy to distinguish; they all bring different skills to the team. The humorous dialogue, which can occasionally be a bit clunky, offsets the grim nature of the crimes they encounter on a daily basis. There is just enough background about their home life to make them well rounded and believable. It’s good that Bone is getting help, as he is much calmer and easier to work with this time round.    The setting in the striking scenery of the Campsie Fells is unusual, and makes a change from the big towns and cities in other detective novels. When I was a child, in the 1960s, it was a favourite place for my family to go for a picnic in the summer. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Dead Man’s Stone, the third book in the series, and am looking forward to book four, The Killing Parade,  when it comes out later this year. This series just keeps on getting better.

Some secrets are worth killling for…

When DCI Duncan Bone is contacted by a terminally-ill psychiatric patient and given clues linking a thirty-year-old unsolved murder to high-profile public figures, he finds himself locked into a conspiracy at the very heart of the Scottish criminal and political establishment.

With his bosses stonewalling the investigation, lives under threat, and his career on the line, Bone faces a race against time to hunt down a group of men who will stop at nothing to cover their murderous crime.

Can DCI Bone catch the killer before the killing starts again?

Set among the dramatic hills and glens of Scotland’s Campsie Fells, Dead Man’s Stone is the third in a series of edge-of-your-seat crime thrillers that will keep you guessing right up to the nail-biting, heart-stopping climax.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS

Is this a case of copy-cat crime? @CathyRy reviews #crimefiction Dark Is The Grave by T. G. Reid

Today’s team review is from Cathy. She blogs here https://betweenthelinesbookblog.wordpress.com/

Cathy has been reading Dark Is The Grave by T.G. Reid

Dark Is The Grave opens with a horrific prologue. PC Hazel Garvey has been abducted and buried alive, a crime which is reminiscent of the Peek-a-Boo serial killer who was killed in an explosion. Also caught in the explosion and seriously injured was DCI Duncan Bone. He was lucky to be alive. Left to cope with PTSD and a ruined home life, he was physically and mentally damaged, which probably accounts for his general irascibility.

When Bone receives a package, ostensibly from his colleagues at the Rural Crime Unit, and finds a video of a woman being murdered, he’s assailed by memories he’d rather not be reminded of. Given that Bone has detailed knowledge of the Peek-a-Boo case, and this appears to be a copycat crime, he is ordered back to lead the investigation.

‘“The digger’s been here.” She pointed at some tracks in the mud that led to a clearing between two or three pallets stacked high with concrete blocks. The trio clambered through the pallets and reached a ten-foot patch of freshly turned clay that stood out against the hard compacted surrounding soil.

“Oh shit. Looks like we’re going to need a warrant,” Walker said.’

“And forensics.” Bone sighed.

I’ll get the negatives out of the way first. My pet peeve. Non speech based dialogue tags such as sneered and smirked and especially those that are equivalent to animal sounds such as snarled and barked. They always pull me right out of a story and make the dialogue and speaker seem unnatural and forced.

Other than that the plot, although gruesome in parts, was good. I didn’t have the slightest idea of the perpetrator until well into the story which is always a bonus. There’s a diverse group of characters, both in Bone’s team and generally—most likeable, others not so much, so a good mix. And I always enjoy short chapters when they build tension and suspense.

3 stars.

A dead cop. A damaged detective. A copycat killer on the loose.

When the chief suspect in the notorious Peek-a-boo cop killer case blew himself up, almost taking lead investigator DCI Duncan Bone with him, the psychologically damaged detective thought his days on the force were over. But when another PC is abducted and murdered in the same deranged Peek-a-boo fashion, Bone is persuaded to return to lead the new investigation. But as Bone and his team hunt a copycat killer, and with time running out before yet another cop is slain, Bone’s terrifying past returns to tear open old wounds and push him to very edge of the abyss.

Can DCI Bone end the killing before the killing ends him?

Set among the dramatic hills and glens of Scotland’s Campsie Fells, Dark is the Grave is the first in a series of edge-of-your-seat crime thrillers that will keep you guessing right up to the nail-biting, heart-stopping climax.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS