📚’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.

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Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT #CrimeFiction MY HANDS ARE TIED by Seam Campbell

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

Sandra has been reading My Hands Are Tied by Sean Campbell

In My Hands Are Tied, DCI David Morton and his wife, Sarah, are invited at the last minute – only a fortnight before – to their son’s wedding, and find themselves at Terra Farm; home to the Collective, and now to Stephen and Abigail, the future daughter-in-law they have yet to meet. The entrance is hidden behind high hedges and a security gate where they are asked to surrender their mobile phones. This level of security all seems a bit much to DCI Morton, but he goes along with it, not wishing to rock the boat. His relationship with his son is difficult enough already without him ruining the ceremony that is about to take place.

When they eventually get inside, Terra Farm is not what they were expecting. It is more like a small village tucked away in a valley, hidden from sight, but actually very close to civilization in SW London. At the centre is the barn, where the ceremony is due to take place, surrounded by eight bungalows, most of which are a bit ramshackle and rundown.

What follows is a bit of a homage to classic detective stories and the ‘country house’ mystery where all the characters are trapped inside, and the detective has his work cut out discovering who the killer is. Here it is a gated commune, dedicated to living an alternative lifestyle, where everyone has something to hide.

Having had a few too many beers after the ceremony, DCI Morton is forced to stay the night. He is woken in the morning by the sound of gunshots; one of the commune members, Guy Rosenberg, has been murdered. Worried that his son might end up being wrongly charged with the crime, he goes against protocol and carries on investigating, when he should have handed the case over to another officer, hoping to find the killer before the weekend is over. Losing his job doesn’t seem to bother him as he was near retirement anyway, but I thought his lack of concern over losing his pension, if found out, was a bit unbelievable.

The story is well written and the characters fleshed out and believable, even though some of them are decidedly weird, but something about this book just does not work for me. This is number seven in a series, but the police officers working on the case did not convince me that they were part of a team. One striking omission is the lack of humorous banter usually found in crime novels.  

I have not read any of the other books in this series, but, while the story worked perfectly well as a standalone, perhaps I would have gained some insight into why this team were not convincing if I had read the series from the beginning.

A last-minute wedding invite drags DCI Morton and his wife to the grounds of Terra Farm to watch his son marry the fiancée they’ve never met.

Nerves about meeting the bride prove to be the least of their worries when they’re awoken by gunshots and one of the guests – the bride’s ex – is found dead.

When Morton’s son becomes the prime suspect, the choice is simple: sit back and let another detective work to imprison his son, or work outside the rules to clear the family name.

As if he had any choice.

MY HANDS ARE TIED is the 7th and final instalment in the DCI Morton series of crime novels.

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