What The Shadows Hide - MJ Lee

 

Book 9 in the DI Ridpath series written by MJ Lee

Ridpath is back and this time, someone is attacking his work colleagues. The Ridpath series has been going for about 5 years, I started reading during before the pandemic and have continued reading the series in parallel with his publication buddies - Marion Todd and Sheila Bugler.

Lee writes and paints the story with such clairty and brilliance, it is amazing he can maintain the pace of the narrative. In this story, Ridpath is again towing the line between his work for the Coroner's office and the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Force, he is essentially doing the work of two men yet he does not lose any of his everyman status as a single father at home to a teenage daughter, but a rebel at heart when it comes to his work.

Ridpath is able to rub people up the wrong way quite easily (I know the feeling), perhaps because he is the one able to get results which endears him to those who work closely enough to him and makes him look like trouble to those who are now too long in the tooth.

The narrative of What The Shadows Hide revolves around a case christened Romeo and Juliet, as two young people (when they passed) who were discovered entombed behind a doorway in an abandoned building during works. With no identification in their possession, the problem is trying to identify the two souls and this leads to the use of DNA genealogy technology to help by a freelancer who was an ex-cop. The GMP want results and Ridpath wants to help his chief coroner Challinor in finding results - yet things take a turn when Challinor is attacked herself in a brutal assault. This attack happens early on in the book so that is not giving anything with the plot and it leaves Ridpath with his deputies - Parkinson to find the answers. They are against the clock to find the solution.

After so many books in any series, you worry that will the character lose its lustre yet the best instances of it not happening - Jack Reacher and Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible franchise - is because the care taken to the story being told. Tom Cruise got Christopher McQuarrie to write, and Lee Child always was able to adapt by taking his creation and dropping him in a new unfamiliar terrain. 

Lee restricts Ridpath to the Greater Manchester postcodes with only mentions of such far flung destinations as Cheshire and Derbyshire, yet Manchester is a vast bastion of differing class structures and like most cities has high rise buildings in its centre and the two up, two down households on the periphery a constant reminder to local governments that reality exists.

What The Shadows Hide is an outstanding read, it is rip-roaring, page-turning and full of vibrancy and zest that is so pleasing to enjoy. Written with reckless abandon and verve by a writer hitting his stride thanks to a great story. Highly recommended.

What The Shadows Hide is out on March 23rd from Canelo Crime

The author MJ Lee is on Twitter @WriterMJLee

When The Dead Speak - Sheila Bugler

The second novel by Eastbourne based novelist Sheila Bugler out from Canelo

Bugler turned some heads with her debut novel I Could Be You released at the start of this year (which seems like ages ago), featuring a gripping page-turning tale set in and around the Southern coastal stretch of Eastbourne with train trips to South London.

This time Bugler takes a tale that is very much based upon you never really know what goes on in your own town and how secrets stay with families.

Dee Doran returns, typically tenacious and takes it upon herself to find out what has happened to a missing Polish immigrant set against a police investigation of a young woman, which her boyfriend detective cannot work on due to a conflict of interest.

Told with real care and precision by Bugler who builds out from the relationships we hold dear, it is key to see how relationships are tested by a see-all community and how such relationship is held in public view.

Again featuring a strong female protagonist, Bugler weaves a narrative that is gripping and finishes strong after a somewhat slow beginning, akin to her contemporary and Canelo stable mate, Marion Todd

For fans of Fiona Barton's work, this is a novel that can be devoured in quick time.

When The Dead Speak is out on July 9th from Canelo 

Hangman

The highly anticipated sequel to Ragdoll by Daniel Cole, has a lot to live up to.  When we finished Ragdoll, the hero Wolf had fled the scene following his colleague Baxter's decision to let him leave the crime scene.  Wolf has gone underground and no-one has seen him, we find Baxter now two years after the end of the Ragdoll murders and the numerous copy cats.  Now there is a new mass murderer who is taking bodies and having them hang from great heights with the word 'BAIT' scored into the torso of the mainly male bodies.

Baxter and her team, including the returning Edmunds have to work with new friends including the ex-pat Rouche, a man born in England but working for the CIA in America who is as disruptive as Wolf was but just as conflicted.

The book has the feel of the writer spreading his wings, but whereas the first book had the social context of fear and panic of unknown attackers on the streets of London, with the media spinning people into a frenzy for their health and safety; this novel though has the feel of being a lost love child of Dan Brown.  Extensive plotting with twists aplenty, by the book characters with little in the way of emotional connection and elaborate set-pieces of action and gore being given precedence over telegraphed dialogue.

This reader feels that following the high-octane, gasping intensity of Ragdoll this is a step backwards although the (very) late introduction of someone means that another book is in the offing and this return to the mean may hopefully incite a return to form.

Cole is a writer who clearly likes to take risks with his writing, compounded intentions and expectations of his readership but for this reader it seems to have come up short to the level of what Ragdoll was, my hope is that the expected third book is a return to that thrilling form.

Hangman is released by Trapeze Books on 22nd March

Blue Gold - book review

Published by Urbane Publications and due for release on 11th May, the debut author by David Barker Blue Gold tells the story of a future world where water is at a premium, a commodity that territories fight over and lives are lost over the ability to drink clean water.

Barker is a part-time economist, who has turned his hand at novel writing and he has successfully crafted a page-turning tub thumping action adventure that is fun to read and shows a real potential. 

Our hero is Sim Atkins, (he goes into why he is called Sim and not Simon) a data analyst for OFWAT, the Government agency for Water regulation, who gets summoned to the Overseas Division after becoming aware of unusual activity from his satellites.  Swiftly Sim is thrust into an odd couple/buddy relationship with Freda, an older female who has a limp as well as emotional baggage and does not welcome the burden of a bothersome partner.

In the same vein of Indiana Jones, James Bond and Bourne, the pair globe trot from Biggin Hill to Brazil to Mount Rushmore to China to the Himalayas.  They encounter many individuals including the brilliantly monikered Bo Brunswick, where swords are crossed and backs stabbed.

Author David Barker's debut

Being British, Barker writes with a particular tongue in cheek imbued by the youthfulness of Sim - who is not familiar with any film from before Star Wars quoted by his partner - coupled with the older more mature Freda, who acts like she has seen it all before yet still keeps her cards close to her chest.

The set pieces and fight scenes are easy to follow and have a zip that reminds you not only of Dan Brown but the far superior work of Matthew Reilly who wrote huge elaborate action adventures with subtle characterisations in unison.

Urbane Publications are a new voice in the big world of publishing, but they continue to strike gold with these new authors with voices and stories to share not only on a small scale but ones that can travel and translate. 

Blue Gold informs us of a world where water levels will rise, water will be in such high demand that people will store ice from each other and it is thought over like oil has been in the late 20th century.  It is a neat twist on a familiar geopolitical tension in the current climate.

Blue Gold will be published by Urbane Publications on 11th May