For our monthly Oundle Crime blogs we focus on books we’ve read, enjoyed and would recommend. We’re a disparate group and love different crime fiction genres, so we hope we give a balanced selection of novels to try. At our last meeting we talked about so many books we’ve split our blog into two parts and, as always, our choices are listed alphabetically by author. Where we’ve marked titles with an asterisk there should be a copy available at Oundle Library for you to borrow.
The Last Time I Saw Him by Rachel Abbott*
Celia, Juliette and Nadia are strangers who have one thing in common – Ellis Cobain. Celia is his wife, Juliette his most recent mistress, and Nadia a previous mistress. They meet by chance in a Cornish hotel and plot revenge on the nasty piece of work who is Ellis. Then Ellis is found dead on his yacht and the three women are unsure if one of them actually killed him, or whether someone else did. DI Gus Brodie and DS Stephanie King are sent to solve the case and the story is told with flashbacks from each of the three women. Norfolk Gal says she was absolutely hooked on this and it has a brilliant twist at the end. The plot is so clever, with all its twists and turns, that she’s looking for more by this author now. 4 Stars.
Act of Defiance by Andrews & Wilson*
The latest title in Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series. If you like adventures, suspend your disbelief that Jack Ryan could still be President of the USA and just enjoy this story for what it is: a high-octane, action thriller about global politics. In essence, it’s a twenty-first century update of The Hunt for Red October, but none the worse for that. Because both of the authors are navy veterans (one was a nuclear engineer and submariner, the other a navy SEAL) so it feels authentic and it’s completely gripping. An excellent addition to the Clancy canon and both Pink Alpaca and Cornish Eskimo gave it 4+ Stars.
Cover Your Tracks by Clare Askew*
This novel starts with a Scottish-American man marching into the Edinburgh police station, demanding that the police look for his aged parents. He lost contact with them 20 years ago when he stole their life savings and ran off to the USA. Since then, he’d made and lost a fortune and has now returned looking for more money. (Not a nice man!) DI Helen Birch and DS Amy Kato investigate, but they can’t find the old couple and become increasingly worried about the wife when they realise her husband could be dangerous. Freyja says the story is interesting and exciting, although she found the two police women a bit irritating at times. It has a surprising conclusion and earned 4 Stars.
In Too Deep by Lee Child*
We’ve generally found the last few Jack Reacher novels disappointing and believed they lost their way when Lee Child’s brother, ‘Andrew Child’, joined the team in 2020. This is the fifth book credited to both the brothers and it’s a definite improvement on the ones before. Reacher wakes up shackled to a bed but remembers nothing about how he got there. It’s not long before he’s escaped, having done some serious damage to his captors. But, injured and suffering from a bad concussion, he must work out what happened to him and why before he can put things right (aka get revenge). This is a much more interesting plot than the last few novels and Cornish Eskimo hopes it marks the start of a series comeback. 4 Stars.
A Body in the Borderlands by Helen Cox*
A Kitt Hartley mystery. Kitt runs a detective agency with her friend Grace and is giving Joe a month’s work experience. He’s just lost his wife and needs a new direction in his life. A new client, Carly, visits their office and explains that her uncle has gone missing. He’s left her a voice message telling her not to look for him, but that’s unlike him because they are each other’s only family. Kitt and co soon realise that something very strange is going on. Norfolk Gal says this is very far-fetched in places and occasionally rather slow, but the characters are likeable. She described it as an okay read, saying that at one stage she’d nearly abandoned it but was pleased she’d carried on. 3 Stars.
The Wrong Sister by Claire Douglas*
A standalone psychological thriller that MadDog says she just couldn’t put down! Two sisters, Tasha and Alice, look very alike but live very different lives. Tasha is married with two children and has a normal, routine life; Alice is a high-flying scientist who travels the world with her equally successful husband. The book begins with Tasha and her husband in Venice for a short break, having left their children with her sister back in England. They haven’t been there long when news reaches them that Alice’s husband has been killed and Alice is in intensive care, gravely injured. Rushing home they find the police trying to piece events together. No-one can understand why anyone would want to harm Alice. MadDog says the story twists and turns all over the place and she didn’t see the ending coming at all. 4+ Stars.
Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Smasher, a new member of Oundle Crime, told us about listening to the complete works of Sherlock Holmes as e-audiobooks in The Definitive Collection, which is read by Stephen Fry. The collection comprises four novels and five volumes of short stories, and Smasher’s verdict is that listening to them in the correct order, from Book 1 – A Study in Scarlet – through to Book 8, His Last Bow gave him a completely new slant on the stories and characters. All of them are, of course, brilliant mysteries but the one he enjoyed best was the penultimate title: The Valley of Fear. The Definitive Collection as e-audiobooks earned 5 Stars. Highly recommended.
If you’d like to attend a meeting of Oundle Crime to meet other crime fiction fans and chat about the books and authors you enjoy, just email join@friendsofoundlelibrary.org.uk and we’ll send you the details.