Category: Crime Fiction

The Keeper by Tana French

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Penguin| 2 April 2026| 524 pages| e-book| Review copy|5*

Description from Amazon

On a cold night in a remote Irish village, a girl goes missing.

Sweet, loving Rachel Holohan was about to be engaged to the son of the local big shot. Instead, she’s dead in the river.

In a place like this, her death isn’t simple. It comes wrapped in generations-old grudges and power struggles, and it splits the townland in two. Retired Chicago detective Cal Hooper has friends here now and he owes them loyalty, but his fiancée Lena wants nothing to do with Ardnakelty’s tangles. As the feud becomes more vicious, their settled peace starts to crack apart. And when they uncover a scheme that casts a new light on Rachel’s death and threatens the whole village, they find themselves in the firing line.

I’ve read the first two in Tana French’s Cal Hooper series, The Searcher and The Hunter, so I was really keen to read her third, The Keeper. They are all excellent books.

This one completes the Cal Hooper trilogy continuing the story of retired Chicago police officer Cal, his fiancée Lena, teenager Trey Reddy, who is now sixteen, and the rest of the people living in Ardnakelty, a fictional, remote village in Western Ireland. Like the first two books The Keeper begins slowly, but I like the slow build up to the mystery, and I love Tana French’s beautiful descriptions of the Irish rural landscape and her characterisation. I really felt that over the course of the trilogy I have got to know the characters – they come over as real people and I felt for all of them as this story developed.

It’s focused on the death of Rachel Holohan, was it murder or suicide, as her fiancé’s father would have us believe? I’m not going to write in any more detail about the plot other than to say that from the slow start the pace picks up, the tension rises and the twists and turns all make this an impressive and convincing murder mystery. I loved it and only hope that Tana French will write more books about Cal and the others as I’d love to know what happens next.

Tana French has won several awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction.

As well as the Cal Hooper trilogy, she has written a standalone novel, The Wych Elm and six books that form The Dublin Squad series:

In the Woods (2006)
The Likeness (2008)
Faithful Place (2010)
Broken Harbour (2012)
The Secret Place (2014)
The Trespasser (2016

Many thanks to the author and Penguin for a review copy via NetGalley.

Spell the Month in Books – March 2026

Published on by Margaret9 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The options this month are Pi Day, March Madness or Green Covers. I know very little about the first two options and although earlier this month I posted a Top Ten Tuesday post on books with green covers (in honour of St. Patrick’s Day , here are five more books with green covers, all crime fiction novels that I’ve read. The descriptions in italics are taken either from Amazon UK or from Goodreads.

M is for Maigret’s Memoirs by Georges Simenon

This is a fictional autobiography by Georges Simenon writing as Maigret, beginning in 1927 or 1928 when Maigret and Simenon, calling himself Georges Sim, first ‘met’. Maigret looks back to his first ‘meeting’ with Sim. He fills in some of the background of his early life and talks about his father and how he first met his wife, Louise. Simenon had written 34 Maigret novels before this one and Maigret took this opportunity to correct some of Simenon’s inaccuracies.

Simenon drops facts and information piecemeal in his Maigret books and one thing I particularly like in Maigret’s Memoirs is that it is all about Maigret, but I did miss not having a mystery to solve.

A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

Set in and around the fictional town of Santa Teresa, California, based on Santa Barbara, where Grafton has a home in the suburb of Montecito, this is the first book in the alphabet- titled series of books featuring Kinsey Millhone, a private investigator. Laurence Fife, a prominent divorce attorney with a reputation for single-minded ruthlessness on behalf of his clients, is murdered. His wife, Nikki was convicted of his murder. On her release eight years later, she hires Kinsey to find out who had really killed him.

It’s a fast-paced book, easy to read and with no gory details.

R is for Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin

Some cases never leave you.

For John Rebus, forty years may have passed, but the death of beautiful, promiscuous Maria Turquand still preys on his mind. Murdered in her hotel room on the night a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there, Maria’s killer has never been found.

Meanwhile, the dark heart of Edinburgh remains up for grabs. A young pretender, Darryl Christie, may have staked his claim, but a vicious attack leaves him weakened and vulnerable, and an inquiry into a major money laundering scheme threatens his position. Has old-time crime boss Big Ger Cafferty really given up the ghost, or is he biding his time until Edinburgh is once more ripe for the picking?

In a tale of twisted power, deep-rooted corruption and bitter rivalries, Rather Be the Devil showcases Rankin and Rebus at their unstoppable best.

C is for The Case of the Howling Dog by Erle Stanley Gardner

A dog howled by night in the quiet of Milpas Drive, and drove Arthur Cartright crazy with terror. He begged lawyer Perry Mason to bring a warrant against its owner, who, he said, had taught the dog to howl in order to drive him mad. According to superstition the howling meant a death in the neighbourhood, and Cartright appeared to believe it.

But Mason believed that a deeper fear than superstition was impelling his client and when both the dog and its owner were killed he took up the challenge and set himself to find the murderer.

H is for Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie

This begins with the party given by Mrs Drake for teenagers. One of the guests, Joyce Reynolds, a boastful thirteen-year old, who likes to draw attention to herself, announces that once she’d witnessed a murder. It seems nobody believed her and yet later on she is found dead, drowned in the tub used for the bobbing for apples game – someone had believed her and had killed her. Mrs Ariadne Oliver was at the party and she asks Poirot to help in finding the murderer.

The next link up will be on April 4, 2025 when the theme will be: Easter OR Pastel Covers

Spell the Month in Books – February 2026

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The theme this month is a Freebie and I’m featuring books I’ve recently acquired and books I read before I started my blog, so I haven’t reviewed any of them and have linked the titles to the descriptions on Amazon.

F is for Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak, fiction.

Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love (Metro), fiction.

E is for Every Body Should Know This: The Science of Eating for a Lifetime of Health by Dr. Federica Amati, Medical Scientist and Head Nutritionist at ZOE, nonfiction.

‘Dr Federica is a human encyclopaedia when it comes to the science of food and health. This book contains the most critical answers to nutrition that we’ve all been searching for. A must read’– Steven Bartlett

B is for The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi, crime fiction.

‘A cracking plot, colourful local characters and descriptions of the hot, dry countryside so strong that you can almost see the heat haze and hear the cicadas – the perfect read to curl up with’― Guardian

R is for Road Rage by Ruth Rendell, crime fiction.

‘With immaculate control, Ruth Rendell builds a menacing crescendo of tension and horror that keeps you guessing right up to the brilliantly paced finale’― Good Housekeeping

U is for Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy, fiction.

Set in the small village of Mellstock in Thomas Hardy’s fictional Wessex, this is both a love story and a nostalgic study into the disappearance of old traditions and a move towards a more modern way of life. (Amazon)

A is for As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us by Sarah Hurwitz, nonfiction.

‘This book explains antisemitism and the danger it poses—not just to Jews, but to all of us. It also reveals the breathtaking history and resilience of the Jewish people and the beauty of Jewish tradition’ – Van Jones, CNN Host and New York Times bestselling author

R is for The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, fiction.

Returning to his stately English home from the chaos of World War I, a shell-shocked officer finds that he has left much of his memory in the front’s muddy trenches. (Amazon)

Y is for The Years by Virginia Woolf, fiction.

Published in 1937, this was Virginia Woolf’s most popular novel during her lifetime. It’s about one large upper-class London family, spanning three generations of the Pargiter family from the 1880s to the 1930s. (Amazon)

The next link up will be on March 7, 2026 take your pick from Pi Day, March Madness, or Green Covers.

The Bull of Mithros: Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.

The Bull of Mithros by Anne Zouroudi is the 6th book in her Mysteries of the Greek Detective a series I’ve been reading out of order.

Chapter One:

In Mithros’ s harbour, no boat ever came or went unnoticed.

Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.

Page 56:

‘Why are we coming this way, Captain?’ asked Skafidis. ‘What would he be doing over here?’

‘He isn’t in his bed at the camp,’ said the captain, ‘and he left without saying goodbye. That’s not polite, is it Skafldis? He’s a man in a hurry to leave us, and I’d like to know why.

Description from Goodreads

It is summer, and as tourists, drawn by the legend of a priceless missing artifact, disembark on the sun-drenched quay of Mithros, the languid calm of the island is broken by the unorthodox arrival of a stranger who has been thrown overboard in the bay. Lacking money or identification, he is forced for a while to remain on Mithros. But is he truly a stranger? To some, his face seems familiar. The arrival of the investigator Hermes Diaktoros, intrigued himself by the island’s fabled bull, coincides with a violent and mysterious death. This violence has an echo in Mithros’s recent past: in a brutal unsolved crime committed several years before, which, although apparently forgotten may not yet have been forgiven. As Hermes sets about solving the complex puzzle of who is guilty and who is innocent, he discovers a web of secrets and unspoken loyalties, and it soon becomes clear that the bull of Mithros may only be the least of the island’s shadowy mysteries.

If you have read this book, what did you think?

Top Ten Tuesday:Love in Crime Fiction

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is a Love Freebie and I’m featuring Love in Crime Fiction. Some detectives are loners, some are happily married and here are eight of them.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford who first appeared in Agatha Christie’s The Secret Adversary in 1922, are, by the end of the book in love and get married. My favourite book of theirs is By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which is about the mystery of what had happened in the house by the canal, whose child had died and how, and where was Mrs Lancaster? They also appear in a collection of short stories in Partners in Crime, N or M? , By the Pricking of My Thumbs, and Postern of Fate .

Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane first appear in Dorothy L Sayers Strong Poison, in which Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocratic amateur detective, and Harriet Vane, a crime fiction writer, first met. Harriet is on trial for the murder of her former lover, Philip Boyes, who died from arsenic poisoning. Wimsey, attending the trial, is convinced she is innocent and sets out to prove it … and falls in love with her. In Gaudy Night she agrees to marry him and they get married in Busman’s Honeymoon.

Another happily married couple is Commissario Guido Brunetti and his beautiful wife Paola. He often goes home for lunch with Paola, who is a wonderful cook. One of my favourite books from the series is A Sea of Troubles, in which she treats him to a delicious apple cake made with lemon and apple juice and ‘enough Grand Marnier to permeate the whole thing and linger on the tongue for ever.’

Georges Simenon’s Inspector Jules Maigret also has a happy marriage and is another policeman who likes to go home for his lunch with Madam Maigret whenever he can. Is it the food or the wife, I wonder? They also like to take walks after dinner and go to the movies. In A Maigret Christmas Maigret has the day off and had planned to spend a quiet morning cocooned in their apartment and are feeling sad at being childless, particularly so at Christmas.

Dr Watson and Mary Morstan in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books are also happily married. They met and fell in love in The Sign of Four when she visits Baker Street to ask Sherlock Holmes to investigate a bizarre case involving the disappearance of her father and the sending of a single pearl to her every year for the past six years.

Cold case Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie in Val McDermid’s DCI Karen Pirie books is not married, but she was deeply in love with Phil Parhatka, a fellow officer who was killed. McDermid does not write specifically about his death. It occurs in between two books The Skeleton Road and Out of Bounds, in which Karen is grieving for Phil. He was the love of her life, having fallen for him the first week they worked together.

Then there is forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her lover DCI Harry Nelson in the Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths. They have one child and an on/off relationship throughout the series. In the last book, The Last Remains they finally confront their feelings for each other.

And finally Detective Superintendent Roy Grace and Cleo, a mortuary technician in the Roy Grace series by Peter James. Before the series started Roy’s wife, Sandy disappeared and despite all his efforts he was unable to find out why and what happened to her. When he met Cleo they fell in love and after Sandy was declared to be dead they married. Throughout the series more information about Sandy is revealed and her story is finally told in They Thought I was Dead.

The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Penguin| 8 January 2026| 428 pages| e-book| Review copy| 4*

Description

On a cold, snowy winter’s night in 1999, Sander and Killian leave a house party together, in a small town in rural Sweden. The very best of friends, they imagine they will remain so forever.

The next morning, each is a key suspect in a murder. Each has something they want to conceal from the police. And from the other.

The hunt for Mikael Söderström’s killer will take over twenty years. It will see a detective leave the force forever. And it won’t end until a second body is found, and the tight-knit community’s secrets are finally brought to light . . .

My thoughts

The Living and the Dead by Christoffer Carlsson, is translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson Broyles.

This has a slow start. It has a tense atmosphere and a great sense of place, set in Skavböke, a small town in rural Sweden. .There are many characters and it took me quite some time to sort them out – who were related, who were friends and who were police, although the list of characters at the beginning of the book does help. The narrative is told from the different characters’ perspectives, which was also confusing until I had them sorted in my mind and I had to re-read several passages for a while. It’s not a book to read quickly!

By the time I got to the second half of the book and the action picked up pace it was much more satisfying to read. It kept me guessing what was going on and who the culprit was all the way through. I enjoyed all the twists and turns, which took me by surprise. It’s a dark, bleak thriller with plenty of suspense as secret relationships, rumours and rivalries abound in the small town. I particularly enjoyed Carlsson’s description of the Swedish landscape and characterisation.

I didn’t know until after I’d read this book that it is the third book in Carlsson’s Hallandssviten Series. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of his books.

Christoffer Carlsson was born in 1986 on the west coast of Sweden. He holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Stockholm and is one of Sweden’s leading crime experts. Carlsson is the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year, voted by the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy, and has won the prestigious Glass Key award for The Living and the Dead, given to the best Scandinavian crime novel of the year. He’s also won the Best Swedish Crime Novel twice.

My thanks to the publishers, Penguin and NetGalley for a review copy.