Mike Crowl, Ted Fox and Geoff Adams review a selection of the latest crime books and thrillers.
It began life as a bestselling e-book before being physically published.
Blood, Wine & Chocolate is a different kettle of fish.
Listed as a ''blackly comic murder mystery'' it's certainly black, though not very comic - I personally found the humour a bit thin.
And it's not really a murder mystery, since we know who kills whom.
It is surprisingly violent, with a lot of peripheral deaths as well.
The lives of three young boys criss-cross.
Vinnie is the son of a not-very-prosperous accountant who becomes decidedly more prosperous when he begins to work for a London gang lord.
The gang lord's arrogant grandson is Marcus, a friend of Vinnie. The wealthy surroundings Marcus is brought up in cover a multitude of illegal and vicious acts.
The third boy, Tom, is the son of a brutal father.
As an adult he becomes Marcus' brutal second-in-command.
After a teenage career of petty crime, Vinnie decides to go straight, and falls into the wine business, for which he has a distinct flair.
He meets and marries Anna, a woman with an equal flair for specialised chocolate-making, and their lives seem set for an idyllic future.
But Vinnie still has some not-so-straight connections, and one night he witnesses two murders that cause him and his wife to end up on a witness protection programme, which sends them to New Zealand.
The wine and chocolate are described in loving and detailed terms, which will appeal to wine and chocolate buffs.
Readers who enjoy thrillers will find this to be a page-turner that's likely to be consumed in a couple of gulps.
- MIKE CROWL
The other half of the story focuses on 82-year-old Rose, whose mind shifts back and forwards between the present and a tragic event when she was 10, after she and her sister were shifted out of London because of WW2 bombing.
Rose is one of the rest-home patients, and insists something very bad is going on there.
Naturally she's never believed, except by her former social worker (who is banned from the building) and eventually by Catherine.
But what exactly is going on takes a bit of uncovering. It's considerably more disturbing than what happened to Rose and her sister in the 1940s.
The two vividly drawn characters hold the reader's attention as the story shifts back and forth, and the suspense is considerable.
The climax won't be to everyone's taste, but the book is deftly written and will keep you up until you finish it.
- MIKE CROWL
The White Van is all about San Francisco's underbelly: dirty cops, Russian drug dealers, Chinese black-market traders, street-smart Cambodians and shady entrepreneurs.
Whisky drinking, drug-hustling Emily Rosario finds herself drugged, disoriented, wanted for robbery and on the run for her life.
Broke, alcoholic and desperate cop Leo Elias, looking for a way out, tempted by the stolen money, hopes to find Emily and the missing cash before anyone else does.
It's a thriller with more than a ring of truth and is a worthwhile read.
Author Patrick Hoffman, 10 years a private investigator, spent his days and nights tracking down witnesses in some of the most violent neighbourhoods in the San Francisco Bay Area.
On his lunch break, he would park his van (a white one) and write this novel for an hour a day.
- TED FOX
Haiti's ongoing socio-economic problems, including its record high unemployment rates, have prompted the country's impoverished to find unconventional sources of income.
As a result, and due to the lack of adequate security forces, the kidnapping threat in Haiti is likely to increase in the future.
This is the background against which Roxane Gay's gripping first novel is set.
It's the story of an American lawyer, Mireille Jameson, who is kidnapped while visiting her rich parents in Port-au-Prince.
Mireille, narrator and young mother, is a privileged Haitian whose parents live a lavish lifestyle within a wealthy seaside compound, outside which her countrymen live in relentless poverty.
Her father, Sebastien, is a hard-working man who made his fortune in the US and returned to build a profitable business in Haiti.
Thugs seeking a million-dollar ransom from her rich father, kidnap Mireille at gunpoint in front of her husband and infant son as they leave the compound.
Mireille suffers bloodily at the hands of her kidnappers over the course of the next 13 days, while Sebastien refuses to negotiate with his daughter's captors, refusing to give away his hard-won fortune to criminals who will stop at nothing.
It is searing yet powerful story of a woman forced into an ''untamed state''.
- TED FOX
The recently widowed Lady Griffin-Clark secures a day pupil place at Cheltenham Ladies' College for her wayward 17-year-old daughter, the story narrator, Isabella (Izzy).
It's a fresh start for Izzy, taking her away from her beloved London and into a village in the North Cotswolds where her mother has bought the unoccupied Stagcote Manor.
The manor is an unnerving place for Izzy, a place where things go bump in the night and where unlucky is not unusual, it's the norm.
And where, in the village, antiquated ideas still dictate villagers' beliefs.
The village is alive with bizarre superstitions, some unexplained and relating to the number seven.
It's a spooky read, the narrative being a sort of Hot Fuzz meets The Wicker Man.
Not to be read by those of a nervous disposition who intend visiting the Cotswolds.
- TED FOX
This is a story of revenge that has its beginnings in WW2.
It starts when 92-year-old Jossi Goldberg, supposed Holocaust survivor and US citizen, is executed in his German home with a shot to the head.
Nothing is what it seems and investigators Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein find new riddles and inconsistencies arising with each new development.
But everything has a meaning and they become clear to Pia and Oliver as the total picture emerges.
The trail leads Pia and Oliver all the way back to the end of World War 2 and the area of Poland that then belonged to East Prussia.
The twists and turns of the unfolding plot will keep you guessing until the very end, with the revelations offering a fascinating view of past and present.
- TED FOX
Belfast 1985: it's Maggie Thatcher, ''The Troubles'', gun runners and Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) investigating a brutal double murder and a suicide. Or is it? Something doesn't add up, and people keep dying.
Every time he goes to use his car, Duffy, living in the middle of a Protestant housing estate and hated by all, checks it for bombs and deals with his neighbours' anti-Catholic feelings.
Scenes are summed up in spare, witty phrasing.
''Twelve-year-old Islay. Good stuff if you liked peat, smoke, earth, rain, despair and the Atlantic Ocean, and who doesn't like that?''
It's a thriller in the 1940s tradition, dark and humorous, set in a country in confusion, with an alcoholic detective who sets his own rules. Nice.
- TED FOX
I'm not sure whether Return to Moondilla is a romance trying to be a thriller or vice versa.
Aspiring writer Greg Baxter (''successful, handsome, martial arts expert and excellent cook'') returns home to Moondilla to write the great ''Australian'' novel.
He re-meets a girl now a doctor in Moondilla and last seen by Greg heading for London after he'd taught her martial arts.
The blurb says ''evocative Australian setting'', but apart from the fish, it's Australian only insofar as there are a few 'roos loose in the top paddock. An undemanding read.
- TED FOX
J.D. Robb just keeps adding to her immensely popular stream of detective bestsellers. Obsession in Death is the 40th in the series featuring the smart homicide cop Eve Dallas and her husband, billionaire Irish businessman (and e-geek) Roarke.
The clever twist is that the books are set in the future, with some robot people featuring and all sorts of smart technology developments.
So the author is, after 20 years of writing, still producing action-packed new plots and exploiting new inventions.
They are enjoyed by avid fans waiting for the latest thriller bursting with Robb's predictions, clever plot ideas and warmly human characterisations.
I never tire of this series.
- GEOFF ADAMS
