DP54Cover - Deadly Pleasures

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Deadly Pleasures
and on a separate track we trace the events leading up to
a character having his hands cut off.
I’m not sure I’d want to spend too much time in Mo
Hayder’s mind if her plots are any indication of what is
usually going on in there. Scary, and certainly one of a
kind. The author will be attending Bouchercon this year for
the first time and I’m looking forward to finally meeting
her.
BRUNO, CHIEF OF POLICE by Martin Walker
(Quercus, £12.99). Rating: A- First novel. Bruno
Courreges may have a grand title of Chief of Police, but in
reality he is the municipal policeman of the small town of
St. Denis in the beautiful Perigord region of southwestern
France. He loves the town and his people and has a fierce
loyalty to both. Most of the time the
most serious thing on his plate will be
thwarting the EU inspectors as they
come through town and try to enforce
unreasonable EU regulations on the
town businesses. But all that changes
when an old man, the head of a local
Algerian immigrant family, is found
murdered, in what at first blush appears
to be a hate crime. The crime is
investigated at a higher level than his,
but they rely on him for his local knowledge.
I would characterize BRUNO,
CHIEF OF POLICE as an intelligently
written cozy mystery. Bruno is eminently
likeable and reminds me of
Rumpole in the way he cleverly manipulates
people for the good of the
whole community – and this is reflected
in the ultimate resolution of the story.
This supplied a nice change of pace
from the pretty steady stream of hardboiled
crime fiction coming out of the U.K. nowadays.
Maggie Mason Review
NO SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES by The
Mulgray Twins (Allison & Busby, £18.99). Debut novel.
Rating: C+ DJ Smith is an undercover agent for HM
Revenue & Customs, and works with a unusual partner, a
sniffer cat, Gorgonzola. They are assigned to sniff out a
heroin smuggling ring, thought to be operating in Edinburgh.
DJ notes the White Heather Hotel doesn’t allow pets, so
she fakes car trouble, and sneaks in Gorgonzola. Morag
Mackenzie, the proprietress and her husband Murdo run
the hotel and have a side business selling tinned haggis
There are many suspicious characters at the
hotel, but several of them come to a bad end, leaving DJ
with fewer suspects than usual in a case like this. An
American golfing enthusiast is her prime suspect. DJ
follows many leads, and ultimately uncovers the smuggling
operation, in a manner that was verging on the unbelievable.
There were some good things about the book,
mostly the setting. I wasn’t fond of the characters, and
thought they were cliched. I did like the way DJ was able
to handle not being allowed to have Gorgonzola in the
hotel. DJ’s age was never clear to me, though I initially
thought she was much older than I later concluded she was.
As this is a first novel, if time permitted, I would read
another in the series
Cath Staincliffe Reviews
BLEEDING HEART SQUARE (Michael Joseph,
£16.99). 1934 and aristocrat Lydia Langstone flees
her violent husband but has nowhere to go. In desperation
she makes her way to Bleeding Heart Square and the
shabby lodging house where her down-at-heel drunken
father (who Lydia never knew) lets a room from Joseph
Serridge. The house was owned by a
middle-aged spinster, Miss Penhow, who
disappeared some years before. Narton,
a plain-clothes policeman is watching
the house and someone is sending ghoulish
parcels to Joe Serridge - rotting
hearts. A labyrinthine mystery, devilish
plotting, terrific suspense and atmosphere
you could bottle - all the elements
that characterise Taylor’s stories,
are here. The nuances of class and
status, the legacy of the Great War and
the rise of British Fascism are part of
rich fabric that Taylor uses to tell his
tale. Superb.
CRY FOR HELP by Steve
Mosby (Orion, £18.99). Dave Lewis is a
magician. He knows the secrets that lie
behind the tricks and illusions and spends
his time publishing a magazine debunking
spiritualists and other charlatans
who con the public. It’s an endeavour
rooted in his own experience: after the murder of his
brother, Dave watched his parents scrabble for comfort
and meaning in the company of frauds and mediums.
Detective Sam Currie is haunted by his failure to prevent
his son Neil’s death and tries to redeem himself through his
work. A serial killer is abducting young women and sending
texts and emails from them to their friends and families
while the victims are tied up and slowly die of thirst. When
Currie discovers that Dave Lewis is linked both to the
women and to those instrumental in Neil’s death, he is
determined to hunt him down. There is always a fresh,
original slant to Mosby’s writing. Excellent at capturing
contemporary lifestyles and concerns, this is engaging
story-telling delivered with panache and assurance.
THE TWILIGHT TIME by Karen Campbell
(Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99). Sergeant Anna Cameron
starts work in the Flexi Unit, policing Glasgow’s notorious
Drag. This is a place of working girls and drug deals.
Several local prostitutes have been attacked by a man who
uses his knife to carve initials on their faces. Then an old
Polish man is found murdered in his flat. The Twilight Time
is written in gutsy, gritty prose with some laugh out loud
descriptions: “He looked like a coconut ice, spider-veined