Me and my sisters- Sinead Moriarty

A pleasant read if a little predictable in places.  Julie, Sophie and Louise are very different personalities and have drifted apart slightly as they have grown older but as problems hit them they discover that blood is thicker than water and they do all pull together.  The story is nicely told with chapters alternating between the three of them and we also have the funny storyline of their brother Gavin who insists on being called Willow to blend in with his tree hugging friends!!

Lucifer's Tears- James Thompson

Inspector Kari Vaara returns in this book.  A woman is found murdered in her lover's flat with her lover beside her claiming he has been hit over the head.  Vaara is under great pressure to wrap up the case quickly and arrest the lover.  However, he feels this is all too convenient and pursues the case more.  He is also told to investigate the war crimes committed by a now 90 year old man and these implicate his grandfather also.
In his private life Kari's wife Kate is 8 and a half months pregnant and her brother and sister from America are staying with the couple leading to cultural and family tensions.  All in all I really enjoyed this book and hope there will be another one in the series. A few times I felt that the translation seemed a little clumsy but on the whole it read well.

Only the innocent- Rachel Abbott

 Sir Hugo Fletcher is found murdered in his home, tied to the bed in such a way that the police are convinced that the perpetrator of the crime must be a woman.  Sir Hugo's charity work made him famous for rescuing eastern european girls from prostitution and prociding somewhere for them to go but what of his private life?  This begins to be revealed to us through a series of letters his second wife Laura wrote to her childhood best friend Imogen.  The public figure and the private man don't match up.  DCI Tom Douglas has no shortage of women he could consider to be suspects but he finds it very difficult to penetrate the tight circle of loyalties that exist for Sir Hugo and between one another. 

This book is told in a clever way because there is the ongoing police investigation into what has happened but this doesn't dominate the storyline and there are also the letters written from Laura to Imogen as well as the discussions these letters provoke between the two friends.  As the book progresses there are more and more layers evident.  I was very slightly disappointed by the ending and for this reason I have gone for 4* and not 5.

Impeding Justice- Mel Comley

After being impressed with cruel justice I downloaded this one and it does not disappoint at all. The book opens with Pete, Lorne's partner, being shot and from there on it is a battle against the clock and against the "Unicorn" a criminal Lorne has been hunting down for 8 years. He is a master of escape and has no end of people that he is controlling. Lorne is desperate to catch him particularly after he starts targetting members of her family.

Tensions still exist between Lorne and husband Tom about the amount of time she is spending at work but these tensions don't seem to be as severe as in the first book. It will be interesting to see whether they have further improved by the time the third book is read.

My only criticism was the ending...guess I'll just have to download the next book though

Blood line- Lynda La Plante

Anna Travis is approached by a man whose son has gone missing.  Eventually DCS Langton tells her to start investigating it.  When Anna questions the man's girlfriend she admits he has gone missing but says she thinks he has run off with another woman.  Anna finds herself in a strange situation trying to work out what has happened. A pool of blood is discovered under the bed but there are very few personal belongings at the flat so obtaining DNA samples to compare to the blood is not possible.  All the reports received about Alan Rawlins say that he is a hard working, polite, quiet man and there appears to be no reason for him to have disappeared or been killed.  Travis finds herself getting very frustrated by the amount of interference by Langton and it is unclear for a while whether their shared past is going to jeopardise the case.

I really enjoyed this book.  I found it really easy to read and was realy interested to find out what did happen to Alan Rawlins.  There weren't too many characters in the book so it was easy to "get to know them".  In this case Anna worsk with a new team of detectives so will be interesting to see if this team continues next time or whether Mike Lewis et al return

The cleansing- Bill Rogers

DCI Tom Caton has to find out who the murder victim is as well as who the murderer is.  As the reader we know the answer to one of those questions- Albert Stephen is the murderer and the book switches between what he is doing and what the detectives are doing.  Even once Caton and his team have found out who the victim is they can find no reason for the murder to have taken place.  Strangely enough though the murderer seems quite keen to show himself to CCTV cameras and ensure people get a good look at him.
This is a really well written first book in a series.  The characters are well developed and likeable.  Despite there being quite a lot of characters introduced I didn't feel like I lost track of them at all.  Am now going to download the second in the series!

Touch- Mark Sennes

DI Charlottes Savage is investigating the murders of several women.  Her husband is a naval officer who is away from home leaving her to bring up her children with the help of Stefan their nanny! 
Harry is a rapist and killer and as the story progresses we learn something of the reasons why he does these things.  The story alternates between finding out what is happening with Harry and what is happening with the investigation.
The story is based in and around Plymouth and reads very easily.  It is not particularly gory and on the whole has a satisfactory ending.  I am pleased to see there is a second book lined up for release.  I look forward to getting to know some of the main characters better

The Cipher Garden- Martin Edwards

This is the second in the series that I have read and I feel that as a series it is starting to pick up pace. For some reason I found it hard to remember the connections between some of the characters in this story- they all seem to be ex partners of each other.

DCI Hannah Scarlett has reopened the case of Warren Howe who was murdered folowing a a tip off. Daniel Kind is uncertain as to why his garden is laid out the way it is and his investigating into this ends up tying in with Hannah's investigations into Howe's death

Vigilante- Kerry Wilkinson

Now you see her- Joy Fielding

Marcy Taggart is visiting Ireland on what should be her second honeymoon but her husband isn't with her as he left her for another woman. While in a bar she sees her daughter walking past. the only problem is that her daughter disappeared and is presumed to have killed herself two years ago as she was suffering from depression. Marcy has never accepted this explanation and sets out to track her down.

This is the second Joy Fielding book I have read and the characters she develops are very believeable and likeable. The storyline jumps from the present to Marcy's memories either of her childhood growing up with a mother suffering from manic depression or to her time as a mother dealing with her daughter's manic depression. It was a gripping read but I would say that I preferred "Still Life" to this one

The shadow of death- Tim Ellis

I thought this was the weakest of the Parrish and Richards books I've read so far.  It felt slightly unbelieveable with Parrish being suspended (because of someone else's agenda) yet co-ordinating his own investigation from his own home with the support of several other officers and Toadstone the forensic scientist.
The actual storyline wasn't bad but did seem a bit like a repeat of previous books.  I'll still look out for the next one in the hope that it will be back to the previous high standard.

The hanging wood- Martin Edwards

Orla Payne's brother disappeared 20 years ago and was presumed to have been killed by their uncle who sunsequently killed himself in the appropriately named hanging wood.  Orla has recently returned to the Lake District and contacts the cold case review team but her drunken ramblings are not very coherent.  Later she is also found dead and the case into her brother's death is reopened along with an investigation into her death.
This is the fifth in the Hannah Scarlett/Daniel Kind series and the third I have read.  I really enjoyed this one and am going to hunt out the two that I have missed. 

The Black house- Peter May

Fin MacLeod is called to investigate a murdered committed on the Isle of Lewis which bears a strong resemblance to one that he was the lead investigator of in Edinburgh.  MacLeod grew up on the Isle of Lewis so the victim and many of the suspects are familiar to him.  This story alternates between the present when he is investigating the case and the past as he was growing up on the Island.  It aslo alternates between being written in the third person (in the present) and the first person (in the past).  I thought there were some really strong parts to this story but there were also some parts that were fairly weak and believeable.  I will keep an eye open for the second in the series and see how that follows

Good as dead- Mark Billingham

DS Helen Weeks goes into her local newsagents for a bar of chocolate and some chewing gum. Within minutes she and a fellow customer are being held hostage at gunpoint by the owner Javed Akter who believes his son was murdered whilst in prison despite the official verdict being suicide.

Akter insists that DI Tom Thorne reinvestigates what happened and retore justice otherwise he will kill his prisoners.

This was a completely gripping book with action alternating between what was happening inside the shop, the responses of the hostage negotiators and Thorne's investigations. It was impossible not to feel sympathy with many of the characters as they were all well rounded and believeable. I had no idea how the book was going to end and it was only towards the end that Thorne's investigations dominated the storyline.

Brilliant installment in the series- can't wait for the next one now!!