REVIEW | The White Cottage Mystery

Series: N/A
Author: Margery Allingham
Genre: adult, mystery
Publish: June 2, 2016 (first published in 1927)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Classic Crime from the Golden Age. Margery Allingham is J.K. Rowling's favourite Golden Age author. 

Eric Crowther collected secrets and used them as weapons. Delighting in nothing more than torturing those around him with what he knew, there is no shortage of suspects when he is found dead in the White Cottage. Chief Inspector Challenor and his son Jerry will have to look deep into everyone's past – including the victim's – before they can be sure who has pulled the trigger. The fact that Jerry is in love with one of the suspects, however, might complicate things.  

The White Cottage Mystery was Margery Allingham’s first detective story, originally written as a serial for the Daily Express in 1927 and published as a book a year later.

REVIEW | The Girl In the Ice

Series: DCI Erika Foster #1
Author: Robert Bryndza
Genre: adult, crime fiction, mystery, thriller
Published: February 12, 2016
Publisher: Bookouture
Purchase: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository

Her eyes are wide open. Her lips parted as if to speak. Her dead body frozen in the ice… She is not the only one.  

When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.  

The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.  

What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?  

As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.  

The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong… resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?  

A page-turning thriller packed with suspense. If you like Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Karin Slaughter, discover Rob Bryndza’s new series today – at a special launch price.

[REVIEW] Sleeping Murder

Series: Miss Marple #13
Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: adult, mystery, crime fiction, detective, thriller, classics
Published: May 1, 2000 (first published 1976)
Publisher: Signet

Gwenda Reed's new home, a charming Victorian villa, is giving the lovely new bride the strangest feeling of déjà vu - and an unnatural dread that's taking its toll. Perhaps her husband's aunt, Miss Marple, can calm the young woman's frayed nerves. But how can anyone solve a mystery such as this when the only clues are those in Gwenda's vivid imagination? As Aunt Jane digs a little deeper she's soon to discover just how truthful - and terrifying - the imagination can be...

"Has all the virtues of Agatha Christie's work: a coherent plot, firm and purposeful narration, and a pleasant style." - Times Literary Supplement 

[REVIEW] The A.B.C. Murders

Series: Hercule Poirot #13
Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: adult, suspense, mystery, thriller, crime fiction, detective, 
Published: February 1, 2011 (first published 1935)
Publisher: HarperCollins

"Let us see, Mr. Clever Poirot, just how clever you can be."

There's a serial killer on the loose, working his way through the alphabet and the whole country is in a state of panic. 

A is for Mrs. Ascher in Andover, B is for Betty Barnard in Bexhill, C is for Sir Carmichael Clarke in Churston. With each murder, the killer is getting more confident - but leaving a trail of deliberate clues to taunt the proud Hercule Poirot might just prove to be the first, and fatal. mistake. 

"Agatha Christie has provided entertainment, suspense, and temporary relief from anxieties and traumas of life both in peace and war for millions through the world." -P.D. James, New York Times bestselling author.

[WAITING ON WEDNESDAY] Career of Evil

Series: Cormoran Strike #3
Author: Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Genre: adult, mystery, crime fiction, contemporary, thriller, detective
Expected Publication: October 22, 2015

When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman’s severed leg.

Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible – and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality.

With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands, and delve into the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men. But as more horrendous acts occur, time is running out for the two of them…

Career of Evil is the third in the highly acclaimed series featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott. A fiendishly clever mystery with unexpected twists around every corner, it is also a gripping story of a man and a woman at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives. 

Cormoran Strike is back, with his assistant Robin Ellacott, in a mystery based around soldiers returning from war.

*             *             *

I’m Waiting Because: I LOVE THIS SERIES, I LOVE Strike, I LOVE Robin. Do I need to say more? If you haven't read this series, I'd say you start NOW! :D

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming can't wait to read.

[REVIEW] And Then There Were None

Series: N/A
Author: Agatha Christie
Genre: adult, classics, mystery, thriller, suspense, detective
Published: November 27, 2013
Purchase: Amazon

"Ten . . ."
Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen." 

"Nine . . ."
At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead. 

"Eight . . ."
Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . one by one they begin to die. 

"Seven . . ."
Who among them is the killer and will any of them survive?  

[REVIEW] Jackaby

Series: N/A

Author: William Ritter
Genre: young adult, historical fiction, detective, mystery, thriller, supernatural, paranormal
Published: September 16, 2014
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository | Barnes&Noble

“Miss Rook, I am not an occultist,” Jackaby said. “I have a gift that allows me to see truth where others see the illusion--and there are many illusions. All the world’s a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain.” 

Newly arrived in New Fiddleham, New England, 1892, and in need of a job, Abigail Rook meets R. F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with a keen eye for the extraordinary--including the ability to see supernatural beings. Abigail has a gift for noticing ordinary but important details, which makes her perfect for the position of Jackaby’s assistant. On her first day, Abigail finds herself in the midst of a thrilling case: A serial killer is on the loose. The police are convinced it’s an ordinary villain, but Jackaby is certain it’s a nonhuman creature, whose existence the police--with the exception of a handsome young detective named Charlie Cane--deny. 

Doctor Who meets Sherlock in William Ritter’s debut novel, which features a detective of the paranormal as seen through the eyes of his adventurous and intelligent assistant in a tale brimming with cheeky humor and a dose of the macabre.

[REVIEW] The Silkworm

Series: Cormoran Strike #2
Author: Robert Galbraith (Pseudonym) for J.K. Rowling
Genre: adult, contemporary, mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Published: June 24, 2014
Publisher: Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company

A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, The Silkworm is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike and his determined young assistant, Robin Ellacott. 

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he hasgone off by himself for a few days – as he has done before – and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. 

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine’s disappearance than his wife realized. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel is published, it will ruin lives – so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. 

And when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before…