Tag: crime

#BookReview Mother of Valor by Gary Corbin

whatcathyreadnext

Mother of ValorAbout the Book

Val’s toughest adversary yet is someone she hardly knows: her mother.

As part of a prostitution sting operation, rookie cop Val Dawes uncovers a national sex trafficking ring operating out of Clayton, one with ties to a violent shadowy right-wing splinter group. Her investigation reveals the group may be planning a violent attack in a matter of days.

Just when the investigation heats up, her estranged mother, who left without a trace a decade before, suddenly reappears on the scene, with a nine-year-old brother Val never knew she had. Manipulative and cunning, her mother divides Val’s attention and loyalties, seemingly intent on disrupting both Val’s promising career and her rekindled relationship with her father.

As Val the group’s violent plans near, Val tries to safeguard her family, leading to shocking discoveries about why her mother returned – and why she left in the first place.

Can Val keep her community safe without destroying her family?

Format: ebook (440 pages)                   Publisher: Double Diamond Publishing
Publication date: 6th December 2022 Genre: Crime

Find Mother of Valor on Goodreads

Pre-order/Purchase link
Amazon UK
Link provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

I’ve read a quite a few of Gary Corbin’s novels including the book that preceded this one, A Better of Valor, the third in his crime series featuring rookie cop Valorie Daws. Mother of Valor can definitely be read as a standalone because the author includes key details of previous events in Val’s life. In fact, certain plot lines in the book relate back to her childhood experiences.

For Val, her mother is the woman who abandoned her and her brother, Chad, the woman who failed to believe Val’s version of an event that took place when she was thirteen, and the woman who has made no effort to contact them since. In fact, Val wonders if her mother is even still alive. It turns out to be much more complicated than that. The reader learns, well before Val does, that there is something much more sinister about Val’s mother than just the fact she abandoned her husband and children. It injects a real sense of tension and unease into the story.

Val’s family history becomes entwined with the investigation into the activities of far right extremist groups who exist in a shadowy world and are prepared to manipulate others to achieve their aims.  As the book progresses, the reader knows Val is about to learn some unpleasant truths about her mother and at the same find herself on the front line in some dangerous situations – and faced with some difficult choices.

Although courageous, resilient and highly competent in her professional life, Val’s past experiences have left her vulnerable in other respects, fearful of physical relationships. Up until now, that is, because she is in the first tentative stages of a relationship with Gil Kryzinski, her former partner/boss. Gil is a wonderful character and I loved the tender, undemanding way he approaches their relationship.

In case you think this is all getting a bit lovey-dovey, I can reassure you Mother of Valor has an exciting, fast-moving plot involving political intrigue, corruption and some really ruthless, unhinged individuals. It all feels scarily realistic and contemporary. And there are some breathless ‘race against time’ scenes towards the end of the book in which Val and her police colleagues confront the individuals behind a despicable plot that threatens many lives.

If you’re looking for a skilfully crafted police procedural with a strong female character, then Mother of Valor will tick all your boxes.

My thanks to the author for my digital review copy.

In three words: Gripping, pacy, chilling

Gary CorbinAbout the Author

Gary is an award-winning author, editor, and playwright in Camas, WA, a suburb of Portland, OR.

Lying in Judgment, his Amazon.com best-selling legal thriller, was released in early 2016, was selected as Bookworks.com “Book of the Week” in July 2016, and is one of six novels worldwide featured in the Literary Lightbox “Indie Spotlight” for Autumn/Winter 2016-17. His current series, the Valorie Dawes Thrillers, consists of three published books, the most recent, A Better Part of Valor, was released on September 21, 2021. The fourth book in the series, Mother of Valor, will release in November, 2022.

Gary is a member of PDX Playwrights, the Willamette Writers Group, the Northwest Independent Editors Guild, the Portland Area Theater Alliance, and the Bar Noir Writers Workshop, and participates in workshops and conferences in the Portland, Oregon area.

A homebrewer as well as a maker of wine, mead, cider, and soft drinks, Gary is a member of the Oregon Brew Crew and a BJCP National Beer Judge. He loves to ski, cook, and garden, and hopes someday to train his dogs to obey. And when that doesn’t work, there’s always Renegade’s Paradise. (Photo/bio: Author website)

Connect with Gary
Website | Twitter | Facebook

#BookReview The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz

whatcathyreadnext3 Comments

The Sentence is DeathAbout the Book

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late…”

These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer. Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine – a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realises that these secrets must be exposed – even at the risk of death…

Format: Hardback (384 pages)            Publisher: Century
Publication date: 1st November 2018 Genre: Crime

Find The Sentence Is Death on Goodreads

Purchase links
Bookshop.org
Disclosure: If you buy a book via the above link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops

Hive | Amazon UK
Links provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The Sentence is Death is the second book in the author”s crime mystery series featuring former Detective Inspector turned private investigator Daniel Hawthorne, and his often hapless sidekick, one Anthony Horowitz. I’m a huge fan of the series and, in fact, I’ve read all the other books – The Word is Murder, A Line to Kill and The Twist of a Knife. This one completes the set. It’s also one of the books on my list for the #NetGalleyNovember reading challenge having been languishing on my NetGalley shelf for four years.

I always imagine Anthony Horowitz chuckling away to himself as he writes these books because of our narrator’s constant grumbling about how he would much rather be writing fiction than, in his role as Hawthorne’s biographer, dutifully documenting the progress of the investigation, and how he wishes he could include scenes that would be more exciting for the reader. ‘Sadly, none of these possibilities were available to me. I was stuck with the facts. My job was to follow Hawthorne’s investigation, setting down his questions and occasionally trying, without much success, to make sense of the answers. It was really quite frustrating. It wasn’t so much writing as recording.’

Horowitz longs to find out more about Hawthorne, more than just that he likes constructing Airfix models, belongs to a book club and is a chain smoker. He’s also intrigued by Hawthorne’s past, convinced there is some secret to do with Hawthorne’s dismissal from the police force, and eagerly collecting any scrap of information. Hawthorne’s plain-speaking and non-PC views also concern him. After documenting one particular conversation, he protests ‘I can’t put that sort of stuff in the book… People won’t like it… They won’t like you’.

Horowitz acts as a kind of Dr Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes, even if Hawthorne is rather scathing about the abilities of Conan Doyle’s fictional creation. Anthony is always one step behind when it comes to spotting the clues that will lead to the identity of the murderer. Actually, that’s a bit unfair; he often spots the clues but reaches a completely wrong conclusion about what they mean.  From time to time he gets a little disgruntled at Hawthorne’s unwillingness to share his thoughts on the case. ‘Whenever Hawthorne saw anything or worked something out, he deliberately kept it from me as if the whole thing was some sort of game.’

Each of the book’s cast of characters at one point or another appears to have the motive, means and opportunity to have committed the murder of Richard Pryce. As Horowitz innocently observes, ‘It was almost as if they were queuing up to be suspects’. There are the usual red herrings and false trails beloved of crime novelists, as well as cast-iron alibis than turn out to be anything but. Horowitz also comes up against the formidable DI Cara Grunshaw who is determined to beat Hawthorne to an arrest and doesn’t much care what she has to do to achieve it.

Alongside the investigation, there are references to the author’s work – his Alex Rider series, his Sherlock Holmes novels and his TV drama Foyles War – but these are balanced by his self-deprecating observations. There is also some gentle poking of fun at the snobbery of the literary establishment. And I suspect the author had a lot of fun writing the excerpt from a Game of Thrones-like fantasy novel.

The Sentence is Death is a clever, witty and thoroughly entertaining murder mystery.

Try something similar: A Three Dog Problem by S. J. Bennett

AnthonyHorowitzAbout the Author

Bestselling author Anthony Horowitz has written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; three James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day and With a Mind to Kill; the acclaimed bestselling mystery novels Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders and the Detective Hawthorne novels, The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, A Line To Kill, and the latest A Twist of Knife.

He is also the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, and responsible for creating and writing some of the UK’s most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. In January 2022 he was awarded a CBE for his services to literature.

Connect with Anthony
Website | Twitter