Rewind, recap: Weekly update w/e 11/10/20

Another week, another achievement of absolutely nothing. Well – nothing apart from reading and buying books anyway lol. I think the closer we get towards winter and the clocks changing at the end of the month, the less inclined I am to do anything. I use the weather as an excuse but really I am just plain tired and beyond strolling into town to grab a coffee, lack the energy to do anything. I don’t want to waste the limited freedom we have, but sometimes it is just hard to find that get up and go, you know? and I was so busy and distracted by work last week, I even forgot to take pictures of my colleague of the day, so here is the one and only picture I remembered last week.

Colleague of the day (week – who knows?)

I had a bit of a splurge last week on the old book buying front and I’m not remotely sorry. My signed copy of The Devil And The Dark Water by Stuart Turton turned up, as did the signed copies of Betrayal by Lilja Sigurdardottir and The Creak On The Stairs by Eva Björg Ægisdottir. I also treated myself to copies of The Healer and Dark As My Heart by Antti Tuomainen, just because I could. Who needs a better excuse, huh? Because I want to make 2021 a year os series catch up, I’ve bought the first three Detective Kubu books by Michael Stanley too, A Carrion Death, A Deadly Trade and Death of the Mantis. Spoiling myself a bit I know, but I picked up Karin Slaughter’s Fallen for the bargain price of 99p, and The Haunting of Brynn Wilder by Wendy Webb and Girls of Brackenhill by Kate Moretti as my Prime picks from Amazon.

i did get one surprise bit of book post this week in the shape of the second Capital Crime book box. This month it’s paperback copies of What Lies Between Us by John Marrs and Remember Me by Amy McLellan, both cracking books. Not too late to sign up to the scheme if you would like to.

One new Netgalley book this week that I don’t even remember requesting, but hey ho lol. I probably did. The Game by Luca Veste. that was my lot but, arguably, it’s probably more than enough lol.

Books I have read

Deadly Cry by Angela Marsons

You have to stop me from hurting anyone else. I don’t want to do these horrible things. Help me before I’m forced to do it again. And I will do it again because I have no choice. I’ve never had a choice.

In a busy shopping centre, a little girl clutches a teddy bear, clinging to it in the absence of her mother, Katrina. Hours later, Katrina’s body is discovered in an abandoned building. For Detective Kim Stone, it looks like a quick, functional murder. But Kim’s instincts tell her there’s more to this senseless murder than meets the eye. What was the motive for killing a young mother out shopping with her child?

Days later, a second victim is found in a local park, her neck broken just like Katrina’s and her six-year-old son missing.

But with her colleague, Detective Stacey Wood, working on another unsolved crime and a member of the team grieving the loss of a close relative, Kim is struggling to make inroads on what is fast becoming a complex case. And when a handwritten letter from the killer lands on Kim’s desk addressed to her, and pleading for help, she knows time is running out to bring the little boy home alive.

With the support of a handwriting analyst and profiler, Kim and the team begin to get inside the mind of the killer and make a shocking discovery.

Some of the victims have scratch marks on their wrists.

But these are no random scratches. The killer is using them to communicate with someone. The question is… with whom?

And if Kim doesn’t find them soon, another innocent soul will die.

The Coral Bride by Roxanne Bouchard

When an abandoned lobster trawler is found adrift off the coast of Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, DS Joaquin Moralès begins a straightforward search for the boat’s missing captain, Angel Roberts – a rare female in a male-dominated world. But Moralès finds himself blocked at every turn – by his police colleagues, by fisheries bureaucrats, and by his grown-up son, who has turned up at his door with a host of his own personal problems.

When Angel’s body is finally discovered, it’s clear something very sinister is afoot, and Moralès and son are pulled into murky, dangerous waters, where old resentments run deep.

Exquisitely written, with Bouchard’s trademark lyrical prose, The Coral Bride evokes the power of the sea on the communities who depend on it, the never-ending struggle between the generations, and an extraordinary mystery at the heart of both.

Winterkill by Ragna Jónasson

When the body of a nineteen-year-old girl is found on the main street of Siglufjörður, Police Inspector Ari Thór battles a violent Icelandic storm in an increasingly dangerous hunt for her killer … The chilling, claustrophobic finale to the international bestselling Dark Iceland series.

Easter weekend is approaching, and snow is gently falling in Siglufjörður, the northernmost town in Iceland, as crowds of tourists arrive to visit the majestic ski slopes.

Ari Thór Arason is now a police inspector, but he’s separated from his girlfriend, who lives in Sweden with their three-year-old son. A family reunion is planned for the holiday, but a violent blizzard is threatening and there is an unsettling chill in the air.

Three days before Easter, a nineteen-year-old local girl falls to her death from the balcony of a house on the main street. A perplexing entry in her diary suggests that this may not be an accident, and when an old man in a local nursing home writes ‘She was murdered’ again and again on the wall of his room, there is every suggestion that something more sinister lies at the heart of her death…

As the extreme weather closes in, cutting the power and access to Siglufjörður, Ari Thór must piece together the puzzle to reveal a horrible truth … one that will leave no one unscathed.

Chilling, claustrophobic and disturbing, Winterkill marks the startling conclusion to the million-copy bestselling Dark Iceland series and cements Ragnar Jónasson as one of the most exciting authors in crime fiction.

A little bit better than last week, but they were three cracking books so I’m more than happy. And with completing The Coral Bride, I also managed to complete my challenge to myself for 2020 – to finish reading all 106 currently published Orenda books titles. (It’s 107 if you include Winterkill but as that’s not out until December and January in paperback, I’m not counting it yet.) Look at them all. Aren’t they pretty?

Full enough week on the blog – recap below;

#Review – A Prayer For The Broken – Mark Tilbury
#Review – The Mine – Antti Tuomainen
#Review – The Man Who Died – Antti Tuomainen
#Review – Palm Beach Finland – Antti Tuomainen
#Review – Little SIberia – Antti Tuomainen

The week ahead is packed out too – three blog tours in fact. No Fear by Casey Kelleher; Portrait of the Spy as a Young Man by Edward Wilson and Dead Perfect by Noelle Holten. Can’t wait.

Hope you all have a brilliant week. I am trying to make sure that at least one day this week I get out and about for a walk. Looking at the weather, I think the weekend looks like the most likely time for it. Wish me luck. I am going to leave you with the one bit of good news I had last week – I found some Halloween chocolate! My choir will look a little less pitiful than I feared. Woohoo. (Yes – it’s the little things …0