*** Please note that various posts will contain affiliate links for Amazon. Purchases from these links will make me a small percentage in store credit. ***
Kate Marshall’s fledgling PI agency takes off when she and her partner, Tristan Harper, are hired for their first big case. It’s a cold one. Twelve years before, journalist Joanna Duncan disappeared after exposing a political scandal. Most people have moved on. Joanna’s mother refuses to let go.
When Kate and Tristan gain access to the original case files, they revisit the same suspects and follow the same leads—but not to the same dead ends. Among Joanna’s personal effects, Kate discovers the names of two young men who also vanished without a trace.
As she connects the last days of three missing persons, Kate realizes that Joanna may have been onto something far more sinister than anyone first believed: the identity of a serial killer hiding in plain sight. The closer Kate comes to finding him, the darker it’s going to get.
Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
In September 2002 Joanna Duncan vanished while leaving her job as a journalist for a local newspaper. Almost thirteen years later Joanna's mother reaches out to Kate Marshall in hopes that she (and partner/former assistant Tristan Harper) will be able to find out what happened to her daughter all those years ago. The police had closed the case long ago but had granted access to the files for three months for an independent investigation. Kate and Tristan get hired for six months which will help them in getting the private detective agency on its feet, as well as a much needed financial boost for each. Kate has inherited her friend/landlord/AA sponsor Myra's businesses and home. Tristan is still working part time at the university and has taken in a lodger to help cover his mortgage.
Kate and Tristan start diving in to the old files and re-questioning anyone who may remember anything that happened on the day that Joanna disappeared. She had recently covered a story about a now-former Member of Parliament who lost his seat because of her investigation into him committing fraud. He also was rumored to use "rent boys" (young male prostitutes) and it was more than possible that Joanna had been investigating this angle also ... especially when Kate discovers a note with the name of two men amongst Joanna's belongings -- both of them young gay and attractive and both of them missing.
Is there a connection between these disappearances?
Are they all connected to the ones that are still happening?
Yet again, Robert Bryndza is amazing with his storytelling. I sometimes find myself feeling like it's okay to skip a paragraph here, a chapter there. That never happens with Bryndza. If anything, I'll purposely backtrack and re-read to see if I missed a clue. I often have ... and I still end up being wrong as to what twists lie ahead. It's nice to not have it all figured out and I definitely didn't with Darkness Falls.
And just one more thing: I absolutely big puffy heart love Abe(and I don't just "big puffy heart" easily)! We need to see him again and again, please!
Criminology academic Kate Marshall is on a scuba jaunt with her son when they dive toward a shocking discovery: the body of a teenage boy entangled below the surface of the Shadow Sands reservoir. The detective chief inspector’s too-quick narrative of a tragic drowning doesn’t add up, and when Kate follows the evidence, it leads to a darker discovery.
The victim is only the latest in a series of mysterious deaths and disappearances linked to the moorlands—and a mythic phantom said to hide in the rolling fog. When a researcher of urban legends vanishes without a trace, Kate and her associate Tristan Harper must act fast and look deep if they hope to find her alive.
But the elusive serial killer they’re hunting isn’t the only one a step ahead of Kate and Tristan. Someone else is making dead certain that the secrets of Shadow Sands stay buried.
Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff
Shadow Sands is the second Kate Marshall book, following the amazing Nine Elms.
Yes. Read that one first. I really shouldn't have to tell you all the time.
I actually had another post all ready for today. It was a book that started strong and then crashed and burned and was really rather not that great about 14 pages AFTER 56. I just didn't feel right about posting two really strong teasers for a book that went wheeeee-boom. SO I grabbed my next Bryndza and got a couple of chapters in before having to do the joyous overnight at work. It should have been fine. It's a freaking holiday so that typically means deadville in the hotel world.
Nope.
However, the problematic dipwads that I had to deal with for the first three hours of my shift made for perfect fodder for a serial killer book for the rest.
Have you ever found yourself actually being tempted to root for a serial killer?
I mean, besides Dexter Morgan.
Luckily, in spite of it all, I'm still not so jaded and depraved that I wasn't rooting for Kate and Tristan.
Okay, so on to the book.
The Shadow Sands reservoir is a popular diving spot near Kate Marshall's home. It had been created in the 1950s when a valley and the village of Shadow Sands was flooded out. Kate and her sixteen-year-old son Jake go out one day to see if they can locate the ruins of the old Shadow Sands church ... and, in the ruins, they discover a fully dressed and quite dead body of a young man not much older than Jake. The police right it off as an accident, but several weeks later Kate is contacted by the boy's mother. She had read up on Kate and felt that she (and Tristan) could uncover the truth as to what really happened to her son, Simon.
Of course, as soon as Kate starts to look into things nothing adds up the way that they're supposed to believe. They soon discover that Simon is the latest in a long line of mysteries at Shadow Sands and it gets even stranger. A new philosophy and religion professor at the university where Kate and Tristan work is studying local urban legends, such the "Fog Phantom" of Shadow Sands who was supposedly responsible for young people going missing: It comes up from nowhere and it gets you, disorients you into a blind panic...
And then she goes missing.
In the fog.
Spooky, right?
I love this about Robert Bryndza. He can make me shiver even when the heat is cranked up ... holds me glued to the pages even on a work night that never really seems to calm down for more than a few minutes at a time ... and keeps me guessing right up to the end.
Published by Berkley in 2014, Queen of Hearts is the eighth book in the Royal Spyness Mystery series by Rhys Bowen. It starts in 1934 and Georgiana is still at Kingsdowne Place in Kent where we left her at the end of Heirs & Graces. Her mother, former actress Claire Daniels, shows up out of the blue to whisk her off to America. Claire wants to marry mega-rich German Max von Stroheim but first needs to be UN-married from Texas oil tycoon Homer Clegg. It should be easy. Leave Kent. Spend a couple of days in London. Take a luxury liner to New York. Take a train to Reno. Get a quickie divorce. Go home. Of course, nothing is every that easy. The "quickie divorce" has a waiting period so Claire and Georgie head to Hollywood to stay with the movie producer they met on the ship, Cy Goldman. Cy ends up dead. There's a jewel thief who may or may not be involved ... and good ol' Darcy O'Mara just happens to be the one investigating that end. We also have to deal with Queenie and her total lack of progress at being Georgie's maid, Belinda constantly appearing wherever and whenever the wind blows as long as there may be men and money involved, a lot of new faces and some not so new, and a rather bothersome Charlie Chaplin ... and me wondering why and how I've managed to stick through eight books. I have about 15% left right now and it might very well be my last 15% of the series.
Recently Finished :
I stayed up ridiculously late Friday and Saturday night in order to finish the amazing Nine Elmsby Robert Bryndza in the wee small hours of Sunday morning. I rambled quite a bit about it on Sunday as part of a new blog feature and I highly highly recommend it -- especially if you like thrillers and serial killer tales and, perhaps, even if you don't think that you do. At least go read the ramble.
What's Next :
It is, after all, Halloween Week and I have two letters left for the Alphabet Soup Title Challenge -- V and Z.
Vampires and Zombies for the win!
But. Because there's almost always a but.
I was undecided about whether I would do Kristen Painter's The Vampire's Fake Fiancéeor Kirsty Dallas's Zombie Playlist first. I was I'm leaning towards Zombie Playlist because the Painter is the fifth in her Nocturne Falls series and I think I have only read the first three. I never blogged any of them and they were victimized by the killed off Goodreads account ... but I do remember that I loved them, and that they were fast and fun reads. I really need to read the fourth before the fifth so if I can sneak in The Professor Woos The Witch,the two together would likely make for a fun Double-Feature Friday. So Painter it shall be. Zombie Playlist will also happen if I have time but the most adorable hotel guest (who happens to be about 11 years old) recommended another book that she is quite enjoying ... and it happens to start with Z ...
Last weekend my son sent me to bed and told me to sleep well. I motioned to the book in hand and said I would sleep when I'm dead. He replied with "so, you'll sleep when you've read?" and it stuck.
It's pretty much how it works -- especially on weekends.
I don't have to work and I generally don't fall asleep easily (part of the curse of working third shift the rest of the week). I generally read myself to sleep. Sometimes excessively. Sometimes it only takes a paragraph and I'm out like a light. Sometimes it takes a lot more.
I've probably already finished whatever I posted for Book Beginnings/Friday56, and quite often for Tuesday Intros/Teaser Tuesday. I'm back to doing WWW Wednesdays to try and stagger things out some, but that's not really a rambley linkup (though it probably will be for me from time to time). That still leaves me the entire weekend ... so I'm linking up to myself with my new "I'll Sleep When I've Read" feature. It may not happen every Sunday ... but it probably will.
If you want to share whatever has kept you up past your bedtime because you just needed one more chapter ... or the entire book ... please comment! My TBR pile is already toppling, but I can always add more.
I mentioned in my WWW Wednesday post that one of the books I was considering diving into next was Robert Bryndza's Nine Elms -- the first in his Kate Marshall series. The third is sitting on my NetGalley shelf and the first two are available via Kindle Unlimited so I took it as a sign. I started reading Thursday morning after I got home from work when I should have been sleeping. Normally that's an okay time to read a little. I'm typically exhausted from work and can maybe get through a chapter before I pass out. I turned off my Kindle at Chapter 8 and decided that some books are better left for weekends.
I finished it last night. Well, technically, in the wee small hours of this morning.
Way past my bedtime.
The story starts in the autumn on 1995. Two years prior a serial killer began targeting teenage girls in the Nine Elms area of London by the Thames. The press gave the killer the name Nine Elms Cannibal since bite marks were found on each victim and "nothing sold newspapers more than a cannibal on the loose."
This is when I was hooked.
Detective Constable Kate Marshall was assigned to the team working the case and when she's targeted as the next victim, she survives and solves the case. Unfortunately, rather than skyrocketing her career, everything falls apart. I won't tell you why or how.
Spoilers and all that.
Fifteen years later, Kate is trying to cope and deal and is now a criminology professor. This is something that she cannot put behind her, and not just because the case comes up in her lectures.
Again, spoilers.
Sorry.
But I'm not.
It doesn't help matters at all when the parents of a girl who went missing twenty years ago reach out to Kate for help. It really doesn't help when a "fan" of the Nine Elms Cannibal appears and the horrors begin all over again. Kate might not be a police officer anymore, but she still gets involved with the help of her friends and colleagues -- particularly Tristan, her assistant at the university, and Alan, a forensic pathologist.
The telling of the story jumps around between characters and locations. Mostly Kate, but also Tristan, Alan, the original Nine Elms Cannibal, his terrifying mother, "the fan" ... and the victims. It never gets confusing, and it never loses its pace ... or its grip. From some authors it would probably end up a jumbled mess. From Bryndza it ends up a thrilling page-turner that you cannot bring yourself to put down -- even if it is way past your bedtime.
I'm glad that I already have the next two Kate Marshall books waiting for another night off. I might miss out on some more shut-eye because of them but, after all, I'll sleep when I've read ...
I've been hunting for new places to linkup to since my reading life has gone a bit haywire ... but in a good way. I've typically done Tuesdays and Fridays but what about the books that get started or even finished in the meantime? I have so many posts piled up waiting to be published right now and the books keep coming in and they keep getting read and I don't seem to be able to stop myself ... nor do I necessarily want to. I've got a mini vacation coming up in December and I've already got posts ready to auto-publish when I'm gone, but that only takes care of a couple of days at most.
Way back in early 2017, before my life started being problematic, I participated in WWW Wednesdays over at Taking On A World Of Words. I only meant to take a brief respite but, well, better late than not at all, right?
The Three Ws are:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
My Current Read :
At the time of this typing, I am reading Jane K. Cleland's Jane Austen's Lost Letters, thanks to NetGalley and the kind folks at St. Martin's/Minotaur. I was more than a bit hesitant about starting this because it's the fourteenth book in a series I have never laid eyes on before. If you've been here ... ever ... you probably know about my fixation on reading things in order. BUT. There must be some exceptions and Jane Austen will probably always warrant an exception being made to just about every rule.
Luckily, so far anyway, I don't feel at all lost for not having read any of the previous thirteen books in the series. Even better? I now have thirteen new-to-me books on the ever-growing TBR. I don't know much about the world of antiques and never really figured I would care to know, but now I'm more than a bit fascinated at least with what goes into the art of authenticating letters. It helps when those letters may have been written by one of my favorite people. It's too bad the expert on the method that most intrigued me (dealing with weight and pressure points and whatnot) got knocked off fairly early in the book. I certainly hope Josie Prescott is good at solving murders and the person is dealt with most heinously. I'm guessing all will be resolved satisfactorily. It is the fourteenth book, after all.
Recently Finished :
Thanks to another NetGalley grab, I read the first two books in Heather Redmond's A Dickens of a Crime series -- A Tale of Two Murders and Grave Expectations. Those will be reviewed/teased/posted this coming Friday and then the ARC in question probably next week. To be completely honest, had it not been for the ARC, I might not have bothered to continue after the first book. At least it was better than another ARC that I was in the process of slogging my way through. That one ended up making me a bit ranty so I scrapped it and took a mental health break with Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper's amazing Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village-- which you can find rambled about and teased here. After my brain breather I continued on with the second in the series. I may not squeeze the third one in, but I'll likely backtrack for it at some point.
What's Next :
I do, of course, have Heather Redmond's The Pickwick Murderscoming due for review. That's set for release on the 26th of October which is a Tuesday which works perfectly with the regular swing of things around here.
Beyond that, I have a bunch of back ARCs that got lost in the shuffle that I could/should get around to reading and there are two coming up in mid-November that I could grab. What I'll probably do, though, is get a start on Robert Bryndza's Kate Marshall series with Nine Elms. The ARC for the third in the series is already calling my name and that's not out until December. I should have plenty of time for the first two. Besides, I didn't have an "N" title for my Alphabet Soup challenge yet.
I'm still working on The Girl in the Iceand still loving it! It's entirely possible that I'll be finished with this by the time I get home from work. Once I was able to focus a bit it really started flying for me. I had forgotten how much I love a good police procedural. I've been stuck in the cozy/romcom mode for far too long!
Erika Foster is a wonderfully complex and gloriously flawed main character. She's sometimes vulgar, often impulsive, and emotionally scarred. I kind of feel like I should be buying her shots in a bar just so we can have a good gab and get it all out.
As always, Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice & Book Beginnings is at Rose City Reader. This week my "56" comes from the 56% mark of the ebook I was gifted, and the Book Beginnings is actually from the second paragraph since I used the first on Tuesday.
Earlier today I shared the cover reveal for Robert Bryndza's upcoming Cold Blood -- the fifth book in the Erika Foster series. Now I'm sharing the beginning few lines and a teaser from the first, which I started reading this afternoon.
Oh.
My.
Gosh.
This is definitely exactly what I needed and I may very well fly from one book in the series straight into the next until I'm caught up for Cold Blood.
(By the way -- in the US The Girl in the Ice is only 99 cents right now for Kindle on Amazon!)
As per usual, "First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros" from Bibliophile by the Sea is on vacation ... but I'm used to doing these two together so I'm just going to stick with it. "Teaser Tuesday" at The Purple Booker asks for a random line or two from anywhere in the book currently being read. I know I have more than a line or two. Be impressed I didn't just screenshot the whole page to post.
I've been hearing about Robert Bryndza for ages now (basically for as long as I've been a bookouture junkie), and even have several of his romantic comedies sitting in my Kindle app waiting for me to get to them .... but they'll have to wait.
Everything will have to wait and all because of one book cover.
Is that not just amazingly gorgeous in a goosepimpley "what the heck" kind of way?!?
I normally don't read thrillers. I'm a lighthearted, fluffy, cozy kind of reader for the most part. The occasional gothic and paranormal, sure, but even those tend to be more on the butterflies and rainbows end of the spectrum to some degree.
Well, kids, life ain't all butterflies and rainbows.
Thanks to life ... stuff ... I've been more in the mood for nitty and gritty. For blood. For smashing butterflies.
Then I saw this cover.
This cover for Robert Bryndza's Cold Blood is so far away from butterflies and rainbows that I have a feeling it would eat them for lunch. And that is exactly what I'm in the mood for. I read the description and knew this had to be mine. This is exactly what my brain has been crying out for.
The suitcase was badly rusted, and took Erika several attempts, but it yielded and sagged open as she unzipped it. Nothing could prepare her for what she would find inside…
When a battered suitcase containing the dismembered body of a young man washes up on the shore of the river Thames, Detective Erika Foster is shocked. She’s worked on some terrifying cases but never seen anything like this before.
As Erika and her team set to work, she makes the link with another victim – the body of a young woman dumped in an identical suitcase two weeks ago.
Erika quickly realises she’s on the trail of a serial killer who’s already made their next move. Yet just as Erika starts to make headway with the investigation, she is the victim of a brutal attack.
But nothing will stop Erika. As the body count rises, the twin daughters of her colleague Commander Marsh are abducted, and the stakes are higher than ever before. Can Erika save the lives of two innocent children before it’s too late? She’s running out of time and about to make a disturbing discovery…there’s more than one killer.
Brilliantly gripping, Cold Blood will have you hooked from the first page and holding your breath to the heart-stopping and shocking ending.
Of course, then I realized that I'm so far behind that I have four Detective Erika Foster novels to read before I can get to this one. Luckily, I now have them all and this comes out on the 20th of September (you can pre-order it now, though ... UK readers can pre-order here). I've got this.
