All I Ever Wanted by Lucy Dillon

Nancy is four, nearly five. She talks all the time: in the car, on the way to nursery, to her brother, to her collection of bears. And then one day everything changes. Nancy’s mum and dad split up, her father moves across the country, and Nancy stops talking.
Eva is forty-four, nearly forty-five. She always knew marrying a much older man meant compromises, but she was sure it was worth it – until Mickey dies suddenly, leaving Eva with only his diaries and a voice in the back of her mind telling her that perhaps she’s sacrificed more than she meant to.

While Nancy’s parents negotiate their separation, the question of weekend contact is solved when her father volunteers his sister Eva’s house. As spring turns to summer, a trust slowly begins to form between a little girl with a heartbreaking secret, and a woman who has realised too late that what she yearns for is the love of a child.

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I really enjoyed All I Ever Wanted.  It has everything. Family issues, humour, heartbreak, tension.
Patrick and Caitlin are the parents of Joel (10) and Nancy (4). Nancy is at nursery and is a real chatterbox. Joel is very dramatic – loves singing, dancing, performing.

When Patrick has to move up to Newcastle for his job, Caitlin decides she wants to stay in Bristol with the children. They live in a mortgage free house that Caitlin’s grandmother had left to her and she feels settled and secure there. Needless to say they decide to separate.

The negotiations are not easy. Patrick has always been a workaholic but he wants shared care of the children, and Caitlin is not happy with the idea of the children making a 600 mile round trip every week. Mediation seemed to bring out the worst in both of them but Patrick eventually suggests that his sister might host contact and she is only 70 miles away. Caitlin has some doubts about this as his sister Eva is a young widow with two pugs and no children and might not be able to or want to have two young exuberant children staying every weekend.

Then the unthinkable happens. Nancy stops talking. Suddenly and seemingly without reason. This adds a complication to the story as she can’t or won’t communicate with the people around her and leads to some incidents and anxious moments.

I loved all the characters and their relationships. There is depth to the characters and I felt as if I knew them. It was certainly easy to picture them. They all have various issues to try and fix. Eva has come to realise that because she married an older man she gave up the chance to have children, and with his sudden death starts to wonder what might have been. (He also had two ex-wives and a son). There is pressure on Eva (and the other wives) to agree to her husband’s diaries being published but that forces her to read them (reluctantly) and leads to some soul-searching.

Eva and Patrick have very different memories of their upbringing and they don’t seem to be particularly close siblings. Patrick spends most of his time at work and and you feel he puts work before the children. He seems to have a need to be in control all the time, but when you learn of his past through Eva’s eyes, I did feel sympathy for him.

Caitlin too is an interesting character. She fell pregnant by accident the summer after graduation and never took up a career, instead moving in with her grandmother. (Patrick is actually Joel’s stepfather but has always considered Joel his son). Caitlin now works in a cafe. After she and Patrick separate she gets to try spreading her wings a little bit. Successfully? I don’t want to spoil the plot.

The children are delightful. Easy to imagine them. It turns out they get on really well with Aunt Eva’s two pugs and the two dogs have their role to play too.

The interaction between the children and the adults is very entertaining. There are also quite serious incidents, adding to the drama and ultimate enjoyment of the story.

This is an entertaining read but with enough dramatic moments to keep you on your toes. There were a few heart-stopping moments too. The various threads of the story all interweave very smoothly. I wasn’t sure how it would end so it was one of those books that kept me reading well into the night.  I like those ones.

(Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review)

Blood Lines (D.I. Kim Stone Book Five) by Angela Marsons

How do you catch a killer who leaves no trace?

A victim killed with a single, precise stab to the heart appears at first glance to be a robbery gone wrong. A caring, upstanding social worker lost to a senseless act of violence. But for Detective Kim Stone, something doesn’t add up.

When a local drug addict is found murdered with an identical wound, Kim knows instinctively that she is dealing with the same killer. But with nothing to link the two victims except the cold, calculated nature of their death, this could be her most difficult case yet.

Desperate to catch the twisted individual, Kim’s focus on the case is threatened when she receives a chilling letter from Dr Alex Thorne, the sociopath who Kim put behind bars. And this time, Alex is determined to hit where it hurts most, bringing Kim face-to-face with the woman responsible for the death of Kim’s little brother – her own mother.

As the body count increases, Kim and her team unravel a web of dark secrets, bringing them closer to the killer. But one of their own could be in mortal danger. Only this time, Kim might not be strong enough to save them…

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Blood Lines is book five in the D I Kim Stone series.

I have to confess I hadn’t read any of Angela Marsons’ books and this would have been the first but a friend advised me to read her earlier books in the series, or at least book 2, Evil Games.  So I took her advice and read Evil Games first – another cracking thriller.

Dr Alexandra Thorne (who appeared in Evil Games) is now in prison, put there mainly by the persistence of D I Stone and her team. Alex Thorne is beautiful, enigmatic, charming, but she is also manipulative, controlling and taunting. She is an evil sociopath. She blames Kim Stone for the way her life has turned out and is obsessed with destroying her.

There are several threads in Blood Lines: the arrest of a serial rapist; the deaths of two females, one a middle-aged, well dressed professional woman with a responsible job, found in a car with a single stab wound, the other a 22 year old drug addict and a known shoplifter, found in the woods with a single stab wound…. and more.

Meanwhile the evil Alex Thorne is in prison, manipulating other prisoners and plotting to mess with Kim Stone’s mind. She knows of Kim Stone’s traumatic past and knows all the right buttons to press to push Kim over the edge. Kim has to carry out her duties as a detective as well as deal with terrifying personal issues.

It’s a real thriller of a book. Angela Marsons is a good storyteller. The plot is fairly complex and there are several sub-plots but it isn’t too difficult to follow them as the writing is good. The book is quite fast paced with the right amount of dialogue. I like how some of the threads come together leading to a thrilling and terrifying climax.

I think Blood Lines could stand alone but I’m glad I was advised to read Evil Games as that explains a lot of Dr Alex Thorne’s obsession with destroying Kim Stone. It also helps when you know some of Kim’s background and her personal issues.  I suspect I’ll catch up with the rest of the books in the series soon.

There is so much more to this book. I found it a thrilling, entertaining read and one of those books where chores are set aside and you also keep on reading into the wee small hours (the best kind).

[My thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for providing a digital review copy].

The 7th Canon – Robert Dugoni

In San Francisco’s seamy Tenderloin district, a teenage street hustler has been murdered in a shelter for boys. And the dedicated priest who runs the struggling home stands accused. But despite damning evidence that he’s a killer—and worse—Father Thomas Martin stands by his innocence. And attorney Peter Donley stands with him.

For three years Donley has cut his legal teeth in his uncle’s tiny, no-frills firm, where people come before profits. Just as Donley is poised to move on to a lucrative dream job, the shocking case lands in his lap, and he must put his future on hold while putting his courtroom skills to the test. But a ruthless DA seeking headlines and a brutal homicide cop bent on vengeance have their own agendas. Now, as he unearths the dirty secrets surrounding the case, Donley must risk his neck to save his client’s life…and expose the face of true evil.

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I’ve been a fan of Robert Dugoni since I read the first Tracy Crosswhite novel (well actually I read the second one first but have since read the other two) I love his style of writing, his characters and the good storytelling.

The 7th Cannon is a little bit different. It is set in 1980s San Francisco.

Peter Donley is a young lawyer who has been working for his uncle’s firm for three years. The office is situated in the Tenderloin district of the city not far from the Court. It’s a very run down area and his uncle often doesn’t charge his poorer clients. Peter, who has a wife and child, is on the brink of leaving to start a more lucrative job. However his uncle is also the lawyer for the Archdiocese so when a teenage male prostitute is found dead in a Shelter for boys, Father Thomas Martin who runs the shelter, is charged with murder and the Archbishop brings the case to Peter’s Uncle Lou.

Peter is very much thrown in at the deep end when his uncle suffers a heart attack and is hospitalised. In these circumstances (defending someone accused of murder) it would probably be expected that Peter would pass the case on to a more experienced lawyer. However after a court appearance, he is officially becomes the priest’s lawyer. Of course the priest says he didn’t commit the crime despite the evidence obtained at the crime scene.

There seems to be something not quite right with the case from the start It’s as if someone is trying to rush the case through the Court before the defence can make their own enquiries. Is someone from high up pulling strings? Has evidence been planted or tampered with? Any potential witnesses (the boys within the shelter that night) had slipped back out onto the streets before they could be questioned by the Police. It is clear from the start that the detective who arrested Father Martin is violent and threatening but he is an interesting character with a back story.

The fact that the book is set in 1980s San Francisco in the seedy, run down Tenderloin District adds to the atmosphere.

I like the Peter character. He’s had a difficult upbringing and he’s had to look out for himself and grab his chances. His past still affects him. He has issues. He’s quite stubborn and tenacious. He doesn’t always make the right decisions but he’s a good character. There is a bit of depth to him and we do get to know a bit about his past.

This is a juicy crime/legal thriller which opens with quite a humorous court scene involving a parrot which gives us a glimpse of Peter Donley’s character and style then switches to the Boys Shelter where Father Thomas Martin is getting ready to lock up for the night. From then on it’s a rollercoaster of a tale that kept me entertained (and engrossed) right to the end….. and yes, it was one of those books that kept me reading until the early hours of the morning. Excellent storytelling!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital review copy.

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The 7th Canon was published on 27 September 2016.  For reasons I won’t bore you with, I missed the fact I hadn’t published this post.  The good news is, if you are already a fan of Robert’s  the fourth book in the Tracey Crosswhite series, The Trapped Girl  is due out on 24 January 2017 – so not too long to wait!