Margery Lancaster tried to kill her abusive husband and their baby son. She went to prison and served her sentence but now she is targeted by a killer. The chief suspects are her ex husband and now grown up son. One dies before he can be investigated and the other is missing…
Poison Memories is the 12th book in the DC Morgan Brookes series of police procedurals set in the Lake District.
Morgan and Ben are battling the elements as the weather rages. This makes the crime scene difficult to preserve and the pair do their best to save evidence. Margery commited a terrible crime in the past but has completed her time in prison so deserves the police’s usual meticulous focus to catch her killer.
There are some hugely emotive topics covered in this book. Margery was abused and possibly suffering from postnatal depression but there is no doubt that her actions were terrible. Morgan’s superior officer is going through a nasty divorce and it is affecting his behaviour. Morgan reacts to both her victim and her boss with compassion as well as professionalism.
There is a spooky element to the book as the house was the site of murders centuries ago. Morgan hears creaking floorboards and whispers but could this be the weather? Her aunt Ettie, an empath and witch, has other ideas and I love her character. Ettie also met Margery in the past and this showed a slightly darker side to her abilities as well as their strength.
The relationships and dynamics between the police characters was fabulous as always in this series. There is teasing and banter but this is all underpinned by respect. The book has plenty of plot twists, despite only having two initial suspects so I was kept guessing. Chapters are quite short so the plot speeds along at a reasonable pace.
Poison Memories is an enjoyable police procedural with a good mystery and strong police team.
Wind howls against the bolted front door, but the woman can still hear footsteps approaching. He has come for her. The memory of what she did still haunts her, and she knows she deserves to die…
Arriving at High Wraith cottage, Detective Morgan Brookes joins her horrified team, who have found a woman’s body chained and dangling from the gnarled branch of an old oak tree. It’s a race against time to preserve any evidence as heavy rain destroys the scene, but they’ve already identified the victim as a woman who once tried to kill her own family.
Twenty years ago, Margery Lancaster went to prison for poisoning her husband and infant son. They both survived, and Morgan must treat the pair as her first suspects. But before she has a chance to get to work, Margery’s ex-husband is brutally murdered, and Morgan’s heart thumps as she sees his hands tied with silver chains that match those found on Margery’s body. Then his son, now a local doctor, arrives at the station to be interviewed. Morgan watches in despair as he drops to the floor and falls into a coma.
With almost all of the forensic evidence washed away by the storm, and no family left to interview, Morgan’s last hope is tracking the two chains to a local hardware store. But the killer is already closing in on his final victim. Is it already too late for Morgan to stop him, or will she uncover the terrible secrets this family are hiding in time to save another life?
A heart-racing, edge-of-your-seat thriller for fans of Lisa Regan, Melinda Leigh and Rachel McLean. Will have your heart pounding as you reach the final, breathtaking twist.
Author Bio
Helen Phifer is the Bestselling writer of the hugely popular Annie Graham, Lucy Harwin, Beth Adams and her current series featuring Detective Constable Morgan Brooks published by the fabulous Bookouture.
She lives in the busy town of Barrow-in-Furness surrounded by miles of coastline and a short drive from the glorious English Lake District.
Helen loves reading books that scare the heck out of her and is eternally grateful to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Herbert and Graham Masterton for scaring her senseless in her teenage years. Unable to find enough scary stories she decided to write her own and her debut novel The Ghost House released in October 2013 became a #1 Global Bestseller.
After the long drive to get to Norfolk, we wanted to stay quite close to our cottage on the second day of our holiday. The closest town was Thetford so we headed there to see the sights/sites.
We started with a visit to Thetford Priory, an English Heritage site. It was lovely and peaceful.
Next we went to two museums: the Charles Burrell Steam Museum and the Dad’s Army Museum. Both welcomed the dogs and had water bowls available.
There was lots of memorabilia at both museums. The kids found Teddy Mainwaring to receive a badge prize and then got to hide the bear again.
We headed across the town to reach the Castle Mound. There are a lot of steps but the view was magnificent!
We had lunch at Lynford Stag and then went for a walk in Lynford Arboretum to stay cool in the shade of the trees.
FBI agent Beth Katz has been searching for her partner Dax’s lost sister who vanished years ago. Finally she has found Ginny but it isn’t the reunion she and Dax wanted. Ginny has been brainwashed by her captor and helps him to traffic other girls for a paedophile ring. Beth’s serial killer instinct is fired up to seek revenge for the innocent victims…
Forgotten Girls is the 4th book to feature FBI agent and serial killer Beth Katz. Her alter ego is The Tarot Killer who kills other killers rather than sending them to prison.
Dax and Beth are thrilled that his sister has been found but there are huge repercussions and the agents begin an operation to catch the paedophiles. Thankfully, despite the dark content, there are no graphic scenes or imagery although we do see Beth’s sickened reaction to the videos she sees. There are two key suspects who go on the run so Beth and Dax along with other agents use the latest technology to track them down. But the paedophile ring is huge and rich and the team are in constant danger.
This case is intensely personal for Dax and he wants to make the perpetrators suffer. Beth and Dax grow closer in this book as she had finally learned to trust and crave human contact. This slows down the pace a little. Beth’s secret serial killer persona doesn’t appear until later in the book and I was impatient! She does have lots of violent attacks to contend with throughout the book but these are all in the line of duty and don’t have the usual impact.
Forgotten Girls is an enjoyable instalment in the series but I want to see more of Beth’s dark persona!
MEDIA PACK
Book: Forgotten Girls
Author: D.K. HOOD
Pub Day: July 31st 2024
She bites her nails as she steals a glance at the stranger in the pickup truck beside her. She trusted him when he offered her a ride, but now, as he turns onto a deserted road leading into a dark pine forest, she knows she’s made a huge mistake.
Special agent Beth Katz races through the dense Montana woodland toward a small, isolated cabin. She’s investigating the disappearance of her partner Dax Styles’s sister who went missing as she walked home from school, and Beth finally has a solid lead. Outside the decrepit building, her heart pounds wondering what she will find on the other side of the door.
A young woman with long brown hair and cornflower blue eyes, just like Dax’s, shakes in the kitchen. It’s clearly Ginny, but before Dax can speak to his long-lost sister, Beth hears a noise from outside. In a rundown outbuilding, they discover another young girl, reported missing just weeks before. Dressed in a thin nightie, Ava cowers as Beth breaks into the padlocked room. Her captor has fled, but Beth will use every skill she’s got to track him down.
Working night and day, Beth uncovers more cases of young girls taken from remote roads near their homes. Twelve-year-old Shiloh Weeks vanished as she walked home just days ago. Her story remarkably similar to Ginny and Ava’s.
Beth and Dax are on a mission to stop to this twisted individual and save any new girls from being taken into the woods and lost forever. But when the trail leads them to a man impersonating a police officer to gain the trust of his victims, will Dax hand him over or take matters into his own hands?
Author Bio
D.K Hood is THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, USA TODAY, and #1 AMAZON MILLION COPY Bestselling Author of the Kane and Alton Series.
D.K’s spine chilling, fast paced serial killer thrillers revolve around Sheriff Jenna Alton and her ex- special forces Deputy, Dave Kane. As the main characters fight crime, their secret pasts are never far away. Set in and around the fictional backwoods town of Black Rock Falls, Montana, known locally as Serial Killer Central, D.K ‘s imagery takes the reader into the scenes with her. Given the title “Queen of Suspense” by her reviewers, D.K ‘s writing style offers her readers a movie style, sizzling fast thrill ride.
NEW SERIES: SPECIAL AGENT BETH KATZ-
Beth is a serial killer working for the FBI. By day she is a dedicated agent and by night she becomes the notorious Tarot Killer and hunts down vicious serial killers, who have slipped through the net of justice. With her handsome mountain man partner,
Agent Dax Styles, they fight crime by walking a very thin line of the law.
Woohoo, holiday time! And this year we took the dogs with us! It meant a bit more planning as we had to find places that were dog friendly as well as consider the weather which was surprisingly hot! We also had to take both cars to carry all of us and our bags!
All of our stops to break up the journey were English Heritage sites.
Our first stop was Berkshamsted Castle. We had visited before but went back because the kids loved it (so did the dogs) with plenty of open space to explore as well as trains to watch. The only downside is that there are no toilet facilities.
Next was Denny Abbey and Farmland Museum. It had something for everyone: history for me, farming for Chris, things to explore for the dogs, a playground for the kids.
Our final stop before arriving at our holiday house was Grimes Graves, a prehistoric flintmine and burial site. The mine was pleasantly cold after the blazing sun at ground level.
Gerald Cartwright disappeared six years ago but his body isn’t found until his son starts renovation work on the family home. Gerald was still alive when he was bricked up behind a new wall…
Firewatching is the first book in the DS Adam Tyler series of police procedurals.
Adam Tyler struggles to fit in at work. He leads on cold cases so is separate from his colleagues who run active investigations. He is gay and his police officer father killed himself, both of which also put him at odds with his colleagues. On this case though, Adam needs the team to put personal differences aside and focus on working together to catch a killer. He works alongside an ambitious young constable who wants to get into CID but the pair have a bumpy working relationship.
Added to Adam’s troubles is the fact that Gerald Cartwright’s son Oscar is a suspect. Adam and Oscar had a one night stand the night before the discovery of the body and now Adam needs to put his conflicted emotions to one side to find the truth. The murder of Gerald is linked with a series of arson attacks and readers are also aware that two old ladies are being blackmailed. There are multiple layers for Adam to consider and I was kept guessing until the end.
There are no chapters as such, instead the book is divided into days. This means that the chronology of the plot is meticulous and detailed, and the pace is rather slow at first. There are breaks as the narrative moves between the experience of various characters, showing the investigation as well potential suspects. Each day starts with an anonymous ‘post’ by someone obsessed with fire and the connection to the main plot is not revealed until later.
I really liked Adam’s character. He has a lot of depth and emotional baggage but his career means a lot to him so he wants to succeed and prove himself. He struggles socially and emotionally which demonstrates a vulnerable side. I enjoyed his friend’s attempts to bring him out of his shell and accept and celebrate his homosexuality as a key component of his persona. I thought that the homophobic jibes experienced by Adam were unpleasant but sadly they felt authentic.
Firewatching is an enjoyable start to a new series with a strong lead character.
Book blurb:
A police procedural introducing Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler, a cold case reviewer who lands a high-profile murder investigation, only to find the main suspect is his recent one-night stand . . .
When financier Gerald Cartwright disappeared from his home six years ago, it was assumed he’d gone on the run from his creditors. But then a skeleton is found bricked up in the cellar of Cartwright’s burned-out mansion, and it becomes clear Gerald never left alive.
As the sole representative of South Yorkshire’s Cold Case Review Unit, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is not expected to get results, but he knows this is the case that might finally kick start his floundering career. Luckily, he already has a suspect. Unluckily, that suspect is Cartwright’s son, the man Tyler slept with the night before.
Keeping his possible conflict-of-interest under wraps, Tyler digs into the case alongside Amina Rabbani, an ambitious young Muslim constable and a fellow outsider seeking to prove herself on the force. Soon their investigation will come up against close-lipped townsfolk, an elderly woman with dementia who’s receiving mysterious threats referencing a past she can’t remember, and an escalating series of conflagrations set by a troubled soul intent on watching the world burn . . .
Margery Lancaster tried to kill her abusive husband and their baby son. She went to prison and served her sentence but now she is targeted by a killer. The chief suspects are her ex husband and now grown up son. One dies before he can be investigated and the other is missing…
