Lexie survived one killer but is now targeted by another. A killer intent on finishing the work of other murderers and DC Morgan Brookes is on his list too…
Save Her Twice is the 11th book in the Morgan Brookes police procedural series set in northern England. The plot relies heavily on old cases so there are spoilers.
Morgan saved Lexie once but isn’t there to save her a second time. Can she save the other survivors of the killers she’s caught and protect herself as well? I really felt upset that these women has escaped death once but were now being hunted down again, and this was reflected by Morgan’s emotions throughout the book.
The police characters shine in this book. Ben and Morgan are negotiating their personal and professional relationships. Cain was injured in the last book but determined to support his colleagues. Pathologist Declan is delightfully full of black humour and wry wit whilst also being compassionate to the victims and his colleagues.
Most of the book is written to show the police investigation and potential victims. There are some chapters written from the perpective fo the killer but this does not help us to identify him or his motives. I thought the tension and sense of danger were well maintained. The ending was a little abrupt and lacked a depth of explanation about the perpetrator.
Save Her Twice is an enjoyable police procedural with wonderful lead characters.
MEDIA PACK
Book: SAVE HER TWICE
Author: Helen Phifer
Pub Day: Feb 7th 2024
Buy Link(s):
Audible:
About the Book:
Morgan shivers in the darkness as she walks through the park towards the abandoned building. She sees the body and the blood dripping onto the cold, frosty grass. A beautiful teenage girl is dead. Morgan feels rage build inside of her as she realises who it is…
Arriving at a quiet family home on the outskirts of the Lake District, Detective Morgan Brookes must deliver devastating news to a heartbroken mother. Seeing Lexie’s pink boots against the side of the house, she remembers the girl’s happy face and can’t help but think of her carefree childhood. Three years ago, Morgan saved Lexie from a serial killer, who is now behind bars. But this time, she’s failed to protect her.
Certain a new and more terrifying killer is at large, Morgan finds a neighbour who claims a man in a silver car was watching Lexie’s house. Then she discovers that Lexie was meeting other survivors of serial killers at a local victim support group. Another girl, Milly, thinks she has been followed by the same silver car.
But just as Morgan rushes to warn the other women, the case takes an even more sinister turn. One of them is found dead, posed in a chair with her hands tied in prayer. Flames engulf the church where the victims usually meet, with several of the others trapped inside.
Morgan manages to save the women just in time, but she knows this killer will never give up. To find him, she must relive every terrifying case she’s ever worked on. Somewhere in her history lies the key to saving more lives, but Morgan has no idea that this dangerous individual wants her as his final victim…
A dark, gripping and twisty new thriller in the Morgan Brookes series that will have your heart racing until the final page. For fans of Lisa Regan, Melinda Leigh and Rachel McLean.
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.
She has written over twenty books in various genres and you can follow her over on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/helenphifer/
Social Media
Mila is all set to return home to Brittany after a visit to her family when her detective agency gets a new case. A vulnerable young woman has been manipulated into running away and her poor health means she is in extreme danger. Can Mila find her in time…?
The Summer of Lies is a mystery drama novel set in the UK and France. It is the second book in a series but I have not read the first (it therefore works perfectly well as a stand alone book as I was not aware of any spoilers).
Mila is a young woman with a complex family situation. Her parents split up and she lives in France, caring for her orphaned niece but also trying to negotiate the complicated emotions of her own grief. She has gone to visit her mother in England – which is quite an uncomfortable experience – and is ready to return home to normality when she is entrusted with finding a missing woman.
I felt desperately sorry for Briony who has been blighted by illness her entire life. Her new friendship has offered her the chance to be free of her over-protective parents and I didn’t blame her at all for seeking freedom and friendship wherever she could find it. However, her saviour is a woman with an unsavoury past and running away puts Briony in danger. I was keen for Mila to ensure Briony was safe but also worried that returning home was also dangerous.
There is plenty of mystery and the author adds different dimensions to the plot with the inclusion of the Mila’s sister’s death. However, I found that this made the pace of the book quite slow. Mila’s family situation is explored at the start and took me a while to get it straight in my head (I wonder if this is explored in the first book?) The settings bring the plot to life and are depicted vividly. I liked Mila’s character and wanted her to succeed in her personal and professional endeavours.
The Summer of Lies is an entertaining mystery novel.
The Summer of Lies
The summer is the hottest yet in the Brittany coastal town of Morranez, but when a new case lands on the desk of the Toussaints detective agency, there can be no time to relax. As wild fires bear down on the town, the alert goes out for a missing girl.
Nineteen-year-old Briony Moorcroft has seemingly been taken from her sleepy Welsh village and brought to France. Her parents are baffled and scared – Briony needs her life-saving medicine or this case will become even more sinister, and with the police dragging their heels, the Moorcrofts are relying on Mila Shephard and Carter Jackson’s sleuthing skills.
Meanwhile there are mysteries troubling Mila’s life too. Two years after the accident that swept her sister Sophie and brother-in-law Charlie away and left their daughter Ani in Mila’s care, new evidence resurfaces that makes Mila doubt everything.
Can Carter and Mila find Briony before it’s too late? And is the truth about Sophie and Charlie finally about to be revealed…
Author Bio –
Louise Douglas is the bestselling and brilliantly reviewed author and an RNA award winner. The Secrets Between Us was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives in the West Country.
Social Media Links –
1969, teenager Florence is sent away to the Scottish island of Harris to have her baby. 2005, Nell discovers a family secret and heads to Harris to find the truth.
Little Wing is an emotional book full of family drama and the nuances of family relationships and friendships.
16 year old Florence becomes pregnant after a one night stand and is sent to distant family in Harris. Whilst there, she adapts to her new life and enjoys being a mother. Nell in the present discovers that her mother who has mental health issues had a sister and suspects that she is actually Florence’s daughter instead. She travels to Harris to find out more about the past.
The emotion is vivid. The gap between the Florence and Nell timeline makes us wonder what has happened and the truth is gradually revealed. We also have the characters of Dougie and his father Gordon. Their relationship is rather strained and awkward due to the physical distance between them until Dougie returns to Harris.
I don’t know if my issues with this book are because I listened to the audio version. I found it quite confusing to have a single narrator as it wasn’t always clear when the perspective had changed, especially in the opening chapter where it frequently moves between the characters. The depth of emotion and character development was therefore a little diminished in my opinion.
Little Wing is full of emotion and drama but I felt the audio version didn’t work too well for me.
Book blurb
Little Wing is the powerful story of two families over three generations.
1969. Florence Lawson, a 16-year-old schoolgirl who dreams of being an artist, finds herself pregnant and banished to one of the most remote parts of the UK.
1986. Dougie Munro, searching for adventure, leaves the Isle of Harris – the island of his birth – for art college and a career in London as a photographer.
2005. Nell Hartley, content with her life managing a care-in-the-community cafe in Colchester, discovers a shocking truth about her family.
Between the sprawl of London, suburban Essex, and the wild, unpredictable Outer Hebrides, three lives collide and interweave as questions are asked and secrets surface. What happened to Florence? Why is Dougie now so reluctant to return home? How can Nell make peace with the lies she’s been told?
Little Wing is a novel about resilience, forgiveness and the true meaning of family, about finding one’s place in the world and discovering how we all belong somewhere and to someone.
Loud music is blaring and one neighbour can’t stand it any longer. He storms round to Miles’ flat and breaks downs the door before smashing the sound system. But then he finds Miles’ body on the floor and becomes the prime suspect in the initial murder investigation. DCI Roscoe and his team
Heir To Murder is the 5th book to feature DCI Gavin Roscoe and his team. I have previously read and reviewed books 1 and 4 from the series: Murder on Oxford Lane and Out For Revenge.
At first glance, the murder case looks straightforward. An unplanned attack by a neighbour driven to the edge by relentless loud music. Digging a little deeper, DCI Roscoe finds out that the victim is from a privileged family but has become estranged. The case meanders through false alibis, blackmail, affairs, and another murders.
Roscoe is preparing for his son’s wedding but this new case requires all his attention. I enjoyed his stable home life and the lack of typical dysfunctional relationships and behaviours that are usually common among police characters. DS Sunita Roy’s character continues to shine. She has good intuition and this leads her to make a number of surprising discoveries that help solve the case. Meanwhile in her private life, her boyfriend is trying to persuade her to invest some money and I was surprised she was not more suspicious!
I think this series goes from strength to strength. The writing style is easy to read and the detective characters are easy to like so I felt invested in wanting them to succeed in catching the killer. There are plenty of twists and I had no idea which way the plot was heading or who was responsible for the crimes.
Heir To Murder is an entertaining police procedural with strong lead detectives.
Heir To Murder
When a neighbour from hell comes to a sticky end, a plucky cop refuses to accept the obvious.
Miles Kenworth loves to play his rock music at a deafening volume. The other residents of his apartment block are not so keen.
One day, after hearing a commotion, Miles’ next-door neighbour discovers his body lying in a pool of blood.
Standing next to the corpse is Jake, the man who lives upstairs.
It should be an open and shut case for DS Sunita Roy. But with Jake vehemently protesting his innocence, she decides to dig deeper.
Most of the residents wanted Miles shut up for good. But was it really Jake who flipped, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Purchase Links
Author Bio – Tony is a former Fleet Street journalist. Tony decided to set this string of novels in Warwickshire and Worcestershire after spending many happy years working as a newspaper reporter in Worcester.
He first developed a love of writing at the age of nine when he and a friend produced a magazine called the Globe at their junior school in Sevenoaks, Kent. When he reached his teenage years, growing up in Tunbridge Wells, his local vicar staged one of his plays, about Naboth’s Vineyard.
At Hull University, Tony was named student journalist of the year in 1971 in a competition run by Time-Life magazine and went onto become a national newspaper journalist, mainly working for the Sunday People in both its newsroom and investigations department.
His very first book to be published, the crime novel Smile Of The Stowaway, was released in December 2018. It concerns a Kent couple who harbour a stowaway and then battle to clear his name when he is charged with murder.
Then, in March 2020, the spy novel The Lazarus Charter, was released. It involves foreign agents operating in the UK. The book has kindly been endorsed by Marina Litvinenko, widow of the murdered Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, and by Stan and Caroline Sturgess, parents of the innocent mother-of-three poisoned with novichok in Salisbury in 2018.
Tony, who has written several other novels which are as yet unpublished, has five grown-up children. He is a Life Member of the National Union of Journalists. He lives in South-East London with his partner Lin.
Social Media Links –
Sam and Maggie head off on a cruise. He is hoping to kindle a romance in the sun while she wants to head to the Nordic countries. Then the pair spot some familiar faces and death isn’t far behind…
Death on the High Seas is the 4th book in the Shires Mysteries series to feature amateur sleuths Sam and Maggie. I have previously read and reviewed the 2nd book in the series, At Death’s Door.
The book is written from Maggie’s first person via journal entriees as well as third person narrative to show the plot developments. Her personality really shines through (I described her as eccentric in my last review but would perhaps update this to vivacious) which contrasts with the more reticent Sam.
I found it really interesting that the author has chosen to depart from the usual setting and supporting characters. I have always wanted to go on a cruise and felt immersed in the setting, however I am afraid I agree with Sam and would want a warmer one!
The mystery side of the book has several layers and I wasn’t sure which direction the book was going to take. Maggie can see spirits which adds another dimension to her character and the plot. Maggie and Sam spot a mother and son with a criminal background from their hometown, Maggie meets up with an old flame, and the cruise ship picks up a distress signal from a fishing boat with injured people onboard.
Death on the High Seas is an entertaining cosy mystery and I love the dynamic between the two main characters.
Death on the High Seas
Maggie and Sam take a break from the murder and mayhem of Bishops Well and embark on a relaxing mid-winter cruise across the northern seas. The brochure promises smooth sailing, good food and dazzling entertainment. Sam is hoping to sprinkle the mix with romance.
But nothing goes to plan.
Maggie runs into an old lover, the mesmerising Benedict Rawbotham, who goes out of his way to sweep her off her feet. Sam is left seething with jealousy.
A mayday signal sent by a fishing boat forces the cruise liner off course. But there is something fishy about the rescued crew and Maggie insists that two young women have died on that boat. Alas, no one believes her.
Soon one of the alleged fishermen is also dead and so is one of the cruise passengers. Cordelia Conti Lang, nicknamed the Bitcoin Queen, with links to London’s criminal underworld, is found in her cabin, stabbed to death.
In pursuit of the killer, Maggie hurtles from one disaster to another and Sam begins to fear for her life. Has he taken her on a cruise to hell?
Purchase Links
Author Bio – Although she writes in a wide range of genres, Anna Legat is best known for her DI Gillian Marsh detective series and The Shires, her cosy murder mysteries. Anna is also the author of the historical thriller, Buried in the Past. She lives near Bath.
Social Media Links –
