quippe | Entries tagged with jo spain

The Blurb On The Back:

One family.
One night.
Ten years of lives.

It’s June 2008 and twenty-one-year old Adam Lattimer vanishes, presumed dead. The strain of his disappearance breaks his already fragile family.

Ten years later, with his mother deceased and siblings scattered across the globe, Adam turns up unannounced at the family home. His siblings return reluctantly to Spanish Cove, but Adam’s reappearance poses more questions than answers. The past is a tangled web of deceit.

And, as tension builds, it’s apparent somebody has planned murderous revenge for the events of ten years ago.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Jo Spain’s standalone crime thriller is a tightly plotted affair that expertly shifts the action between the sibling narrators as they move from the night of the murder to the events of 10 years earlier. The relationship between the siblings is convincing and the slow reveal of Frazer’s cruelties also works well but the resolution in the final quarter relies on a number of contrivances and left me wondering if one character deserved their fate.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

All of us have our secrets, don’t we?

Late one night, a man walks in the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear.

Just an hour later the attacker has handed himself in to the police. He doesn’t contend his guilt, but claims he doesn’t know his victim, that the attack was unplanned and committed in a fit of madness. Was this just a random act of violence? Or is it linked to one of Harry’s many sins: corruption, greed, betrayal?

And of the three, Harry, Julie and the stranger – who is really the guilty one?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Jo Spain’s standalone thriller has a confident, twisting plot and makes good use of split narration to take in the heady rise and hedonistic depths of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger economy and the impact of money, secrets and power on a couple’s relationship that – despite some soapy moments – kept me turning the pages until the end.

THE CONFESSION was released in the United Kingdom on 25th January 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

”I am going to die. I cannot stand the thought of leaving my girls, of never seeing them again. I would give anything to turn back time and stop this. The gun is in my eye line as the second bullet is fired. That’s the one that kills me.”

Ryan Finnegan, a high-ranking government official, is brutally slain in Leinster House, the seat of Irish parliament. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team are called in to uncover the truth behind the murder. As the suspects start to rack up, Tom must untangle a web of corruption, sordid secrets and sinister lies.

At first, all the evidence hints at a politically motivated crime, until a surprise discovery takes the investigation in a dramatically different direction. Suddenly the motive for murder has got a lot more personal … but who benefits the most from Ryan’s death?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in Jo Spain’s TOM REYNOLDS SERIES is an okay crime thriller that looks at the effects of Ireland’s energy policy and politics in general on the forgotten coastal communities but the reveal relies on crucial information being hidden until the final chapters and there’s a soap opera element to the story (notably the family set-up of some of the characters) that was a bit too melodramatic for my tastes. I liked Tom Reynolds as a detective hero – a dedicated family man, I believed in the relationship with his wife and the situation with his single mum daughter gave him some emotional bite – and I also liked the fact that he was willing to listen to his superiors without running off to play the maverick rule-breaker. Ray Lennon was less interesting to me, partly because I haven’t read WITH OUT BLESSING so wasn’t familiar with the storyline but also because the inevitable romance developing with DS Laura Brennan had a soap opera vibe to it that I didn’t care about. The mystery itself rattled along fine until the final chapters when Spain suddenly reveals information previously unmentioned (which I thought a cheap trick) and the ending dripped with melodrama that made me roll my eyes. Ultimately, it wasn’t a bad book and I kept turning the pages but I won’t rush to read the preceding book.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.