Written in Bone by Simon Beckett

Written in Bone by Simon Beckett

Synopsis

“I took the skull from its evidence bag and gently set it on the stainless steel table. ‘Tell me who you are. . . .’ ” With this silent plea, forensic expert Dr. David Hunter ignites a harrowing murder investigation on a windswept Scottish island, and a tale of menace, sexuality, and revenge unravels—along with the chilling message that a killer has…

Dr. David Hunter should be in London with the woman he loves and a past he can’t quite shake off. Instead, as a favor to a beleaguered cop, Hunter travels to a remote island in the Outer Hebrides to inspect a baffling set of remains. A forensic anthropologist, he has seen bodies destroyed by all forms of violence, but even he is surprised at what he finds: human remains burned beyond recognition—all within the confines of an otherwise undamaged, unoccupied cottage. Local police want to rule the death accidental. But Hunter’s examination of the victim’s charred skull tells him that this woman, no doubt a stranger to the close-knit island of Runa, was murdered by someone nearby.

Within days, two more people are dead by fire. Hunter’s job is to coax the dead into telling their stories—but now that he’s beginning to hear them, he is staggered by the truth. Working with only the barest of clues, he peels back the layers of mysteries past and present, exposing the tangle of secrets at the heart of this strange community—from the deceptions of a wealthy couple to the bitterness of an ex-cop and the secrets of a lonely single mother—as a tale of rage and perversion comes full circle…then explodes in a series of violent actsand shocking twists.

⇒ Via: BN.com

Forensic scientist finds himself on an Scottish island in midst of an murder investigation. The spate of murders triggered by his investigation becomes too dangerous for himself. Engrossing even if a little farfetched.

Absolution by Caro Ramsay

Absolution by Caro Ramsay

Synopsis

It's been twenty years since Police Detective Alan McAlpine has set foot in Patrickhill Station-and more than twenty years since he fell forever in love with the mute, faceless woman he called Anna as she lay dying in Glasgow's Western Infirmary. Daily, he'd watched over her, and they had begun to communicate with each other, she by moving her wounded fingers. Her fingers could not tell the sad, unseasoned police cadet her name, however, or name for him the father of her newborn baby girl or identify the assailants who had flung the acid in her once incomparably beautiful face. Or tell him how she'd smuggled a cache of uncut diamonds into Scotland.

Now McAlpine is back in Patrickhill, where he's been summoned to head up the investigation of a disturbing murder case. Two women-their arms outstretched, their legs together and feet crossed at the ankle-have already died at the hands of a man the press has tagged the Crucifixion Killer. More gruesomely, the third victim will also have been violently disfigured when her body turns up in Whistler's Lane, coincidentally (perhaps) the scene of an equally brutal murder four years earlier.

The face of another woman, though-a strikingly beautiful young woman, blonde-has taken hold of McAlpine's consciousness, and soon the consequences of a case cold for two decades are commanding-and dangerously thwarting-the course of his team's current, already desperate investigation.

As crimes in the present intersect with iniquities committed in the past, the mystery in this steely, piercing, psychological thriller is as gripping as its twists are surprising. And absolution proves to be extreme.

⇒ Via: BN.com

Thriller about a conflicted policeman whose past comes to haunt him in his latest case almost 20 years later. A serial killer is loose, killing immoral women who are linked by a tenuous thread. Well written but leaves you wanting for more. The main character is wasted and the reader is left wondering why.

Never Go Back by Robert Goddard

Never Go Back by Robert Goddard

Synopsis

In the spellbinding new mystery by the master of “the clever twist,” a group of ex-RAF comrades journey to a Scottish castle for a reunion. But by the time they reach their destination, two of them are dead.

Harry Barnett is leading a contented life in Vancouver with his wife and daughter when he is brought back to England by the death of his mother. He intends to spend just a few days sorting out her affairs when a chance meeting he will regret for the rest of his life makes him change his plans. Two old acquaintances from his National Service days track Harry down to his mother’s house — the last address they had for him. A lavish reunion has been organized to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their RAF days. Harry decides to go.

During the war, Harry and his fellow RAF conscripts spent three months in a Scottish castle where they acted as guinea pigs in a psychological experiment. The reunion is to take place in the same castle. It will be a chance to see friends, settle old scores and lay a few ghosts to rest.

The party begins on the train up to Aberdeen, until the apparent suicide of one of their number shatters the holiday atmosphere. Their arrival in Scotland seems under a cloud, and when another comrade dies soon after their arrival, Harry is gripped by a sense of foreboding. As well, the recollections of the old comrades of their time in the castle are frighteningly different, and unexplained events from 1955 still haunt them. As Harry tries to solve the mystery of what really happened fifty years ago, he uncovers an extraordinary secret that convinces him he will never leave the castle alive.

⇒ Via: BN.com

Former RAF soldier finds himself in midst of murder and double cross when he decides to join his buddies for a reunion after 50 years. A gripping tale of double-cross and suspense that holds you till the very end.

Bleeding Hearts by Ian Rankin

Bleeding Hearts by Ian Rankin

From the Publisher
Michael Weston is paid well to do his work and ask no questions. When you're a professional assassin, total secrecy is part of the job. But after a successful mission in London, the police are immediately on his tail. How did they know how to find him? And who is his anonymous employer? Why did he or she want his target, a TV reporter, killed? Was he set up from the start?
The questions lead Weston to his nemesis Hoffer, a private detective who has been hunting him for years. Ever since Weston accidentally killed an innocent American girl, her grieving father has employed Hoffer on a relentless mission to bring Weston to justice. Could Hoffer finally have set a snare that worked?

Weston sets out to find his mysterious employer, traveling from London to Glasgow to Seattle-even if it means encountering Hoffer face-to-face at last. With the brilliant eye for character and taut pacing that have made him an internationally renowned bestseller, Ian Rankin delivers a gripping story that examines what happens when the assassin becomes the target, and proves yet again that "in Rankin, you cannot go wrong" (Boston Globe).

⇒ Via: BN.com

Professional assasin tracks down his employer when he suspects betrayal. The main character is more of an anti-hero and you cannogt but identify with him.

Borrowed Time by Robert Goddard

Borrowed Time by Robert Goddard

From the Publisher
It is a golden evening of high summer. Walking a ridge on the Welsh Borders, Robin Timariot meets by chance an elegant middle-aged woman who seems strangely out of place. They exchange only a few words, but those words prove to be unforgettable. A few days later Timariot learns from the newpapers that, just hours after their meeting, the woman was raped and murdered.

A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot that all is not what it seems. Fascinated by the dead woman's memory, he is sucked into the complex motives and tortured relationships of her family and friends, searching against his better judgemnt for the secret of what really happened the day she died.

The closer he gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late he realizes that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to be allowed to live.

⇒ Via: BN.com

Robin Timarriot gets entangled in a web of lies and betrayal when he is unwittingly drawn into a murdered woman's family affairs.

Play to the End by Robert Goddard

Play to the End by Robert Goddard

From the Publisher
Intricate, fascinating and deeply satisfying to the last page — another classic Robert Goddard mystery.

Actor Toby Flood, formerly of big and small screen but now seldom seen on either, arrives in Brighton with the other cast members of the Joe Orton play Lodger in the Throat. They have been on tour since September, but hopes of a West End transfer have been abandoned and they are all looking forward to the end of the run the following Saturday.

Flood is visited that night by his estranged wife, Jenny, now living with wealthy entrepreneur Roger Colborn. Jenny runs a shop in the Lanes and is worried about a strange man who is hanging around outside. Roger has dismissed her concerns but Jenny persuades Toby, for old times’ sake, to do something. The next day Flood trails the man and confronts him. Derek Oswin is an unemployed loner who blames Roger Colborn for his father’s death from cancer on account of dangerous practices at the now-closed plastics factory run by Roger and his late father, Sir Walter Colborn. However, Oswin is a fan of Flood’s and eventually he agrees to lay off. Then, Colborn gets wind of Flood’s contact with Jenny and tries to buy him off, but Flood sees only a longed-for opportunity to win Jenny back, and presses for answers to a host of questions surrounding the death of Sir Walter seven years earlier.

Before he fully understands the risks he is running, Flood finds himself entangled in the mysterious — and dangerous — relationship between the Oswins and the Colborns. The prospects of him surviving until the close of the play suddenly start to look far from good.

⇒ Via: BN.com

An actor who has seen better days finds himself drawn into a web of intrigue and murder after his touring company schedules his play in a town where his estranged wife lives.

Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard

Sight Unseen by Robert Goddard

From the Publisher
Another classic mystery from the “master of the clever twist.”

On a summer’s day in 1981, a two-year-old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor’s van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson.

One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of “Junius,” the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. The two-year-old, Tamsin Hall, was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson, the nanny, wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide.

In the spring of 2004, retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed “Junius” reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber’s denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit — and hence the long-concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries arebetter left unsolved.

⇒ Via: BN.com

Aman finds himself in the center of a murderous conspiracy arising when he witnessed an accident 23 years ago. He is reluctantly drawn into investigation when the retired chief inspector gets an anonymous letter indicating that there was more than just an accident that happened 23 years ago. Both the retired policeman try to backtrack the cold case from 23 years ago uncovering a conspiracy with international mobsters, high finance and betrayal.