Friday 6 September 2019

BLOG TOUR: A Litter of Bones (DCI Logan Crime Thrillers #1) - JD Kirk


Was the biggest case of his career the worst mistake he ever made?

Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed 'Mister Whisper,' earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process.

Now, he spends his days working in Glasgow's Major Investigations Team, and his nights reliving the horrors of what he saw.

And what he did.

When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home.

But as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago?

And, if so, is the real Mister Whisper about to claim his fourth victim?

A Litter of Bones is the explosive debut crime thriller novel from JD Kirk, an exciting new voice in Scottish crime fiction. Perfect for fans of L.J. Ross, Ian Rankin, Chris Brookmyre, and Stuart Macbride.


What did I think?

The first thing that stood out for me when reading A Litter of Bones was the amazing first line; it gives us a hint of the dry humour that JD Kirk uses throughout the book to accompany the seriousness of a missing children storyline.  Without making light of a dire situation, I loved how JD Kirk injected some dry humour into his writing to fully flesh out his characters and keep the reader fully entertained.  Although we are reading crime, we don't necessarily need it to be constant violent deaths and grisly crime scenes, so with spending time on character development JD Kirk gets the balance perfectly right in his amazing crime debut.

JD Kirk has hit a gold mine with his DCI Jack Logan character; he's got Owen Petrie, a serial killer, incarcerated in Carstairs, the notorious psychiatric hospital outside of Glasgow, but Logan still has unfinished business with 'Mister Whisper'.  Logan is haunted by the abducted little boy whose body was never found and he refuses to let the case go cold.  When there are disturbing similarities to a new abduction, the police wonder whether there's a copycat or whether the wrong man has been caught.  Logan stands by his conviction and joins the taskforce in the hunt for the new missing boy, but he can't ignore the link to the previous abductions...how can this be happening again when the killer has already been caught?

I really loved this book; it's so intriguing and it had my brain whirring with so many questions and possibilities flying around my head.  How is Petrie doing this?  If not him, then who?  Has the right man been caught in the first place?  Is something supernatural going on?  Perhaps an ethereal Mister Whisper conjured by saying his name in the mirror 3 times?  It's so good when a book gets you thinking like that, it just shows how invested in the story you are, and I was 100% invested in this one.  I felt as if I was reading with my eyes open as wide as they could be sometimes, almost in a permanent state of surprise, so it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when I did actually gasp out loud in shock at one point (luckily I was reading alone, otherwise that would have taken some explaining).

Having been a long-time fan of Billy Connolly, I couldn't mistake the essence of Scotland running through the prose; from the jaggy bushes (remember Billy's jaggedy-arse wool?) to the bone drenching smirr of the Scottish rain.  I love these little homages to dialect that bring the book to life and make it memorable.  I found this book so entirely engrossing that I can't think of a single criticism of it; I loved the characters, the setting and the storyline and I'm really looking forward to reading more DCI Logan books.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:


Buy it from Amazon




About the author:

JD Kirk lives in the wilds of Scotland, where he spends his days making stuff up and writing it down. He lives with his wife, two children, one dog, and – if his daughter has anything to do with it – a cat in the very near future.

Having been writing in various genres for over a decade, JD turned his attention to crime fiction in May 2019, and hasn’t looked back. A Litter of Bones is his first crime novel, and the first of his hundred-plus books that his wife could bring herself to read.





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2 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for being on the blog tour today Michelle x

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