BLOG TOUR: The Trap - Ava Glass

How far would you go to catch a killer?

This is the question UK agent Emma Makepeace must ask herself when she is sent to Edinburgh for the upcoming global G7 Summit.

The Russians are in town and Emma and her team know a high-profile assassination is being planned.

But who is their target?

There is only one way to find out. Emma must set a trap using herself as bait.

As the most powerful leaders in the world arrive and the city becomes gridlocked, Emma knows the clock is ticking.

 

What did I think?

I was so excited to read the new Alias Emma novel and I was not disappointed.  I just couldn't read it fast enough and the super-fast pacing left me breathless.  They don't call Ava Glass the Queen of Spy Fiction for no reason.

Although The Trap is book three in the series, you can read it as a standalone but you will definitely want to read the earlier books, if you haven't done so already.  Emma Makepeace has a new undercover assignment.  This time it's based in Edinburgh as intelligence discover an assassination plot planned for the G7 Summit.

It's a race against the clock to discover their identity and stop the assassin so Emma teams up with local law enforcement officer Kate Mackenzie.  I loved the connection Emma and Kate have so I don't think it's the last us readers have heard of Kate Mackenzie (yay!).

Blisteringly fast paced, sharp and addictive, it's impossible to put The Trap down once you pick it up.  Ava Glass is firmly cemented in place as one of my favourite authors and I highly recommend this book.

I received a digital ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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BLOG TOUR: The Coming Storm (The Coming Darkness Book 2) - Greg Mosse

SOMETIMES THE CALM IS DEADLIER THAN THE STORM.

The hotly-anticipated sequel to Sunday Times Thriller of the Year The Coming Darkness sees the return of special agent Alexandre Lamarque.

He may have saved the world from darkness, but he knows his work is not done yet.

There’s still a terrorist threat out there, pulling together the strands of a new and even more destructive conspiracy to bring the world to its knees.

Battling with personal tragedy on one hand, and the intrusion of new-found celebrity on the other, Alex and his allies must re-emerge from self-imposed exile to face the fight of their lives.

From the streets of Paris, the lithium mines of Southern Mali, and the mighty Aswan Dam, they come up against forces whose intentions are as devious as they are malign. Time is against them, and there’s more at stake than ever. Can they survive the coming storm?

 

What did I think?

I thought Greg Mosse's debut, The Coming Darkness, was fantastic but the sequel, The Coming Storm is breathtaking.  Although you could read The Coming Storm as a standalone, I think you would appreciate it more if you had already read The Coming Darkness.

Everyone wants to meet The Man Who Saved the World, Alexandre Lamarque, but his fame also makes him a very visible target.  The pacing is blisteringly fast as the threats come from all angles and I felt like Robocop as my eyes scanned the pages as fast as I could.

There is so much going on with Alex, Mariam and Amaury after the events of the first book and I absolutely devoured each storyline.  I really enjoyed reading more about Mariam's personal life, although it did break my heart.  I was on the edge of my seat throughout and I certainly had my virtual running shoes on as I raced through the book.

Intelligent, captivating and heart-poundingly thrilling, The Coming Storm is a superb novel in its own right but when read as part of the series it is spectacular.  Although I don't want the series to end when it's barely begun, I will definitely be rereading these books when the series is complete.  Very highly recommended.

I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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BLOG TOUR: The Traitor - Ava Glass

LONDON. EARLY MORNING.

A body is found in a padlocked suitcase.

Investigator Emma Makepeace knows it's murder. And it's personal.

She quickly establishes that the dead man had been shadowing two oligarchs suspected of procuring illegal weapons in the UK. And it seems likely that an insider working deep within the British government is helping them.

To find out who the traitor is, Emma goes deep undercover on a superyacht owned by one of the oligarchs.

But the glamorous veneer of the rich hides dark secrets. Out at sea, Emma is both hunter and prey, and no one can protect her.

Never has the turquoise sea and golden sands of the Riviera seemed so dangerous.

As the hunt intensifies, Emma knows that she is in mortal danger. And that she needs to find the traitor before they find her . . .

 

What did I think?

Wow!  Ava Glass stole my breath; I'm sure I forgot to breath when I was reading The Traitor.  It is completely awesome!  It's Ava Glass' second book featuring intelligence agency operative Emma Makepeace but you can read it as a standalone as I haven't read The Chase but I definitely want to now.

Emma is a very strong and well-developed main character.  With Russian heritage, she is the perfect spy to place on a Russian yacht but, with no mobile phone coverage, the risks are very high.  It's a risk that Emma is more than willing to take though.  Yikes!  I'm glad I don't bite my nails or I'd have bitten them down to the quick.  

I absolutely loved this book and with a traitor in their midst I suspected almost everyone, even those people that Emma trusts.  I'm really not surprised that film rights have already been acquired as it is an outstanding spy novel.

Incredibly fast-paced and filled with danger, The Traitor is a breathtaking novel that drew me in from the start and continued at break-neck speed until the very end.  I think the book cover must have been coated in superglue as I simply couldn't put it down and my poor eyes were worn out at the speed I was demanding them to read.

Very highly recommended and an absolute must-read.  Just don't forget to breathe when you read it!

I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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About the author:

The Traitor is the highly anticipated follow up to Ava Glass’ 2022 debut spy thriller The Chase.

The Chase is currently shortlisted for Best Spy Novel at the 2023 Crime Writer Awards alongside established names including Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) and Linwood Barclay. No small feat for a debut novelist.

Film rights to The Chase and The Traitor have been acquired by Ink Factory, producers of The Night Manager, who are currently working on a pilot in conjunction with Sky Atlantic, now in the final stages of editing. Next step will be casting!  

Ava Glass is a former civil servant with the highest security clearance bar one.  She has seen just enough of the inner workings of espionage to ensure that she will always be fascinated by spies.

Prior to working at the home office, Ava Glass worked as a crime reporter, covering multiple homicides, making her writing both fresh and dangerously believable.

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BLOG TOUR: Assassin Eighteen (Last Man Standing book 2) - John Brownlow

'I am waiting for someone to kill me. Tonight would be a good night for it.'

Agent Seventeen, the most infamous hitman in the world, has quit. But whoever wants to become Assassin Eighteen must track him down and kill him first.

So when a bullet hits the glass inches from his face, he knows who fired it - doesn't he?

But the sniper isn't the hardened killer he was expecting. It's Mireille - a mysterious, silent child, abandoned in the woods with instructions to pull the trigger.

Reuniting with his spiky lover, Kat, Seventeen must protect Mireille, and discover who sent her to kill him, and why.

But the road he must travel is littered with bodies. And the answer, when it comes, will blow apart everything Seventeen thought he knew. 

What did I think?

Assassin Eighteen is the second book in the Last Man Standing series but it is so good that you can totally read it as a standalone.  I loved Agent Seventeen but Assassin Eighteen completely blew me away and the pair of them together are simply earth-shattering.

Seventeen is living in Sixteen's house and waiting for Eighteen to come along and kill him.  Things don't quite go to plan when the shot that Seventeen is expecting doesn't kill him but instead leads him into a complex web of danger and destruction with another target on his back.

The pacing is blisteringly fast and my eyes were zipping down the page faster than my brain could read the words.  I absolutely love John Brownlow's style of writing; the chapters are short and punchy but every single word is impactful and effective.  A couple of chapters have no more than two words but they are perhaps the most heart-stopping and tense chapters I have ever read.

There aren't enough words to describe how amazing this book is - it's an absolute must-read and easily one of my favourite books of 2023.  I'm going to be shouting about Assassin Eighteen for a long time - it's JAWDROPPINGLY BRILLIANT!  DO NOT MISS IT!

I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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BLOG TOUR: The Coming Darkness - Greg Mosse

 

A thrilling debut that has been likened to John Le Carré and Raymond Chandler . . .

Paris, 2037. Alexandre Lamarque of the French external security service is hunting for eco-terrorists. Experience has taught him there is no one he can trust – not his secretive lover Mariam, not even his old mentor, Professor Fayard, the man at the centre of the web. He is ready to give up. But he can’t.

In search of the truth, Alex must follow the trail through an ominous spiral of events, from a string of brutal child murders to a chaotic coup in North Africa. He rapidly finds himself in a heart-thumping race against chaos and destruction. He could be the world’s only hope of preventing THE COMING DARKNESS . . .

What did I think?

With a dystopian setting and a hint of sci-fi, The Coming Darkness is a little out of my comfort zone but I rather enjoyed it.  It's a book of two halves for me; it took me quite a long time to get into the story and to work out who the characters were but once I got over that hump I absolutely flew through it.

Set in Paris in the near future of 2037, I loved the main character of Alexandre Lamarque and I hope this is the first of many thrillers starring Alex.  Greg Mosse has created a scarily realistic fictional future world and the book is filled with tension as you don't know who can be trusted or what they are willing to do for their cause.

The writing is outstanding and I think because of the almost sci-fi element to the novel, there's a lot of world building at the start which I'm not used to.  So I found the pacing at the start of the book to be slower than I expected but boy does it ramp up.  Once I became immersed in this new world, the thriller element completely gripped me and I couldn't read it fast enough.

An intelligent, thought-provoking and scarily realistic thriller, The Coming Darkness is a fantastic debut from Greg Mosse and one I would definitely recommend reading.  I think it deserves a reread and I wouldn't be surprised if it will be even better the second time round.

I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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BLOG TOUR: Seventeen - John Brownlow

ONE HUNDRED YEARS. SEVENTEEN ASSASSINS. ONE HELL OF A RIDE.

A LARGER-THAN-LIFE, NON-STOP BLOCKBUSTER THRILLER FOR FANS I AM PILGRIM AND GREGG HURWITZ FROM HOLLYWOOD SCRIPTWRITER WITH FILM RIGHTS SOLD IN A MAJOR DEAL...

YOU’LL NEVER KNOW MY NAME.

BUT YOU WON’T FORGET MY NUMBER.

BEHIND THE EVENTS YOU KNOW ARE THE KILLERS YOU DON’T.

WHEN DIPLOMACY FAILS, WE’RE THE ONES WHO GEAR UP.

OFFICIALLY WE DON’T EXIST, BUT EVERY GOVERNMENT IN THE WORLD USES OUR SERVICES.

WE’VE BEEN SAVING THE WORLD, AND YOUR ASS, FOR 100 YEARS.

SIXTEEN PEOPLE HAVE DONE THIS JOB BEFORE ME.

I AM 17. THE MOST FEARED ASSASSIN IN THE WORLD.

BUT TO BE THE BEST YOU MUST BEAT THE BEST.

MY NEXT TARGET IS 16, JUST AS ONE DAY 18 WILL HUNT ME DOWN.

IT’S A DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD AND IT GETS LONELY AT THE TOP.

NOBODY GETS TO STAY FOR LONG.

BUT WHILE WE’RE HERE, ALL THAT MATTERS IS THAT WE WIN.

VISCERAL, CINEMATIC AND INSANELY ADDICTIVE, 17 WILL KEEP YOU ON THE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT AND LIVE LONG IN THE MEMORY. UNTIL 18 COMES ALONG ... 

What did I think?

No wonder the blurb for Seventeen is written in capital letters; this is a book that grabs you round the neck and shouts in your face the moment you turn the first page.  It's an absolute firecracker of a novel and I LOVED IT!! 

It's written in the first person and has short, punchy chapters so it feels as if the protagonist is talking solely to you.  I really liked 17 and his cool, calm and collected way of thinking and working.  There's so much going on that I almost forgot to breathe and this is one of those books where your eyes jump down the page quicker than your brain can read.  I had to cover the page while I was reading to stop my naughty eyes from skipping ahead.

17 carries out his tasks quickly and efficiently; that's why he's the best.  Assassins usually inherit their position following the death of their predecessor, however, 16 disappeared leaving a loose end that needs to be tied up.  17 must find and kill 16 but he needs to have eyes in the back of his head as there's always the danger of the hunter becoming the hunted as new assassins compete to be crowned 18.

I loved everything about this book: the writing, the plot, and the characters.  The action doesn't let up for a moment and the pacing is lightning fast.  It's an intense and exciting rollercoaster of a thriller that had my heart pounding and left me breathless.  Absolutely brilliant!

Filled with espionage, danger and tension, Seventeen is a raw, gritty fast-paced thriller that had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.  I devoured every single carefully crafted word and couldn't read it fast enough.  It's destined for the big screen (movie rights have already been sold) and I, for one, can't wait to see it.

I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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About the author:

JOHN BROWNLOW HOLDS BRITISH/CANADIAN CITIZENSHIP AND LIVES TWO HOURS NORTH OF TORONTO. HE WROTE THE FILM SYLVIA, STARRING GWYNETH PALTROW AND DANIEL CRAIG, THE TV SERIES FLEMING ABOUT IAN FLEMING’S WORK AS A SPY AND THE GENESIS OF JAMES BOND, AND THE TV SERIES THE MINIATURIST, ADAPTED FROM JESSIE BURTON’S BEST-SELLING NOVEL. 

YOU CAN FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @JOHNBROWNLOW

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Need to Know - Karen Cleveland

You get to work. Make a coffee. Turn on your computer.

Your task: break into a Russian criminal's laptop and find proof that he's concealing five deep-cover agents - seemingly normal people living in plain sight.

You’re in. Five faces stare back at you.

One of them is your husband.

What did I think?

What a scorching debut!  I read this via The Pigeonhole so read this in 10 staves over 10 days but I definitely think that this would have been a book I would have read in one sitting.  It was torture waiting 24 hours for the next instalment after being left on so many end of chapter cliffhangers and I even set my alarm 30 minutes early so I could read the last instalment before going to work.  It really is THAT good and I don't want to inadvertently reveal any of the plot so I'm going for a brief review.  

Need to Know is a book that constantly has you questioning 'what would I do?' as Viv cracks a Russian spy's computer and sees her husband's picture among his assets.  What would you do?  Call your boss and destroy your family or hit delete and go home to your husband, the spy?  What a moral dilemma for Viv and it's easy to say you'd do one or the other until you're actually presented with the same situation.  I didn't blame Viv at all for her actions although could see her getting deeper and deeper into a hole from which she could never climb out of.

My huge question was 'can Viv trust her husband, Matt?' and I changed my mind over and over again.  I went from yelling 'don't trust him' to thinking that their whole life couldn't be a lie...could it?  The whole book reminded me of a series of 24 with the suspense and tension building with each chapter, so I wasn't surprised to learn that Universal Studios have acquired the movie rights to Need to Know.  If it's half as good as the book, it'll be AMAZING!

Need to Know is an edge of your seat suspense filled thriller that begs a follow up and consider me on my knees begging you for a sequel, Karen Cleveland. A 100% definite 5 star read; do not miss this book!  

This is my honest and unbiased opinion of my first, but definitely not my last, Pigeonhole book.

My rating:

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BLOG TOUR: The Mayfly - James Hazel

I'm thrilled to be on the blog tour for The Mayfly, which is sure to be one of the most exciting books of the year.  Before we get on to my review, I have a fabulous guest piece from James Hazel about the films that inspired The Mayfly.

The films that inspired The Mayfly

Whilst I love crime fiction, I’m relatively late to the party. For most of my early life I was a passionate reader and watcher of psychological horror. It wasn’t particularly the gory slasher films that intrigued me; it was the supernatural, the unknown.

Unsurprising then that subtle elements of horror have crept into The Mayfly, although not without belittling its status as, fundamentally, a crime novel. Here’s a few of the films and TV shows that directly or indirectly influenced the shape of The Mayfly.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, a film I watched at far too young an age, the everyday is suddenly turned into a nightmare. A seemingly benign part of our everyday background, the birds, suddenly take on an apparent collective consciousness and start working together to wage a war on mankind.

It struck me that this was real horror, a concept that utterly destroyed our intellectual trust with life. Hence the members of the House of Mayfly are the everyday. Towards the end, Priest reveals that the members comprised, “politicians, bankers, lawyers, coppers. Even a fucking geography teacher.”

The character of Priest was inspired by a whole mish-mash of heroes, from Sherlock Holmes to James Bond and Luther (the Volvo!). You could pick any decent film featuring the former two protagonists and find a little bit of Priest in there.

The final scenes are partially inspired by the strange happenings in Eyes Wide Shut, in which the main character, Dr Bill Harford, stumbles on a secret society practising a sexual ritual at a secluded mansion. 

There’s an obvious connection with Silence of the Lambs, as Priest’s brother, William, is a convicted serial killer incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, although Dr William Priest has never admitted to eating any of his victims. The similarity with Hannibal Lecter is more to do with the interplay between William and Charlie, with the former acting as counsel to the latter in all matters gruesome and murderous, a bond that will develop in future Priest’s thrillers.

The Mayfly also features a German SS doctor, Kurt Schneider, who was responsible for experimenting on inmates at Buchwald concentration camp during the Holocaust. The novel raises questions about Nazi ideology and the nature of evil and I have to thank a host of films for inspiration, from the iconic Schindler’s List to the glorious technicolour romp in Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Readers will also note that Priest suffers from a form of dissociative disorder and this affects his perception of reality. At its most extreme, Priest has full-on out of body experiences and strange hallucinations and, in so doing, I am always reminded of the unreality brought to life in The Matrix. For more insight, some sufferers of depersonalisation disorder, a particular type of dissociative disorder, describe a feeling of being trapped powerless in their own bodies, much like the artificial intelligence trapped in the robotic cells in the science-fiction television series Humans.

Finally, this list wouldn’t be complete without reference to Charlie Priest’s favourite film Freaks. A 1932 American film in which the ‘freaks’ of the travelling circus are the real heroes, while the ‘non-freaks’ are the villains. What better way is there to celebrate being different?

So what did I think about The Mayfly?  Here's my review:

A mutilated body discovered in the woods. 
A murderous plan conceived in the past.

A reckoning seventy years in the making . . .

When lawyer Charlie Priest is attacked in his own home by a man searching for information he claims Priest has, he is drawn into a web of corruption that has its roots in the last desperate days of World War Two. 

When his attacker is found murdered the next day, Priest becomes a suspect and the only way to clear his name is to find out about the mysterious House of Mayfly - a secret society that people will kill for. 

As Priest races to uncover the truth, can he prevent history from repeating itself?

What did I think?

Like a pesky bluebottle, the buzz about The Mayfly on Twitter was hard to ignore - not that I could ever ignore such excitement surrounding a new book!  So like a moth to the flame I was powerless to resist The Mayfly and picked it up almost as soon as it dropped on my mat.  What an intriguing book this is, I am certain that we have not heard the last of Charlie Priest and I, for one, can't wait to read about what he gets up to next.

I could probably write a whole review about Charlie Priest, yet I get the feeling that we have only just scratched the surface of his fascinating life.  Charlie is an ex-policeman who retrained as a lawyer, he suffers from dissociative disorder and has a brother who is a serial killer.  See - intriguing or what?  Add to this a dual timeline with a post-war experimentation slant and I was lucky to finish the book without getting papercuts from turning the pages so fast.

Charlie aside, I absolutely loved his associate, Simon 'Solly' Solomon.  Solly is an accountant - he likes numbers not people, which is pretty much how I describe myself - but oh my word, he is such an amusing character.  He's completely OCD and I almost choked with laughter as he revealed his inner Sheldon Cooper (of Big Bang Theory fame).  Like a typical accountant, he's forgotten about as you never see him arrive or leave and he's left to beaver away in a dark and dusty room, but he's always there to be relied upon.  

I think it's always a worry with dual timelines that the reader sometimes feels as if they are reading two separate books.  I felt a bit like that when I started The Mayfly as I couldn't see how these two stories were related or how they would ever come together at the end, which is why The Mayfly is so brilliant as it all slots together perfectly.  James Hazel is a refreshing and exciting new voice in crime fiction and I'm already looking forward to more Charlie Priest adventures.  Believe the buzz on this one, and make sure you catch a copy of The Mayfly.

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

My rating:

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In Their Footsteps - Tess Gerritsen

This is a story of espionage that takes us on a journey around Europe - England, France, Greece and Germany. Jordan and Beryl Tavistock are siblings whose MI6 parents' deaths were a mystery to them until a drunken partygoer spills the beans.  Their father was believed to have shot their mother after discovering she was having an affair, and then killed himself before he was uncovered as a traitor.  Jordan and Beryl don't believe this for a minute so they jet off to Paris to uncover the truth, followed by ex-CIA Richard Wolf who is tasked with keeping an eye on them.

As the siblings get closer to the truth, the real traitor becomes desperate to conceal their identity, desperate enough to kill.  Just when we think all has become clear, the murderer of the Tavistocks is revealed.  I was close but I hadn't guessed who it was.

Obviously, and needlessly I may add, a romance blossoms between Beryl and Richard.  How they find time for such shenanigans whilst someone is trying to kill them is beyond me!

Whilst the espionage story was engaging, I'm afraid that this felt a bit like a Mills and Boon in a thriller cover.

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