A Silent Death

Finished March 20

A Silent Death by Peter May

This standalone thriller is set around a Scottish police officer, John Mackenzie. Mackenzie has always wanted to be a police officer because his father was one. Not that he really knew his father, who died when he was a child. Mackenzie is a man who is highly intelligent, always curious, and is unflinchingly direct. It is this last characteristic that has caused him the most trouble. It has caused him to be separated from his wife, with her having custody of their two young children, and has caused him to leave his job at the Met. 

As the book opens, he is just starting a new job at the National Crime Agency and is given the task of going to Spain to pick up a prisoner, Jack Cleland. Cleland has been a wanted man for some time, intelligent and wealthy before venturing into the world of international drug crime. His arrest in Spain was a bit of a fluke and opens the book. Cleland has declared vengeance against Christina Sanchez, one of the police officers who arrested him, and is a very dangerous man.

Christina has been fighting her superiors for some time, trying to get the respect and cases that her skills and abilities would normally get her, if she wasn't a woman. She took the assignment that netted Cleland as a favour to a fellow officer, and she soon finds that it was one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

Christina has a beloved aunt, Ana, that she and her sister visit regularly. Ana is deaf and blind, both disabilities affecting her as a young woman. Technology has opened her world to some extent, but she is still often trapped by her limited senses. 

As Cleland escapes custody and looks for ways to exact his revenge on Christina, her family, including Ana, come into his plan. Mackenzie's skills make him a good investigator to assist in the hunt for Cleland, but his personality also means that his choices don't always lead him to make good decisions. 

The setting is a big part of the story, The town of Marvina, on the Costa del Sol, is a small enough place to navigate, with lots to interest tourists. As Mackenzie walks through the town and drives to locations in the nearby hills, we get a real sense of the landscape and the economic reality of the people who live there. 

A fascinating read, with an interesting and complex character at the centre of action. There is lots going on here and the story held my interest until the end. 

The Deadly Hours

Finished February 21

The Deadly Hours: An Anthology by Susanna Kearsley, C.S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber, and Christine Trent

This linked set of novellas has in common a pocket watch, one cursed from its origin in gold stolen from a church in Cartagena.

We first encounter the watch in 1733 along the Spanish coast when a fierce storm forces several ships to take shelter in a small coastal town. At the local inn, there are several players in international affairs. One has been sent to kill someone and others are on a mission to protect the same man. This first tale is by Susanna Kearsley and features her character Mary MacPherson along with her Jacobite husband Hugh. The watch is owned by Valcour, a pirate who took part in the acts in Cartagena. 

The second tale is set in the 1830s in Edinburgh and is told by Anna Lee Huber. It features her character Lady Darby and the watch seems to be linked with a number of deaths in the city, and is brought to Lady Darby's attention by a man who reappears several times in her life, the criminal leader Bonnie Brock Kincaid. She and her husband Gage track the rumours about the watch to try to save the city from the threat.

The third tale is set in London in the 1870s and is told by Christine Trent. This tale features her character the Victorian undertaker Violet Harper and her American photographer husband Samuel. Violet has been hired by a recently distinguished peer to gather his deceased relatives from wherever they are currently interred and bring them together in a new tomb. In one of the graves she opens, she finds a curious object, and it seems to bring trouble to the rich neighbourhood of her client.

The fourth and last tale is told by C.S. Harris and takes place in 1944 in a small town near Dover. The local leader of the Home Guard, and watch collector is found dead under suspicious circumstances and only one item seems to be missing from his home. When more victims are found, suspicion ranges to several foreigners living locally. The main characters here are a female historian and an MI5 agent.

I enjoyed the strong female characters in this book, and it was my first introduction to the characters in the stories. I also liked how the authors worked together to link the story of the watch over time. 

The Ignorance of Blood

Finished August 8
The Ignorance of Blood by Robert Wilson

This is the last book in a series of four books featuring Javier Falcon of Seville, Spain. Javier is a busy man, involved in many things. He is an inspector with the local police, but also has ties to the intelligence community and is running a spy for them, a man he has become close friends with.
As the book opens a Russian mobster is switching from one mob to another, taking money and information with him, when he is killed in a freak accident. Falcon gets called to the scene and overseas the transfer of the information and cash to a secure location.
He has been working on a case involving a local judge who is in jail for killing his wife, who also happens to be Falcon's ex-wife. This is also tied to a construction case, where a bomb was set at a site. Falcon isn't sure of the judge's guilt, and is looking at a woman that he was having an affair with, a woman who definitely is hiding something. As he tries to trace back the woman and who she has had contact with, and put some pressure on her, things get ugly, and there seems to be government connections involved.
Meanwhile the man he is running as a spy is having a crisis that he goes to Falcon for assistance on, and Falcon wants to help but feels out of his depth.
And then the youngest son of the woman Falcon has fallen in love with is kidnapped, and he is sure that it is to put pressure on him.
So many storylines, and so much happening emotionally for Falcon as well. He is an upright and honest guy, at least mostly. And when he steps over a line, he doesn't try to blame anyone else for it. He has a good team of officers, ones that work together and are really committed to their work. But for him, when the situation became personal, he changed his feelings about things.
I really liked Falcon, and the strong woman he is in a relationship with. I will look at the earlier books in this series to get more on these characters.

The Summer of Dead Toys

Finished January 3
The Summer of Dead Toys by Antonio Hill

This novel features a Barcelona police detective who was born in Argentina. Inspector Héctor Salgado is returning from a trip to his native Argentina following a forced leave, a leave necessitated by his violent assault on a man connected with a human trafficking investigation.
His colleague Martina Andreu is now the lead on that case, and Salgado is assigned unofficially to a seemingly simple case of accidental death.
A young man has fallen from a third story window to his death. He was known for sitting on the window sill to smoke a cigarette, and so the death is easily explained as accidental. The promising young officer on the case Leire Castro has a feeling there is more to it, and as Salgado becomes involved his intuition also says that the young witnesses aren't telling them everything.
Meanwhile Andreu is following leads in the disappearance of a suspect that are worrying and she finds herself torn between the evidence and her gut feelings.
We also see a bit of Salgado and Castro's private life, their relationships, their worries, and what may lie ahead for each of them.
This is an intriguing read, with some very interesting situations and characters.