The Secret Child (DI Amy Winter #2) by Caroline Mitchell.

This is the second book in the DI Amy Winter series but it can be read as a stand-alone. It is set around London and features child abduction. Can DI Amy Winter and her team bring back 4 year old Ellen quickly to the safety of her home? Will Amy drill down to the bottom of this mystery? Get ready for another British crime thriller from Caroline Mitchell.

I liked the research that Caroline has done to build the plot of her latest novel. I liked how she used the tale of the Little Albert Experiment from 1920 and the use of drugs like Methylphenidate to bring a sinister side to her story.

I liked once again how Caroline captured the cultures within the police service, the interview techniques they use and the procedures involved complying with PACE.

I found it lovely that Amy’s pet, Dotty the Pug was included as part of her home life. However, I did not find Amy’s private life as interesting as in the first book, Truth and Lies. Once again there was dialogue between Amy and her birth mother Lillian Grimes but this became a frustrating drag and I thought just why does Amy, or for that matter, Caroline bother?

Oh and onto pet hate time. Frustratingly this novel went back and forth between 1984 and the present time. Caroline even mentioned boring Brexit to give it an up to date feel but then chapter after chapter she floated back to 1984. Then you are in the situation of knowing more about the background to this story than DI Amy Winter and her team investigation the child abduction.

With Amy and her mother Lillian droning on and on about their past, I started to loose empathy with Amy. Nothing exciting really happened in her private life and I feel her character has become a little tired.

I have read 4 other books from Caroline Mitchell, including Truth and Lies which was the first DI Amy Winter novel. Each of those books for me was a 5 star OUTSTANDING read. However, although I found The Secret Child to be a GOOD read, I did not enjoy it as much as the others, so it gets a highly respectable 4 stars from me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Amazon Publishing UK for giving me a copy of this book on the understanding that I provide an honest review.

Give It Back by Danielle Esplin.

Give It Back is a debut novel focused on the story of three women, Ella and her elder sister Lorraine, who employs an au pair called Lexy. Slowly Ella gets to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Lexy and Lorraine’s son called Logan. The story is set in Seattle although Lexy comes from London.

I found Give It Back to be a frustrating read as the time frame keeps switching backwards and forwards. Each chapter is from the point of view of either Ella, Lorraine or Lexy and I quickly became confused. This was not helped by some chapters detailing things that that in later chapters had not happened yet. In the early pages it was very easy to get Ella and Lexy mixed up as their names at a quick glance can be mistaken and the author’s voice sounded the same for both characters. In a character-driven novel it is important to have strongly different voices for each character.

I thought the plot was poor, which led to further frustration. Give It Back became quite a jumble for me as there were no clear story lines. It was like trying to recall conversations after a drunken night out with a large group of friends.

At the end of the book, the title Give It Back comes into play. This was a disappointment but dwarfed by the very end, which was simply daft. I was left with a strong feeling of just what was going through the author’s head that made Danielle tell her story in this way. This mystery could have been told from very different angles so that it developed with a linear time-frame and engaged the reader with eclectic characters rather than these samey women.

Making allowances for Give It Back being a debut novel, I still think this is a POOR read and just gets 2 stars from me.

Give It Back was written in 2017 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

The Bone Keeper by Luca Veste.

All over the country, children are warned away from certain areas, with tales of horror and the bogeyman. These stories are told to keep the children safe until they become street-wise. But what if those stories told to control children were true and the bogeyman really did exist?

The Bone Keeper is a mixture of horror and your regular, police procedural crime thriller. The story features real locations around Liverpool and Merseyside. As Luca puts it…

“All the locations found in this book exist; however, some minor details have been changed or expanded to better tell this story.”

I liked how this book started with the song chanting among children…

The Bone Keeper’s coming. The Bone Keeper’s real.

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t feel.

He’ll snatch you up. And make you weep.

He’ll slice your flesh. Your bones he’ll keep.

… echoes of this song repeat throughout the book and they had a creepy, taunting effect on me. I stop reading the book and the song suddenly springs into my mind. I found the song both catchy and haunting at the same time. The Bone Keeper’s home and patch is in the woods, any woods that are dotted around urban landscapes. These haunts are very easy to picture anywhere in Britain and are very popular with dog walkers like myself. The Bone Keeper is very easy to relate to, especially when I am daydreaming with Charlie the Pug as we stroll through woods together.

I thought The Bone Keeper developed the urban legend really well. I loved how it played out a culture and a cult following. There was plenty of danger and horror along the way. I found it creepy with lots of feeling woven into the plot.

The central character is DC Louise Henderson but this is not your usual Police story. Character development of Louise was very good and there are many surprises along the way.

I found this book to be creepy and imaginative, yet for all the knife-wielding action it was still a fun, horror read.

The Bone Keeper has a great ending, all the seeds have been sown and if the homeless population appears to be shrinking, you read it here first! This urban legend was a great idea for a book, it was well developed and thought out. I think The Book Keeper is a GOOD read which gets 4 stars from me.

So you may think, I have listed all these good things about The Bone Keeper, how come I have not given it 5 stars? Simple, I found this book GOOD but not outstanding. Sometimes an author throws so much content into a book, it makes your brain buzz rather than simply entertain. Classic books get 5 stars and rightly so. The Bone Keeper is very worthy to read and would make a good film. I think Luca Veste has a lot of talent and I would be happy to read more from him.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Sourcebooks Landmark for giving me a copy of this book on the understanding that I provide an honest review.