A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay.

Follow Cal Weaver as he solves mysteries in a small town. He was stopped at a red light when he got a tap on his car window from a teenage girl asking for a ride. Then things started to go very wrong...

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this mystery thriller. As the story unfolded, there were many, many twists and turns. Linwood time after time led you up the garden path only to suddenly change direction yet again. He skillfully built his plot at an entertaining and refreshing pace, with a back story that was not laboured. The amount of detail in the plot was tremendous and this was a joy to read. I wondered how Linwood had written his novel and I imagined a spreadsheet of details that he had to paste into the growing text.

A Tap on the Window is a first person narrative but with a twist. Every now and then, there is a short chapter written in italics - which is not Cal Weaver but someone else integral to the story. Slowly the identity of the italic chapters is revealed. This is very clever and adds even more enjoyment to this great novel.

Aside from this mystery, that ticks all the boxes, there is also a discussion of local politics and the role of the police with their treatment of teenagers and visitors to this small town. Solving mysteries is different nowadays with the exponential uptake of Facebook, which Linwood weaves into his tale...

These days, all I had to do was go to the number one social network. There wasn't, in my experience, a kid today who wasn't on it, although I suspected it wouldn't be long before the younger generation found some other way to connect. All their parents were on Facebook now, ruining it for them, crowding them out, posting videos and pictures of dogs and cats and cute babies, and tarting up cliched aphorisms--"This Is Your Life. Be Who You Want To Be!"--in coloured boxes with fancy fonts.

... So true, Lindon! But Lindon does not stop there, he also has a rant about the dash cam...

My car had a dash cam--a camera mounted in the front windshield that caught the whole thing. Just in the right side of the frame. I should have known better. I didn't think my car was at the right angle to capture the scene. My chief brought me into his office and we watched the video together. Several times. No pop-corn.

... So there you have it, a great mystery complete with a reflection of how modern technology has changed our daily lives. I consider this a top quality read and think that Linwood is tops in the mystery thriller genre. What more can I say? This is simply a 5 star read for me. A great quote is featured on the inside cover from the Evening Telegraph. "More wriggles and twists than a bag full of snakes" - I could not put it better myself.

A Tap on the Window has 484 pages and was written in 2013.

The Swimmer by Joakim Zander.

The Swimmer is an international spy thriller. People are frightened of the shadows following who may be out to kill them.

Forget the hype as I found this book to be quite ordinary. The plot was average and the entertainment value was poor. Joakim told his tale from many perspectives and his many characters had their own shallow roles to play. There was no central character to indentify with and this whole tale was a bit of a soap opera.

The story flitted about going backwards and forwards in time plus numerous changes of location and country. This splattering of time, location and characters made this book difficult to get into. It is an easy book to put down and as this shallow story develops you can guess how things are going to work out.

Comparisons can be made with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and other Swedish thrillers but I found The Swimmer to be a big let down. I found everything to be second rate, the plot, the characters, the social message and the quality of storytelling. Nothing was quirky or memorable. The whole book was such a POOR read that I can only vote it 2 stars.

The Swimmer was written in 2013 and is available as an Amazon KIndle eBook.

Grave by Luis Samways.

Follow Detective Frank McKenzie of the Boston Police Department as he tries to catch a man calling himself the Grave Digger, who has a list of 15 people he plans to kill.

This crime thriller gets off to a really chilling start and the first paragraph is one of the best to start a novel that I have read in a long while. The story starts with his first victim and the plot builds with a steady pace. Unlike other crime thrillers that are centered around the Police, Luis gives you both sides of the tale. He develops fully the characters of the Grave Digger and Detective Frank McKenzie.

I really liked the balance of this novel, it was not just about the crime and it’s detection but also the daily life of the lead detective and the killer. Both central characters had a lot to say about life in general, how society functions and the frustrations of the day job.

I found Grave to be a very entertaining book to read and I loved the sheer attitude coming forward from every character. This is book 4 in the Frank McKenzie series but you do NOT have to read them in sequence. Luis tells such a good tale, it stands on it’s own. His plot is unique and I loved the way it developed. Generally the bad guy just does his crime but in Grave his motivation is fully explored. Luis took a risk giving the Grave Digger’s point of view such prominence but it added so much more to this story.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Grave and I think that Luis Samways is an author to watch. His writing style is very similar to that of Chris Simms with the DI Jon Spicer novels. Where Chris writes about Manchester in the UK, where I have been to many times - Luis writes about Boston in America where I have never been. Yet Luis writes such a descriptive, entertaining and comfortable tale that I feel as though I could have been sitting in the back of Frank’s Ford Capri. To make a British reader who has never been to America feel at home takes talent and Luis has it by the bucket load. Well done Luis and although your novel has not yet had any reviews posted on the Goodreads website, I will vote Grave the top score of 5 stars from me.

Grave is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2015.