Tag: Cloak and Dagger 2019

Dumb Witness

LauraLeave a Comment on Dumb Witness
Dumb Witness
,

, Book # 16
HarperCollins
July 5th 1937
Paperback
411
English
October 5, 2019 October 6, 2019

An elderly spinster has been poisoned in her country home. Everyone blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th… by which time Emily was already dead.

About the book

Second book that I read about Hercule Poirot. I don’t know, I’ve just this craving to read all about Agatha’s books that I have at home (not many though, I only have one more). At least I will finish the Mount TBR challenge…

Anyway. The book starts in April when the protagonist invites her relatives for Easter, but while they are at their aunt’s house, she falls down the stairs. Everyone thinks that it was because of her dog’s ball, but the woman thinks otherwise. So she writes Poirot a letter but this letter arrives late, two month late, when she is already dead (for natural causes). As soon as Poirot receives the letter he leaves for the woman’s house just outside of London.

Here, he finds out that the old woman left everything to her Lady-in-waiting and nothing to her relatives and this change of the will happened soon after the accident with the ball.

What will he discover? The woman was killed or was it really natural causes?

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Peril at the House

LauraLeave a Comment on Peril at the House
Peril at the House
,

, Book # 8
HarperCollins
February 1932
Paperback
287
English
September 28, 2019 September 29, 2019

Hercule Poirot is vacationing on the Cornish coast when he meets Nick Buckly. Nick is the young and reckless mistress of End House, an imposing structure perched on the rocky cliffs of St. Loo.

Poirot has taken a particular interest in the young woman who has recently narrowly escaped a series of life-threatening accidents. Something tells the Belgian sleuth that these so-called accidents are more than just mere coincidences or a spate of bad luck. It seems all too clear to him that someone is trying to do away with poor Nick, but who? And, what is the motive? In his quest for answers, Poirot must delve into the dark history of End House. The deeper he gets into his investigation, the more certain he is that the killer will soon strike again. And, this time, Nick may not escape with her life.

About the book

Second Agatha Christie’s book that I read and first about Hercule Poirot. This is not the first book in the series because I have only 4 Christie’s books in the house and I don’t want to spend money on these series. Even if it’s the #8 in the series, it wasn’t difficult to understand the book. The only flaw is that I don’t know the characters very well.

First of all the narrator is Captain Hastings and not Poirot as I believed before reading this book. The book is set in an island in the south of England in the middle of the Channel (or this is what I found searching for the city on Google Maps) and here Poirot retired form his detective work.

He meets a woman, Nicky, who has been victim of 3 attacks on her life, but she doesn’t know that someone wants to kill her.

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The Night Stalker

LauraLeave a Comment on The Night Stalker
The Night Stalker
, ,

, Book # 2
Bookouture
June 2nd 2016
ebook
429
English
August 26, 2019 August 30, 2019

If the Night Stalker is watching, you’re already dead…

In the dead of a swelteringly hot summer’s night, Detective Erika Foster is called to a murder scene. The victim, a doctor, is found suffocated in bed. His wrists are bound and his eyes bulging through a clear plastic bag tied tight over his head.

A few days later, another victim is found dead, in exactly the same circumstances. As Erika and her team start digging deeper, they discover a calculated serial killer – stalking their victims before choosing the right moment to strike.

The victims are all single men, with very private lives. Why are their pasts shrouded in secrecy? And what links them to the killer?

As a heat wave descends upon London, Erika will do everything to stop the Night Stalker before the body count rises, even if it means risking her job. But the victims might not be the only ones being watched… Erika’s own life could be on the line.

The global bestselling author of The Girl in the Ice is back with a heart-racing, electrifying thriller. If you love Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Karin Slaughter, you’ll be hooked on Robert Bryndza.

About the book

The Night Stalker is the second book in the series with Erika Foster as protagonist, a detective of the British Police. Erika and her team are called upon a crime scene of a local doctor who is found by his mother naked and with a plastic bag on his head. Erika’s boss wants to give the case to the sex crime division considering that the doctor just divorced his wife and was meeting with men. But Erika thinks otherwise and believe that there is something else hidden behind a hate crime.

A few days later another body is found, naked with a plastic bag o his head. This time the victim is a well known news reporter and it can’t be a hate crime.

In this book, too, Erika can’t do her job and this (and other small facts) is why I give only 3 stars.

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The Dry

LauraLeave a Comment on The Dry
The Dry
,

, Book # 1
Brown Book Group
May 2016
ebook
340
English
August 21, 2019 August 24, 2019

After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.

Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see whether there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them, and Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.

About the book

This is the first book that I read of this author and I think I will read more of hers. The book is set in Australia, in a very small town where heatwaves and drought are a every day problem and when something bad happens it is said “it’s the heat fault”. Federal agent Aaron Falk is in town for a funeral of a friend, Luke Hadler, who was involved in an omicide-suicide case. In fact everyone in town believes that he killed his wife and son, leaving only his daughter alive because she is only 1 year old. After that he killed himself. But Luke’s parents don’t believe this version and ask Arron to investigate.

Aaron will clash with the father of one of his old friends, a girl who died 20 years prior. The father believe that both Aaron and Luke lied in the past and that they know how the girl died.

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Speaking in Bones

LauraLeave a Comment on Speaking in Bones
Speaking in Bones
,

, Book # 18
Cornerstone Digital
July 2nd 2015)
ebook
432
English
August 14, 2019 August 16, 2019

When forensic anthropologist Dr Tempe Brennan is approached by amateur detective Hazel ‘Lucky’ Strike, at first she is inclined to dismiss the woman’s claims that she’s matched a previously unidentified set of remains with a name.

But as the words of a terrified young woman echo round her office from an audio recorder found near where the bones were discovered, something about the story won’t let Tempe go.

As Tempe investigates further she finds herself involved in a case more complicated and horrifying than she could ever have imagined.

About the book

Tempe is about to leave for Montreal when a rather peculiar woman shows up at her office asking to investigate the disappearance of a girl just turned 18, who nobody wants to report as missing. Investigating this case will put Tempe in danger and what she believed to be just a disappearance case will soon be something else.

I must say that I liked the case and the book in general more than the last few I read. I still don’t understand how Tempe always manages to be in danger in every single book in which she is the protagonist, but I’m used to it by now…

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