Review - A Serial Killer's Guide to Murder by Asia Mackay

A Serial Killer's Guide to Murder by Asia Mackay

Publisher: Headline

Release date: 14 January 2025

Back cover blurb: Hazel and Fox are an ordinary married couple with a baby. Except for one small thing: they're ex-serial killers. They had it all. An enviable London lifestyle, five-star travels, and plenty of bad men to kill. Not many power couples know how to get away with murder. Then Hazel fell pregnant and they gave it all up for life in the suburbs; dinner parties instead of body disposal. But recently Hazel has started to feel that itch again. When she kills someone behind Fox's back and brings the police to their door, she must do anything she can to protect her family. This could save their marriage - unless it kills them first.

A Serial Killer’s Guide to Murder is definitely “different”. But then I knew that it was going to be when I read the blurb..

A book about two Serial Killers married to each other is never going to be a conventional read.

Hazel (Haze) and Fox seem like an ordinary married couple. Nice house, good neighbours, beautiful child. But their lives are not like others. The pair were drawn together by dark pasts. Both of them killing bad men for 

They both know how to get away with murder.

Literally.

When they first met, their relationship was idyllic, both of them excited by the kill. As soon as they found out they were expecting Haze detected an immediate change in Fox. He wants them to stop their killing and become “normal” parents to their daughter.

When Haze meets Jenny at a mother and baby club she is bonded to this stranger in a way that she never has been before. She’s never been one for close female friendships, but the truth is she needs Jenny’s friendship in a way that she never even realised.

She needs a distraction. Because she and Fox made a pact, which lately she has been itching to break. She knows if she kills again it will break her marriage and she doesn’t want to do that.

And then Jenny drops a bombshell which makes Haze question everything she thought she knew about her friend, her own relationship with her husband and where she should go from that moment on…. 

A Serial Killer's Guide to Murder is available from 14 January 2025. You can pre-order it  

now via Amazon online and all good shops. 

Thank You to the publishers who approved my request via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review - Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons

Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons

Publisher: Century [Random House UK]

Release date: 2 January 2025

Back cover blurb:  Emma Moon is out. She’s served 16 years for a notorious armed robbery that left two men dead – and enriched many more. But Emma Moon never talked. She kept the code. She never revealed who was with her on the day of the robbery. She never told who killed those two men. And now she is free – and everything has gone. Her family. Her share of the money. And her faithless husband. So Emma Moon is in a hurry. Because it is payback time. And after all those years inside, she has friends who will do anything for her. As the bodies of the innocent and the guilty pile up, only one detective stands between a career criminal and her quest for revenge. The same man who, as a fresh-faced policeman, arrested her all those years ago. Max Wolfe is back. Single parent to a teenage daughter, owner of an ageing dog, music lover, hopeless romantic - and a murder detective who has his own code of honour.

I have missed Max Wolfe! There I said it. I have missed a fictional detective...

In my defence, he is one of my favourite fictional detectives! Along with his dog and his daughter. 

We are always given an insight into the “normal” side of his life, how much he cares about things, and this is partly what makes him a great detective.

16 years previously a young Max arrested Emma Moon for her involvement in a robbery than left two innocent men dead and several others on the run with the proceeds. 

Emma says she did it for love, and denies knowing what was in the safe.

Max’s instincts tell him to believe her, but his colleagues don’t.

When one by one her old adversaries begin to die, Max begins to wonder if they are right and Emma is behind it. He knows that people kill for revenge, but something just doesn’t seem right.

And then there’s the murder of an innocent young homeless woman, unconnected to Emma Moon but about to lead Max down a road of police corruption and deprivation like he’s never seen before.

With his own career on the line can Max get to the truth before time runs out?

Murder for Busy People is available from 2 January 2025. You can pre-order it now via Amazon online and all good book shops.

Thank You to the publishers who approved my request via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review - A Dangerous Game by Mandy Robotham

A Dangerous Game by Mandy Robotham
Publisher: Avon
Release date: 16 January 2025

Back cover blurb: London, 1952. Seven years after the chaotic aftermath of World War II, London has is coming alive again, with jazz clubs and flickering cinema awnings lighting up the night sky. But for widowed Helen ‘Dexie’ Dexter, she’s still a woman in a man’s world. She longs to prove herself as an officer in the London Metropolitan Police, yet she’s stuck intervening in domestics and making tea for her male colleagues. Then Harri Schroder arrives, seconded from Hamburg to the Met. Haunted by the loss of his wife and child, Harri is unlike any man Dexie has ever known. Compassionate and sharp-witted, he sees her not as a threat, but as an intelligent, canny officer full of potential. And when Harri is tasked with hunting down a Nazi war criminal-turned-respected-businessman, with connections to the upper echelons of British society, it’s Dexie he turns to for help. But as their bond deepens, a deadly fog engulfs London. Dexie and Harri must expose the fugitive before he vanishes, risking everything for justice – and each other…

I love Mandy Robotham's work and this novel is no exception.

1953 and both London and Germany are still feeling the after effects of WW2. German Detective Harri Schroder has case after case piling up on his desk and no time to complete the never evening paperwork. When he is offered the chance to go to London to work on a case, it is is an opportunity he finds hard to resist.

He spent some time in Germany before the war and is not worried about others perceptions of him. He was never a member of the Nazi party, only associated with them by his work and he is a firm believer in doing the right thing.

When he arrives in London and finds out that his task is to track down and apprehend a Nazi war criminal he almost gets on the first flight back to Germany. He is unfortunate enough to have met the man, and is worried he might be recognised before he has chance to capture him.

But there is a lot politically at stake, and Harri quickly finds out that returning home is not an option, and so he must stay, make the best of a bad situation and enlist the help of someone from the Met Police. That someone is WPC Helen Dexter, or Dexie as she is known to her friends.

She and Harri meet on his first day, and he is immediately struck by her competence, no nonsense attitude and kindness lurking beneath the surface. He senses that they are similar, and feels that they will work well together. Which they do.

Until London is struck by an awful, deadly fog, which makes their job almost impossible to do, and puts their lives at stake as they stalk their prey through a city where no one can see. Will he vanish before they get the chance to apprehend him? Or can they solve the case before he disappears?

A Dangerous Game is available from 16 January 2025. You can pre-order it now via Amazon online and all good book shops.

Thank You to the publishers who approved my request via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

My Top Picks for 2025

Here we are once again.

I have no idea how this time of year comes around so quickly!

Other People's Houses by Clare Mackintosh / Sweat by Emma Healey / We All Live Here by JoJo Moyes / One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter / Don't Let Him In by Lisa Jewell / Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid / The Bookshop of Secrets by Kerry Barrett

The Favourites by Layne Fargo / Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons / Always on my Mind by Carys Green / The Lamplighter's Bookshop by Sophie Austin / A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay / The Stranger in the Room by Luca Veste / The Names by Florence Kemp

I Bet You'd Look Good in a Coffin by Katy Brent / A Dangerous Game by Mandy Robotham / People Pleaser by Catriona Stewart / Someone Is Lying by Heidi Perks / The Eights by Joanna Miller /  Making a Killing by Cara Hunter / Burn After Reading by Catherine Ryan Howard

The Grape Vine by Kate Kemp / Claire, Darling by Callie Kazumi / The Cleaner by Mary Watson / This Book will Bury Me by Ashley Winstead /  So Thrilled for You by Holly Bourne / Hope Street by Mike Gayle / Come Fly With Me by Camille Di Maio

Bad Publicity by Bianca Gillam / The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue / Notes on Surviving the Fire by Christine Murphy / Black Tag by Simon Mayo / Instructions for Heartbreak by Sarah Handyside / Mrs Spy by M.J. Robotham / The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn

American Housewife by Anita Adriel / Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine / The Teacher of Auschwitz by Wendy Holden / High Season by Katie Bishop / The Book Game by Frances Wise / Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth / The Business Trip by Jessie Garcia

Beach Bodies by Sienna Sharpe / Days of Light by Megan Hunter / Rumoured by Kelly and Kristina Mancaruso / The Correspondent by Virginia Evans / The Show Woman by Emma Cowing / Bombshell by Alison Hammond / Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff

This is by no means a definitive list and I am also looking forward to discovering many more wonderful books from both new and established authors during 2025. Notably: 

The Death of Us by Abigail Dean / TBC - Adele Parks / Believe by S.M. Govett / Favourite Daughter by Morgan Dick / When Sally Killed Harry by Lucy Roth / The Day of the Roaring by Nina Bradreshwar / Nesting by Roisin O'Donnell / The Daughter by T.M. Logan / With a Vengeance by Riley Sager / I Make My Own Fun by Hannah Beer