Virtual Crime Book Club – Video and Voting!

Last night the book club discussed A Superior Death by Nevada Barr. It was a mixed bag of reviews from the members for this book. To hear their thought watch the video below. But be aware their are spoilers contained so don’t watch until you have read the book.

 

 

For September’s choice we are reading a book that has been adapted to screen. Be that the big screen or small. The next meeting is Monday 13th September at 8pm BST (UK time zone). Please vote for your choice in the comments by the end of Friday and I’ll let you know the winning book at the weekend.

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (movie)

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened — something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.

Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay — demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy’s daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy’s daughter died covered in someone else’s blood.

 

 

A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin (TV series Rebus)

“He’s gone…”

When his daughter Samantha calls in the dead of night, John Rebus knows it’s not good news. Her husband has been missing for two days.

Rebus fears the worst – and knows from his lifetime in the police that his daughter will be the prime suspect.

He wasn’t the best father – the job always came first – but now his daughter needs him more than ever.  But is he going as a father or a detective?

As he leaves at dawn to drive to the windswept coast – and a small town with big secrets – he wonders whether this might be the first time in his life where the truth is the one thing he doesn’t want to find…

The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier (Glacé TV series)

The first victim is a horse: its headless body hangs suspended from the edge of a frozen cliff.

On the same day as the gruesome discovery, a young psychiatrist starts her first job at a secure asylum for the criminally insane, just a few miles away.

Commandant Servaz, a Toulouse city cop, can’t believe he has been called out over the death of an animal. But there is something disturbing about this crime that he cannot ignore.

Then DNA from one of the most notorious inmates of the asylum is found on the corpse… and a few days later the first murder takes place.

In this snowbound valley, deep in the Pyrenees, a dark story of madness and revenge is unfolding. It will take all of Servaz’s skill to solve it.

 

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (movie)

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid….He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man.

This is the Code of the Private Eye as defined by Raymond Chandler in his 1944 essay ‘The Simple Act of Murder.’ Such a man was Philip Marlowe, private eye, an educated, heroic, streetwise, rugged individualist and the hero of Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep. This work established Chandler as the master of the ‘hard-boiled’ detective novel, and his articulate and literary style of writing won him a large audience, which ranged from the man in the street to the most sophisticated intellectual.

 

 

The Hunting Dogs by Jørn Lier Horst (Wisting – TV series. BBC iplayer)

Seventeen years ago William Wisting led the investigation into one of Norway’s most notorious criminal cases, the murder of young Cecilia Linde. When it is discovered that evidence was falsified he is suspended from duty. It looks like a man has been wrongly convicted, and suddenly the media are baying for blood. Wisting, who has spent his life hunting criminals, is now the hunted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Conspiracy of Bones by Kathy Reichs (Bones – TV series)

It’s sweltering in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Temperance Brennan, still recovering from neurosurgery following an aneurysm, is battling nightmares, migraines, and what she thinks might be hallucinations when she receives a series of mysterious text messages, each containing a new picture of a corpse that is missing its face and hands. Immediately, she’s anxious to know who the dead man is, and why the images were sent to her.

An identified corpse soon turns up, only partly answering her questions.

To win answers to the others, including the man’s identity, she must go rogue, working mostly outside the system. That’s because Tempe’s new boss holds a fierce grudge against her and is determined to keep her out of the case. Tempe bulls forward anyway, even as she begins questioning her instincts. But the clues she discovers are disturbing and confusing. Was the faceless man a spy? A trafficker? A target for assassination by the government? And why was he carrying the name of a child missing for almost a decade?

With help from a number of law enforcement associates including her Montreal beau Andrew Ryan and the always-ready-with-a-smart-quip, ex-homicide investigator Skinny Slidell, and utilizing new cutting-edge forensic methods, Tempe draws closer to the astonishing truth.

But the more she uncovers, the darker and more twisted the picture becomes…

 

Leave your vote below!