Virtual Crime Book Club – Video and Voting Choices

Last night the virtual crime book club discussed A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee, the second book in the Sam Wyndam and Sergeant Banerjee series and the second book of Abir’s we have read.

The book received a resounding agreement on how very much the group enjoyed the book and are enjoying the series. The setting in India and the relationship between Wyndam and Banerjee being two areas that were discussed. If you were unable to attend, you can watch the full meeting on the video below. Do be aware there are spoilers involved. The killer is revealed. So if you haven’t yet read the book but intend to, maybe don’t watch until afterwards.

If you haven’t yet joined the crime book club but do fancy meeting up once a month with like-minded people – with a love of crime fiction – and a very friendly group, follow this link > HERE, which will provide details.

 

 

April’s theme is sci-fi/fantasy/crime crossover books. Listed below are the choices. Leave your vote in the comments below. Voting is open until the end of day on Friday 1st April.

The next meeting is 8pm BST, Monday 25th April. I look forward to seeing you there!

Five Minds by Guy Morpuss

ONE BODY. FIVE MINDS. ONE KILLER.

The Earth’s growing population has finally been controlled. Lifespans are limited to eighty years, except for those who make an extreme choice: to become a commune. Five minds sharing one body, living for four hours at a time. But with a combined lifespan of nearly 150 years.

Alex, Kate, Sierra, Ben and Mike are a commune. They have already spent twenty-five years together, arguing, reconciling, alliances shifting and re-forming. They travel to a Death Park where games are played in which extra lifespan can be gambled like money. The plan is to win time to upgrade their next host body. But then Kate accepts a dangerous offer, and one of them disappears.

Someone is trying to kill off members of the commune. Is one of them responsible? Or is someone else playing a deadly game? It’s hard enough to catch a murderer. It’s almost impossible when you might be sharing a body with them…

 

The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox

WHO BETTER TO SOLVE A MURDER THAN A DEAD DETECTIVE?

When Detective Inspector Joe Lazarus storms a Lincolnshire farmhouse, he expects to bring down a notorious drug gang; instead, he discovers his own body and a spirit guide called Daisy-May.

She’s there to enlist him to The Dying Squad, a spectral police force who solve crimes their flesh and blood counterparts cannot.

Lazarus reluctantly accepts and returns to the Lincolnshire Badlands, where he faces dangers from both the living and the dead in his quest to discover the identity of his killer—before they kill again.

 

Sleep Tight by CS Green

Even in your dreams you’re not safe…

The nightmare is only just beginning…

When DC Rose Gifford is called to investigate the death of a young woman suffocated in her bed, she can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to the crime than meets the eye.

It looks like a straightforward crime scene – but the police can’t find the killer. Enter DS Moody – an eccentric older detective who runs UCIT, a secret department of the Met set up to solve supernatural crimes. Moody wants Rose to help her out – but Rose doesn’t believe in any of that.

Does she?

As the killer prepares to strike again, Rose must pick a side – before a second woman dies.

 

The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney

The perfect life. The perfect love.

Abbie awakens in a daze with no memory of who she is or how she landed in this unsettling condition. The man by her side claims to be her husband. He’s a titan of the tech world, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most innovative start-ups. He tells Abbie that she is a gifted artist, an avid surfer, a loving mother to their young son, and the perfect wife. He says she had a terrible accident five years ago and that, through a huge technological breakthrough, she has been brought back from the abyss.

She is a miracle of science.

But as Abbie pieces together memories of her marriage, she begins questioning her husband’s motives–and his version of events. Can she trust him when he says he wants them to be together forever? And what really happened to Abbie half a decade ago?

Beware the man who calls you . . .

Touch by Claire North

He tried to take my life. Instead I took his.

It happened so long ago, I’ve forgotten the details. But he was desperate, hungry enough to kill. As I was dying, my hand touched his. That’s when my first switch took place.

I looked through the eyes of my killer just in time to see my own body die.

Now switching is easy. I can jump from body to body, have any life, be anyone.

All it takes is a touch.

 

 

Farthing by Jo Walton

One summer weekend in 1949 — but not our 1949 — the well-connected “Farthing set”, a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy is a minor daughter in one of those families; her parents were both leading figures in the group that overthrew Churchill and negotiated peace with Herr Hitler eight years before.

Despite her parents’ evident disapproval, Lucy is married — happily — to a London Jew. It was therefore quite a surprise to Lucy when she and her husband David found themselves invited to the retreat. It’s even more startling when, on the retreat’s first night, a major politician of the Farthing set is found gruesomely murdered, with abundant signs that the killing was ritualistic.

It quickly becomes clear to Lucy that she and David were brought to the retreat in order to pin the murder on him. Major political machinations are at stake, including an initiative in Parliament, supported by the Farthing set, to limit the right to vote to university graduates.

But whoever’s behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn’t reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts… and looking beyond the obvious.
As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out — a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.