Val Penny

With the action and Hunter's personality this made for a great read for a Sunday afternoon! Hunter really is an awesome main character! I don't think there will be many people who read this book and not like him! The writing in this book is really good! This is the first book I have read of this series but I didn't feel like I was missing anything! But I look forward to reading more from this series!

Thank you Rachel's Random Resources and Val Penny for sharing this book with me and for having me on the tour!… (mehr)

DI Hunter Wilson and Dr. Meera Sharma are out for a romantic evening that comes to an abrupt halt when they leave the restaurant for the hotel's elevator. When the elevator door opens, they find a young woman laying on the floor, bleeding, with her eyes missing--completely missing.

Unlike the two previous women found with their eyes removed, she's not dead. She's still alive, if only barely, and Meera sets to work caring for her, while Hunter calls an ambulance and a police crime scene team.

When she is able to regain consciousness they learn that her name is Eileen Maguire, and her date's name was Frederick. They met on a dating app, and she doesn't know his last name. She can describe, but since she is now blind, she can't look at pictures to help narrow down the possible matches.

Having initially no real lead on the man is one complication. Another is that Eileen Maguire is the sister of Linda Maguire, the girlfriend of Jamie Thomson, who with his cousin, Frankie, is currently running Thomson's Top Cars, owned by Jamie's father, who is currently doing a rather long prison sentence. Jamie and Frankie are relatively small-time crooks, and oddly friendly and likable, but it's going to be awkward on both sides for them to be effectively the victim's next of kin. And Jamie can be a little hot-headed at times.

Jamie and Linda, Frankie, Frankie's two young twin girls, and Frankie's girlfriend, Donna, are sharing one half of what, as far as I can tell, is what here in the northeastern US we call a duplex--two apartments, side by side rather up and down, in mirror image layout. The other side is occupied by an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Morrison, who understandably find Jamie in particular a rather annoying neighbor. This turns out to be much more important than one might initially suspect, due to the Morrisons' unexpected connections, and Mr. Morrison having at one point fudged some details on some paperwork.

Meanwhile, we're also following the activities and concerns of the person who stole Eileen's eyes. We know both that it fascinates him, and that he's actually working for someone else, the man who really wants to collect especially attractive and interesting human eyes.

In these Edinburgh mysteries, Edinburgh, at least the criminal investigation and higher-end criminal activities portions of it, seems like a small town, where everybody knows everyone, or knows someone who knows them, or not infrequently is related to people of interest. Sometimes, it's a combination of all three. The characters are, if not all likeable, by any means, well-developed, and interesting. The British class system comes into play, for good and ill, and at both the upper and lower reaches of society. It's a story that's well-plotted, held my interest, and made me care about the characters.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher, and am reviewing it voluntarily.… (mehr)

Book 5 in the Edinburgh Crime Mysteries, Hunter's Secret takes us back thirty years to an unsolved murder in which the body disappears without trace. The teenaged Hunter and his younger brother found the body of a brutally murdered young man, but by the time the police began to look for it, it had been removed. The experience traumatised the boys, and Hunter has kept this buried deep inside for thirty years. The case is resurrected in the present day as another body has gone missing in similar circumstances.

There are secrets in Hunter's romantic life too. He is seen by some colleagues with an attractive woman who is not his girlfriend Meera. They have chosen to meet somewhere they would not expect to be overheard and seem intimate.

Hunter's Secret is an interesting tale, visiting the private lives of the main characters as well as following the detective work to solve the case, which I thought made it feel more authentic. It is well written, and delivered in short chapters, which encouraged me to read 'just one more...' in a bid to answer the list of questions I was compiling with every page read.

Hunter's Secret can easily be read as a standalone, but I would recommend starting from the beginning of the series to get a better understanding of the various characters.… (mehr)

Hunter's Blood is the fourth book in The Edinburgh Crime Mysteries series, but the first I've read. Whilst it can be read as a standalone novel, I rather wish I'd started at the beginning of the series and got to know the main characters better.

The story is told mainly in the third person, although Linda's story is told from her perspective in the first person. I was a little confused by this as Linda is a secondary character who can tell the reader nothing about the main events in this story.

There are lots of threads to follow: a van overturns and the occupants are trapped inside; a traveller child goes missing; three elderly women are murdered; a drug baron has lost some of his product.

There are also a lot of characters to get to know. Some are upstanding, law-abiding citizens while others are less so; and some are the worst kind of hardened criminal. But DI Wilson and his team stand ready to solve crimes, support the victims and put the offenders where they belong - behind bars.

Hunter's Blood is a well-thoughtout and executed police procedural, which kept me thoroughly entertained following the twists and turns of the plot and getting to know the main characters.… (mehr)