Winter, 1987. Detective Jamie Day arrives in London determined to prove himself. After years policing a quiet seaside town, his promotion to the Metropolitan Police feels like the opportunity he has been waiting for.
But the capital is a very different world.
On his first day in plain clothes, Jamie makes a grim discovery: the dismembered body of a young man, left in a dark corner of the city. What should have been a routine first shift quickly becomes the beginning of a major murder investigation.
Then another victim is found.
As winter deepens, young men are being killed late at night across London, their bodies discovered in eerily similar circumstances. The detectives soon realise they may be hunting a serial killer.
Working alongside a tough and experienced team, Jamie must prove he belongs while navigating the pressures of a high-profile investigation. But as the case grows darker, the killer’s pattern begins to emerge. And if they don’t stop him soon, another body will be waiting in the shadows.
THE QUIET KILL (Detective Jamie Day Book #1) by Robert Bryndzna is the beginning of a new murder mystery series set in 1987 London and featuring a newly minted detective from a small English seaside town thrown into a big city murder investigation with an already cohesive group of seasoned detectives. I was excited to dive into this chilling criminal murder investigation set in the 1980s with a new group of characters from one of my favorite authors and I was not disappointed.
Detective Jamie Day is on his way to his new position as a plain clothes detective in London when he is detoured to go to the location of a discovered dismembered body. Immediately thrown into a major murder investigation, Jamie knows he must prove himself, but he is having trouble fitting into the already tight group of murder detectives. DCI Harry Dean takes him under his wing and helps him navigate his new position, colleagues, and the big city.
Dismembered bodies of young gay men continue to be discovered, and the detectives soon realize they have a serial killer in London. Can Jamie help find the killer and prove he belongs in his new job to his colleagues?
This is a fast-paced, intense introduction to a new group of characters from Mr. Bryndza that kept me engrossed in not only the gritty murder mystery, but also the differences in investigation techniques and technologies from the 1980s. It does not seem that long ago to me, but the differences in criminal investigations and technology have been immense in the last 40 to 50 years. While the killer is known in this story, the chase to catch him is what pulls you in. It is an intense, dark story that highlights the fear and ignorance of AIDS and the immergence of a more open gay culture in 1980s London. The investigative plot is realistic and leads to a satisfying conclusion. I am looking forward to seeing how these characters progress in future books in the series.
I highly recommend this suspenseful start to a new murder mystery series!
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About the Author
Robert Bryndza is an international bestselling author, best known for his page-turning crime and thriller novels, which have sold over five million copies.
His crime debut, The Girl in the Ice was released in February 2016, introducing Detective Chief Inspector Erika Foster. Within five months it sold one million copies, reaching number one in the Amazon UK, USA and Australian charts. To date, The Girl in the Ice has sold over 1.5 million copies in the English language and has been sold into translation in 29 countries. It was nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Mystery & Thriller (2016), the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle in France (2018), and it won two reader voted awards, The Thrillzone Awards best debut thriller in The Netherlands (2018) and The Dead Good Papercut Award for best page turner at the Harrogate Crime Festival (2016).
Robert has released a further five novels in the Erika Foster series, The Night Stalker, Dark Water, Last Breath, Cold Blood and Deadly Secrets, all of which have been global bestsellers, and in 2017 Last Breath was a Goodreads Choice Award nominee for Mystery and Thriller. Fatal Witness, the seventh Erika Foster novel, has just been published.
Most recently, Robert created a new crime thriller series based around the central character Kate Marshall, a police officer turned private detective. The first book, Nine Elms, was an Amazon USA #1 bestseller and an Amazon UK top five bestseller, and the series has been sold into translation in 18 countries. The second book in the series is the global bestselling, Shadow Sands and the third book, Darkness Falls.
Robert was born in Lowestoft, on the east coast of England. He studied at Aberystwyth University, and the Guildford School of Acting, and was an actor for several years, but didn’t find success until he took a play he’d written to the Edinburgh Festival. This led to the decision to change career and start writing. He self-published a bestselling series of romantic comedy novels, before switching to writing crime. Robert lives with his husband in Slovakia, and is lucky enough to write full-time.
Converting the old Beacon Point lighthouse into a bakery is as adventurous as Lindsey cares to get. Her mother, Ellie, a former 80s fashion model, likes her creature comforts even more—until she sees a business opportunity for her Beacon Harbor fashion boutique when she’s invited by the Mitten Kittens Glamping Club on a woodsy getaway.
Far from roughing it, the ladies will be warm and cozy in chic vintage campers. Ellie insists Lindsey come along to win the campfire cookout contest. Campfire cooking has come a long way from bacon and beans. Soon Lindsey is making pizza, berry cobbler, and gooey Carmelita camping bars.
But the festive spirit is soon dampened when a body is found in Ellie’s camper. It seems like an accidental death until everyone’s tires are slashed and it’s clear the glampsite has become a crime scene. With no cell service to call for help, it’s up to Lindsey to smoke out the killer around the campfire . . .
Because no one is out of the woods yet.
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Elise’s Thoughts
Murder At the CampfireCookout by Darci Hannah will be the last in this series, kind of, because there will be a spinoff. This series is ending, but the characters readers have come to love will be back in a spinoff, still set in Beacon Harbor.
The author had the characters step out of their comfort zones, away from the bakery. Lindsey left her boyfriend Rory at home but also Welly, her Newfoundland dog. Lindsey, her friends Kennedy and Colleen, Lindsey’s Mom Ellie, and Ellie’s friend Betty all go glamping. Far from roughing it, the ladies will be warm and cozy in chic vintage campers and Lindsey was chosen to participate in the campfire cooking contest. The campground is way off the grid. Not long after they arrive, bad things begin to happen. Their cars are vandalized and they are stuck there with no phones or internet. Then one of the campers is found dead and soon everyone realizes it was not an accident.
One of the fellow glampers ends up dead from a sabotaged oven. Lindsey and her friends are determined to put the pieces together so they can escape the horror show unfolding at the glamping site and get home. The women realize they need to find who among them could have done this horrible act. They are also worrying about their own safety since a series of suspicious acts also occurs, adding to the tension.
Readers will get the feeling of a locked room mystery with the claustrophobia atmosphere of the isolated campground, a suspicious death, tires slashed, no phone service, and surrounded by trees and a lake in the woods. Everyone quickly realizes they are stranded in the woods with a killer and before others get hurt or killed, they need to find the murderer, with Lindsey knowing she must ‘smoke out the killer.’
As with the previous books, the ending has a twist, but unlike the others, the tension slowly ratchets up over the course of the story. Since this is a cozy mystery, the tone is lighter than a typical suspense, thriller, or mystery. There are funny moments, but the story also will have readers getting edgy with the feeling of those telling ghost stories around a campfire.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?
Darci Hannah: I thought it would be fun to take the girls away on their special trip, and travel to the Upper Peninsula in Michigan, which is a very beautiful area. I went to school up there. It’s very remote. I’ve been camping up there when I was younger. And it’s just pristine and gorgeous and very isolated. There’s still some dense wilderness up there. So, I thought I wanted to take them camping.
EC: Why glamping?
DH: I used to work at our library, near my town, gosh, years ago. This woman came in, and she had this old historic license plate, but it had never been registered to a car. It was from 1976. And she asked if we could register it. She said, ‘Well, I’m in a glamping club, and I have a glamper, and I want to put it on that.’ What they would do is get these old Airstreams very cheaply or campers, and they would gut them. She was showing me all these pictures of her camper, that she had renovated. And then they would rebuild them by themselves, or maybe with their husband’s help, and just make them almost like she sheds. I thought I would like to write about this someday. And this was probably in 2018.
EC: What is a She Shed?
DH: A she shed is often converted from a garden shed. These spaces serve as cozy areas for relaxation, creativity, or hobbies, providing a sanctuary away from daily responsibilities, specifically for women. It was just a very feminine space. And so that’s what these things are.
EC: How did you incorporate glamping into the story?
DH: I figure that my characters are kind of fancy girls especially, Lindsay’s mother, Ellie. She’s not the type of person who would ever go camping, but glamping would work. And so, I thought it would just kind of be fun to have them go on this isolated trip, to just get away and work on some new ideas for a line of clothing.
EC: Kennedy, the best friend, also went on the trip, but seemed out of place?
DH: She is one of those city gals who is overconfident, a diva, overwhelmed where she is right now. High maintenance, likes to be the center of attention, impatient, obstinate, foolhardy, and brazen. And she’s also a loyal friend. She is just so loyal to Lindsey. That’s why their friendship works, because she’s opposite of Lindsey. And in this story, she can’t deal with their situation.
EC: What about the stalker?
DH: They are the motivation behind everything that’s going on. They have a driving need to connect with the person they target. wanting to be a part of their lives through manipulation and controls. It’s a one-sided attraction. But a stalker doesn’t believe it, because they’re delusional.
EC: How does the setting play a role?
DH: I want the reader to be submersed in this beautiful, almost pristine environment. It’s almost like a closed room murder, with a finite number of people, and then, there could be somebody out there. So that’s always a danger in the woods. You don’t know who’s out there. You don’t know what’s out there. You don’t know what animals are around us who’ve been in that area.
EC: Why didn’t you have Wellington, the dog, go with them on the trip?
DH: If I brought Welly, he would sniff out the murder right away. Dogs know things. They have senses and so I didn’t want to cheat. I had to make it tough for the characters. and uncomfortable so they would push themselves to these limits.
EC: Is this the last in the series?
DH: Yes, because the publisher decided it, probably when I started this book. These books came out in mass market but bookstores do not want to carry mass market. And it’s very heartbreaking, because the reason this series ended was strictly because of the format. They told me if I wrote another one, that the bookstores would not carry it, and if the bookstores aren’t going to carry your book, there would be a loss of sales.
EC: So, what about the next book?
DH: It will be a spinoff of this series: same character, same setting, and they didn’t give me much to go on. They wanted what I’m writing, but they wanted it with just a new hook, so they could remark it and repackage it. And so, finally, one day, I thought the next logical step would be just branching Lindsey into catering. There will be a little bit of a break before the next book. It’s going to be the same type with just a little different spin. I hope it works. It’ll be a trade paperback.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE MIDWIFE AT IVYCOTTAGE (Wildflower Secrets Book #4) by Rebecca Alexander on this Bookouture Books-On-Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Description
Imogen holds the faded photograph of a baby up to the golden light by the ivy-covered cottage. Her breath catches. The sweet face reminds her of a child she once cared for… and can never forget. Who is this baby, and why was his photograph hidden here?
After heartbreak turned her world upside down, Imogen was forced to leave her nursing job and the life she had built behind. Now she has come to a beautiful countryside village, where she’s renovating a tumbledown cottage she hopes to call home. She never imagined the wartime secrets it’s hiding. Or that working alongside Jaz, the warm-hearted, handsome local builder with a kind smile, will make her light up in a way she hasn’t for a long time…
Hidden inside the cottage she discovers the photograph of a baby, and the incredible story of Julia, a midwife who once lived at Ivy Cottage. Julia devoted her life to caring for the village’s mothers and babies during World War Two, at a time when every birth was full of danger. Including a tiny infant who she was determined to save…
As Imogen pieces together the little boy’s story and Julia’s extraordinary courage, she begins to confront the loss she has buried for so long. With Jaz by her side,could Ivy Cottage finally be the place where her heart begins to heal?
THE MIDWIFE AT IVY COTTAGE (Wildflower Secrets Book #4) by Rebecca Alexander is a heartfelt, emotional dual timeline WWII historical fiction and women’s fiction mash-up with romantic elements in the Wildflower Secrets series. While these stories can be read as standalone books, there are many crossover characters in both the historical and present-day timelines which makes it more enjoyable reading them in order and reconnecting with the characters you loved in previous books.
Present Day: Imogen “Immy” and her father have come a long way in renovating the old manor house into a senior home with the help of a local contractor/carpenter, Jasper, “Jaz”. When she investigates the Ivy Cottage behind the manor to hopefully renovate for her personal use, she discovers a picture of a young boy, and she is determined to discover his past with the help of others in the town. He reminds her so much of the patient she lost as a pediatric ICU nurse before coming to help her father.
1940’s: Sister Julia is a trained midwife who survives the bombing of the hospital she works at. She is offered the position of helping evacuees, pregnant mothers and their small babies, billeted throughout the small villages on the moors. She is given the Ivy Cottage to live in behind the manor house. She becomes integral in the lives of many mothers and their babies as well as the young doctor in town to help his father’s practice. When a mother delivers a baby with Downs syndrome, Julia becomes more than professionally involved.
This is a story that is inspiring, heartbreaking, and deeply emotional with two women who are both dedicated professionals as well as troubled by an incident in their lives that could change their future paths. Immy and Julia are both strong women and while they work through personal and/or professional difficulties, they do it with grace. This is just an all-around endearing story with great characters and just the right amount of romance and history. If you have read the previous books and love all the seniors living in the manor, make sure you have tissues ready at the end of the present timeline.
I highly recommend this addition to the Wildflower Secrets series!
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About the Author
Rebecca Alexander was born in Malta and grew up on the south coast of England, becoming a psychologist. She escaped parenting six children to study writing in 2011, and the Secrets series of novels was published in 2013. A Baby’s Bones and sequel followed. Rebecca lives in a haunted 300-year-old cottage in Devon where she grows fruit, paints, and bakes. She reads and writes all sorts of genres, from women’s fiction to fantasy to crime. She is married with four chickens, two grandchildren and a cat.
After rescuing a teammate from a covert detention facility in East Asia, it’s back to business as usual for John Dempsey and Task Force Ember: conducting counterterrorism operations in denied areas.
An opportunity to strike a master Houthi drone engineer sends the team to Yemen, but things start to go wrong almost as soon as their boots hit the ground. What is their local contact hiding, and why didn’t their CIA contact show up to the rendezvous? Meanwhile, First Lady Petra Jarvis’s job—juggling the roles of wife, first lady, and Ember liaison—is about to get a lot harder. The Presidential Election is only two weeks away, and President Kelso Jarvis’s SEAL instincts are failing him. Good in the heat of battle and in the situation room, Jarvis is floundering in debate prep, allowing his political rival to paint him as a caricature of the war mongering, hot-tempered SEAL.
What neither Petra nor Dempsey know is that they are both in the sights of a master spy operating right under their noses in DC—a spy with orders to sow chaos. As Election night nears, Dempsey and Petra are drawn further into his web, and soon it’s hard to tell who is manipulating whom.
A dangerous game is afoot, and to win Dempsey and Ember may well be forced into a bargain with the devil.
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Elise’s Thoughts
Insurgent by Andrews & Wilson has everything readers love about these stories including fast-paced action, suspense, and an intense plot with a level of realism that makes people think these authors have a crystal ball.
The plot has John Dempsey and the Ember task force having an opportunity to strike a master Houthi drone engineer in Yemen. It appears that Task Force Ember’s technology might have been infiltrated by foreign adversaries leading to a cat and mouse between Ember and a psychotic Chinese operative who has grandiose plans to strike massive blows to the United States and Dempsey personally. Meanwhile, First Lady Petra Jarvis’s job of juggling the roles of wife, first lady, and Ember liaison puts her in danger.
High stakes, geopolitically and personally, with life and death consequences has Petra and Dempsey intent on finding the Chinese agent and making sure he fails. Readers will be on the edge of their seats as the tension level builds.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: What is new on the television front?
Brian Andrews: We have a project over at Amblin Entertainment, which is Steven Spielberg’s company. We’re excited about that. It is based on one of the short stories that we have coming out later this year. We’ve had a little bit of musical chairs with the showrunners for the “Shepherd Series” and “Tier One.” We’re on the hunt for our third showrunner for the Shepherd series right now. Still hoping that that will get some movement. We’re interviewing a showrunner for another series called Strike Group that we’re developing, which is about an aircraft carrier, a mystery.
EC: How did you get the idea for this story?
BA: Insurgent is book ten in the “Tier One series” and felt like it is an important book. It was time to circle back almost like an anniversary. We circled back and revisited some of the themes that we introduced in the first book. I think the savvy reader will pick up on that right out of the gate. It opens in Yemen, where Operation Crusader went down with John Dempsey losing his team, which is when Jack Kemper became John Dempsey. He hasn’t been back to Yemen since the Jabouri base was blown up. And, so for him, this is a homecoming, an emotional one, because he’s coming back to this place where it all started. This is why we kicked off the book here.
EC: But the Chinese play a major role in the story?
BA: The world is now interconnected. The Yemenis aren’t just making their drones and their anti-aircraft systems and missiles by themselves. It is not happening in a vacuum. They’re getting help when they’re getting supplied by the Chinese and they’re receiving aid from the Iranians. We’re starting to see that the Chinese, especially over the last five years, are becoming a defense contracting hub. They’re building drones, missiles, and helicopters. They have a guidance system. They’re starting to export the types of products and weapon systems that were previously only in the purview of the United States. Soviets, and the European defense contractors. Now they’ve got a foot in that game.
EC: Does the title mean anything?
BA: It is the origin. We think of an insurgent as an assaulter or somebody who’s coming at you on your home turf with a gun. This title is sort of metaphorical. We’re dealing with a more complicated insurgent. We dealing with a Chinese effort to infiltrate American defense, industrial complex, and our politics on multiple levels.
EC: The structure of this book is different?
BA: We’ve never done this before. in any of our novels. And we were excited and curious to see if people recognize the flash forward open, and then what people think of it. The book is started at the end, and then we come back and bring you back up to that point. You see all the events that led up to the climax.
EC: How would you describe Ren, the Chinese agent?
BA: He is evil, a threat, a psychopath, manipulative, adaptable, sadistic, and loves chaos. This antagonist has got a screw loose. And so that’s something else that we haven’t really explored since Malik, the Russian Zeta, part of the secret Russian task force. He was a little bit sociopathic and on the edge. He went against Dempsey in Red Specter, that was book five.
EC: It’s like the story has a word of warning about the Chinese?
BA: Before, we could exert a certain element of control over bad actors, by depriving them of access to arms and technology. Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, along with terrorist organizations if they couldn’t develop them, their weapons in house, or buy them from the Russians, or get them off the black market, they couldn’t get them. And now the Chinese are happy to supply them with weapons, but not just weapons. It’s not just guns, it’s technology and guidance systems along with drones, engines, and components they couldn’t make themselves.
EC: There is a book quote that says it is hard to kill only with air strikes. Can you explain?
BA: There’s going to be people who are going to question the value of special operations, of teams like our fictional task force, Ember, and operators, like John Dempsey, who must go in on the ground to execute missions and deny areas. People question, why should we take the risk? We can just drop bombs. We can launch a missile, we can blow up their warehouse, or target the home where the guy lives. But just look at Iran. It’s clear the regime is still in control. We could bomb them into oblivion, and if they’re hiding underground, and we don’t have any boots on the ground, we don’t eliminate the regime, the regime will rise again. I think we’ll always have to have boots on the ground whether they’re overt or covert.
EC: Can you explain the book quote, “politicians were the easiest adversaries to manipulate because they lacked principles and acted only in their own self-interest.”
BA: Our goal was to be apolitical in these stories and not pick a side, but we live in a policy driven world, in the geopolitical world. I think it’s okay for characters to call out certain frustrations that we the authors are observing in real life. In American politics that’s driven by self-interest and power. The way that our politicians can change their opinion, and their votes on a dime should be concerning to people. You elect somebody based on what you perceive to be their platform and how they convey to you their belief systems and you’re doing that because you’re hoping that that person will represent you, the voter, and the constituency’s interest when it comes to making important decisions. And then they get in office, and you realize, oh, they don’t care. That was all just a bunch of gaslighting. They just said what they thought they needed to say, and what the voters need to hear to get elected. Then they get in there, and they do what they’re told, or what money buys, or whatever. And I think that this is something that we’re all seeing that politicians are maybe emboldened to even not hide it anymore, because there’s no consequences in their behaviors.
EC: Do you have wishful thinking when you put this quote in by President Jarvis? “I don’t make decisions based on the political climate polling. Whatever the pundits may or may not want or criticize me.”
BA: I think it’s very clear, and should be clear to anyone who reads this book, that President Jarvis is the president that we all want. And President Jarvis is the type of president that all presidents should aspire to. It should be an act of service to be President of the United States. It should be a burden. It should be difficult when you should have sleepless nights because you’re having to put the needs of the country ahead of your own. And as president, you should have to serve your entire constituency. that means people who don’t agree with you on everything that you say. In the Tier One series we want to entertain. But also, we want to present characters who represent a higher purpose. They should be models of heroism. People who do the right thing, do the hard thing, and put country, mission, and team before self.
EC: What’s the importance of First Lady Petra?
BA: She had a military, and an intelligence career. She was chief of staff to the DNI, who was Jarvis. She’s the president’s sounding board, confidant, knows national security, and a woman of action. What the US has never had is a First Lady who came from a background of military service or in the intelligence community. Because in her mind, she brings something different to the table. Jarvis needs her. He appreciates her counsel and her input. She is sort of a counterbalance to him, especially with his Parkinson’s now. Petra would say, ‘I’m going to do both. Why do I have to limit myself? You know, why can’t I be the first lady and continue to be Petra.’ So that’s kind of what we did in this book, her refusing to be put into a box and told that you must do this, because that’s what all the other first ladies did. And there’s this expectation, I hope we communicated in the text, in the story, there’s an expectation that she will behave and be quiet, and go off and do the things that other first ladies do.? But she is not going to do that. She’s supposed to function as the shadow firewall between Director Casey of Tier One, and the Office of the President, to provide a certain level of possible deniability and keep Jarvis at arm’s length from the operation of the task force. The exact role that he filled for President Warner. What we started to put into that subplot in this book is this idea that Jarvis is struggling to give up power and knowledge, the task force decision making. She calls him out on it saying, ‘This was your idea. So, you know, you can’t, you can’t have it both ways. You gotta pick.’ And he lets her be in charge and make the decision making.
EC: The next books?
BA: The next Tier One, book 11 we have not thought about yet. And have not written another Shepherd book.
The next Sons of Valor is what we’re writing right now, starting a new trilogy. It will take “Chunk” Redman, who leads a covert team of elite operators, and Whitney Watts, and the Gold Squadron south of the border, where they’re going to be up against Mexican cartels for the next 3 books. It is titled for now, Sons of Valor 5 and will be out sometime next year.
But we do have a book coming out in November titled Dark Horse. It is a standalone novel. It’s a sort of a modern retelling of Three days at the Condor. It’s about a secret program that the CIA runs where they have a think tank, and the members of the think tank come up with predictive scenarios about things that our adversaries could do. And they feed those scenarios into the analysis machinery of the CIA. And they get discovered and targeted by bad guys with everyone getting killed except one person. And that character is Eva Dasher, and Eva is on the run, being hunted, trying to figure out who’s responsible for this.
We are also writing a short story every month, for the entire year. The first short story was released last December, titled First Ranger. And then we did one a month since. Each of these stories was written to be a potential vehicle that Anderson/Wilson could develop for film and television. It gives our readers and listeners a preview of some non-Tier One and Sons of Valor projects that we’re trying to develop for TV and movies and features. They’re completely different. First Ranger is historical. fiction. It’s the story of Thomas Knowlton, who was America’s first army ranger. He’s a real guy, but we fictionalize the story about how he was recruited by General Washington to form America’s first special forces unit, which were known as Knowlton’s Rangers, covert operations in 1776. Another example is Sledgehammer, that has a retired ground branch operator, Matt Holland. This is a story about a guy who’s retired. He’s in his early 70s and realizes that his daughter who he thought died is still alive. He puts together a team from his past, and they go into Syria to rescue her.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for NATURAL CAUSES (Sam Tate Mystery Series Book #5) by Nikki Stern on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a PICT giveaway. Enjoy and good luck!
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Book Description
Nature abhors a vacuum. One killer is filling it with bodies.
Three years after quitting her job as a homicide cop, Sam moves to Denver as a named partner with a boutique private investigation firm. She’s finished with the violence and trauma that have marked both her personal and professional lives. But when a zealous eco-terrorist begins a killing spree with plans to escalate, she finds herself once again hunting a serial killer whose past too closely resembles Sam’s own.
Genre: Police Procedure, Suspense Thriller, Crime Mystery Published by: Ruthenia Press Publication Date: June 23, 2026 Number of Pages: 280 ISBN: 979-8996092208
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My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
NATURAL CAUSES (Sam Tate Mystery Book #5) by Nikki Stern is another exciting addition to the Sam Tate mystery/crime thriller series of books. Sam is now a private eye and partner in an exclusive firm in Denver, Colorado. This book is easily read as a standalone with Sam starting a new career in a new location with enough background on the few carryover characters from the previous book that you are not confused or feel like you are missing something. Like the other books in this series, it is plot based around a complete serial killer investigation.
P.I. Sam Tate is getting used to her new life with the help of a few close friends. After twenty years in law enforcement, she is looking forward to more low-key investigations. When a family requests an investigation into the disappearance of their husband/father, Sam only begins to investigate when his body is found. Almost immediately after, the son of a prominent businessman is killed. Both have cryptic one-word notes and pin pricks at the base of their necks. When a third is discovered, it becomes a multi-agency investigation and Sam is once again involved in a serial killer investigation.
The notes lead Sam and the others to the possibility of eco-terrorism revolving around conspiracy theories and the dark web. Will Sam and her friends be able to unravel the truth from lies and stop a serial killer with an agenda on the loose in Denver?
The plot in this book, as well as all the books in this series, are fast-paced and full of red herrings and twists that continually surprise. This story is intriguing and kept me reading right up to the suspenseful ending. Sam is trying to move on and yet she gets pulled right back into a serial killer investigation. This book does a good job of pulling in key points of Sam’s life from the previous books. If you haven’t read them this is a good starting point and you will not feel like you are missing anything while I can recommend all the previous books.
I highly recommend this serial killer thriller in the Sam Tate series and look forward to many more to come.
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Excerpt
“Gorgeous, absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.”
Todd Fischer stood near the edge of a snowy precipice and slapped his chest like a primate surveying his kingdom. He pulled in a lungful of air, his new Filson hiking vest tight against his broad chest. He was winded, more than he cared to admit, and cold. Even at the end of April, the temperatures on this trail lingered in the low thirties. A late-season snowfall added to the discomfort, not to mention the threatening gusts of frigid air.
“You know,” he continued, turning to his companion, “people would pay plenty to live here.”
“I don’t think you can just put up housing in a national park,” she replied.
“Anything can be bought and tamed, Elena. “Even the Rockies.”
“I believe you, Todd. Now, please come down off that ledge? Remember the warnings we received about the missing railings and the danger of microbursts? I do not want my husband to be blown away like a character in The Wizard of Oz.”
Fischer laughed. “I’m not about to be knocked over by a blast of air. I think you should worry more about the kids. Go see what’s happened to them.”
As soon as she’d moved out of sight, he bent over, suddenly dizzy. Crap, getting old was not for sissies. He needed more exercise, more hydration, more time, more of everything.
Elena turned back to the trail, shaking her head. The “kids” were young adults and, as far as she was concerned, pampered twenty-somethings. She was the “wicked” stepmother, just ten years older than the eldest, perpetually a graduate student. Whereas younger brother Paulie treated school as one long excuse to party.
Now she heard them, bickering, as usual.
“Could you stop complaining?” Rowan was saying.
“Not a chance,” Paulie griped. “We are tramping in the mountains, just past dawn, in the cold and the wind. In late April. I left a warm bed and a warm body so I could freeze my backside off with distant dad and wife number three.”
“Maybe the warm body should have helped you dress for a hike in the Rockies.”
“You’re just jealous.”
Rowan appeared first, dressed perfectly for a mountain trek. Paulie, on the other hand, looked like he’d come from a night of clubbing, right down to his overpriced sneakers and his curated day-old beard.
“There you are,” Elena said, forcing a smile. “We were on the ledge for a better view.”
“The one with the ‘danger’ sign?” Paulie asked. “Oh, right. Dad likes to go where he’s not supposed to. I guess you could call it his specialty.”
Elena reminded herself that she could handle two brats for one morning. Before long, she would get herself pregnant and make them both irrelevant.
“Take a look,” she suggested. “It’s quite lovely.”
But they were back to fighting, ripping into each other like territorial animals. Until an unexpected gust of wind interrupted their discourse, strong enough to send a few rocks scuttling down into the valley.
“What was that?” Paulie asked.
“Nature, dummy,” Rowan retorted.
“Wait, where is your father?” Elena demanded.
Paulie cupped his hands and yelled, “Attention, Todd Fischer. We’re officially concerned. Show yourself.”
Rowan climbed to the ledge and swallowed hard. “Maybe he found another way to head down,” she said.
“No,” Elena declared. “Something happened.”
***
Author Bio
Nikki Stern is the author of eight books, including five in the award-winning Sam Tate Mystery Series. She was a co-author of several musical murder mystery plays in the popular Café Noir collection. She’s also written a number of short stories and essays, some of which can be found here. A former families’ advocate following the death of her husband on 9/11, Nikki now serves on the leadership council for Search for Common Ground, a global conflict transformation organization. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
For the first time in print comes a collection of five short stories in the Edgar award-winning Kate Burkholder series, PLUS one new, never-before-published story, from New York Times bestselling author Linda Castillo.
When two young boys don’t return home from an innocent afternoon of fishing, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder must track them down before the first winter storm of the season bears down on Painters Mill in THE PACT.
In DISAPPEARED, Kate races against the clock to find a two-year-old who has vanished during a violent thunderstorm. Was the little boy swept away in the rising creek waters? Or is his disappearance even more sinister?
In BLOOD MOON, a man is brutally attacked by a large beast in the woods. Throughout the night, reports of similar incidents escalate and Kate must confront the creature terrorizing the town before violence tips over into tragedy.
When a family dog brings home a human bone, Kate finds herself on a desperate search for answers to end the macabre rumors and ghost stories inundating Painters Mill in the Edgar award-winning short story HALLOWEDGROUND.
In DARK STORM RISING, Kate must brave a dangerous blizzard to save an elderly Amish woman from a sinister foe. Will Kate reach her in time to save her life?
In A DARK PATH, a brand-new story, an Amish couple disappears while enroute to town. They’d recently been threatened by their granddaughter’s troubled boyfriend—and there’s heavy weather moving in. Kate rushes toward their remote farm, but a dog on the road causes her to crash into a ravine, where she discovers a shattered buggy. Together, she and her new canine friend must find the couple before it’s too late.
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Elise’s Thoughts
A Dark Path by Linda Castillo has her trademark writing style even though the stories are not as dark as her novels. All six stories feature her blend of twists, mystery, kind-heartedness, some humor, and sometimes violence.
There are five short stories written as novellas plus a new short story that has as its title the same name as the book compilation. In “A Dark Path,” a brand-new story, an Amish couple disappears enroute to town. They’d recently been threatened by their granddaughter’s troubled boyfriend with a storm moving in. Kate rushes toward their remote farm, but a dog causes her to crash into a ravine, where she discovers a shattered buggy. Together, she and her new canine friend, Sherlock, must find the couple before it’s too late.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Why have a collection of short stories?
Linda Castillo: Charlie, my editor, asked me to write that first short story many years ago. I had never read a short story. And his advice to me was, just get to the point. And make them a little bit lighter. I would write a short story, and that short story would be released on Kindle, or, another digital device right before the release of a novel. And I started getting a lot of mail from readers who were saying, ‘I don’t use an e- reader. I like to have a book. I need a physical book. Now I can’t read your short stories.’ Because they’ve only been available on Kindle or another device, Charlie, my editor at St. Martin’s Press, said, let’s do a collection of six or seven stories. And that’s what we did. You know, the first collection was titled A Simple Murder, and since it was very well received, we did this one. Because each individual short story is too short to do a novel, so we did a collection.
EC: Is it different to write a short story than the books?
LC: I would say the biggest difference, of course, is the pacing. Things must happen very quickly. And one of the things that I also try to do, and as you well know, the novels get very dark sometimes. There’s a murder involved, and there are some dark elements in some of the Kate Burkholder novels, especially the early novels. And the short stories, even though some of them deal with darker topics, some of them are fun, some of them are cozier than the Kate novels. For me, as a writer, it was really a nice change. It was a different pace. It’s faster, and, you know, you don’t really have time to develop your characters as much. So maybe it’s a little bit more topical, but in a fun way.
EC: I usually don’t like the short stories because the plots are not detailed enough and there is not much character development. But if a reader has read the Kate books, they will enjoy these short stories. Do you agree?
LC: I have a funny story. There was one reader, and I think she gave A Dark Path a pretty good review, but she said, ‘I’ve not read any of the novels, but these are way too innocent for me.’ And I was dying to respond to her. I wanted to tell her, but the novels are not that innocent. No. I guarantee you’re going to get a murder. But some of them I wouldn’t call them lighthearted stories. But just, a little bit more lighthearted than the, than the novels.
EC: What was your favorite short story?
LC: “Blood Moon.” This is the story with the hog. Anyone who has been out camping or, having a tent in the yard or whatever, sleeping out in the barn or something like that can relate. Telling ghost stories and then hearing a noise and you’re like, what was that? And to me, that’s so much fun and that was kind of the whole idea behind that short story. It was just, really a lot of fun, and, you know, kind of one of those adventures. It was a little quirky, but I really did enjoy that story.
EC: Did the stories have a lesson to them?
LC: I think some had a theme of tolerance. “The Pact,” with the two little boys who did the whole blood brother, cutting the wrist in the beginning. You know, there really is a lesson in that. And then the other one is “Hallowed Ground,” where the Mennonite woman wants to give tours of an Amish cemetery. “Disappeared” also has a theme of tolerance where the Amish girl falls in love and gets pregnant by the English boy and her parents try to separate him from the baby and love of his life. I think one of the things that I always try to do, maybe not in the same way with every story, is that tolerance works both ways. In “The Pact” the Amish parents weren’t exactly wild about those two kids being best friends. These are probably the little moral lessons that we learn as children, and I think, you know, it’s not always a bad thing to have that reiterated as an adult.
EC: Did the setting play a role?
LC: My settings always seem to have stormy weather in them too. Me and weather. I hope readers are okay with that. I’m a huge fan of weather. The first book, Sworn Silence, took place during a long, cold Ohio winter. That was such a big part of the book. It made everything more difficult as far as the investigation and the story. If you add the weather element, you have a man against man, and then you also have man against nature. It adds a little element of moodiness or, just a little something extra that I love, I’m a huge weather fan.
EC: What about the new short story, “A Dark Path?”
LC: There’s a Labrador in the story. We had a yellow Labrador too. I found him when I was living in Dallas where we lived. It was very sad, and the day that I had one of my dogs put down, a woman carried in this emaciated animal, just skin and bones. No hair, just bloody, bloody skin. I thought it was a pit bull. And I told Dr. Williams, I will take that animal. I thought, I just put Blue down and I’m here at this moment because I need to save this other animal. We took him, and we had to feed him. He almost died because he was starved to death. We had to feed him every hour, He got his hair back and his head was no longer bigger than his body, he turned into a gorgeous, sweet tempered yellow Labrador. His name was Nutmeg, and we gave him a very, very good life. And we lost him, a few years ago now. That is who I based the Labrador in “A Dark Path.” I didn’t name him after Nutmeg, but named him Sherlock. I gave the lab in the story the look of the yellow lab Nutmeg.
EC: Will you have Sherlock as a rescue dog working for the police department?
LC: Sherlock bonded with Kate. He has the personality of a lab. He will be a supporting character in future stories. And I don’t know if you remember, but Tomesetti brought home a cat. The books deal with heavy topics of murder. I think the cat and Sherlock bring a level of comfort. And so that’s kind of what I try to do with that. Sherlock will be just a home family member. This story combines the abusive boyfriend with Sherlock saving Kate.
EC: What about the next book?
LC: It’s called The Betrayed and will be out in July 2027. I absolutely love this story. The plot has an ordinary Amish woman, with a family, a husband, and suddenly finds herself the target. Kate comes in blind, having no idea why, why would somebody be trying to murder her. She does not lead a reckless lifestyle, she’s not a risk taker, and she’s lives in Painters Mill. It has some dark moments.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
