Genre: Crime/Detective/Thriller
Description
Book 1 Talking to the Dead
A crime you’ll always remember. A detective you’ll never forget.
A young girl is found dead. A prostitute is murdered. And the strangest, youngest detective in the South Wales Major Crimes Unit is about to face the fiercest test of her short career.
A woman and her six-year-old daughter are killed with chilling brutality in a dingy flat. The only clue: the platinum bank card of a long-dead tycoon, found amidst the squalor.
DC Griffiths has already proved herself dedicated to the job, but there’s another side to her she is less keen to reveal. Something to do with a mysterious two-year gap in her CV, her strange inability to cry – and a disconcerting familiarity with corpses.
Fiona is desperate to put the past behind her but as more gruesome killings follow, the case leads her back into those dark places in her own mind where another dead girl is waiting to be found…
Book 2 Love Story with Murders
A freezing cold winter. A dead body from the past. A tale of love – and murder.
A human leg is discovered in a suburban freezer. The victim is a teenage girl killed some ten years earlier. But then other body parts start appearing. And these ones are male, dark-skinned, and very fresh…
Is this a tangled tale of love gone wrong? Or are there more sinister lines connecting the dead bodies to a recent tragedy in a Cardiff prison, and an engineering company that’s up to a whole lot more than is first apparent?
Fiona Griffiths starts to investigate, in the midst of the coldest winter on record. Up in a remote cottage in the Welsh Black Mountains, she finds the data that contains the clue to the entire mystery. But, as the first snow starts to fall, she discovers that she’s not alone.
Is it A Series?
Yes, 6 books in all, I think
Is It Easy to Read?
Yes š
Karen’s Magic Review
My brother in law introduced me to this series. He told me I should give them a go as he would be interested to see what I thought about them. I took note of the name and a few days later, author Stephen Puleson sent out his newsletter with a review of the exact same book. I was surprised to see this come up within a short space of time, so I downloaded the first book, quickly followed by the second.
The main character, Fiona, is quirky and I love the way Harry Bingham writes – short sentences, random thoughts and funny terms of phrase. They all go to building a picture of the character and her personality. I also loved her family and how her dad is actually a criminal who has never been caught. He adores his funny little daughter and the way he speaks to her is so believable. Everyone has funny quirks, and this family is no different.
They are two parts to this these books, Fiona Griffiths, and the storyline. I don’t know what I enjoy the most. The plots are often quite complex interspersed with the interesting characteristics of Fiona.
Because this is a traditionally published book, I was surprised to find quite a lot of errors in the first one, typos more than anything. One I remember was he should have she, but instead said he. Because the book was so good, it wasn’t a problem, just surprising. The second book, I only found one and that was something like JFiona. Obviously, he going to write something else, but didn’t delete all the letters. Surprisingly, they weren’t picked up on edits, though.
I particularly enjoyed one incident in the first book between Fiona one of her boss. I’m not very good at picking up these things and expect other readers will have realised she was gay before I did. Her boss, invited Fiona for lunch, obviously with the intent of declaring her feelings, as she’d interpreted Fiona’s friendliness and understanding for something else. Of course, it could have been very awkward, but it was so nicely written and the two girls ended up being good friends instead. No dramatics, no flying off the handle, just real life.
I’m sorry the books aren’t enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited programme, it would have saved me a fortune! Having said that, the eBooks are reasonably priced.
I won’t spoil it for you, but there was a mystery introduced in the first book, and touched upon in the second. and you really want to get to the bottom of it. I’ve already purchased book 3!
Clever writing, clever books and thoroughly recommended.
Karen J. Mossman 