Book picks similar to
Blackdown by D.M. Mitchell


mystery
historical-fiction
amazon
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Fade to Black


Steven Bannister - 2012
    Allie St Clair doesn't fit in at New Scotland Yard.Hailing from a background of conspicuous wealth and privilege, she is gorgeous, Cambridge-educated and has just been fast-tracked to be the youngest woman promoted to acting Detective Chief Inspector in the history of the Metropolitan Police.Her battle for acceptance at The Met is overshadowed by a bizarre and supernatural twist as a wave of sickening crimes sweeps London.Dark forces older than time and family connections to The Archangel Michael, hurl her into a race from London to ancient Glastonbury to find the murderer and rescue a young police officer from a horrible death.The ancient game of good versus evil is played out against the backdrop of the sinister Glastonbury Tor with devastating results for Allie and her family.Her life is changed forever as she discovers why she alone has been chosen to partner with The Archangel to combat the satanic Mr Black.Discover the gripping debut novel from Steven Bannister - the first in a series of tales that will explore the age-old mystery surrounding good versus evil from a number of perspectives.

Fatal Flowers


Enes Smith - 1992
    Ellie wonders why the madman let her escape and tell the police every horrible thing she saw. But he's not finished with Ellie yet. Or her baby daughter.

The Folks at Fifty-Eight


Michael Patrick Clark - 2012
    With the war in Europe at an end, Hammond returns to Washington only to find his unit disbanded and his wife moved out of the marital home.Ostracized by the Washington elite, publicly humiliated by an unfaithful wife, and scorned by former friends and colleagues, he is forced to take a mundane job with an insurance company. . . But then comes the call.The State Department wants him to rescue a young woman, trapped in Soviet East Germany. Should he succeed a plum job at The State Department awaits. Desperate for deliverance from his humdrum existence, Hammond accepts the assignment.He heads into enemy territory, unaware of the sinister force that sponsored his mission or of the unseen dangers that lie in wait. He only knows that he must somehow save the girl to save himself, but as his enemies close in, and ever-more disturbing revelations come to light, Gerald Hammond begins to wonder which poses the greatest threat. . . The enemy he runs from, the friend he runs to, or the girl he was sent to save?"Fast paced thriller with lots of action - I couldn't put it down!!" - Amazon Reviewer "Delicious spy novel, bold and graphic." - Amazon Reviewer "A tremendous book - a definite page turner"- Amazon Reviewer "This is the best spy novel I have read in quite some time" - Amazon Reviewer "I purchased this based on the reviews, and it exceeded expectations" - Amazon Reviewer "And be warned, there's bad language, sex, sadistic murders, regular murders, etc. in this book. It's a spy novel...stay out of the kitchen if you don't like this kind of heat." - Amazon Reviewer

Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner


Amy Myers - 2007
    But she couldn’t. She’d stay there stuck fast in paint forever. A chimney sweep in Victorian London’s poverty-stricken East End, Tom Wasp is highly flattered to be asked to model for Valentine Drake, a painter in fashionable Chelsea, especially since his co-model is the beautiful and warm-hearted Bessie Barton, a red-headed stunner who becomes his friend. Grief-stricken when her body is found by mudlarks on the muddy banks of the river Thames, Tom vows to find her murderer. Tracking her pitiful past through London’s seamiest quarters, he discovers the monstrous shadow that hangs over her life, Moonman, from whose clutches Bessie had fled, only to fall into his murderous hands at last. But who is Moonman? Is he one of the Angels, the high-minded group of artists to which Valentine belongs? Or is the truth more terrifying still? Step by step Tom hunts down his quarry through the darkness, guided by his faith that there is goodness in this world as well as evil, and assisted by his chummy, the eleven-year-old Ned. Narrated by Tom himself, this unusual historical thriller whirls the reader from the squalor of London’s Victorian slums to the heady pleasures of its high-life, revealing both the evil and the goodness in both. Tom and Ned make a formidable team as they clean the filthy chimneys of life in this first book of the Tom Wasp series. Praise for Amy Myers ‘Victorian England hides a dark underbelly of misery and degradation along with a vicious murderer.’— Kirkus Reviews ‘Tom Wasp is one of the most engaging characters I’ve encountered in yeats’ – Ellen Keith, Historical Novels Review AMY MYERS has been a full-time writer since 1988, and has written a wide range of novels from historical sagas and contemporary romance to crime. She is married to an American and lives in Kent. Many of her novels have been published under the name of Harriet Hudson.

No Game For a Dame


M. Ruth Myers - 2011
     Moving through streets where people line up at soup kitchens, Maggie draws information from sources others overlook: The waitress at the dime store lunch counter where she has breakfast; a ragged newsboy; the other career girls at her rooming house. Her digging gets her chloroformed and left in a ditch behind the wheel of her DeSoto. She makes her way to an upscale bordello and gets tea – and information – from the madam herself. A gunman puts a bullet through Maggie’s hat. Her shutterbug pal on the evening paper warns her off. A new cop whose presence unsettles her thinks she’s crooked. Before she finds all the answers she needs, she faces a half-crazed man with a gun, and a far more lethal point-blank killer. If you like Robert B. Parker's hard boiled Spencer series and strong women sleuths, don't miss this one-of-a-kind Ohio detective from a time in United States history when dames wore hats -- but seldom a Smith & Wesson.

Starving Men


Siobhan Finkielman - 2020
    He also spends part of his professional life secretly counseling former members of the disbanded IRA. Michael always thought this would be enough to satisfy his heritage, but when the highly skilled yet deeply disturbed Turlough O’Sullivan enters his office, he sees an opportunity that the demons of his past won't let him overlook.Haunted by childhood tales of the gruesome history of the Irish people under British rule, Michael enlists his new patient's help in tracking down the living descendants of the long-dead villains of Irish history, as payback for his country and his lineage.But Michael's plan for a bloody revenge doesn't run smoothly: not only must he learn the truth about the role models who formed him as a child, but on his trail is a young detective at Scotland Yard, an officer obsessed with stopping the unknown serial killer who is out for an historical revenge that she can't understand.

Aleutian Grave


William Doonan - 2014
    Henry Grave returns as an investigator for the Association of Cruising Vessel Operators. A World War II P.O.W., Henry is as cunning as he is charming, and at 85 years of age, he fits right in with his fellow passengers. The arctic exploration ship Nikolai Gorodish is cruising the Aleutian islands when a cabaret dancer named Rose DeSilva is found stabbed to death. More deaths will follow. But that’s only the beginning. Is there an arctic demon on board the ship? Or is someone else cannibalizing the bodies of the dead? With the help of a horror film star, a Russian heiress, and an apprentice shaman, Henry draws on skills honed in a Nazi prison camp to track down a killer who might have his own reasons for taking this particular cruise, reasons unrelated to the sumptuous meals, delightful shipboard activities, and arctic ports of call.

Cicada Spring


Christian Galacar - 2015
    . .On a warm May evening in the spring of 1979, the people of Heartsridge, Massachusetts, are living the American dream. Families are gathered for barbecues. Kids are playing in front yards. Gardens are being kept. Meanwhile, Kara Price stumbles home through the woods, raped and beaten, her life shattered by a wicked act of violence, perpetrated by one of the town’s most beloved and public figures. Surrounding Kara is a cast of compelling and nefarious characters—a violent-tempered mayor who can do no wrong in the eyes of the town, a sheriff bound by the rules and plagued by a guilty conscience, a father bent on revenge, a serial killer in the midst of an identity crisis. And at the center of it all there's Kara, who just wants to move on with her life and forget everything that happened to her. But how can she do that when everyone thinks she is a liar who is only out for attention? With plot and emotion braided together by a careful hand, this haunted group of people all acting on behalf of their own interests begs the question: How far would you go to protect your own?

Storm Log-0505


James D. Mortain - 2016
    But a student is missing. And he must find her. Compelled to leave his wife in Bath, Deans heads to North Devon, where he encounters Denise Moon, a medium, who exposes him to a psychic dimension he could never have imagined existed, in what soon becomes a murder hunt. Gripped by inexplicable phenomena attributed to his own ‘paranormal awakening’ and alienated from all but his new mystical muse, Deans is closing in on a sophisticated killer... ...but all is not as it seems, and Deans’ future is about to change.

The Jekyll Revelation


Robert Masello - 2016
    Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It also promises to reveal a terrible secret—the identity of Jack the Ripper.Unfortunately, the journal—whose macabre tale unfolds in an alternating narrative with Rafe’s—isn’t the only relic in the trunk, and Rafe isn’t the only one to purloin a souvenir. A mysterious flask containing the last drops of the grisly potion that inspired Jekyll and Hyde and spawned London’s most infamous killer has gone missing. And it has definitely fallen into the wrong hands.

Stone Cold


Joel Goldman - 2012
    Find out how far Alex Stone goes to protect her lover, save the innocent and speak for the dead in Stone Cold, the first book in Joel Goldman’s Alex Stone Thriller series.

Little Boy Found


L.K. Fox - 2017
    . . It Was Only The Beginning.One rainy morning, just after Nick drops off his young son Gabriel outside the crowded school gates, he has a minor collision with another car. The driver won't surrender his insurance details, so Nick photographs the licence plate. When he gets home, he enlarges the shot on his phone and spots something odd about the picture-Gabriel in the back seat, being driven away by a stranger. Nick needs to know what happened to his boy, but losing Gabriel turns out to be far less terrible than the shock of finding him. Now, to discover the truth, he must relive the nightmare all over again...Be warned, this is not another missing child story: what happened to Nick and his son is far more shocking.

Flash Bang


Kellen Burden - 2013
    Dishonorably discharged from the Army, he’s wracked with night terrors and an anger that he can't abate. Unemployable and uninterested in anything resembling a normal job, Parks makes his living in fugitive apprehension, finding wanted felons on Facebook and thumping them into custody with his ex-military buddies John Harkin and Eric "Etch" Echevarria. When the body of a teenage Muslim boy is found in front of a downtown Denver nightclub Parks, Harkin and Etch are called on to do what they do best: Find bad men and make them pay.First-time author Kellen Burden serves up edgy humor, brutal action and characters you can’t get enough of. Flash Bang will keep you turning pages until the end.

A Place of Execution


Val McDermid - 1999
    On a freezing day in December, another child goes missing: 13-year-old Alison Carter vanishes from the isolated Derbyshire hamlet of Scardale. For the young George Bennett it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case: a murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the inner city; an outcome that reverberates down the years.Decades later he tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when her book is poised for publication, Bennett tries to pull the plug. He has new information that he will not divulge, and that threatens the very foundation of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down.A taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multilayered narrative that turns expectations on their head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know...

Death of a Serpent


Susan Russo Anderson - 2012
    . . A dark secret . . . And one woman determined to uncover the truth. Sicily, October 1866. At a high-class house near Palermo, three women are knifed to death, their foreheads slashed with a strange mark, their bodies dumped on the madam's doorstep. Infuriated with the inept police inspector who does nothing to solve the crimes, the madam summons her friend, Serafina, and asks her to catch the killer. Serafina launches into the investigation, gathering evidence, following leads. An unexpected murder plunges her into despair, but not for long. In a defiant meeting with the local mafia capo, her arch enemy, she makes an important discovery. Now convinced of the murderer's identity, she enlists the help of her very pregnant daughter and together they conceive a daring plan to ensnare the killer, but not before Serafina uncovers shocking truths of her own.