Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Auntie M has been reading several series in order, and today she’s talking about Clare Chase, whose Tara Thorpe series is set in Cambridge.

Murder on the Marshes introduces Tara, a Cambridge journalist who is investigating the death of a young woman found in the fountain of one of Cambridge’s college courtyards.

When Tara learns the woman had been receiving death threats, she can’t help but flash on the one that was left on her own doorstep the night this woman died.

Her personal interest in the case catches the attention of DI Garstin Blake, and he reluctantly comes to see that her journalistic nose has its advantages, as she interviews what they both feel are potential suspects. But Tara’s past experience with police has left her wary of police in general.

Refusing to acknowledge the pull she feels toward the married Blake, Tara doesn’t share the secret in her past that might have bearing on the case, even as they get closer and closer to the killer.

Death on the River opens a few years later, when Tara has left journalism and entered the police force. Only a few weeks into her position as a DC in Cambridge, she is shocked one night to find a woman on the doorstep of her isolated fens cottage. Dr. Monica Cairncross begs Tara to investigate the death of her brother, Ralph.

It’s been deemed an accident, but Tara’s immediate supervisor, DS Wilkins, has little time for Tara’s efforts to find out about the accident and if there was any possibility it could have been murder. But going behind Wilkin’s back, Tara finds out Ralph Cairncross had an earlier accident with the wiring on a faulty lamp that almost killed him.

Butting heads with her DS isn’t missed by their boss, DI Blake, who is determined to give Tara the chance she deserves in his team, despite the misgivings of Wilkins. Just how far will her DS go to scupper Tara? Then a second body is found, and it becomes clear someone has murder on their mind.

With Death Comes to Call, Tara’s newest case revolves around the disappearance of local painter Luke Cope. Inspecting his paintings, Tara is alarmed to see one of a pretty woman with a man’s hands around her throat.

She’s at a loss, until the body of a young woman is found on a nature preserve, left overnight. The dead woman is Freya Cross, an art gallery employee who modeled for Cope and is the woman from the painting. Is life imitating art?

Tara investigates, sometimes using unusual methods she’s fond of from her journalism days. There have been changes to Blake’s team, too, that effect their working. As Tara and the team investigate both Freya’s husband and stepson, there are other forces at work trying to destroy the new detective constable.

Murder in the Fens brings Tara and her team to the body of a young woman found on the edge of the fens, her pockets stuffed full of dead flowers. Was this an affair gone wrong, a crime of passion, or something more?

Searching the young student’s room, Tara finds what turns out to be a rare family heirloom hidden among her things. What was smart Julie Cooper doing with something valuable that belongs to the family of the master at her college?

Was this simple theft, or the hint of something much more? And how far back in time will Tara have to look to find the threads of what is at the heart of this death?

With team changes come a new detective who seems too good to be true, but at least Tara isn’t the lowest in the pecking order. Her tense relationship with DI Blake takes an unexpected turn in this one.

The mystery is solved in each one, so the books don’t strictly have to be read in order, but there was an undeniable pleasure in watching the progression of the relationships Tara has, first as a journalist, and then as a young detective with the various members of her team.

She has her own past, a complicated family situation, and support in odd corners, but it all works and makes her an interesting and strong young woman, whose sense of determination sometimes gets in the way of being a team player, something she must learn.

Chase does a good job, too, exploring Cambridge as a setting, bringing the ancient city and its many colleges to life, as well as the stark fens countryside.

All in all, it’s a satisfying series and Auntie M is looking forward to Tara Thorpe’s next case.

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Spencer Kope returns readers to the Special Tracking Unit of the FBI in Shadows of the Dead.

Magnus Craig is known as “Steps” but only a few people know of his ability to see shine, a color stream of the essence created by people, varying in color and intensity depending on the length of time they’ve been in a certain place. The origin of this synesthesia is in itself interesting and creative. How he deals with it with special glasses adds to this touch and creates empathy for a man whose special sight is a daily bombardment of colors and senses without the glasses.

The strong opening in this third outing (Collecting the Dead, Whispers of the Dead)creates immediate interest: tracking a man after he’s fled in the woods after a police chase to a remote cabin in the woods brings them information about his partner in crime, a man he calls OK for Onion King.

Then a young woman is found in the trunk of his car, a woman he calls Eight. When she regains consciousness, her information is telling: she was abducted by someone different from the man who left her in the woods; and more critically, she was not the first but the eighth victim.

Steps and his partner, Jimmy, will trace the villain in real time and though the dark web, a race against time for the unknown abducted victims still being held. For is this young woman was Eight, where are the first seven?

Kope, a working crime analyst, brings a huge sense of reality to the plot through profiling and other detection methods from his own knowledge base. Yet he’s smart to weave characters who will capture the readers’ attention, especially Steps, even as he takes them on a wild ride.

The unpredictable plot, as well as the easy camaraderie and dialogue between Jimmy and Steps add to make this a wholly satisfying read.

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Jane Harper’s debut The Dry, set in the outskirts of Melbourne, was such a hit that Auntie M had to see what all the fuss was about. After reading it, she immediately ordered the sequel, Force of Nature, and anxiously awaits a third.

The Dry introduces Federal Agent Aaron Falk, who left Kiewarra twenty years ago and hasn’t looked back. With his unusual looks, he’s always been a standout.

Then he find out his best friend from childhood, Luke, and his entire family have been found murdered. Hesitating, his visit home is clinched when he receives a note saying that the sending knows that Aaron and Luke lied about a childhood event, and tells him to come for the funeral.

The worst drought in decades has hit the rural area yet most of it is still recognizable to Aaron. Leaving with his father, now dead, had been a defining moment of his youth.

Returning will thrust him into the world of buried secrets, long-held grievances, and the question of who really killed Luke and his family.

Force of Nature bring Aaron back to a natural area, this time to a corporate retreat on a wilderness site. Five women have gone the trek, ostensibly to bond out of their office comfort zone in a weekend away that is to build trust——but only four return.

Aaron’s involvement rests on the missing hiker. Alice Russell is the whistleblower in his most recent case. She was supposed to be bringing him documentation that would topple her company and several people in it. And several of those people were in the woods with her.

As Aaron adds himself to the searchers and the investigation, the stories the four returning hikers give vary slightly, and just enough to raise his suspicions. Who betrayed the hiker?

Both books are tightly plotted, and illustrate a detail for characters that make them realistic and how that Harper is a great study of human nature. With their compelling story and the lead character perhaps the most intriguing of all, Harper’s books are both Highly Recommended.

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