Today I am very pleased to have been asked to be on the blog tour for Helen Durrant’s latest bestseller, Dead Guilty, which is book 9 in the Calladine and Bayliss Mystery Series of books.
Looking for a brilliant best-selling crime mystery with great detectives?
Detective Calladine and Bayliss hunt for a missing child in a mystery with a shocking ending.
Sophie Alder is the three-year-old daughter of local factory owner, Richard Alder. Richard and his wife Annie are locals from the rough housing estate who’ve made it big.
Plus, there’s a crime wave in Leesworth and the police can’t cope. One thief even dares to break into Calladine’s house.
A number of local men have formed a vigilante group. On one of their patrols they catch the burglar and he ends up dead.
The investigation is complicated and the detectives keep hearing about a shadowy figure called “Street,” the mastermind behind the increase in drugs and theft.
With two more murders and Calladine’s personal life in turmoil, the detectives face against time to find “Street” and the missing child.
In an ending with a huge twist, the detectives find everything they believed is turned upside down.
If you like Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott, Mel Sherratt, Ruth Rendell, or Mark Billingham you will enjoy this exciting new crime fiction writer.
DEAD GUILTY is book nine of a new series of detective thrillers featuring D.S. Ruth Bayliss and D.I. Tom Calladine.
THE DETECTIVES
Tom Calladine is a detective inspector who is devoted to his job. His personal life, however, is not so successful. Having been married and divorced before the age of twenty-one has set a pattern that he finds difficult to escape.
Ruth Bayliss is in her mid-thirties, plain-speaking but loyal. She is balancing her professional life with looking after a small child.
THE SETTING
The fictional village of Leesdon on the outskirts of an industrial northern English city. There is little work and a lot of crime. The bane of Calladine’s life is the Hobfield housing estate, breeding ground to all that is wrong with the area that he calls home.
DISCOVER YOUR NEXT FAVOURITE MYSTERY SERIES NOW
THE CALLADINE & BAYLISS MYSTERY SERIES
Book 1: DEAD WRONG
Book 2: DEAD SILENT
Book 3: DEAD LIST
Book 4: DEAD LOST
Book 5: DEAD & BURIED
Book 6: DEAD NASTY
Book 7: DEAD JEALOUS
Book 8: DEAD BAD
Book 9: DEAD GUILTY
THE DCI GRECO BOOKS
Book 1: DARK MURDER
Book 2: DARK HOUSES
Book 3: DARK TRADE
Book 4: DARK ANGEL
MATT BRINDLE
Book 1: HIS THIRD VICTIM
Book 2: THE OTHER VICTIM
My Review
This is book 9 in the series, so it would be advisable to have read at least a couple of the previous books first to understand the dynamics of the team. Saying this the book can be read as a standalone as it doesn’t take long to work out what is happening and has happened in the past.
Before I get onto the main storyline in this book I have to congratulate Helen on the way she has developed the characters and built them up so strongly, ensuring the series is still fresh and improving with each new book.
The book starts off with Calladine’s house being broken into at night, whilst he is asleep upstairs. When he confronts the burglar he is given the name of the mastermind, Street. Armed with this information Calladine and Bayliss have to investigate the spate of burglaries, but there is also a vigilante group out doing the same thing.
Along with this story line there is another one revolving around the missing child of a wealthy couple who have made it big despite of their upbringings.
The missing child case takes priority for a while, until the vigilante group catch a thief, who then turns up dead. With this murder the police attention switches back and forth between the two cases as they are both as important as each other.
The way the book switches between each case ensures you never know what is going to happen next and kept me hooked trying to work it all out. The plot is very well written and the way the two stories intermingle made it a very captivating and enjoyable read.
About the Author
OVER 750,000 books sold of her Calladine & Bayliss and DI Greco Series
I’m one of the ‘baby boomer’ generation. I was born in Edinburgh to an English father and Scottish mother. My father was from the North West of England and this was where the family settled.
I know the area well, both the good and the bad, and so I set my books here. Sitting between two counties, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and between the city and the hills, it offers a rich mix of the industrial and the countryside and all the character therein. I always planned to write crime novels — to create the characters in my books. Since my retirement from a busy teaching job in FE, this is what I’ve done — almost to exclusion of anything else!
I have a grown-up family and five grandchildren. They see me as something of an eccentric — always on my laptop writing away. Writing is something of a second career and, despite having a bus pass, keeps me busy, young and tuned in the world as it currently is.
Twitter @hhdurrant
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/helen.durrant.12
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Calladine-Bayliss-Detective-Novels/614047648616619?ref=hl
Website https://www.helenhdurrant.co.uk/
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