📖 Book Review ~ The Botanist by M. W. Craven

 

Little Brown Books
2 June 2022

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe can count on one hand the number of friends he has. And he'd still have his thumb left. There's the insanely brilliant, guilelessly innocent civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw of course. He's known his beleaguered boss, Detective Inspector Stephanie Flynn for years as he has his nearest neighbour, full-time shepherd/part-time dog sitter, Victoria.

And then there's Estelle Doyle. It's true the caustic pathologist has never walked down the sunny side of the street but this time has she gone too far? Shot twice in the head, her father's murder appears to be an open and shut case. Estelle has firearms discharge residue on her hands, and, in a house surrounded by fresh snow, hers are the only footprints going in. Since her arrest she's only said three words: 'Tell Washington Poe.'

Meanwhile, a poisoner the press have dubbed the Botanist is sending high profile celebrities poems and pressed flowers. The killer seems to be able to walk through walls and, despite the advance notice he gives his victims, and regardless of the security measures the police take, he seems to be able to kill with impunity.

For a man who hates locked room mysteries, this is going to be the longest week of Washington Poe's life.

📖 My Review..

Just as DS Washington Poe can count on one hand the number of friends he has, so I can count on one hand the number of authors whose books I will read without a) seeing the blurb or b) seeing the cover - M. W. Craven is one such author and a new Poe and Tilly mystery is the highlight of my year. The Botanist, which has been on my book radar for several months, is now finally published so I can share my thoughts about book number five in the Poe and Tilly series of crime mysteries. 

There are two cleverly constructed threads running through the story, namely that of the eponymous botanist who is seemingly picking off high profile celebrities, a perpetrator who carries out the crimes with such ingenuous methods of disposal that for once Poe is stumped as to how this modus operandi is being carried out. The second thread is rather more personal for Poe as it involves one of his closest friends, of whom we know he doesn't have many, so when pathologist, Estelle Doyle is arrested for murder, Poe is determined to prove her innocence.

The Botanist is one of the most complicated locked room thrillers I've read, darkly, suspenseful with more twists and turns than a Cumbrian country lane and yet thanks to the skillful manipulation of the narrative it's so easy to devour the pages in short, sharp bursts, rather like the chapters themselves which are sometime just a page or two long. The attention to detail is, as always, meticulous, combining science, technology, and the masterpiece that is Tilly Bradshaw, whose serious explanations of the unexplainable, and her joyous faux pas, form such a crucial part of the story. 

Whilst this latest story forms an integral part of the series, it is perfectly possible to read the book as a standalone, but why deprive yourself of a superb crime series, start at the beginning and wallow in the dream team that is Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw and be taken into the minds of some of the darkest, fictional killers. The stories are not for the faint hearted but each are written with such talent  and skillful attention to even the smallest detail that the pages turn themselves.

Each year the latest Poe and Tilly story makes it onto my reads of the year list - The Botanist is no exception. In fact, as I also say every year, this is my favourite, especially as, this year, my home town gets  a little mention 😊

🍴Best read with.. a cup of Tilly's herbal tea and a sneaky, bacon butty, heavy on the sauce 😋

About the Author

M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle. He joined the army at sixteen, leaving a decade later to complete a social work degree and spent seventeen years as a probation officer in Cumbria, rising to the rank of assistant chief officer. The first in the Washington Poe series, The Puppet Show, won the 2019 CWA Gold Dagger, has sold in numerous foreign territories and has been optioned for TV by Studio Lambert. M. W. Craven has been shortlisted for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award and an Amazon Reader Award. He is also the author of the Avison Fluke novels, Born in a Burial Ground (shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger) and Body Breaker. 

Twitter @MWCravenUK #TheBotanist  #TeamPoe #TeamTilly

@TheCrimeVault 

Amazon UK

Featured Book of the Month and Blog Tour ~ Dead Ground by M. W. Craven

 

I am delighted to host today's Blog Tour stop

Constable
Little Brown Books
3 June 2021

Washington Poe #4

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book and for the opportunity to take part in this blog tour

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused - he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp - but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows.

As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions: despite being heavily vetted for a high-profile job, why does nothing in the victim's background check out? Why was a small ornament left at the murder scene - and why did someone on the investigation team steal it? And what is the connection to a flawlessly executed bank heist three years earlier, a heist where nothing was taken.

My thoughts...

If only I could get away with writing a review that says " This is just brilliant" as that sums up my feelings after finishing this latest book from master wordsmith, M.W. Craven. I thought that after reading The Curator the author had excelled himself but this story really does takes the series up a  whole other notch. 

Dead Ground literally hits the ground running with one of the most imaginatively described opening chapters I have read in a long time and the scene is then set for an engrossing and utterly compelling crime thriller which sees Detective Sergeant Washington Poe and his computer expert assistant, Tilly Bradshaw having to go right into the heart of a mystery which, with every tantalising clue, just gets weirder, and weirder. 

When a man's body is discovered in a seedy Carlisle brothel, Poe initially thinks that this is merely a run of the mill murder inquiry but once he and Tilly realise the significance of an object found at the scene, the whole plot start to twirl and dance with all the twists, turns, complicated plot shifts and mesmerising characteristics which we have come to expect from this talented author. 

To spoil any of the plot would be disgraceful so I’m not going to say anything about what happens when and why, except to say that I read the book in two sittings as I really couldn’t put it down and even though I desperately wanted to see how the plot played out, I really didn’t want the book to end as that would mean saying goodbye to Poe and Tilly.

There really is no end to this writer's talent for giving us clever and intricately plotted crime thrillers and even though each book succeeds on its own merits, it is still part of the superb partnership that is, Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw. They’re just a great double act whose distinct and rather special personalities shine through with every well written word.

If you haven't read this series yet, and you really are missing a treat if you haven't, but be warned even though they are dark and very gritty, and not for the faint hearted, they are also seriously compulsive. So.. let Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw take you on a very special journey through some of the darkest recesses of picturesque, Cumbria.

In my opinion these books are a TV series waiting to happen ...just saying!

Dead Ground is my featured book of the month for June and is available to buy from all good books shops. 

About the Author

A brand-new voice in British crime fiction, M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle. He joined the army at sixteen, leaving a decade later to complete a social work degree and spent seventeen years as a probation officer in Cumbria, rising to the rank of assistant chief officer. The first in the Washington Poe series, The Puppet Show, won the 2019 CWA Gold Dagger, has sold in numerous foreign territories and has been optioned for TV by Studio Lambert. M. W. Craven has been shortlisted for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award and an Amazon Reader Award. He is also the author of the Avison Fluke novels, Born in a Burial Ground (shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger) and Body Breaker. The second in the Washington Poe series, Black Summer was published in June 2019. 

Twitter @MWCravenUK #Dead Ground  #TeamPoe #TeamTilly

@TheCrimeVault

Amazon UK

🌠

Review ~ Body Breaker by M W Craven

Constable
Little Brown
9 January 2020

Avison Fluke #2

My thanks to the author and publisher for my copy of this book

The second dark and twisted thriller in the Avison Fluke series by M. W. Craven, the acclaimed author of The Puppet Show.,

Investigating how a severed hand ends up on the third green of a Cumbrian golf course is not how Detective Inspector Avison Fluke has planned to spend his Saturday. So when a secret protection unit from London swoops in quoting national security, he’s secretly pleased.

But trouble is never far away. A young woman arrives at his lakeside cabin with a cryptic message: a code known to only a handful of people and it forces Fluke back into the investigation he’s only just been barred from.

In a case that will change his life forever, Fluke immerses himself in a world of New Age travellers, corrupt cops and domestic extremists. Before long he’s alienated his entire team, has been arrested under the Terrorism Act – and has made a pact with the Devil himself. But a voice has called out to him from beyond the grave. And Fluke is only getting started…

What did I think about it..

When a severed hand is found on the third green of Cockermouth Golf Club it leads DI Avison Fluke and the Force Major Incident Team into a very dark and dangerous investigation which has its roots in Cumbria but which takes Fluke into some of the darker areas of his past. There's a discussion amongst the FMIT in Body Breaker about who it was who said that 'golf is a good walk spoiled' and regardless of who was responsible for the phrase there's no doubt that the round of golf at the start of this novel is one that the golfers, and detectives, won't forget in a hurry.

By any stretch of the imagination Body Breaker is a powerful thriller. It's filled with all the twists and turns we have come to expect from this talented writer, with a cast of returning characters who literally leap fully formed from the page. The plot, as ever, moves along at a cracking pace,  and as we learned from the first book in the series, Fluke is a detective who does things entirely his own way which sometimes means acting in an entirely unorthodox manner in order to get results, but hey, this is fiction after all, and a flawed and unconventional lead detective adds a fascinating dimension to another gritty murder investigation, which has more than hint towards terrorist activity.

This second book in the series is no less convoluted than the first, and whilst it can be read as a stand alone story, there are some finer points of character progression which would be entirely lost without prior knowledge, so my recommendation is that you should start with Born in a Burial Gown and enjoy this excellent series from the start.


Originally published in 2015, the first two novels in the Fluke series are being reissued on the 9th January.

About the Author

M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle, running away to join the army at the tender age of sixteen. He spent the next ten years travelling the world having fun, leaving in 1995 to complete a degree in social work with specialisms in criminology and substance misuse. Thirty-one years after leaving Cumbria, he returned to take up a probation officer position in Whitehaven, eventually working his way up to chief officer grade. Sixteen years later he took the plunge, accepted redundancy and became a full-time author. He now has entirely different motivations for trying to get inside the minds of criminals . . .

Website

Twitter @MWCravenUK 

@TheCrimeVault

Amazon UK

Review ~ Born in a Burial Gown by M W Craven

Constable
Little Brown
9 January 2020

Avison Fluke #1

My thanks to the author and publisher for my copy of this book

The first gritty thriller in the Avison Fluke series by M. W. Craven, the acclaimed author of The Puppet Show.

Detective Inspector Avison Fluke is a man on the edge. He has committed a crime to get back to work, concealed a debilitating illness and is about to be made homeless. Just as he thinks things can’t get any worse, the body of a young woman is found buried on a Cumbrian building site.

Shot once in the back of the head, it is a cold, calculated execution. When the post-mortem reveals she has gone to significant expense in disguising her appearance, Fluke knows this is no ordinary murder.

With the help of a psychotic ex-Para, a gangland leader and a woman more interested in maggots than people, Fluke must find out who she was and why she was murdered before he can even think about finding her killer…

What did I think about it..

Whenever I visit the English Lake District I am in awe of its unspoiled beauty, the majesty of its hills and mountains and the splendid isolation of its hidden crags. Born in a Burial Gown has its focus in Cumbria, as this is the place that Detective Avison Fluke calls home, however, we are about to discover that there are darker elements at play in this beautiful part of the country.

Born in a Burial Gown is the first in the Fluke series, so there's a certain amount of getting to know the main characters. Detective Inspector Avison Fluke, the lead detective of the Force Major Incident Team, is a fascinating character, he's stubborn, unpredictable and a bit of a maverick and I warmed to him immediately. Fluke is everything you want in a lead detective but from the outset we realise that all is not well in his world, however, his work ethic exceeds his own personal cost and from the start we understand that Fluke is a detective who isn't in the business of messing around when there's a murder investigation to get sorted.

The mystery at the heart of the novel is complex and convoluted, both gritty and dark in equal measure with a realistic sense of the unpredictability of a police investigative team working together. The characters who make up the FMIT are an odd bunch and at first glance seem like a team of misfits and yet, they all have their own individual strengths, and none more so than Fluke's oppo, DS Matt Towler, who has a similar military background to Fluke and a shared past which is alluded to as the story progresses.

I'm deliberately not sharing any spoilers about Born in a Burial Gown except to say that it is a really cleverly constructed murder/mystery and a cracking good introduction to what promises to be an addictive crime series.

Originally published in 2015, the first two novels in the Fluke series are being reissued on the 9th January.

About the Author

M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle, running away to join the army at the tender age of sixteen. He spent the next ten years travelling the world having fun, leaving in 1995 to complete a degree in social work with specialisms in criminology and substance misuse. Thirty-one years after leaving Cumbria, he returned to take up a probation officer position in Whitehaven, eventually working his way up to chief officer grade. Sixteen years later he took the plunge, accepted redundancy and became a full-time author. He now has entirely different motivations for trying to get inside the minds of criminals . . .

Website

Twitter @MWCravenUK 

@TheCrimeVault

Amazon UK