Short Stories by Ann Cleeves – The BOLO Books Review

“The Woman on the Island” is Ann Cleeves’ most recent short story. While the tale is extremely brief, it does help to fill in some backstory on Vera Stanhope’s past relationship with her father, Hector. Needing a respite from her police duties, Vera takes what she...

Night Shadows – The BOLO Books Review

Night Shadows is the third book in Eva Björg Ægisdóttir’s Forbidden Iceland series. Following both The Creak on the Stairs and Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows continues the evolution of Detective Elma and her family, friends, and colleagues, while also documenting the...

A Scandal in Brooklyn – A BOLO Books Short Story Review

Lauren Wilkinson’s “A Scandal in Brooklyn” is a clever short story that updates the Sherlockian mythos for a more modern and diverse audience. Here, Irene Adler is a Black woman in the midst of divorcing her tech billionaire husband, when a girlfriend asks Irene to...

A Killing in Costumes – The BOLO Books Review

Zac Bissonnette is releasing his debut cozy mystery, A Killing in Costumes, at a time when the current publishing marketplace is celebrating diversity of all kinds. Through planned intent or lucky happenstance, Bissonnette’s novel capitalizes on this trend with what...

The Disinvited Guest – The BOLO Books Review

Carol Goodman is one of those rare authors readers can always rely on to present a gripping story, well told – regardless of each particular novel’s chosen subject matter. As such, many fans will flock to her newest novel eager to see what Goodman has in store this...

First Born – The BOLO Books Review

Between his underrated Tuva Moodyson series and his critically acclaimed stand-alone The Last Thing to Burn, Scottish author Will Dean has proven himself more than astute at writing from the female perspective. This trend continues in what might be his most powerful...

Things We Do in the Dark – The BOLO Books Review

The innate ability to know how a story needs to be told is a skill that is typically honed over years, but in the case of Jennifer Hillier, this key storytelling tool seems to be part of her DNA. From the start, with the deliciously unsettling Creep (and the follow up...

Dark Objects – The BOLO Books Review

Simon Toyne burst onto the literary landscape with his unique Sanctus trilogy – a DaVinci Code style narrative with deeper characterization and superlative narrative skills. Toyne followed this with a minor pivot when he released his Solomon Creed duology (The...

Outside – The BOLO Books Review

After translating all of Agatha Christie’s novels into Icelandic for publication in his home country, Ragnar Jónasson launched his own crime fiction career with two highly-regarded series – the Dark Iceland books, which I dubbed as “cozy noir,” for their unique...