Guest Post

Guesting on this blog for the first time the awesome Wendy Foster Leigh


The Man on the Washing Machine, Susan Cox

Theophania Bogart has found the perfect city in which to hide from her frenetic past. San Francisco is the ideal city in which to hide from family scandals left behind in England. In San Francisco she begins a new life in the flats around Fabian Gardens. She lives above her shop specializing in soaps, scents, and your basic Bay Area kitsch. She falls into a routine of morning coffee, dog walking, and arguing with her irresponsible business partner. She is settling into the community until the day she sees a local handyman falling from a window across the garden. Something strange is going on in the neighborhood. When her business partner is also killed, Theo seems to be the perfect suspect.


Theo is an example of the plucky protagonist who goes into dark rooms without turning on a light or foolishly meeting a suspect in the silent garden. Perhaps the strangest incident in her escapade is the moment she walks into her laundry room and finds a stranger standing on her washing machine. He disappears quickly, and she goes on the search for both the murderer and the unknown man on the machine.


Sue Cox has written a mystery which demands that it become a series. Theo lives in a square surrounded by flats and businesses filled with future stories. The book is a comfortable read; however, has an edge to it that should appeal to readers who want a strong woman protagonist and a cast of peculiar characters.


The Man on the Washing Machine is the winner of Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel. Sue Cox has created a likeable character in the form of Theo and has introduced a neighborhood association with enough personality to make a reader curious as to what can happen next in Fabian Gardens.

A couple of xmas crackers

December is always a busy time of year at TKE, so while I remember here are a couple of cracking good reads for you to get your teeth into. Enjoy!

Splinter the Silence, Val McDermid

Carol Jordan just got a second chance, saved from a drink drive charge by a failure in procedure she is offered a chance to get her team, including psychologist Tony Hill, back together. A home office proposal, a floating murder investigation team headed by Jordan. Whilst Carol puts her people in place, Tony does his best to keep his feelings for Carol out of the way while he attempts to wean her off the booze.

The new unit's first case isn't official, it may not even be a case at all, just a series of random patterns that Tony identified which may or may not mean that the suicide of a prominent feminist blogger who took on the internet trolls and won is actually murder. It's a race against time to work out who the next victim might be and Jordan's team have made some powerful enemies who are out to scupper the unit's reputation before the paint is dry on their new office walls.

Ashley Bell, Dean Koontz

Novelist Bibi Blair still lives close to her parents in surfer's paradise Newport Beach,.  Her day starts like any other, until she can't pick up her coffee cup. She checks herself into hospital and gets the news no one ever wants to hear. She has a year to live, without chemo and radio therapy six months tops. Most would crumble under such a diagnosis Bibi looks death in the face and says "we'll see."

Overnight the cancer vanishes but the cure comes at a price. Bibi learns that she has been spared to save the life of another girl, Ashley Bell. If Ashley dies, Bibi will too. To keep her fiancee and family safe Bibi goes on the run, taking on the forces holding Ashley, who will do anything to stop her.

With the deadline fast approaching Bibi can't even trust herself. She's been using a memory trick that a man called 'Captain' taught her when she was six years old to keep herself in the dark as to how much danger she's really in.