Six Wounds by Morgan Cry BLOG TOUR #SixWounds @GoJaBrown @PolygonBooks @RandomTTours #BookReview

 

To make the perfect Spanish whodunnit cocktail, take one dead gangster, mix in six shifty expats, add one ruthless baddie and garnish with a suspicious police officer . . .

Daniella Coulstoun has recently moved to the Costa Blanca. When the dead body of a prominent London gangster is discovered in the cellar of her bar she quickly becomes the number one suspect.

With the police closing in, the local expats turning on her and a psychotic rival to the dead gangster in the background, Daniella knows she needs to nail the real killer, and fast.

Six Wounds by Morgan Cry was published on 5 May 2022 by Polygon. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this #RandomThingsTours blog tour 

Six Wounds is the second in the Daniella Coulstoun series, following on from Thirty-One Bones which was published in 2020.

I went in to this one cold, I've not read the first book, but honestly, it doesn't matter (although I do intend to catch up on it soon). The author is very clever, he gives the reader the back story, without flooding us with too much information. Every now and again we get a snippet from the past and it is excellently done. The story flows really well. 

This is a cracking read! I read it in just about one sitting, totally engrossed in Daniella's life, running a decidedly dodgy bar in Costa Blanca, Spain. It's not just the actual bar that is questionable though, the co-owners and the customers are all incredibly colourful characters too, most of them have dubious pasts and the majority of them are still up their eyes in trouble. 

Daniella inherited the bar from her estranged mother. They'd not been in touch for years, and whilst Daniella was working in an insurance call centre in the UK, her mother was creating her empire. An empire of heavies, thieves and strays. 

Daniella is now well established as the main shareholder in the bar, she's in a new relationship and is discovering the 'joys' of being a bar owner in Spain. However, not everyone is happy about her being in charge; not the other owners, some of the clientele and certainly not the owners of a neighbouring bar. 

One explosive and frightening night, Daniella's bar explodes. Literally. The doors come crashing down, furniture is smashed, there are holes in the walls and the floors ..... and a dead body is found in the cellar. This is serious. The dead man is a well-known gangster and Daniella soon finds herself in the frame for his murder.

What follows is an action-packed romp of a story, there's some really dry humour in amongst the deaths and the threats and it's a fabulous read. I was glued to it, I really enjoyed the character creation so much. The author is so very skilled in bringing his characters to life, they feel so real.

Gripping and pacy, a real roller-coaster of a read. Highly recommended.

Here, Gordon Brown is writing as Morgan Cry. 

Gordon has written six crime thrillers to date, along with a number of short stories. 

He also helped found Bloody Scotland, Scotland's International Crime Writing Festival, is a DJ on local radio (www.pulseonair.co.uk) and runs a strategic planning consultancy. 

In a former life Gordon delivered pizzas in Toronto, sold non-alcoholic beer in the Middle East, launched a creativity training business, floated a high tech company on the London Stock Exchange, and compered the main stage at a two-day music festival. 

He lives in Scotland and is married with two children

www.gordonjbrown.com

Twitter @GoJaBrown