No Time to Cry: Constance Fairchild Series 1 (The Constance Fairchild Series)

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However, my main problem was with Con herself. A lot of the action was a result of her acting really stupidly again and again. She didn't let people know what was happening, she failed to pay attention and constantly got captured, and she ended up with more concussions than a rugby prop! Will I carry on? I honestly don’t know. I hope that this series gets better; I wonder if some of the weaknesses come from the difficulty inherent in trying to write a police procedural when the main character isn’t on active duty for most of the book, especially with a main character who seems to have no friends to interact with. Lady Constance Fairchild or Con as she likes to be called, is a Detective Constable currently suspended from duty after the case she worked on in the previous book, which led to some high profile arrests of people of importance including some police officers. Which explains why she is not well liked around the station. She is being hounded by the press being called ‘posh cop’. My thanks to Headline/Wildfire for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Nowhere to Run’ by James Oswald in exchange for an honest review.

Con offers to help Lila though soon realises that she has stumbled into a very dangerous situation. No further details to avoid spoilers. Trouble always seems to find her, and even if she has nothing to hide, perhaps she has everything to lose . . . Oswald’s debut book, a police procedural and the first entry in the Inspector McLean series, has over thirty five editions. The first edition of the book was initially published in 2012, titled Natural Causes, and the series is shelved as crime, mystery, and thriller genres.

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Natural Causes, The Book of Souls, and The Hangman’s Song are the three best books in the bibliography of James Oswald. Natural Causes and The Book of Souls have just been described and thus no need to revisit them. The Present Tense. I have no idea what has led to some authors leaping on this wobbly band-wagon. The shifts between past and present tense always jarred and just when I was getting into reading immersion the oddness of a workaround that just wouldn't be needed in past tense writing would flip me out again. It was incredibly frustrating and costs the book a star. I like Con Fairchild who wants to do a good job and is frustrated at every turn. She is dogged, determined and a magnet for trouble. It’s great stuff. As J D Oswald, James has written a classic fantasy series, The Ballad of Sir Benfro. Inspired by the language and folklore of Wales, it follows the adventures of a young dragon, Sir Benfro, in a land where his kind have been hunted near to extinction by men. The whole series is now available in print, ebook and audio formats.

I thoroughly enjoyed Nowhere to Run, which is an exciting and slightly fantastical thriller told entirely from Con’s point of view. The first thing to note is that realism doesn’t play a big part in this novel, so it’s swallow your disbelief time and plunge into a big adventure. I really enjoy James Oswald's writing and love the Inspector McLean series and had high hopes for this one after the first book but what happened in the second half of this novel. The plot was well set up and the characters laid out and then it was as if the author lost his direction or interest. Hopefully a blip and I fully intend to continue reading both the McLean and Fairchild series.The first one is the DCI Gilchrist series authored by Frank Muir. The featured protagonist, called Andy Gilchrist, is a detective inspector domiciled in St Andrews, a coastal town in Scotland. As this new case gains momentum and more victims are discovered, Con finds herself on a journey to Edinburgh in the hope of unearthing more about the victim found near her flat. She remains officially off-duty and works somewhat outside of her legitimate parameters. While in Edinburgh, Con encounters characters who may be familiar to readers of James Oswald’s McLean series. I love how the two series ‘accidentally’ overlap and how James Oswald subtly weaves these characters into each separate plot-line. I loved Constance Fairchild, the main character, and the attitude she has to what other people think which was very inspiring. She really doesn’t care what others think of her and is able to stand up for herself when needed which had me cheering for her in all the awkward situations she finds herself in. I liked that she is so supportive to other female police officers and lends her support to them when needed. My frustration with how her colleagues were treating her meant I was firmly on her side and I wanted to keep reading to find out if she would prove them all wrong. The launching pad in the first book in the series, Natural Causes, is the murder of a renowned Edinburgh figure. The local police view it as godsend when they nab the murderer within a day. Unfortunately for the police, the murderer commits suicide shortly thereafter before it can go trial. However, it becomes more than a mere coincidence when the process is re-enacted. There is another murder and, by the same token, the murderer, owns up before taking his own life!

Our society is described as the worst possible, and all ranting is against every problem as produced by the MAN; no one has to take responsibility for anything they are all poor oppressed souls. nevermind any reality or the facts, propaganda is just that, tell it as you want them to see it. Meanwhile Con is also dealing with her brothers impending wedding and meets her mother, who is now part of The Church of the coming light and the disturbing Reverend Dr Masters….. This is the second book in the Constance Fairchild series by author James Oswald. I was really looking forward to this one following the first book 'No Time to Cry' which I thoroughly enjoyed. In all honesty the first half of this book was an improvement but I am not sure why I felt it just fizzled out. Detective Constable Constance Fairchild is on compassionate leave following the death of her mother, and is renting a cottage near Aberystwyth, Wales to get away from the hustle and bustle of London. The problem is trouble appears to follow Fairchild around and she finds herself in a police station cell after defending herself from two would-be rapists. While at the station she is mistakenly put in the same cell as a young Ukrainian woman, Lila, who confides in that she’s been forced by her manipulative boyfriend into prostitution and running drugs. Fearing for her life, she has run away from him, only to end up in the cells.

Publication Order of Anthologies

But she does her best to ignore them and finds allies in Karen Eve, Bain and Diane Shepherd. They do their best to include her in the investigation that concerns the young man she found and others that have died from their injuries. James has also introduced the world to Detective Constable Constance 'Con' Fairchild, whose first outing was in the acclaimed No Time To Cry.

Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex The Hangman’s Song, which is the third book in the Inspector McLean series, was initially published in February 2014. In this book, there is a series of seemingly suicide cases wherein three Edinburgh residents take their own lives. But their suicide notes point to a creepy helical trail, implying that a murderous person or thing is on the loose. Detective McLean is on the quest for reconciling the suspicious murders and sleuthing organized crime all the while. Trouble always seems to find her, and even if she has nothing to hide, perhaps she has everything to lose…. She’s been suspended since then, awaiting her opportunity to testify at the trial of wealthy businessman Roger De Villiers and D.S. Gordon Bailey who between them ran a murky business empire. The balance between these three time frames is extremely well maintained in this intriguing novel, as the characters try to cope with the challenges they all face. In the first time frame men are faced with the impossible tasks set out for them in battlefields in which many die and all are treated badly. The difficulties that are faced as a country in mourning makes for problems and decisions that must be made. The family mystery which Sarah confronts is a long standing situation, but it becomes more convoluted as the novel progresses. This is a timely novel as anniversaries of some of the events approach and there is an existing significance to the tomb even today. I have found this book to be both profound and moving, and I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to read and review it.Six decades previously, a young girl died a grisly death; her murderers disfigured her body, disemboweled her, and preserved her body organs in containers. Fast forward to sixty years later, the young girl’s decades-old murder has been noticed and the old murder case has been assigned to police detective Anthony McLean. The death has the hallmarks of an age-old ritual wherein people sought immortality by trapping demons in a girl’s corpse. Detective McLean, who has so much on his plate, is juggling other cases of murders, burglar cases wherein cats are stolen from recently deceased people’s homes, and is striving to reconcile these all the while.