Tag: Metropolitan Police

Blog Tour: ‘The Phoenix Project’ by Michelle Kidd

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for ‘The Phoenix Project’ by Michelle Kidd. This book was published on 5th October, 2018. The tour has been organised by Damp Pebbles Blog Tours.

This is the first book in the series featuring Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh – there are two further books in the series: ‘Seven Days’ (Book 2) and ‘The Fifteen’ (Book 3).

The Blurb


How long can the past remain buried?

A simple message in a local newspaper. A set of highly sensitive documents left in the back of a London black cab. Both events collide to cause Isabel Faraday’s life to be turned upside down. Growing up believing her parents died in a car crash when she was five, Isabel learns the shocking truth; a truth that places her own life in danger by simply being a Faraday. Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh of the Metropolitan Police races against time to save her, and at the same time unravels long forgotten secrets involving MI5, MI6, the KGB and NASA. Secrets that have lain dormant for twenty years. Secrets worth killing for. With kidnap, murder and suicides stretching across four continents, just what is the Phoenix Project?

The Phoenix Project is the first Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh novel.

If you like a gripping page turner, with plenty of surprising twists, buy The Phoenix Project today to discover its secrets.

My Review

I’ll admit that this book was slightly outside my usual genres – although I love a police procedural, this one looked a lot more like a thriller and on an international scale so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

However, from the first page, it became evident that I was in safe hands as the story was revealed – multiple characters, many locations and different time periods were dealt with confidently by the author and I sat back to enjoy the ride!

I don’t think it can be emphasised enough that the scale of this book is HUGE. As well as involving MI5, MI6, NASA, the KGB and the Metropolitan Police, the story shifts between countries. The plot is also complex and on a massive scale with even an element about space travel. Although the premise initially seems a little far-fetched, it is absolutely compelling as the plot is developed around it. Although this was not within my usual genres, I found myself being pulled along by the story.

One of the ways that this book stays pacey and fresh across nearly 500 pages is the twists. Wow, the twists! There were so many that I felt like I was being pulled in so many directions and absolutely raced through the book in order to work out what was truth among the various plot strands featuring spies, double crosses, liars, corruption and secrecy!

In the middle of all this is DI Jack MacIntosh – we mainly follow his investigation and so discover things alongside him. He is an interesting character with a bit of back-story and I’d be interested to see how he develops in the rest of the series.

Also thrown into the middle of the mix is Isabel Faraday, a young woman working in an art supplies store who believes that her parents were killed in a car crash when she was a child. She receives a message to meet her ex-boyfriend, Miles, one evening and becomes central to the plot as she – along with the reader – tries to make sense of the bewildering events. I really liked Isabel as a character because she was surprisingly tough in the face of adversity and some very odd circumstances.

This is a hugely ambitious novel and one that I enjoyed very much, although I did sometimes feel that the plot was the driving force of the novel – I would have liked a little more character development in places as sometimes motives were not so clear. However, this is a minor quibble only as the plot is so fast-paced and twisty that there is never a dull moment.

I’d recommend this to those who like thrillers with a political dimension – although there is a central police figure, this is far from being a police procedural in the traditional sense. Instead, the reader is thrown into a whirl of people, places, plot twists and embarks on a race through the pages in order to discover the truth.

About the Author


Michelle Kidd is a self-published author known for the Detective Inspector Jack MacIntosh series of novels.

Michelle qualified as a lawyer in the early 1990s and spent the best part of ten years practising civil and criminal litigation.

But the dream to write books was never far from her mind and in 2008 she began writing the manuscript that would become the first DI Jack MacIntosh novel – The Phoenix Project. The book took eighteen months to write, but spent the next eight years gathering dust underneath the bed.

In 2018 Michelle self-published The Phoenix Project and had not looked back since. There are currently three DI Jack MacIntosh novels, with a fourth in progress.

Michelle works full time for the NHS and lives in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. She enjoys reading, wine and cats – not necessarily in that order.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorKidd
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michellekiddauthor
Website: https://www.michellekiddauthor.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michellekiddauthor/

Purchase Links

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3nLLqMQ
Amazon US: https://amzn.to/2IkU6Jz

‘The Cutting Place’ by Jane Casey

This is the 9th book in the Maeve Kerrigan series and was published in April 2020.

This is the latest installment in the series featuring DS Maeve Kerrigan of the Metropolitan Police.  Although the series is great, this can also be read as a standalone as a lot of the backstory is explained or not needed to follow this book.

In this novel, Maeve's team are called upon to investigate the disappearance of a young journalist, Paige Hargreaves.  It seems that she was about to publish an article about the Chiron Club, a bastion of secrecy and dubious attitudes to women.  As Maeve gets closer to the truth, the extent of the Club's activities are revealed and there are some who would go to extreme lengths to preserve the secrets it holds.

Having read a few of the previous books, I was glad to see DI Derwent present as the potential romantic interest; this is a book where Maeve's private life takes a starring role, something that I felt rather distracted from the story's denouement although it was an interesting plotline.  This is a well- written and lively addition to the series, although not quite a 5 star read as I found the ending slight lacked something for me personally.

An enjoyable police procedural for those who are already familiar with Maeve's world, but I'd probably recommend starting earlier in the series if you haven't read any of the others.

I received a free copy of the book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

Photo by Sarah Pflug from Burst

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