Crime Book Club – Meeting Video and New Vote

On Monday the crime book club met and discussed Murder Mindfully by Karsten Dusse. It was an interesting discussion that included ;whether you need your protagonist to be likeable, or if a book can keep your attention with an unlikable character; The feel or realism in crime fiction in light-hearted or straight-laced thrillers; and the kind of mindfulness practiced in this book.

You can catch up on the meeting with the video HERE, but be aware it contains FULL SPOILERS. (For some reason I couldn’t add it to the page today.)

Our next read is a book to screen adaptation. It’s not necessary to read the book and watch the show/movie in the month, but there may be a short discussion on the adaptation if enough have done so.

Read the blurbs and leave your vote in the comments before the end of Friday 10th July 2026.

The next meeting is Monday 3rd August 2026. You can sign up for the book club HERE (required to obtain login details)

The Keeper of Lost Causes (Also known as Mercy) by Jussi Adler-Olsen

(The TV show can be watched on Netflix and is titled Dept Q)

Carl Mørck used to be one of Copenhagen’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself. So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of Copenhagen’s coldest cases for company. His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead.

But she isn’t dead … yet.

Darkly humorous, propulsive, and atmospheric, The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces American readers to the mega-bestselling series fast becoming an international sensation.

The Devil’s Star by Jo Nesbø

(The TV series can be watched on Netflix and is titled Detective Hole)

A young woman is murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and behind her eyelid is secreted a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star – a pentagram, the devil’s star.

Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work.

A wave of similar murders is on the horizon. An emerging pattern suggests that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands, and the five-pointed devil’s star is key to solving the riddle.

Listening Woman by Tony Hillerman

(The TV series is available on U and Alibi channels)

The blind shaman called Listening Woman speaks of witches and restless spirits, of supernatural evil unleashed. But Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police is sure the monster who savagely slaughtered an old man and a teenage girl was human. The solution to a horrific crime is buried somewhere in a dead man’s secrets and in the shocking events of a hundred years past. To ignore the warnings of a venerable seer, however, might be reckless foolishness when Leaphorn’s investigation leads him farther away from the comprehensible . . . and closer to the most brutally violent confrontation of his career.

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

(The TV series can be watched on Apple+ The first season is the first book)

You don’t stop being a spook just because you’re no longer in the game.

Banished to Slough House from the ranks of achievers at Regent’s Park for various crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal, Jackson Lamb’s misfit crew of highly trained joes don’t run ops, they push paper.

But not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a ‘slow horse’.

A boy is kidnapped and held hostage. His beheading is scheduled for live broadcast on the net.

And whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren’t going to just sit quiet and watch

City of Darkness by A A Dhand (also retitled as simply Virdee for the tv show)

(The TV show can be found on the BBC simply titled Virdee and is based on this, the third book in the series)

It is an ordinary Yorkshire morning, cold and miserable.

The streets are not yet busy. Police cars hurriedly pull up in the centre of town, but none of their lights are flashing and the sirens are silent.

A body has been found, elaborately and painstakingly positioned to send a message. But what message? And to who?

It’s DCI Harry Virdee’s job to find out. But Harry doesn’t know that the killer is watching him, that the killer is coming for him.

Because this is personal.