Book Review: The Winter Killer (DI James Walker #3) by Alex Pine

“New Year. New Bride. New Murder.”

The third book in Alex Pines’ DI James Walker series and set to be published on 13th October, The Winter Killer is set on New Year’s Eve as the clock strikes midnight, when DI James Walker receives a phone call that puts paid to his Christmas break. During the wedding of the year at a lakeside hotel, the bride’s sister has vanished.

When Rachel left the wedding breakfast before her speech, newly-wed Libby was furious. But as the night went on with no sign of her maid-of-honour, Libby started to realise something was wrong. Before the wedding night is out, the lake is being searched for a body. Something old, something new. One guest is a killer. The question is: who?

Book Review: The Killer in the Snow (DI James Walker #2) by Alex Pine

“The first fall of snow can be fatal…”

The second book in the DI James Walker series, The Killer in the Snow by Alex Pine is set a year since DI James Walker cracked his biggest case yet, and he’s hoping for peace and quiet this festive season. But across the fells, a local farmer returns home on Christmas Eve to find footsteps in the fresh snow that lead down to his unused basement – and no footsteps leading away. Days later, his body is found, alongside those of his wife and daughter. Without a neighbour for miles, there are no witnesses and little evidence. And the crime scene has strange echoes of another terrible murder committed at the farmhouse, twenty years earlier.

My 2020 Reading Wrap-Up

Over the past couple of years, I have documented every film that I have watched and reviewed them all using Letterboxd. As a way to motivate myself to read more, I thought I would do the same for what books I have been reading, using Goodreads as a way to set myself a reading challenge every year.

I initially set my target as 25 books this year, but a few things happened that meant I reached this goal quite early on. Firstly, I had a baby, so this meant that I was awake at silly hours with plenty of time to read. Then, there was lockdown. Because of lockdown, I decided to join Bookstagram and NetGalley and get more serious about reviewing books. So now, instead of reading two books at most a month, I’ve been reading up to ten.

I upped my goal to 60 around halfway through the year, and still managed to pass that by reaching 74 books. This year has really rekindled my love of books, and I can’t wait to start 2021 with this new passion.

Here’s how my 2020 challenge went:

Book Review: The Christmas Killer (DI James Walker #1) by Alex Pine

“As the snow begins to fall, the body count begins to climb…”

The 2020 thriller by Alex Pine, The Christmas Killer follows DI James Walker who is ready for a quiet family Christmas in the sleepy village of Kirkby Abbey. But when he opens an early Christmas present left on his doorstep, he soon realises that won’t be possible. Inside is a gruesome surprise, and a promise – twelve days, twelve murders. Not long after, the first body is found, half-frozen in the snow. As the blizzards descend, panic spreads through the remote Cumbrian village – there’s a killer amongst them, and with eleven more victims to go, anyone could be next.