Lies After Death is a crime debut for KJ Dando, someone who has had various jobs and has served in the British Army in the Balkans and Iraq. In my mind, my Kindle reader is a retired woman in her early 70s who’s living in the countryside where she walks her dog. With drive, determination and a small team to help, he went ahead and started publishing his Ruth Hunter police procedurals two years ago, in the middle of the pandemic. For local readers, they provide the opportunity for intense scrutiny: one took to Google Maps to prove it was impossible to drive from Llancastell to Liverpool in 40 minutes.

They have experienced editors and publishers, well-oiled and financed marketing machines and big cheque books (or should that be PayPal accounts, these days?

But Ruth has barely settled in when the body of a teacher is discovered… with strange symbols carved into her skin. She’s already had one outing on the island, tackling a drugs gang holding passengers hostage onboard a sightseeing cruise ship. She’s transferred to the nick in fictional Llancastell in North West Wales expecting that the criminal activity will be sheep rustling and quad bike theft. But Ruth has barely settled into her new position in North Wales Police, when the body of a brutally murdered woman is discovered…with strange symbols carved into her skin. Detective Inspector Ruth Hunter lives with the pain of her partner’s mysterious and unsolved disappearance.

On the police side, Nick’s alcoholism is dealt with in far more depth than is usually the case with cops who suffer from addiction in crime novels. But she was depicted as having to adopt masculine traits to survive in a male-dominated police force,” said Simon.

Now the body count is set to soar still further in one corner of our region - but fortunately it is all in the name of fiction as a master storyteller releases his latest crime book. But, you know, when a detective moves somewhere for the quiet life, everyone needs to stay on their toes, because someone is about to die.

Perhaps Simon McCleave wanted to tie up as many loose ends as possible, but he could easily have left some of them hanging. I wasn’t quite sure how Nick, who is weening himself off booze at about 20 units a day, can be at the wheel of a police car and not checked for alcohol after a major collision, though. The police procedural aspect is strong, but using a huge variety of characters the author manages to drive the story in various directions. Throughout The Snowdonia Killings, the Welsh countryside, culture and heritage are brought out through a peppering of references.His Killings series, featuring DI Ruth Hunter, has sold over a million copies, and a major new TV show based on the books is due to begin shooting in Snowdonia in late 2023. The people there have an island mentality and the two bridges that connect to the mainland gives a sense of place that can be closed off.

Now Laura Hart is back for the follow-up, In Too Deep, investigating the discovery of a skeleton in a “crumbling castle ruin near the seaside town of Beaumaris". Big Island, LA connects the dots between a heist gone wrong at a police shooting range and corporate greed and political corruption, leaving a former combat marine and an agoraphobic crime reporter to sort out the mystery. Thousands upon thousands of readers in the UK and around the world have downloaded and enjoyed this book a great deal. Following a parents evening, when nearly everyone else has gone home, she meets her killer in the school carpark and it’s lights out. The biggest worry is winning over a team of mainly local coppers who live in tight-knit communities that have been circumspect about English incursion for about 750 years.The gangs, the violence, the senseless killings – not to mention the fact that her lover disappeared out of the blue a few years back. She’s a lesbian detective who has faced sexism, dealt with a failed marriage and coming out, and has a daughter she doesn’t know very well over in Liverpool. Ruth’s personal life is gradually filled in as well, the author building her up to be the lead character across his planned series. Victims have met their deaths in all manner of grisly ways, the sole comfort being the inevitable unmasking of the perpetrators. The Snowdonia Killings is the first in the series and it perfectly demonstrates why indie crime fiction is part of any healthy diet.