I really enjoyed this book! A great story line that kept me hooked and excellent main characters. I would highly recommend this book.

I liked parts of this book but not it's entirety. This is a series I've dipped in and out of over the course of the eleven books with most of them being solid four star reads for me. This entry in the series spent a whole lot of its pages dealing with personal lives and problems of the police officers. I just don't enjoy a police procedural that pays that much attention to plot lines having nothing to do with the crime.

Anderson and Costello are part of the team who travel to a tiny village in Scotland to investigate the death of a stranger in the area. The weather conditions will play a large part as this story unfolds. The person who found the body is so shocked by the experience that he's not making any logical sense at all. The team finds the animosity toward one family spending the Christmas holidays in the area to be so deeply felt that it opens the door for many motives for the crimes discovered.

The portions of this novel dealing with the crimes and the investigations were very interesting to me and the only reason I finished the book. I don't remember other books in this series being so heavily focused on personal drama. I'm going to have to choose more wisely next time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Severn House Publishing for an e-galley of this novel.

My thanks to Net Galley and Severn House Publishers for my ARC of this book 11 in the Anderson and Costello series. Although it is a standalone read, I would recommend beginning at book one. When a man is murdered in a fast food restaurant, there are no witnesses and no clues as the team are called to investigate. A few days later, two bodies are discovered in a remote Highland cottage. The investigative team travel north in blinding snow and freezing temperatures to assist the local village police and find the killer. I love the character of Costello with her wit and impatience, Anderson's troubled domestic life adds a touch of realism and the cast of characters with their intricate relationships. makes this a really good read. Plenty twists, action and surprises with a great ending makes this a 5* read.

Caro Ramsay starts delivering right from page one; capturing the actual hell on earth that is a “fast food burger joint” she drags us straight into the action with one family definitely not heading for a merry Christmas now! And she does not let up until the very end. Costello and Anderson are two of my favourite Fictional Detectives, I can picture them in my head, hear their sharp barbed retorts and smile as they bounce perfectly off one another.
Costello warms the cockles of my heart, her caustic wit, impatience, sense of independence and her tendency to pull no punches when she speaks, make her instantly recognisable and perfectly relatable. And Anderson, well lets just say his home life currently resembles the set of a Jeremy Kyle show!
As usual Caro Ramsay presents her readers with a large cast of characters and a number of subplots running through the book, so pay attention; relationships strengths and weaknesses are explored and I was certainly put through the mill and more as the book drew to an explosive and emotional rollercoaster ride of a conclusion!
Travelling between the Highlands and Central Scotland, we are taken on a suspenseful and at times eerie journey between the plots. We have the tensions and stresses of urban life with Anderson and Costello while the rural policing of the Highlands is most certainly not of the cosy kind. Caro Ramsay somehow manages to marry two seemingly unconnected incidents and present a perfect union for her readers.I love that this series makes me think, it is not a sit back and lose yourself kind of read, there is a very real need to pay close attention to what is going on in these pages; she may present us with an awful lot of information but believe me, it all makes sense! Costello and Anderson initially don’t feature together in this book but when things take a sinister turn in the Highlands they are thrown together into a dark side of country life with coffin bridges, rumours of malicious snow sprites and local folklore set against a backdrop of a picture perfect Christmas snow scene. Only you know things are not perfect, definitely not when they have been sprinkled with the famous Caro Ramsay twistieness! It gave me shivers, little fingers of suspense crawling over me, it worked my old gray matter, nothing is ever given away easy from Caro Ramsay, she makes sure you work to earn that damn reward!Once again Caro Ramsay nails it, sense of place, characters and plot all tied up and presented in a bow twisted tighter than a corkscrew! Do not miss this!

Thank you NetGalley and Severn House for the eARC.
Another fantastic read, no. 11 in the Anderson & Costello series, that I literally ate up, even knowing I have to wait at least another year for no. 12, sigh...
DCI Anderson and DI Costello are called from Glasgow to the wilds of Northern Scotland in a blizzard that would kill you if you ever got stranded in it. A German couple on vacation were found dead in and near a cabin. The man was still inside, but the wife looked like she tried to escape to the outside, blood trails showing her flight. But why anyone would want to kill this couple, who had only been there for a day, and were happy and friendly, enjoying the idea of having Christmas in the beautiful surroundings of glens and ancient woods, makes for a tough case, practically impossible to solve.
I love Anderson and Costello, they are a terrific team, even though Anderson has fantasies of throttling Costello and throwing her out the window at times. She has no filter and says it like it is, not always a welcome trait. But they trust each other unconditionally and work together like a fine tuned clock. Anderson is still having a tumultuous home life, living with the rest of the family and hangers on in his huge house, because he can't bear to be separated from his little grandson, but needs babysitters! He spends much time on the job and probably will miss Christmas at home, a thought not all together unpleasant to him.
This was such a great book, the twists, turns and surprises are incredible and the sense of place claustrophobic at times (in a good way) and I would give it more than 5 stars if I could. Highly recommended!

Sooo much better than the last book! We see some unexpected characters return but by having a case in the highlands the dynamic is different and we don't get to see as much of the team. Following the conclusion I'm definitely looking forward to what happens next.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Severn House Publishers for an advance copy of The Red, Red Snow, the eleventh novel to feature Glasgow detectives DCI Anderson and DI Costello.

A family man is stabbed to death in a burger bar but how? The victim didn’t realise he’d been stabbed so there are no forensics or witnesses. Then Anderson and Costello are sent to Glen Riske in the Highlands to investigate two dead bodies found in an isolated cottage. Again there are no forensics or witnesses. So what happened in both these cases?

I thoroughly enjoyed The Red, Red Snow which is the usual mix of tricky investigation and domestic woes. It starts quite slowly with a series of seemingly unrelated characters and narratives which are designed to set the scene so it takes a while for the investigation to ramp up. Once that gets going the narrative settles down and reverts back to Colin Anderson’s point of view. This means that the bulk of the novel is concerned with events in Glen Riske. The team do rather go round in circles for a while with the villagers remaining tight lipped on historical events and relationships and them trying to understand the lack of forensics. The solution when it comes is a doozy and while the motive is clear I didn’t really get to grips with the mechanics and I have no idea if it’s even possible.

In the meantime Anderson is having family problems with his wife who isn’t really a wife and his daughter, Claire. Costello, as ever, is there with the snarky comments and hard eyed realism. They are an odd combination but it works.

I have been reading this series for many years and while I can recommend The Red, Red Snow as a good read I don’t think it is one of the best in the series.

4 stars

A man is stabbed to death after taking his family to see an ice show. There are no witnesses, no motive and no suspects. This is going to be a very hard case to solve – if it gets solved at all.

A German couple, Henning and Elise Korder, are murdered in a little cabin in the wilds of Scotland a distance from Glasgow. There are no tracks in the heavy snow. The young man named Charlie who came to clean up after a party at the cabin discovers the man's body and goes off the deep end crashing his car in his haste to leave the scene.

DCI Colin Anderson and DI Costello are asked to investigate the case. There are only two local police officers and the murder is way out of their depth. When Anderson and Costello arrive, they discover a second body, that of a woman. It appears that the couple were man and wife, both in their sixties. They were geology professors from Germany. Could it be murder – suicide? Did Charlie kill them?

This book is very confusing in places. There is a great deal of background information given on each of the characters in the book. I felt it could have been more condensed and still gotten the points needed across to the reader. Costello is very rude to a young DC named Morna. I don't believe I like the Costello character at all. Anderson's home life is beset with problems; his daughter is apparently going down the wrong path, his wife's live-in boyfriend is a pain in the behind and there is his adorable grandson Moses. This is a very good police procedural, and would even be better in it were trimmed in a few places. I have read other Caro Ramsay novels and have enjoyed them more.

I want to thank NetGalley and Severn House/Severn House Publishers for forwarding to me a copy of this entertaining book for me to read, enjoy and review.

At its start this one had a few references I didn't I understand because of the local vernacular but soon got the hang of it.
The story went slowly and had a simplistic motive (partially). Best to read curled up in a cold night in a cold room

The good detectives are back! Everything is crowded during the Christmas Ice Show. And when a seemingly random husband and father is stabbed in a crowded food court, there are no witnesses, no clues and no idea who would do such a thing.

When a week later they are called out to a holiday cottage in a fairly remote glen in the highlands, they fin two bodies. One inside and one outside. Whoever the killer was, there is no evidence of them. Not even a snowprint.

Anderson is glad enough to jump in as he has more problems than a man should have at home. And his partner has her own issues.

Full of superstition and family squabbles, the characters are really well done and the old tale of greed, superstitious nonsense, and stone-cold murder was very well done!

NetGalley/ June 2nd, 2020 by Severn House Publishers

DCI Anderson is a man who is having a family crisis. When the call comes for a body in a remote highland glen nearly snowbound he jumps at the job taking along DI Costello.
What starts as a baffling murder at the Christmas Ice Show in the city will become in twinned with the remote highlands investigation.
This story has great fleshed out characters that you can relate to but you also have another more community based world still believing in old folklore.
The deaths of 2 German tourists swapping cottages with a Christmas party crowd will have many twists and turns but DCI Anderson will find although he may not be able to relate to his family relationships he can certainly be a match for local spirits or murderers.
These characters are well worth visiting again in future.
I was given an ARC of this book by Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

It may be the holiday season, but detectives Anderson and Costello are finding more corpses than presents. A man stabbed at a Christmas show, two bodies found at a holiday cottage a week later, that’s bad enough, but the killer has left no clue, not even footprints. At first glance the village seems quaint and quiet, but underneath the snow and Christmas decoration, something ugly lies buried.