"the first body fell from the sky at 16:05pm on tuesday 5 february, landing seconds later at the feet of a woman waiting for the number 7 bus on grove hill."

I picked this up through Netgalley, with thanks to J.L. Blackhurst (Jenny Blackhurst), HQ and Harper Collins for gifting me this e-ARC

tess and sarah jacobs are half-sisters. one is a cop. the other? a con artist. so when tess's first murder case as acting di sees all the evidence of the locked room case point to her sister and their shared past, can they work together to find out who really is behind it? especially as the bodies keep piling up?

rating: ⭐⭐⭐

my thoughts: i've never read a Jenny Blackhurst book before, despite spotting them on shelves - for some reason they've never grabbed my attention quite enough. i actually requested this off netgalley after seeing the proof editions and descriptions over on tiktok, as the cover intrigued me, and i normally love a good cosy crime.

but this dragged. i loved the beginning of the book, with the whodunnit and confusing surrounding the locked room mystery. i enjoyed each subsequent killing and the wild theories, but the amount of miscommunication between the sisters at so many points in the book just ruined it. i also couldn't enjoy the major twist of the book because it just seemed implausible and far fetched for how it came to occur.

i'd have also loved to see more of sarah's criminal world, as i loved the descriptions of the building she called base, as it just brought to life the setting and how no one pays attention to different corners of towns and cities - but i found tess quite bland and boring, with the different officers and higher ups making me a little confused.

and the ending? i've never seen a book so abrupt that i thought i was missing pages. yes, this suggests a new venture with tess and sarah (maybe? hopefully?) but even so i'd have liked a better conclusion compared to how it was rushed.

It was ok for me. I really like most of Jenny's books, and enjoyed the way she set this up. I just felt it got long and too much in the middle for me. I skipped to the back to see who the killer was.

This one sounded interesting from the blurb (also, excellent cover!) But sadly didn't work for me. A bit too unbelievable and slightly predictable.

Tess Fox is currently Acting DI and is trying to prove her worth to gain the promotion she's been waiting for, so when she lands her first murder case she thinks this could be the one that clinches it for her. But this is not a straightforward murder because the victim was thrown from the balcony of an apartment that was locked from the inside, the killer is nowhere to be seen but there's no evidence to show they left the building either. When Tess realises the victim is someone from her past, she knows the only person that can help her solve this is her estranged half sister, con artist Sarah Jacobs. Then two more bodies are found, both known to the sisters, and Tess begins to question whether she can trust Sarah after all...

As a huge fan of this authors psychological thrillers, I was intrigued to see how her deviation to the murder mystery/ police procedural genre would compare. Three Card Murder is a locked room mystery set in Brighton with not one, but three incidents for Fox and her team to solve and they face many hurdles along the way. It's an intriguing Jonathan Creek-esque story with a great plot that keeps the reader guessing throughout. I enjoyed getting to know the two sisters and, although they are on opposite sides of the law, they actually worked well together, I believe there is a lot more to come from them both and, as this one ended on a cliffhanger, it will be good if Blackhurst revisits their story in the future. Another great read from one of my go to authors.

I'd like to thank HQ and Netgalley for the auto approval, I will post my review on Goodreads now and Amazon on publication day.

Two half sisters, one a policewoman the other a con artist.

I found this book up and down. It starts with a classic sealed room murder - well the room is sealed and the victim fell from the balcony and had his throat slit.

Enjoyed some of the references and even ordered a book mention but overall it was a bit loose for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

Acting Detective Inspector Tess Fox has three major problems with her first murder case, a body whose throat was cut and thrown from the balcony of his flat.
First, the room was locked from the inside. The security cameras recorded nobody entering or leaving the flat and there were no other exits from the apartment.
Second, she knows the victim – and the victim was something that knew something about her that could end her career and possibly her freedom.
Finally, what clues there are point directly to Sarah, Tess’s estranged half-sister, a con-artist and the only person that Tess knows with the ability to pull off such an impossible crime – and the two that follow it…
As you know, I’m always wary of the locked room murder tag on a book. First of it, it might be nothing of the sort, although the blurb makes it clear that the first murder is a genuine locked room. It’s no spoiler to say that the other two – a stabbing in an elevator for the second time in a month for me and a shooting in an hotel room with the door bolted from the inside. So far, so good, but you may remember a part-read unreviewed title that I mentioned recently that had a proper locked room but was resolved by a secret passage. And I can say hand on heart, that is not the case here. I knew that wouldn’t be the case as the author mentions relatively early on Gideon Fell and Henry Merrivale. Of course, most people with an interest in the genre would know those names, but far fewer would mention Edward D Hoch’s Dr Sam Hawthorne. So I was pretty sure I was in safe hands.
There’s also massive points for the two wrong solutions to the first crime – there are two standard ways that I can think of for a death in a sealed flat. One is used in an episode of Death In Paradise, the other in Brooklyn Nine-Nine of all places, but J L Blackhurst not only doesn’t use these, they are dangled as false solutions.
I was not away of J L (Jenny) Blackhurst before this book – she has written eight psychological thrillers and, according to her agent, is one of the leading British crime writers in Germany. I dip my toe into the psychological thriller world on occasion, but it’s not a favourite haunt of mine. This on the other hand, this is far more my cup of tea.
The to-and-fro and one-upmanship between Tess and Sarah, the joint leads is very enjoyable to read and both characters’ stories work well to help develop the overall murder plot. The crimes are nicely done, with solutions that fit the genre nicely. You may well recognise echoes of classic novels in some of them – there’s a whiff of Carr in the first two, but Blackhurst has done something significantly different in each case.
Where the book struggles a tad is in the finale – the crimes are explained, the perpetrator identified – but then things are done to set up the next book. To be fair, I’m not sure how the book could have ended otherwise, given that this is clearly the start of a series, but there was something a little unsatisfying about it.
Don’t get me wrong – I know criticising the ending makes it sound like I didn’t the book – because this is a really good read that genuinely embraces the classic crime genre (and the locked room genre) and brings it into the present day. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for the next in the series, it’s definitely one to try. To give an idea of how much I liked it – I kept taking breaks between each chapter as I didn’t want it to end. I may have kept putting it down, but only so I could keep enjoying picking it up again!
Three Card Murder is out 31st August from HQ in ebook and paperback. Many thanks for the review e-copy via NetGalley.

Special thanks to HQStories and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

The story focuses on two estranged sisters; one is a cop trying to solve her first murder case. The victim has been thrown off a balcony from an apartment that has been locked on the inside. But the victim is already known to the cop and clues at the scene could spell trouble for her or for her estranged con-artist sister who always seems to be in the centre of the investigation forcing them to reconcile.

The book has some small continuity errors such as stirring a mug of hot chocolate before pouring it into a mug. (Unless we usually have a mug for stirring and a separate one for drinking?) There are some other minor grammatical errors which pulled me out of the story once or twice. It also has some pacing issues. The book is quite a slow burner with it only spicing up around halfway through the book BUT then the ending is very rushed with the door left open for another book with these two sisters.

I enjoyed the main story. There are some part of the story that are sadly predictable however the “how” rather than the “who” was a fun head scratcher that I couldn’t quite figure out. The characters were very contrasting which I enjoyed and both of them had their own character arc.

The book shows a lot of promise and I’d be happy to read another by this author.

I was really excited for this book, and was sad when it fell flat.


Where’s the drama? Where’s the thrill? Where’s the plot?

I sure couldn’t find it.
I had heard so many good reviews aswell, but unfortunately this just wasn’t for me

Three Card Murder is the first book for wonderful thriller writer, Jenny Blackhurst, under the name J L Blackhurst and takes on a very different style of detective/mystery: whodunnit - and it’s a very promising start for more to come!

I was already a big fan of Jenny’s books so was excited to get stuck into this. For me, it was a slow burner. But by the middle of the book, I couldn’t put it down and found it really intriguing and compelling.

The story centres around two step-sisters - Tess and Sarah - who, on the surface, couldn’t be more different. But as the story gathers pace, they find a strong bond and mutual respect starts to grow.

Tess is proud to be on the police force and aiming for a promotion. She finds herself leading her first murder case when things start to get tricky with links to her past that she wants to keep hidden - and links to her step sister which bring them back in touch for the first time in many years.

Now she has to surreptitiously team up with her con artist step sister to help her to solve what seems like an unsolvable mystery. Whilst keeping her past life and connections to the criminal family hidden from her colleagues!

I loved the story and how the crimes were deliberately baffling. It was impossible to work out how the murderer had got away, and brilliant how it all got worked out.

My only problem was the end! It was so sudden that I was jabbing at my kindle to turn the page! I thought - that can’t be it, can it?! I even went back and re-read the last couple of chapters before I could be reasonably happy that it was definitely the end and did work. *reasonably* happy, but not happy! It was just too sudden for me and felt like another chapter of wrapping up wouldn’t have gone amiss.

But perhaps this means another book of Tess and Sarah is on its way and we can pick up where we left off and straight into another mystery? I definitely hope so!

Acting DI Tess Fox is slightly ashamed by the enthusiasm of her reaction when a man's gruesome death means that she has the opportunity to lead on a murder case for the first time. Tess is trying to position herself for a major promotion, from DCI to staying on permanently in the role of DI, and solving this case would give her a huge boost in terms of her chances.

Unfortunately it seems that that is not to be. After being called to the scene after a man was thrown off a balcony - as well as basically having his throat slit (which came first and killed him is unclear, so it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation) - Tess is perturbed to discover two things.

Firstly, how could the perpetrator have escaped when the front door to the flat was locked? The CCTV footage does not provide much help in this regard, either.

Secondly, the tattoo on the victim's body indicates that this may be somebody that Tess actually knows. Indeed, it's possible that it is linked to an unpleasant incident in her past.

When two further such killings follow in quick succession there is no way of ignoring the likelihood of a personal link. But could that link be with Tess's estranged half-sister?

The latter is certainly smart enough to figure out how to do something like this, and she also operates on the wrong side of the law. Coming from a family of con artists, she and her father initially got on well with Tess, who met them as a young adult, but subsequent events led to a rift, which deepened after Tess joined the police force.

Now, Tess is reluctant to believe that Sarah would be involved in something so heinous, but she has no alternative but to explore that possibility...

This story has twists and turns aplenty and there is plenty of shade cast at various characters, raising suspicions left, right and centre. The chemistry between the sisters is portrayed nicely, and there is a fair bit of humour despite the grimmer aspects of the story topic. I was *not* a fan of the cliffhanger aspect, but overall, this was an enjoyable read. I give it 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Oh my! What a book! This was such a fun story to read. The pages just raced past as I tried to figure out what was going on from the information I was being given as our main characters imparted their knowledge to me.
The story is mainly told from Tess's point of view but occasionally we get a bit from Sarah as well. Two sisters who seem polar opposites most of the time but have similarities so I ended up thinking of them more as one being yin to the others yang especially with the metaphor of the light and dark sides seeming to playing true with these girls!
After the first impossible murder we are given knowledge that the sisters believe they and only they hold which could possibly explain the why but then that would mean that one of them is responsible and then, when the second body confirms this theory, I was left wondering which sister was the guilty party!
To find out all the answers you're just going to have to read this unputdownable book and then join me in hoping for another one as it would be so good to return to those left standing at the end.

I loved the premise of this novel and was also drawn to it by the amazing cover. Tess and Sarah are estranged half sisters, Tess is a police officer and Sarah is a con artist working for the family business. They are brought together again in the wake of current murders which bring up secrets from their past.
This was a mixed read for me. The sisters are interesting characters and I liked the Brighton setting. I usually enjoy a locked room mystery but I found that Three Card Murder ended up being too much of an unbelievable caper for me. The writing didn’t draw me in and I feel it needed editing to tighten up the plot. A disappointing and unsatisfying read.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this digital ARC.
2.5 stars.

A fun clever triple locked room mystery with two sisters on opposites sides of the law versus a serial killer.
Well thought out plot and enjoyed trying to piece the clues together to discover the murderer.
Enjoyed getting to know to know the sisters - a witty, fresh and unique duo who refused to be stereotyped.
Hope there will be a book two.
Thanks @jennyblackhurst @HQstories & @netgalley for the eARC

Tess, a police officer, is investigating an impossible crime. Three locked room murders. Tess is puzzled at how these crimes could have been committed and enlists the help of the only person she knows who has the insight to help, her con-artist sister Sarah.

I was drawn to the cover and blurb of this book and I am so glad that I gave it a chance as it was a very clever, complex and hugely entertaining read. I loved the mix of puzzles and trying to work out how the seemingly impossible murders could have happened. The characters are very compelling and I found myself drawn to them. I also enjoyed that you get a serious look at their relationship and some of their back story. This added an extra layer to the overall story. The writing was well done and I enjoyed the humour added in. The only thing I wasn’t as keen on was the sudden ending but this at least allows the series (hopefully) to continue. Overall a fresh, fun crime novel. 4.5 stars rounded to 5. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book in return for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, right up to the ending which made me feel cheated out of a resolution. I’m sure there will be a sequel, which I will definitely read. Great characters and a real sense of location, you can almost smell the chips and candy floss.

Three Card Murder revolves around three murders which all turn out to be locked-room mysteries. Tess Fox is a police officer leading the investigation into the murders however clues left at the crime scenes hint towards her past and force her to work with her con artist sister Sarah.

The mystery in this book was really intriguing and I thought the pacing of the story was spot on. I loved the relationships between characters in this book and felt the dialogue was very natural and the banter and sarcasm was entertaining.

However I was slightly disappointed by the ending and felt that too many side characters were introduced who added very little to the plot.

Overall I would really recommend this book if you’re looking for a quick, clever mystery!

I actually enjoyed this one more than I thought I would. Was lovely reading about Tess and Sarah who have both been accused of murder. Loved the antics the chaos brings.

❤️♣️♦️♠️ Three Card Murder ♠️♦️♣️❤️

By J L Blackhurst

A massive thank you to @hqstories and @netgalley for this ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This is not my first novel from this author so expectations were high, she writes a great psychological thriller! But this sounded different and it intrigued me.

The concept was fab and I enjoyed getting to know both Tess and Sarah. Leading very different lifestyles but with so many similarities and it was great to see their relationship grow.

A modern day, locked room mystery to keep you guessing. Puzzles galore! I’m honestly in awe, how someone can think up these murders and plot twists is beyond me. Some of the most clever scenes I’ve read! And just when you think you know where the story is going there is one final plot twist which leaves the book on a massive cliffhanger. I cannot wait to see these characters again in a sequel!!

Definitely a 5 star read from me ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pre-order yours now, out 31/08/23.

This was a fast paced read that I really enjoyed. Tess and Sarah are half sisters and could both be implemented in a recent murder. Things are complicated as Tess is a police officer and Sarah is a conwoman.

Three locked room mysteries for the price of one in this Brighton-set crime romp.

Two half-sisters, one a con artist, one a police detective, is a fun set up. Both get to put their unique skills to the test, even if they have an uneasy relationship with each other.

The mysteries are seemingly impossible and the whole thing has a real Jonathan Creek meets Hustle vibe about it.