(AUDIO) BOOK REVIEW

A Series Of Detectives, All With ‘Dead’ In The Title

Book review of Dead Wrong, Dead Silent, Dead List and Dead Lost by Helen H. Durrant (Calladine & Bayliss series)

Once I have used my monthly credit on Audible, I always browse to see which other books they included in my membership. Books included in the membership are free to listen to for a limited time.

While browsing, the title ‘Dead Wrong’ caught my eye. As I read through the blurb, there was a button at the bottom, with the heading: Included in series. I clicked and discovered I could listen to the first four books in the Calladine & Bayliss series by Helen H. Durrant — Dead Wrong, Dead Silent, Dead List and Dead Lost.

About the author, Helen H. Durrant

Born in Edinburgh as one of the ‘baby boomer’ generation — her father English and her mother Scottish — Helen grew up in a Pennine village between the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire. This beautiful spot lies between the hills and the city, giving locals a mixture of countryside and industry. This author sets most of her stories in this area.

Helen H. Durrant worked at a local college in the Department of Further Education, and had always put off writing for when she wasn’t working full time anymore. Once she retired from her job at the college, she had no excuses anymore, and took up a new full-time occupation: writing. She feels proper retirement will just have to come later.

Durrant had always wanted to write crime novels, and for someone who only started writing after she retired, she has quite an impressive list of books:

DI Greco Books: Dark Murder (2015), Dark Houses (2016), Dark Trade (2017), Dark Angel (2018)

Calladine & Bayliss Books: Dead Wrong (2015), Dead Silent (2015), Dead List (2015), Dead Lost (2016), Dead & Buried (2016), Dead Nasty (2016), Dead Jealous (2017), Dead Bad (2018), Dead Guilty (2019), Dead Wicked (2020), Dead Sorry (2021), Dead Real (2022)

DI Matt Brindle Books: His Third Victim (2017), The Other Victim (2018)

DCI Rachel King Books: Next Victim (2019), Two Victims (2019), Wrong Victim (2019), Forgotten Victim (2020), Last Victim (2021), Lost Victim (2023)

Detectives Lennox & Wilde Books: The Guilty Man (2020), The Faceless Man (2021), The Wrong Woman (2023)

Detective Alice Rossi Books: The Ash Lake Murders (2022)

Helen H. Durrant has been married for many years, has two grown-up daughters, five grandchildren and one great grandchild. She loves to spend time with them.

Calladine & Bayliss

D.I. Tom Calladine has been married and divorced before the age of 21 and this has set a pattern he finds hard to escape. He cannot seem to get into a serious relationship, always sabotaging it in some or other way. He’s a 51-year-old detective and devoted to his job. His superiors might have skipped Calladine for any promotions because the drug lord, Ray Fallon, is the cousin he grew up with. Calladine has a girlfriend who works in the nursing home where his mother lives, but he’s not in love with her.

Ruth Bayliss, a woman in her mid thirties, is Calladine’s loyal but brutally honest sidekick. She uses her workload as an excuse for not having a love life or time to go to the gym.

The Calladine & Bayliss series is set in the fictional village of Leesdon, with the Hobfield housing estate as the breeding ground for crime.

Dead Wrong

Someone finds a set of severed fingers in a children’s playground, and not long after the police found more severed body parts. Calladine’s superintendent thinks it must be the work of Ray Fallon, but the detective’s instinct tells him there’s more to these crimes. They identify the body parts as those of two young criminals from the Hobfield housing estate.

When the killer contacts a junior reporter, Lydia, she gets in contact with Calladine, and agrees to hold off on having it printed in the paper. He is infatuated with Lydia, and it’s up to the reader to decide whether the feeling is mutual, or if the reported is only using him.

Whichever is the case, everything escalates when Lydia disappears and ends up in the hands of the killer.

At the end of this first book, there’s also an interesting personal twist for Calladine, and a sad one as his mother ends up in hospital in a serious condition.

Dead Silent

This book starts with the funeral of Calladine’s mother, which he attends with his daughter, Zoe. Ray Fallon, having been raised in the same house as the detective, also attends the funeral, surrounded by his surveillance.

The book starts with a car accident, and someone throwing a dead body into a burning car. The medical examiner tells Tom the woman has died at least 48 hours before the accident. She had a livestock tag on her earlobe, and her mouth sewn shut. Soon after, they find a decomposed body in a hearse, also with the same livestock tag and her mouth sewn shut.

It becomes a race against time to find the killer. In the meantime, their personal lives carry on. Tom sleeps with Lydia, cheating on Monika, the girlfriend he doesn’t love. Ruth has trouble with the boyfriend she had since the end of the first book in the series.

At the end of this book, Tom is injured in a shooting.

Dead List

At the first murder Calladine and Bayliss investigate in this third book, they find a tarot card. Then there’s another murder, and yet another tarot card. The murderer has a list of names, and it’s up to the detectives to understand the reason for the killings.

Then two children disappear, and the detectives are baffled to find the link between that and the murders. It becomes a race against the clock.

Tom is still on leave after his injury, but he gets involved in both these cases, to the chagrin of the detective who runs the case of the missing girls. Lydia’s only focus is to talk to Ray Fallon, and wants Tom to help her with that. He refuses, which causes them to fight.

While investigating and wanting to know more about the tarot cards, Tom meets a mystical woman in her shop. He spends more time with Amy than is needed for the investigation.

Just like the other books, in this one there is also attention for the personal lives of the Calladine and Bayliss. Tom learns about his mother’s secret, and Ruth is clear about her future love life.

Dead Lost

Close to a disused cotton mill, homeless people have set up camp. Security personnel guard the mill, to prevent the homeless from getting in. A homeless man disappears, the homeless find a bloody coat in a bin and three women receive boxes with small bones in them. That’s when the police come to investigate.

In the personal lives of the detectives, there’s a lot happening too. Ruth is in the third trimester of her pregnancy, Lydia is still pursuing Ray Fallon, and Tom meets his biological mother. There’s a huge development in the book regarding Ray Fallon, while Tom has to deal with a new DCI.

Maybe a bit too easy listening

These books really make for easy listening. Yes, there are a lot of gory details, and the crimes are all hideous, but several times while busy with each of these books, I wondered why I kept on listening. Some people left reviews that the books kept them on the edge of their seats, but I don’t share that feeling.

So why did I carry on with these books?

The answer is simple: because the characters of Calladine and Bayliss intrigue me, especially that of the former. Even though I missed a bit of depth in the crimes, Tom Calladine and his life carried each of these four stories forward, and made me enjoy them, nevertheless.

🦋 About Me | 💻 Follow and subscribe | 📚 My stories | 🦜 Twitter