Strange Tales: The Name On The Bullet, by John Dean

Monday, 24 April 2023

The Name On The Bullet, by John Dean

I am pleased to be the first port of call on the latest blog tour from John Dean, a stablemate of mine at The Book Folks, who is promoting his new novel The Name On The Bullet, which was published on April 4th.

After a policeman is shot dead, DCI John Blizzard seizes a chance to settle old scores

When a high-profile detective on a reality TV cop show is killed, John Blizzard fancies old-school gangster Nathaniel Callaghan for the crime.

With the aging boss’s control over his northern crime empire on the wane, Blizzard sees an opportunity to turn his associates against him. But MI5 are also in on the action, and the different departments are in danger of scuppering each other’s investigation.

Yet as skeletons clatter out of the closet, it dawns on Blizzard that things are not as clear cut as they seem.

Who had murder on their mind, and who wrote the name on the bullet?

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When a policeman fronting a reality TV cop show is killed, his colleague DCI John Blizzard seizes a chance to settle old scores with local gangster Nathaniel Callaghan, who appears to be behind the murder. But as the investigation continues, drawing in MI5 and other departments, it seems that things aren’t as clear cut as they seem.

This is the eleventh book in the DCI Blizzard series and, thankfully, works perfectly well as a stand-alone since it’s the first of John Dean’s books I’ve read. This has plenty of twists and turns, some more surprisingly than others and the book was helped along by a keen sense of location and nice sense of humour. There are a lot of characters (I did have to go back with a couple of names, to check who they were) but they’re briskly introduced and work well, particularly with the little brushes of personal life we see (especially for Blizzard). The backstory is well constructed and details of it are fed out at a good interval, helping keep the reader off-guard. Told with a decent pace, some clever writing and a straightforward voice, this works really well and I’d very much recommend it.

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John Dean is a former journalist who worked on regional newspapers for 17 years before going freelance in 1997. As a freelance, he wrote for regional and national newspapers and for many magazines on subjects as diverse as crime, wildlife and business before retiring in March 2020 to concentrate on his crime fiction. He also runs creative writing courses.

John lives in South West Scotland and his website can be found at http://johndean.ning.com/

THE NAME ON THE BULLET is the eleventh standalone murder mystery by John Dean to feature stalwart crime-solver DCI John Blizzard. The full list of books is as follows:

1. THE LONG DEAD

2. STRANGE LITTLE GIRL

3. THE RAILWAY MAN

4. THE SECRETS MAN

5. A BREACH OF TRUST

6. DEATH LIST

7. A FLICKER IN THE NIGHT

8. THE LATCH MAN

9. NO AGE TO DIE

10. THE VENGEANCE MAN

11. THE NAME ON THE BULLET

The book can be picked up from Amazon on these links