📖 Book Description
A Detective Markham mystery
Bromgrove folk are dying to join Fitness for All. A friendly little gym where everyone’s welcome. And everyone’s a suspect.
Paralympian Jack Donahue has always been the gym’s devastatingly handsome poster boy. Until now. Jack is found dead in the weights room. Bludgeoned with the same dumbbell that helped sculpt his world-class biceps!
Detective Gil Markham is called to investigate, with his loyal – and gloriously tactless – sidekick George Noakes never far behind. But the deeper they dig into Jack’s secrets, the more suspects they find.Behind his spotless public image, Jack wasn’t short of enemies. A spurned student with a grudge. A bitter ex-trainer. A girlfriend hiding secrets of her own. Markham fears it all links back to a spate of attacks on the ladies of the Silver Swans barre group.
Before long, a second body falls. Then a third . . . both paid-up members of the gym.
Whoever’s behind these killings, they’re only just getting warmed up.Can Markham solve the case before they return to make it a personal best?
📚Book Information
Crime in the Gym by Catherine Moloney
Publisher
Joffe Books 🔗 Website • Instagram
Available formats
📖 Digital Edition • ISBN: 9781805737230 • Pages: 264 • Published: 27 July 2026
Find out more
Amazon • Goodreads • The StoryGraph
🌟 Book Tour
I’m delighted to be taking part in the Virtual Book Tour for Crime in the Gym, hosted by Zooloo’s Book Tours.
The full tour schedule can be found below.
My sincere thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours for the opportunity to take part in this virtual book tour, and to Joffe Books for providing digital review copy of Crime in the Gym. As always, my review is based solely on my own reading experience and reflects my honest opinion.
👤 About the Author
Catherine Moloney is a Liverpool writer of Irish-American heritage. After graduating in Jurisprudence from Jesus College (University of Oxford), she was called to the Bar at Gray’s Inn. Despite qualifying as a barrister, her first love was English; this led to a PhD in English Literature at Birkbeck College (University of London).
In her academic career, she lectured and published widely on the subject of tuberculosis and nineteenth-century literature, but somehow managed to avoid contracting galloping hypochondria and turned her attention to crime fiction.
🔗 Connect with the Author
👩🏻💻 My Review
This is my second Detective Markham mystery, and once again I found the series easy to enjoy as a standalone. While readers following the series from the beginning will naturally have a deeper understanding of the recurring characters, Catherine Moloney provides enough background for newcomers to settle quickly into the investigation without feeling lost.
The story begins with the shocking murder of Paralympian Jack Donahue, whose carefully maintained public image soon begins to unravel as Detective Gil Markham and George Noakes uncover the secrets hidden beneath the surface. As the investigation progresses and more deaths follow, the list of suspects steadily grows, with each new discovery adding another layer to an increasingly complex case.
One of the strengths of the novel is the dynamic between Markham and Noakes. Their contrasting personalities bring moments of humour and warmth to what is otherwise a serious investigation, while the supporting cast helps create the feeling of an established police team with plenty of history behind them.
Crime in the Gym is very much a character-driven police procedural, with several interconnected storylines unfolding alongside the central murder investigation. Readers who enjoy gradually piecing together clues, following multiple lines of enquiry and unravelling a broad cast of suspects will find plenty to keep them engaged.
Having enjoyed my introduction to the series in Crime in the Garden, I appreciated the opportunity to revisit Detective Markham and his team. Catherine Moloney continues to deliver a thoughtfully constructed police procedural, and readers who enjoy character-led mysteries with a broad ensemble cast will find plenty to keep them engaged.
#CatherineMoloney #CrimeInTheGym #DetectiveMarkham
#JoffeBooks #ZooloosBookTours #blogtour #bookreview
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DISCLOSURE: I received a review copy of this book from Joffe Books via Zooloo’s Book Tours and NetGalley.
As always, my thoughts are honest and my own.
This review is original content.
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