2019 in Review

Some incredible books published in 2019.

Some of my favourite Irish authors were at the height of their talents with Adrian McKinty's THE CHAIN achieving the sort of success his talents have always deserved. Stuart Neville, writing as Haylen Beck, delivered his best yet in LOST YOU, Dervla McTiernan's THE SCHOLAR built on the promise of her first Cormac Reilly thriller and John Connolly proved that a series can continue to get better 7 books in with A BOOK OF BONES, one of the strongest in his Charlie Parker series.

In WANDERERS, Chuck Wendig gave us a modern THE STAND and so much more while Stephen King's own THE INSTITUTE recalled his best. Another long book, Don Winslow's THE BORDER, brought his trilogy to an end with a suitably scathing take on the 21st Century political landscape while Claire North's powerful THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY reflected on the horrors of colonialism which continue to be echoed in the worst today's rightwing rhetoric. Abir Mukherjee gave us the best yet in his series set in the heart of colonial India with DEATH IN THE EAST, the best locked room mystery(ies) of the year. In THE UNDOING OF ARLO KNOTT, Claire North warned of the dangers of trying to rewrite the past in a devastating fantasy.

And, although not published until a few weeks into 2020, Ani Katz's A GOOD MAN is one of the best, and most disturbing, novels I read this year.

Review: A Good Man

A Good Man by Ani Katz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“That’s what I did for a living. I spun stories, made things like death seem clean and manageable - attractive, even.”

A GOOD MAN by Ani Katz is a haunting and disturbing novel. From the beginning of the story, narrated by Thomas Martin, the titular ‘Good Man’, it is clear that something tragic has occurred, horrific enough to warrant examination in the media. Thomas tells the story of his family, trying to make sense of the events.

Despite having grown up in a damaged, perhaps toxic, household, Thomas is a successful advertising executive with a beautiful French wife and exceptionally bright daughter who adore him; at least that is how he tells it. Thomas is a convincing and engaging storyteller but there are moments when we question his reliability. He lets slip that Miriam, his wife, whose trust-fund bought the beautiful home that Thomas selected for them, was not, initially at least, as enthusiastic about leaving the city of New York as he was. Thomas loves the good things in life - opera, food and fine wine - but his occasional comments about ‘a haphazardly constructed cheese plate’ and the eating habits of others seem a little off. He frequently returns to Richard Wagner’s Tannhaüser, and its self-destructive hero with whom he appears to identify almost obsessively. In returning to parts of his tale he sometimes adds additional detail which changes our understanding.

A GOOD MAN is one of those books about which it is difficult to say much without spoiler, suffice to say that I was drawn in and held enthralled until the truth was revealed. Ani Katz is a talented writer and I read A GOOD MAN with the creeping uneasiness with which I read Shirley Jackson. It really is that good.


View all my reviews

Review: Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll

Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll by Bernie Marsden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bernie Marsden is a guitarist’s guitarist, talented and unassuming, a bluesy player with a distinctive yet adaptable style yet none of the questionable attitude of more recognised ‘rock stars’. WHERE’S MY GUITAR is Bernie’s autobiography, updated to 2019, and details his remarkable career playing alongside ex-Deep Purple stars, Jon Lord, Ian Paice and David Coverdale in Paice Ashton Lord and Whitesnake, Cozy Powell, Jack Bruce, Gary Moore and many others. What the vast majority of these relationships share is the respect in which Bernie is held. Even his falling out with Coverdale, with whom he co-wrote the songs which have largely allowed him to pick and choose his projects, was due to other’s mismanagement and has been mended, DC writing the foreword to this edition. Bernie even managed to win over the notoriously difficult Ginger Baker although it is an experience he didn’t relish repeating.

There are surprising diversions such as his work in the theatre, his role as musical director for the band formed by professional tennis greats such as Pat Cash, John McEnroe and Vitus Gerulaitus, and the related ‘almost’ gig with Cliff Richard, a particularly amusing section. Marsden comes across as a thoroughly likeable man and the book reads like listening to a old friend. But, like one of his Whitesnake numbers says, he ‘loves the blues’ and it is Bernie’s interactions with blues singers, famous and not so famous, which really ‘tell his story’....

View all my reviews

#BlogTour - The Sound of Her Voice by Nathan Blackwell

 Some murder cases you can't forget. No matter how hard you try.

The body of a woman has been found on a pristine New Zealand beach - over a decade after she was murdered.

Detective Matt Buchanan of the Auckland Police is certain it carries all the hallmarks of an unsolved crime he investigated 12 years ago: when Samantha Coates walked out one day and never came home.

Re-opening the case, Buchanan begins to piece the terrible crimes together, setting into motion a chain of events that will force him to the darkest corners of society - and back into his deepest obsession . . .

The Sound of her Voice is a brilliantly authentic police procedural by an elite former detective - shortlisted for the 2018 Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel.

“Do not go gentle.”

THE SOUND OF HER VOICE is a New Zealand-set police procedural which tells the story of Auckland Detective, Matt Buchanan, a man haunted by the missing girl he couldn’t find. The discovery of the desecrated remains of another young girl sends Buchanan on a twenty year journey into the darker regions of the soul, where the trauma he experiences investigating the abuse and murders of children causes him to question his worth and envy those for whom ‘it was over.’

The violence is realistic, hard and unsettling, never gratuitous. Buchanan is flawed and makes mistakes but he is driven and suffers mentally the effects of the horrific crimes he investigates. The novel is dark with a disturbing oppressiveness reminiscent of the likes of Seven or True Detective. 

Nathan Blackwell, a former NZ police officer, writes authentically about both the crimes and the devastating effects of PTSD. THE SOUND OF HER VOICE is gripping and discomfiting and is worthy of comparison with the more familiar noir offerings from Europe and America. 

Follow the Blogtour @orionbooks @Nathan_B_Author @Tr4cyF3nt0n @orion_crime @ngaiomarshaward

#Blogtour - The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North

A hauntingly powerful novel about how the choices we make can stay with us forever, by the award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and 84K.

South Africa in the 1880s. A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William.

William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.

Gripping, moving, and utterly thought-provoking, this novel proves once again that Claire North is one of the most innovative voices in modern fiction.

It has taken us nearly thirty years to conquer the world, and when there was nothing left to take, it sounded a starting gun whose shot echoed from Verdun to the Somme. That is the truth of it.

THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY is the story of a Great War Doctor who, over the course of two evenings in a trench hospital just behind the lines, relates a strange tale to a nurse. As Abbey talks to Sister Ellis we hear the fantastic story of his cursing by the mother of a boy whose lynching he witnessed without intervening. William did not take part but he stood by. Since then he has been pursued by the shade of the boy, Langa. When Langa gets close Abbey can read the true thoughts of those around him, indeed is compelled to utter these truths aloud; should Langa catch up, Abbey’s loved ones will die.

What follows is a thrilling adventure story as Abbey travels the world always trying to keep ahead of the boy. He encounters others with the curse, is discovered by, and tries to escape from, a shady British intelligence agency who want to harness his ‘gift’, and tries not to fall in love... Claire North is an incredibly talented and versatile author; one pulse-racing and cinematic chase through New York in particular is the match of any of the masters. The rhythm, the pacing of the novel as a whole is astounding. But this is so much more than a thriller.

The logic of it was inescapable. Even if France had little interest in the mud mosques of Djenné, it had to plant its flag in Mali before the Belgians could. Though the British were hardly concerned with Sudan, they needed to stake a claim before the Germans, to protect Egypt. What was Morocco, save a territory at threat from the Italians? What were Madagascar, Nigeria, Guinea; Portuguese East Africa, Libya, Eritrea — why, they were all countries that another Great Power might claim if you didn't claim them first. Peace in Europe hung by a thread, no power ready to move against its neighbour for fear of losing the fight, Conquest, the butchery of the world beyond Europe's mountains, kept the peace — at least for a little while.

North has written a scathing indictment of colonialism and empire, of the ‘great men’ for whom common men are resources, ‘just another Tommy’ to be used up, other races animals to be rounded up or exterminated. As one character says,

“We found truth-speakers, yes. Primitive peoples in the deserts of Australia, or the jungles of central Africa. People who barely understood elementary concepts, and could not cooperate fully with our aims.”

THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY is a masterpiece. The novel defies genre, at times a spy thriller, an adventure story, a horror story, and as the narrator is essentially Sister Ellis, who relates Abbey’s words as he in turn tells others’ truths, the suspicion that we are listening to one or more unreliable narrators only makes the real truth of colonialism and warfare all the more effective. Intricately plotted, breathless, exhausting and heartbreaking. 

Follow the blogtour - @orbitbooks @clairenorth42 @MsAnnaJackson #williamabbey

Review: Death in the East

Death in the East by Abir Mukherjee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

DEATH IN THE EAST is the fourth, and possibly the best to date, in Abir Mukherjee’s Raj-set Wyndham and Banerjee mysteries. The story alternates between 1922 India and 1905 London as Sam Wyndham, who, in an attempt to finally kick the opium addiction with which he has struggled through the previous three books in the series, has travelled to an ashram in remote Assam. An event on the way causes him to recall the earlier events when, as an inexperienced and rash bobby on the East End beat he investigated a violent attack on, and subsequent murder of, a young woman of his acquaintance.
In truth the two narratives initially seem unconnected and the intriguing 1905 London mystery feels a little broken up by the 1922 story of Sam’s ‘cure’ but around the two thirds mark the stories collide in startling fashion and the novel resolves very satisfyingly. Along the way there are chillingly atmospheric meetings in crime-ridden, dark London backstreets, two locked-room puzzles, an Agatha Christie-like examination of suspects and a significant change in the relationship between Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee.
As in previous novels, Mukherjee comments on the racism, the subtle and unconscious as well as the overt, of the English, particularly of the upper classes, against those who are ‘different’ be it the Jewish immigrant population in London or the native Indian ‘blithely dismissing the fact that this was his country and we were the foreigners in it.’ Unfortunately, things are not noticeably different a century later.

View all my reviews

#BlogTour - Ghoster by Jason Arnopp

Jason Arnopp – author of acclaimed cult hit The Last Days of Jack Sparks – returns with a razor-sharp thriller for a social-media obsessed world. Prepare to never look at your phone the same way again . . . 

Kate Collins has been ghosted.

She was supposed to be moving in with her new boyfriend Scott, but all she finds after relocating to Brighton is an empty apartment. Scott has vanished. His possessions have all disappeared.

Except for his mobile phone.

Kate knows she shouldn’t hack into Scott’s phone. She shouldn’t look at his Tinder, his calls, his social media. But she can’t quite help herself.

That’s when the trouble starts. Strange, whispering phone calls from numbers she doesn’t recognise. Scratch marks on the walls that she can’t explain. And the growing feeling that she’s being watched.

Kate refuses to leave the apartment – she’s not going anywhere until she’s discovered what happened to Scott. But the deeper she dives into Scott’s digital history the more Kate realises just how little she really knows about the man she loves.

________

Let’s get this out of the way, and it might be a spoiler - Jason Arnopp writes horror fiction. I did not know that. Despite buying his previous novel, The Last Days of Jack Sparks, on a recommendation, I haven’t actually got round to reading it. And, when offered the opportunity to take part in the BlogTour for GHOSTER, I recognised the name and was intrigued by the social media angle. I was expecting a thriller about our reliance on technology but oh this is so much more.

Kate Collins is a fantastic character - witty, foul-mouthed, intelligent, a little insecure, and thoroughly relatable, likeable and entertaining. Arriving from Leeds to live with her boyfriend in Brighton, she finds his apartment abandoned, emptied of furniture, with a strange drawing on the doors to the balcony. And, on the balcony, she finds Scott’s mobile phone. As Kate tries to understand why Scott, despite being so keen on her, and on their moving in together, has seemingly done a runner, she relates the story of how they got to this point. Is it possible that Scott has been stringing her along since they met? Is he somehow watching her distress, taking pleasure in it? Despite swearing-off social media, and smartphones, following an incident some time ago, Kate decides to snoop on the contents of Scott’s phone, his messages, Facebook and Tinder accounts in an attempt to answer her questions.

The mystery of Scott’s absence, and Kate’s resourcefulness in investigating his ghosting of her, is so thoroughly absorbing that, by the time you realise that the hairs are standing up on the back of your neck, that things are getting really creepy, you are completely invested. And by the time things start to get really crazy there is no backing out, you go with it, you want to know where Kate, and Arnopp, are going…

I have read other genre-splicing novels which ultimately failed due the abrupt shift in tone. There is no flicking of a switch here, no ‘trick’ to the writing. Jason Arnopp creates realistic characters, not only in Kate but in the supporting cast - her incredible best friend, her unsettling new colleague - characters the reader cares about as they are gradually drawn into a plot that becomes increasingly stranger. I found the book entertaining and disturbing in equal measure. It deserves to be huge. Thanks to OrbitBooks and Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the opportunity to take part in the BlogTour. And now to Jack Sparks…

Follow the Blog Tour - @JasonArnopp @OrbitBooks @SpecHorizons @gambit589

Review: Sarah Jane

Sarah Jane by James Sallis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All stories are ghost stories, about things lost, people, memories, home, passion, youth, about things struggling to be seen, to be accepted by the living...

James Sallis’s SARAH JANE is a masterpiece of spare yet poetic prose, a character study that zags when you expect it to zig, existential noir. Sarah Jane narrates her own story, her journey from troubled teen, through a tour of duty in the Middle East, a runaway bride, eventually, almost accidentally, becoming a small town sheriff. Along the way she makes observations about life and experiences, some sad, some funny, some enlightening.

Points on a line can never approach the experience itself.

For every gain you make, there’s slippage somewhere else. Sometimes the slippage is bigger than the gain.

Commentary on modern day America.

...from simpler times when, mistakenly or not, we understood the American dream to be collaborative rather than competitive.

But it’s what Sarah Jane doesn’t tell us, what Sallis alludes to but does not reveal, that makes this such a good novel. There is violence running through the story, behind all the events, and we are never sure who is responsible. One murder in particular, seemingly random, possibly not, makes you question every opinion you have developed about Sarah Jane. The ending is ambiguous and that, and the magnetic, hypnotic writing, begs a reread...


View all my reviews

Review: Elevator Pitch

Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


If you have ever stepped onto a passenger lift and thought, “What if the cable broke?” you will relate fully to the core plot of Linwood Barclay’s ELEVATOR PITCH. The book begins with an actual elevator pitch; a frustrated would be script writer sneaks past security to approach the executive whom he has targeted as the prospective champion of his work, cornering her in an elevator which then proceeds to move randomly between floors before plummeting down the shaft. Over the next few days, more elevator tragedies occur and Barclay’s cast of characters, including the, possibly shady, Mayor of New York, his aide and son, a news reporter and her estranged daughter, are drawn into the events and their aftermath.

The book is as fast moving and tense as one would expect from Linwood Barclay, tightly plotted and relatable, believable characters. The events are on a larger, 1970s disaster movie-like, scale than his previous novels which I have read and it does suffer slightly in comparison with some due to the lack of focus, the multiple viewpoint character. But ELEVATOR PITCH is a thrill-ride, a claustrophobic, breathless pleasure to read.

View all my reviews

Review: Heaven, My Home

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

HEAVEN, MY HOME is the second in Attica Locke’s Highway 59 series, the sequel to BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD continues the story of Texas Ranger Darren Mathews. Still tortured by the events in the first novel, and dealing with his strained relationships with his wife and his manipulating, blackmailing mother, Mathews investigates the disappearance of a 9-year old boy. The boy, the son of a white supremacist, has gone missing on Caddo Lake near the town of Jefferson but his family, especially his wealthy grandmother, seem more concerned with the land owned by an old, black man, quickly a suspect in the boy’s presumed death, than in the fate of young Levi King. Darren is conflicted too, protective towards the accused Leroy Page, about whether finding the boy will lead to another extremist in later life, about whether he can exploit the situation to implicate the boy’s jailed father in the murder from the first book in which Darren himself is implicated.

The story is full of racial tension and Attica Locke perfectly captures how the election of Donald Trump has made the Aryan Brotherhood more confident and how the ‘there are bad people on all sides’ rhetoric has impacted society, demonstrated in the FBI’s desire to portray the boy’s disappearance as a ‘hate crime’ against white people, conveniently ignoring the hatred of black, and native American, people openly displayed by the boy’s stepfather and his hangers-on. But the author is not afraid to show Darren Mathews’ own flaws and prejudices and this makes the story more authentic, the characters more fully rounded.

Like the blues music that the book is steeped in, there is a lot of pain and not a lot of humour in the story but, like the blues, it is cathartic and real - HEAVEN, MY HOME really should come with a soundtrack - and the music is reflected in the lyrical prose -

“Her voice was husky, like aged molasses that had crystallized and developed sharp edges.”

“Cypress trees, their trunks skirted so that they appeared like the shy dancers at a church social, leaving enough space for God between them...”

It’s gorgeous, rhythmic writing and, thankfully, the ending would suggest that there is more of Darren’s story to come.

View all my reviews

#Blogtour - A Shadow on the Lens by Sam Hurcom

“The Postmaster looked over my shoulder. As I turned to look I saw a flicker of movement from across the street. I felt unseen eyes peer at me.

He walked away without another word. I watched as he climbed onto his bicycle and sped away down the street. I turned back and looked over my shoulder.

Someone had been watching us.”

1904. Thomas Bexley, one of the first forensic photographers, is called to the sleepy and remote Welsh village of Dinas Powys, several miles down the coast from the thriving port of Cardiff. A young girl by the name of Betsan Tilny has been found murdered in the woodland - her body bound and horribly burnt. But the crime scene appears to have been staged, and worse still: the locals are reluctant to help.

As the strange case unfolds, Thomas senses a growing presence watching him, and try as he may, the villagers seem intent on keeping their secret. Then one night, in the grip of a fever, he develops the photographic plates from the crime scene in a makeshift darkroom in the cellar of his lodgings. There, he finds a face dimly visible in the photographs; a face hovering around the body of the dead girl - the face of Betsan Tilny.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Hurcom was born in Dinas Powys, South Wales in 1991. He studied Philosophy at Cardiff University, attaining both an undergraduate and master's degree. He has since had several short stories published and has written and illustrated a number of children's books. Sam currently lives in the village he was raised in, close to the woodlands that have always inspired his writing.

A SHADOW ON THE LENS is Sam's debut novel.

———

Metropolitan Police Special Investigator Thomas Bexley, a forensic photographer whose self proclaimed ‘keen eye for detail when examining crime scenes, and a surprising talent for piecing together evidence, brought many a guilty man and woman before judge and jury’, travels to a small village in south Wales to assist with a murder enquiry. Bexley, fresh off a successful case in Oxford, is rather arrogant and seems to expect this to be a simple case. He is fairly dismissive of the village, ‘quite pleasant, if not a little inert’, and of the village people who dress ‘in none of the high fashions of central London’ - Bexley expects to tie this up quickly and return to the metropolis. Things do not go as Thomas expects.

Sam Hurcom’s debut is a superb procedural with an interesting, if a little unsympathetic, central character, a confident investigator whose faith in himself and his abilities is shaken as he is drawn deeper into the fate of Betsan Tilney and the feeling that things are spiralling beyond his control. There are some really interesting supporting characters and several stunning twists.

Hurcom captures the mannerisms and speech patterns of the times, the deference of many of the villagers to authority. The mannered, first-person prose has the feel of a late 19th or early 20^th century gothic novel while retaining a modern readability. The novel is a little Sherlock Holmes, a little The Wicker Man and there are a few scenes which are really scary and skin-crawlingly creepy, scenes Stephen King would be proud of. 

A SHADOW ON THE LENS is a thrilling read and, as a debut, it makes me intensely anticipate where Sam Hurcom, and Thomas Bexley, go next.

Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the invitation to take part in the BlogTour and to Orion Fiction for the review copy.

Follow the author @SamHurcom

Follow the Blogtour 

Review: The Turn of the Key: a heart-stopping pulse-racing psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of In A Dark Dark Wood

The Turn of the Key: a heart-stopping pulse-racing psychological thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of In A Dark Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Did you download Happy?’

Ruth Ware’s “The Turn of the Key” is even better than her last novel, “The Death of Mrs Westaway”. Like the previous book, the story takes place in a remote Victorian house and is reminiscent of many classic gothic novels, but this time the house in question, Heatherbrae in northern Scotland, is a chimera, its ancient stone walls extended in modern steel and glass, every function, every utility, (almost) every lock controlled by smart devices - du Maurier meets Crichton...

The story is told from a prison cell as a nanny, jailed for the murder of a child, writes to a lawyer, pleading for his help, protesting her innocence. Rowan Caine, engaged by successful architects, Bill and Sandra Elincourt, is almost immediately thrown in at the deep end - left to look after the couple’s children as her employers attend a conference. As well as struggling with the unfamiliar house, the unintuitive, highly complex Happy interface, and Mrs. Elincourt’s detailed childcare ‘manual’, Rowan is met by hostility from the girls in her charge. Maddie, the elder of the two girls at home, seems particularly determined to reject any attempt to build a relationship, the prospect of a returning moody teenage daughter is daunting, and a series of strange noises in the night, accompanied by a malfunctioning Happy, suggest that there may be truth to the stories that previous nannies left their posts in fear.

Ruth Ware builds tension through the book and some passages are really creepy. And there is the suspicion that Rowan may be an unreliable narrator, the only version of events we get being hers. The pages start to race by as we build to the inevitable conclusion, the inevitable death. And when the end comes, there is a devastating twist which leaves the reader exhausted.

I have been on a really good run of satisfying novels recently and “The Turn of the Key” can sit on the shelf with any of them.


View all my reviews

Review: The Family Upstairs

The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In ‘The Family Upstairs’ Lisa Jewell has written a deliciously dark and horrifying psychological thriller full of twists and unreliable narrators. I spent large parts of the novel not knowing fully who the characters were and what exactly was happening or where we were going. And it was great.

When Libby turns 25 she inherits a multi-million pound house in London’s affluent Chelsea. She is also told the story of how, as a baby, she was found in the house with the dead bodies of her parents and an unknown man, seemingly cult members, who appeared to have taken their own lives in a suicide pact. Libby discovers that she had siblings, a brother and sister, but no trace of them has been found since.

Meanwhile, in Nice, a down on her luck mother of two, struggling to survive, receives a message that ‘the baby is 25’ and begins to make plans to travel back to London. A first person narrative reveals the story of what happened in the house in the 1980s. There were in fact four children and six adults living in the house in what can only be described as a very non-traditional unit.

Lisa Jewell skilfully and thrillingly weaves these narratives together and we gradually discover what happened in the Chelsea house a quarter of a century ago and the fates of the people who were living in the house. It is a breathless ride, the pages fly by and the shocks keep coming. At no time did I feel that I was being cheated - the reveals arise naturally from the narrative, both in Libby’s investigation into her family history, and in the ‘as it happened’ first person narrative. Highly recommended.


View all my reviews

#Blogtour - The Undoing of Arlo Knott by Heather Child

My rating: 5 of 5 Stars

From the press release

What if your life had an 'undo' button?

Arlo Knott develops the mysterious ability to reverse his last action. It makes him able to experience anything, to charm any woman and impress any friend. His is a life free of mistakes, a life without regret.

But second chances aren't all they're cracked up to be. As wonderful as his new life is, a mistake in Arlo's traumatic childhood still haunts him and the temptation to undo, undo and keep undoing could be too much to resist.

———

Soon after his mother suffers a terrible accident, 13 year old Arlo Knott discovers that he has the ability to jump back in time, only for a short time - enough to undo the punches he has just inflicted on his sister, but, unfortunately, not enough to save his mum. Always a mummy’s boy, already abandoned by his father, Arlo initially uses his ability to fit in, to try out approaches to conversations, to relationships, taking back ‘errors’, seemingly always saying or doing the perfect thing. But, self-centred as he is, Arlo uses his trial and error gift for his own benefit, trying multiple lottery scratch cards until he finds a winner, building a name as a mind reading magician. Even his desire to use his gift for good is motivated by how others will see him. He craves the recognition and reward he once got from his mother.  And Arlo’s decisions become increasingly careless and even unethical...

In truth, ‘The Undoing of Arlo Knott’ crept up on me. Heather Child is a very talented writer who has that rare gift of deceptively simple prose, a writer who disappears and lets the story tell itself. What started and a pleasant novel with an intriguing concept completely drew me in. I became invested in Arlo, who narrates his own tale. Child made him sympathetic even as I questioned his choices and then, too late to go back, I realised where she was going with this, and it is devastating.

I had never read Heather Child before but am really glad I did. ‘The Undoing of Arlo Knott’ is a thought provoking and moving book. I am still thinking about it days, and weeks, later. Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the invitation to take part in the BlogTour and to Orbit Books for the review copy.

Follow the author @Heatherika

Follow the Blogtour 

Review: Changeling

Changeling by Matt Wesolowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

‘Changeling’ by Matt Wesolowski follows the same format as the previous two novels in the series, six episodes of a podcast tell the story of a unsolved crime. Each episode of the podcast largely takes the form of an interview with someone connected with the crime, telling the tale “from six different perspectives, seeing the events that unfolded through six pairs of eyes.” As before, the episodes are interspersed with ancillary recordings which add to the background though not forming part of the podcast as it would be released. And, as before, the book really works better in audio form, especially given the talents of the voice actors.

The current case concerns the disappearance of a 7-year old boy in 1988 from his father’s car as the father attempted to restart the broken down vehicle. Was the boy snatched in the brief moment in which the man says he was out of his sight; did wander off into the remote forest beside which they were parked? What is the explanation for the knocking sounds that appear in many of the participants’ stories? And is Scott King, the presenter of the Six Stories podcast, really in a fit state to tell the story dispassionately given the events of, and the backlash to, ‘Hydra’, the previous Six Stories series?

This time around it is Scott King’s own audio notes that form the bridging material between the podcast episodes and it is clear that he is not a well man. The difference in tone between these different elements, the anxious disturbed individual of the private recordings and the more assured, professional delivery of the podcast, is a credit to both the author and the voice actor. The story is harrowing and unsettling with elements almost touching on horror and, as with the preceding novels, it is absorbing and entertaining. The ending is shocking and, while I would love to see what Matt Wesolowski can do in a different form, I hope we find out what happens next in the Six Stories reality.

View all my reviews

#Blogtour - Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And, like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

- 

 ‘Wanderers’ is a big apocalyptic novel which has already been, rightly, compared to Stephen King’s ‘The Stand’. The influences are obviously there, and Wendig mentions King on several occasions throughout the narrative (including the delicious idea of a ‘Gunslinger’ concept album). There are parallels to the likes of Robert McCammon’s ‘Swan Song’, Emily St John Mandel’s ‘Station Eleven’ and Michael Crichton’s ‘Andromeda Strain’, and, for that matter, ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Outbreak’ and ‘Contagion’. But, in ‘Wanderers’, Chuck Wendig absorbs ingredients from all of these influences and returns a story that is the equal of any of them.

 The story of the sleepwalkers is set in a world only slightly removed from our own. The spread of the disease is only too real, the development of AI perhaps a few years from reality. And, unfortunately, the reaction of the American people to the situation could be ripped from the pages of today’s newspapers. Accompanying the narrative are extracts from social media account, podcasts, political speeches, and TV news. Commentators debate the cause of the sleepwalkers - Islamist terrorists, government conspiracies, crisis actors, fake news, China, aliens, comets - while people react with fear and violence. Right wing, white supremacist militias are incited to action by fascist, MAGA politicians. This is ‘The Stand’ brought right up to date with a verisimilitude that is often uncomfortable - concerns about intensive farming, big pharma, fundamentalist preaching...

 The 800 pages fly by, helped by characters, good and bad, who are complex and well drawn, and by dialogue which is natural and realistic. I am sure I will return to the book again and again - it really is that good. To be clear, ‘Wanderers’ is an ASTOUNDINGLY GOOD NOVEL. I have to confess, I had never read Chuck Wendig prior to this novel, and I thank Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and Remy Njambi of Rebellion Publishing for the opportunity to take part in the Blogtour and for introducing me to an author whom I will be recommending to anyone who will listen.

Follow Chuck Wendig at his website terribleminds.com and on Twitter @chuckwendig

Follow the Wanderers Blogtour

Review: The Chain

The Chain by Adrian McKinty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Adrian McKinty is a really talented writer, a master of intelligent plots and dialogue that is both snappy and realistic, who can keep the reader on the edge of their seat even as they marvel at his seemingly effortless, poetic prose. His Michael Forsythe trilogy and Sean Duffy series have been critically acclaimed. Several of his novels have been shortlisted for major awards, ‘Rain Dogs’ (2016) winning an Edgar. That McKinty is not better known is surprising; that he had to take work as an Uber driver to make ends meet is astounding. ‘The Chain’ will change all that.
When Rachel Klein answers her phone to Unknown Caller, she becomes part of The Chain. The caller tells her that her daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped and, to secure her release, Rachel must pay a ransom, abduct a hostage of her own, and successfully convince her victim’s loved ones to become kidnappers themselves. If she fails, her daughter dies. If she goes to the authorities, her daughter dies. Over the next few days Rachel’s life will be turned upside down. Her love for her daughter, her fear for Kylie’s life, will cause her to commit acts she thought unimaginable, to become a criminal, a kidnapper.
With ‘The Chain’ Adrian McKinty has written a novel that is deliberately commercial, intended to appeal to a wide audience, particularly an American audience. And that is understandable; he deserves a wider readership and the success that brings. That he has been able to do so without dumbing down - retaining his love of language, discussing Existentialism, writing beautiful, flowing, prose - is astonishing. There is a passage at the start of Chapter 40 which perfectly illustrates McKinty’s talent. It reads like a poem, yet propels the plot forward, creates unbearable tension and is the equal of anything you will read in any ‘literary’ novel this year.

Sunday, 11:59 p.m.
She merges with the traffic.
The highway hums. The highway sings. The highway luminesces.
It is an adder moving south.
Diesel and gasoline.
Water and light.
Sodium filament and neon.
Interstate 95 at midnight. America's spinal cord, splicing lifelines and destinies and unrelated narratives.
The highway drifts. The highway dreams. The highway examines itself.
All those threads of fate weaving together on this cold midnight.
Towns and exits gliding south, shutting down other possibilities, other paths. Peabody. Newton. Norwood.
The Google map making its own zodiac.
Pawtucket.
Providence.
The Brown University exit. Lovecraft country. An old coach road to East Providence. Big houses. Even bigger houses.
Maple Avenue. Bluff Street. Narragansett Avenue.
“Here,” Mike says.
"Is this it?"
"Yeah.”

‘The Chain’ has been championed by Don Winslow, Ian Rankin, Stephen King and many others. It should be a huge bestseller, to have a blockbuster movie adaptation. But more, it should be the conduit through which McKinty’s previous works are introduced to a wider readership. Adrian McKinty, Sean Duffy and Michael Forsythe deserve nothing less.

View all my reviews

Review: Lost You

Lost You by Haylen Beck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Now. A woman stands on a ledge. She is holding a child. A man attempts to talk her down.
Then. Libby, a single mother, is on vacation with her infant son, Ethan. It is Libby’s first vacation since her divorce, one she was reluctant to take. But she is enjoying herself, as is her son. And then Ethan is gone.
Let’s not beat around the bush. ‘Lost You’ by Haylen Beck, Stuart Neville’s alter-ego, is one of the best novels of the year. Neville has always been an excellent storyteller, from his debut, ‘The Twelve’ (aka Ghosts of Belfast), to last year’s ‘Here and Gone’, his first as Haylen Beck. ‘Lost You’ surpasses them all. Ostensibly a story of child abduction, the book is so much more. Just when you think you know where he is headed, Neville takes a left-turn and the story goes to places you did not expect it to.
Neville creates sympathetic fully drawn characters, makes you care about them, only to reveal something to make you question your initial feelings. It would be unfair to discuss the plot in any detail but everything arises from decisions the characters make, decisions the reader can understand and empathise with, if not agree with. The characters drive the story forward to an ending that is as heart-rending as it is inevitable. The story will stay with you long after you have set the book down.
‘Lost You’ is stunning novel that deserves to be huge.


View all my reviews

Review: Daisy Jones & The Six

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Daisy Jones & the Six is the story of a fictional rock band from the 1970s. It is written as an oral history, very much in the style of Barney Hoskyns’ ‘Hotel California’ or ‘Trampled Underfoot’, about the Laurel Canyon scene and Led Zeppelin respectively, and shares much with both. Indeed, it is so convincing that I finished it aching to listen to ‘Aurora’, the group’s most successful, and final, album.
The story of the rise of The Six, centred around their lead singer, and natural rock star, Billy Dunne, and the parallel path of Daisy Jones, wild child, hedonistic drug user and crazily talented, is told in a cut-and-shuffle manner where individual interviews are edited together to produce a single narrative from multiple viewpoints. The spectacular, seemingly destined, collaboration between Daisy and The Six, and the volatile, complicated relationship between Billy and Daisy, is both the spark that brings the group unimagined success and the seed that eventually tears the the band apart.
Very obviously inspired by the complex relationships between the members of Fleetwood Mac, Taylor Jenkins Reid makes you care about these characters, all of them flawed, so that the inevitable implosion is as stunning as it is total. My only gripe is that the meaningful lyrics that many of her ‘interviewees’ pore over in such detail, and which are printed in full at the end of the book, come across as a little trite and generic, particularly without any musical context - but then that is also true of many of the great ‘70s bands, and I still love them.

View all my reviews

Review: Hydra

Hydra by Matt Wesolowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Welcome to Six Stories. I’m Scott King.”

The second in the ‘Six Stories’ series, ‘Hydra’ is just as good and as satisfying as its predecessor. As in Matt Wesolowski’s previous novel, the story is told as six episodes of a podcast which looks at a crime “from six different perspectives, seeing the events that unfolded through six pairs of eyes” and, as before, in printed form, the novel reads as transcripts of these podcasts but really comes to life in audiobook format.

Hydra is not so much a whodunnit but a whydunnit. We know from the outset that ‘the Macleod Massacre’ was carried out by Arla Mcleod, who bludgeoned her family to death with a hammer. The question, and the heart of Scott King’s podcast investigation, is what drove Arla to murder her parents and sister, what in her history brought her to that point. The episodes are again linked by an additional narrative, in this case a recording of Arla herself which has been uploaded to a torrent site and which eventually collides with the podcast narrative to reveal the truth behind the story.

The conceit of presenting the story as a ‘true crime’ podcast is immensely entertaining with the added bonus that, as the story is fictional, the twists can be tightly woven into the story rather than, as in some real podcasts, it feeling like information is being withheld in order to make the story more dramatic. It is a balancing act, but one which Wesolowski performs admirably. It will be interesting to see where he goes if and when ‘Six Stories’ comes to an end but, at the moment, I am hugely enjoying the series and have the third high on my ‘to be listened to’ list.

View all my reviews

Review: After the End

After the End by Clare Mackintosh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I may not have read this book had I not heard of the author. “What appeals to you about this book?” NetGalley asks when you request a proof. “Author. I have heard good things about Clare Mackintosh. She writes thrillers.”

‘After the End’ is not the psychological mystery I was expecting but it is a profoundly moving novel, the story of parents faced with an impossible choice - to submit their terminally ill child to treatment that may prolong the length his life but not its quality, or to let him slip away, allowing his pain to end. It is a sad story but it makes you smile in places. It is harrowing but full of humanity.

In her afterword, Clare Mackintosh, who lost a son in circumstances which inspired the novel, says “this is not a story about loss, but about hope. Hope for the future, for a life beyond an unavoidable tragedy.” And, as the second half of the story explores possible outcomes, Sliding Doors-style, the message of hope is clear - life goes on, changed by the experience, but loss does not mean forgetting.

‘After the End’ is an intensely emotional novel and one that I am thankful to have read.

View all my reviews

Review: Six Stories

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Six Stories is an unusual, and very successful, hybrid - the novel takes the form of six episodes of a ‘true crime’ podcast examining the circumstances which led to the disappearance of a 15 year old boy in 1996 and the subsequent discovery of his body a year later on a remote marsh in Northumberland. Each episode of the podcast centres on an interview with someone connected with the incident, the story told from the perspective of ‘six pairs of eyes’ leaving the listener, or reader, to make up his mind what happened.

As a novel, ‘Six Stories’ reads like a transcript of the podcast episodes (there is a connecting narrative but the story essentially unwinds in the conversations in the episodes) but it is as an audiobook that the story really comes alive. I am a big fan of the whispersync technology which allows the reader to switch from reading to listening seamlessly but I dispensed with the text completely in this case, immersing myself in the fictional true crime podcast.

Wesolowski has cited Serial, a true true crime podcast, as a major inspiration and he has really captured the feel of the genre and the medium. He also uses his love of horror (he previously published horror short stories) to ramp up the oppressiveness of the setting, the dank marshes, the overbearing fell, the local folk tales, to weave a really entertaining story. I loved it and have already started (listening to) the second in the series.

View all my reviews

Review: Their Little Secret

Their Little Secret by Mark Billingham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Been a while since I read Mark Billingham and I’m really not sure why because he never fails to deliver. In his latest, DI Thorne is haunted by a suicide and begins a personal investigation which reveals apparent links to the murder of a young man on Margate beach.

Billingham is skilled at police procedural with a cast of characters who come across as real people. And there is an excellent psychological thriller intercut with the police investigation as we follow a couple with a strange, complicated and unhealthy relationship. The writing is crisp and propels the story along; the dialogue is authentic, witty and sharp. This is the 16th in the Thorne series but can be read as a standalone with no issues. There are however enough references to events that have occurred in the five or six books that I have somehow managed to miss which, combined with a cast that I enjoy spending time with, make me want to jump back and catch up.

View all my reviews

Review: A Book of Bones

A Book of Bones by John Connolly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When a new novel in John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series lands I immediately drop whatever I’m reading and race through it. The race was slower this time, not only because A Book of Bones is nearly 700 pages long but also because a lot of the story takes place in London, and in a part of London I don’t know very well and in which I have just started to spend a few days a week, so I had to take time to look up the locations.
This is a sprawling, Dickensian beast of a novel which picks up just after The Woman in the Woods and which takes Parker to Arizona and, with Louis and Angel, to The Netherlands and England, in pursuit of Quayle and Mors as the saga of the Fractured Atlas culminates in Quayle’s attempt to bring about the end of the world. The plot, which involves ritual murder/sacrifice in locations throughout England, is interspersed with documents and diary entries which give historical context to Quayle’s quest and reference, among others, Jack the Ripper and Nicholas Hawksmoor, as Connolly pulls together threads which he has been weaving for years, to the original Fractured Atlas novella and, even further back, to the Travelling Man and the events that set Charlie Parker on the path which brought him here.
It is an astounding piece of work, obviously not a jumping on point for new readers, which is incredibly satisfying for those who have been following the series. The Book of Bones leans more towards the horror side while still being an effective mystery and there are echoes of Conan Doyle and Lovecraft, parts of it remind me of Ramsey Campbell, but it is very John Connolly. And, as this part of the narrative climaxes, Connolly throws in a final line that stops the reader dead and makes it clear that Parker’s story is not yet finished. In years to come, I really believe that this will be considered one of the great epic series of whatever genre into which you want to put it.

View all my reviews

Review: A Rising Man

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm a little late to Abir Mukherjee but I'm glad I got here. 'A Rising Man' is set in 1919 Raj India, a period I know little about but which Mukherjee brings to life - the intense colours, the oppressive heat, the simmering violence; the racism, both institutional and casual, of the last decades of the British Empire.

Sam Wyndham, a policeman two weeks into his career in the colonial force in Calcutta, investigates the murder of a high ranking British official, a man apparently killed by terrorists seeking the end of British rule. But when the secret police seem a little eager to close the case, Sam, along with the pompous, racist Inspector Digby and Sgt. 'Surrender-Not' Banerjee, Indian-born and educated at Cambridge, suspects that there is more to the crime than initially appears. Mukherjee's dialogue is excellent and the characters all have distinct voices. He describes the locations, from dusty back streets to opulent colonial mansions to temples surrounded by lush jungle, with a deft touch. And along the way, he drops phrases worthy of Chandler - a carpet is "thick enough to suffocate a small dog", Wyndham "tried not to stare at her legs, which was difficult because they were fine legs and I appreciate these things" - and takes a few humorous pokes at his native Scotland, a country whose climate "is rather unpleasant for ten months of the year and downright inhospitable for the other two."

I enjoyed 'A Rising Man' thoroughly. It is a satisfying and entertaining detective story but also a commentary on British Colonial attitudes to, and treatment of, 'foreign' subjects; food for thought when those same attitudes and nostalgia for the days of Empire seem to be driving the Brexit movement in England. Second in the series already purchased and high on the TBR list.

View all my reviews

Review: The Island

The Island by Ragnar Jónasson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Perhaps I would have benefitted from reading the first in this series of Icelandic thrillers but possibly not, as they appear to be published in reverse chronological order which in itself is an interesting concept. The Island concerns the death of one of a group of friends on an island south of the Icelandic main island, exactly ten years after the murder of another of their number. This second death is investigated by Hulda Hermannsdóttir, a somewhat tragic detective, previously passed over for promotion in favour of a seemingly less talented colleague, partially due to his successful closure of the first case. Hulda is an interesting character and the Icelandic landscape, particularly the island itself, is atmospheric and haunting. The plot, however, is a little too straightforward yet Hulda makes progress by chance rather than through her investigative skills. That said, it is perhaps her downbeat doggedness that makes her interesting and I will read the other books in the series.

View all my reviews

Review: Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994

Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994 by David Hepworth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More a collection of articles than a cohesive narrative, Uncommon People is well-written and entertaining but lacks the singular focus of his previous book 1971 - Never A Dull Moment.

In truth, the book could have cut off at the end of the '70s, there being many, many more 'Rock Star' stories from rock & roll's first quarter century than thereafter and Hepworth's approach of one essay per year means that interest tails off towards the end. That said, his piece on Prince, which really hangs on the allegations against Michael Jackson, makes interesting reading in light of the recent Jackson documentary, and his piece on Kurt Cobain is one of the best examinations of the inability to deal with fame that I have ever read.

View all my reviews

Review: The Scholar

The Scholar by Dervla McTiernan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dervla McTiernan’s ‘The Scholar’ builds on the promise of her first novel ‘The Ruin’. Garda Cormac O’Reilly, still viewed with suspicion by some of his colleagues in Galway, has something of a supporter in Carrie O’Halloran who recognises that Cormac’s talents are being wasted on cold cases and sees an opportunity to share some of her workload. But, as O’Reilly familiarises himself with the investigation into a man who appears to have tried to murder his wife and children, he takes a frantic call from his girlfriend, Emma, who has found a body in the road outside the university in which she works, the body of a young woman carrying the ID of the granddaughter of one of Galway’s richest businessmen.
The plot is suitably serpentine, the pace intense, but it is the cast of characters that make this such a joy to read. The key players are well-drawn, not just Cormac O’Reilly, but also Emma Sweeney, Carrie O’Halloran, Peter Fisher - these are ‘real’ people, not clichés; there are no rogue cops with drink problems here. The dialogue is realistic and we see the investigation processes at work, but ‘The Scholar’ is so much more than just a good police procedural. The suspense is extreme at times and the book is never less than satisfying. And, along the way, McTiernan asks questions about the ‘profits at all costs’ nature of Big Pharma.
I am so glad that ‘The Ruin’ was not a one-off and look forward to the next in the series.

View all my reviews

Review: Twisted

Twisted by Steve Cavanagh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Who is J. T. LeBeau?”
A few years back there was a television series called ‘Harper’s Island’ which essentially took ‘And Then There Were None/Ten Little Indians’ and slasher movies and ramped up the intensity until it almost, but, importantly, not quite, became parody. It was great fun. In ‘Twisted’, Steve Cavanagh has done the same thing for the current trend for ‘this novel has a twist you will not believe’ books.
J. T. LeBeau is the blockbuster thriller version of J. D. Salinger. His novels fly off the shelves, constantly at the top of the bestseller lists and yet nobody knows who he is, not even his publisher. Except, that’s not quite right. Four people know who he is and two of them are dead… When Maria Cooper and her lover discover that Maria’s husband has $20 Million dollars in a hidden bank account, she suspects that her spouse is in fact J. T. LeBeau. And she wants her share of that money.
Cavanagh piles twist upon twist, poking fun at publishers’ need to SELL THE TWIST, while doing what a lot of the popular ‘twist’ books forget to – telling a compelling and exciting story. Yes, it veers close to spoof at times but, crucially, Steve Cavanagh expertly keeps it, just, on the side of believability and keeps the thrills, well, thrilling.
‘Twisted’ is great fun and I’m sure it will be a huge hit. And perhaps the producers of ‘Harper’s Island’ should give it a read…


View all my reviews

Review: The Wych Elm

The Witch Elm by Tana French
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A new Tana French novel is the highlight of my reading year. ‘The Wych Elm’ is a departure from her Dublin Murder Squad crime novels in the sense that the story is told from the perspective of the victim of the crime rather than the investigators but, like that series, is a character-driven story which really gets into the psyche of the protagonist.
When we meet Toby he is on a night out with his friends, middle-class Dublin rugby types, apparently fairly harmless, if slightly unlikeable, slightly full of themselves. But, when Toby confronts burglars at his apartment that night, he suffers head injuries and memory loss in a vicious assault. Returning to The Ivy House, his uncle’s home at which he spent a lot of his childhood, Toby’s convalescence is, at first, bolstered by helping his uncle cope with his own, terminal, illness. The two support each other and fall into an easy routine, aided by Toby’s girlfriend, and, through conversations with the cousins with whom he grew up, Toby tries to regain the memories he has lost.
Tana French is a master at these familial relationships, the small interactions, the petty jealousies and misunderstandings between people who ‘love’ each other. Toby is an unreliable narrator, all the more so because of his brain trauma, but there is a sense that each of the characters is hiding something or, at least, reframing their own narratives, editing their own stories. Then the discovery of human remains in the hollow trunk of the ancient Wych Elm tree in the back garden of The Ivy House starts Toby on a path of investigation, casting suspicion on his cousins, his uncle, even himself. As the police tear apart the garden so Toby’s questions open up old wounds, gradually unravelling first his relationships, then his self-image, his sense of who he is.
‘The Wych Elm’ is a story of psychological disintegration told with Tana French’s keen ear for dialogue and ability to get inside the minds of her characters. It is a slower novel than the Dublin Murder Squad books but no less compelling. I enjoyed it and thank Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the early access.

View all my reviews

Review: The Wolf and the Watchman

The Wolf and the Watchman by Niklas Natt och Dag
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A dark and disturbing, very well-written and translated, novel set in late 18th Century Stockholm. King Gustav has been assassinated, paranoia is rife and, as the Revolution tears Paris apart, Sweden fears that the violence will spread from France. Against this background a city watchman pulls a body from the fetid lake, a corpse that has had his limbs amputated and his eyes and teeth removed. The watchman, Mickel Cardell, a one-armed veteran of Gustav’s ill-fated war with Russia, is thrown together with Cecil Wings, an investigator who is slowly dying from consumption, in a race to identify the mutilated man and bring his murderer to justice. This may not sound pleasant, and it is not, it is harrowing but also haunting and absorbing. The mismatched investigators are compelling characters and the first section of the book is as good a procedural as I have read recently, albeit a very unusual one.
The novel is however, split into four sections. The second section takes the form of a series of letters as a young dandy chronicles his descent into poverty and squalor. The third section tells the story of a young woman, Anna Stina, mistreated and unfairly condemned to a workhouse prison. These middle sections of the novel are almost as gripping as the main story but, for me, they broke up the rhythm of the plot. The stories are intrinsically linked to the central one but I would have preferred to have had them as more regularly interspersed subplots rather than as distinct, separate ‘parts’.
I knew next to nothing about this period of Swedish history but Niklas Natt och Dag brings the period to life, the sights and smells, the trauma and atrocities. There is a description of a naval battle that is as vivid and frightening as anything I have read on the subject. So, while I have problems with the structure of the novel, its power is unavoidable. It will stay with me for a long time and I thank NetGalley and John Murray Books for the opportunity to read it.

View all my reviews

Review: The Last

The Last by Hanna Jameson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“Nadia once told me that she was kept awake at night by the idea that she would read about the end of the world on a phone notification. It wasn’t exactly Kennedy’s Sword of Damocles speech, but I remember that moment word for word.
“For me, three days ago, it happened over a complimentary breakfast.”

‘The Last’ by Hanna Jameson is an End of the World novel but a thoroughly 21st Century take on the Apocalypse. Conference attendees at a secluded countryside hotel south of Zurich watch their phone screens in horror as World War III erupts. The world’s capital cities fall one by one on social media. Online footage showing the vaporisation of London “didn’t seem as real as the headlines” seeming “too fast, and too quiet.” And then, almost worse than the end of the world, the internet goes down…
The story that follows is told in the diary of Dr. Jon Keller, an American lecturer, who chronicles his and his fellow guests’ reactions to the limited news they have, to the strange coloured clouds, the lack of rain, of sunlight, to the fear of radiation poisoning. Some cannot cope and commit suicide; others deal with practicalities, rationing fuel and resources, finding food, burying the dead. And then, when the water runs cloudy and tastes off, an exploration of the water tanks on the roof reveals a dead body, a murder that occurred in the days leading up to the nuclear war.
‘The Last’ is an exciting and original novel told in a very compelling and naturalistic way. The journal form is perfect for a narrative in which the protagonist literally has no knowledge of the state of the world outside the remote hotel location. This is not a big apocalyptic novel, it is a small scale story of survival of people coping with the unknown.

‘…No one panicked, we didn’t go all Lord of the Flies. It could be fine.’

Of course, as the survivors eventually have to venture outside the hotel, we suspect that it will not be fine. The rhythm of Keller’s journal entries changes as key events occur. We go from a series of short daily entries commenting on his depression and then boredom to longer, frantic passages bringing us up to date with major events which have happened in extended periods during which Keller has been away from his book.
I loved this novel. I loved the concept when I heard about it on ‘Two Crime Writer’s…’ podcast. I have never read Hanna Jameson before and, while I understand this book is something of a departure for her, I really like the way she writes and will have added her previous books to my TBR list.

View all my reviews