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.

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Review: The Silent Patient

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“As you will see, it’s an incredible story - of that there is no doubt. Whether you believe it or not is up to you.”

Theo Faber is a psychotherapist who develops an intense interest in, if not an obsession with, the case of Alicia Berenson, a relatively famous artist who, having murdered her husband has refused to speak a word and has been confined to a secure psychiatric unit in London. Despite the clinic’s shaky financial viability, Faber sets his sights on, and succeeds in gaining, a position there purely for the opportunity to treat Alicia and, in the process, perhaps persuade her to speak and reveal the truth about why she shot and killed the husband whom she appeared to love.

Alex Michaelides has written a very competent, entertaining mystery. The short chapters propel the story along with the added technique in which the last line of one chapter feeds straight into the first of the next, often contradictorily. “‘She won’t like it one bit.’” … “‘I think it’s a great idea.’” The author uses this sparingly but enough that it makes you smile when it happens and anticipate the next one. The book begins with extracts from Alicia’s diary and these reappear at stages to break up Theo’s narrative and reveal elements of her past and of her state of mind leading up to the murder. And then there is a twist.

I’m not a huge fan of ‘the twist’. There is a vogue at the moment to elevate ‘the twist’, to make it the reason to read a novel. And often it is contrived and disappointing. However, when the moment arrives in ‘The Silent Patient’ it is so unexpected and so well done that it makes the reader question everything that has gone before. I stopped and re-read the chapter. And then I read it again. I took a moment before moving on to the conclusion of the story. It is excellent and turns a good, competent mystery into a five-star thriller. The key to this is that Michaelides has laid the groundwork - the climax arises naturally from the plot, and it rings true. It is like the camera changes and you see what has gone before through a different lens. And, crucially, it makes you want to go back and read it again.

I enjoyed this a lot and it deserves to sell and to be talked about. I look forward to what comes next from Alex Michaelides.


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Review: Gone by Midnight

Gone by Midnight by Candice Fox
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I enjoyed Candice Fox’s ‘Redemption Point’, her second novel featuring Queensland PIs, Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell, I struggled to relate to Conkaffey, his every action informed by a false accusation of child abduction to the extent that it slowed the plot. Conversely, Amanda, convicted of a murder she did commit, albeit accidentally, was a whirling dervish, a ball of energy with no social graces who offended all around her while displaying almost Holmesian deductive skills.
‘Gone By Midnight’, the third in the series, is a tighter novel, fast-moving and with fewer flaws. Ted Conkaffey, perhaps due to the presence of his infant daughter who is staying with him for the first time since his fall from grace caused the breakup of his marriage, is a much more sympathetic character. His anger, and shame, at those who still suspect him despite his no longer being a ‘person of interest’, and his love for his daughter, drives him as he and Amanda try to locate an eight-year-old boy who has disappeared from a local hotel.
Amanda remains a thoroughly entertaining character. She ‘hates’ children, shows little empathy for the missing boy or his parents, sees the boy’s disappearance as a competition the winner of which is rewarded with a cake, and makes friends with a criminal biker gang while making enemies within the police force.
‘Gone By Midnight’ is a more complete and confident novel than ‘Redemption Point’. The mystery is intriguing and entertaining, the characters more fully realised, the dialogue sharp and I look forward to the next in the series.

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The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lucy Foley’s “The Hunting Party” is an excellent claustrophobic psychological thriller that questions how well people really know each other.
Nine entitled friends travel to the Scottish Highlands for a New Year’s Celebration where a tragedy occurs. The story is told in two timelines, events leading up to the disappearance of one of the guests, narrated in the first person by three of the female guests, and the aftermath, again in the first person, by the female caretaker of the Highland Lodge. At intervals, we also learn, in a third person narrative, about the estate’s gamekeeper, a man with a hidden past.
The story is full of red-herrings and misdirection and the author cleverly hides the identity, and even the gender, of the missing guest, a technique that is only very rarely apparent to the reader - there were a couple of occasions where I thought, “wouldn’t it have been more natural for the character to say the name”, but they were few and far between and did not spoil my enjoyment of the story.
There are few, if any, likeable characters in the novel and even the best of them have some darkness in their past that affects their actions but that is not a criticism - they all rang true, and it is fun to piece together what is really behind the unreliable narrators. Apparently optioned for TV, the story would make an excellent miniseries.


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Review: The Chestnut Man

The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I have enjoyed a lot of what could be termed ‘Scandinavian Noir’ I have always found the television from the Nordic countries to be more dynamic and involving than their literature. Series such as The Killing and The Bridge, despite complex plots, focus as much on the human element as on solving the crimes. Søren Sveistrup, writer of the former series has, perhaps not surprisingly, written a novel more akin to those television series than to his contemporaries on the bookshelves.
The Chestnut Man is a fast-moving crime novel. The plot, as complex and intriguing as it is, fairly thunders along. Two detectives, the young ambitious, Naia Thulin and, burnt out jaded Europol cop, Mark Hess, who has been sent back to Copenhagen while an investigation is held into possible misconduct, are initially suspicious of each other. However, as they investigate the murders of two women in separate incidents, the pair are drawn together as their theories that the crimes are connected, not only to each other but possibly to the disappearance of a senior politician’s daughter a year ago, put them out of step with their colleagues who consider the early crime solved as a murder, despite the lack of a body.
Like The Killing, The Chestnut Man is a mixture of police procedural, politics and familial relationships and it is the impact of the crimes on the families - the Government minister and her husband who are struggling with the loss of their daughter, Thulin’s distress at neglecting her own daughter because of her career ambitions - which, I feel, sets the novel apart. An entirely satisfying crime story, the book also sheds some light on another side of the Danish capital, the poorer tenements, the immigrant communities.
I enjoyed The Chestnut Man immensely and look forward to more from Søren Sveistrup, especially if he revisits Thulin and Hess.

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