Friday 20 September 2019

Review: Elevator Pitch

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.

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Thursday 12 September 2019

Review: Heaven, My Home

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.

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Saturday 7 September 2019

#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 20th 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
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#BlogTour - Still See You Everywhere by Lisa Gardner

A remote tropical island. Countless dangerous secrets. No way to call help. ‘A  master of the thriller  genre’ David Baldacci ‘Full-on  acti...