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The Bad Things by Mary-Jane Riley
Fifteen years ago Alex Devlin’s nephew and niece were snatched from her garden while she was looking after them. The little boy’s drowned body was discovered in a suitcase but the little girl was never found. Martin Jessop and Jackie Wood were jailed for their murder but now Jackie has been released after her conviction was quashed on appeal and Martin has hung himself. Still trying to put things right, Alex uses her job as a journalist as an excuse to meet Jackie Wood and try to find out where Millie is buried.
The book is listed as a darkly compelling thriller but is as much a police procedural as a thriller, the action being split between the viewpoints of Alex Devlin and DI Kate Todd, two women who are still affected by the trauma of events all those years ago. The main characters are engaging and sympathetic and make it an absorbing read. Alex still carries the guilt of allowing the children to disappear while under her care and has a secret she is desperate to kept hidden. Kate, who was a young PC at the time and found the body of the boy, is consumed with demons that prevent her from living life to the full. Both are very likeable characters with believable motivations.
The setting of the Norfolk countryside in November perfectly reflects the bleak nature of the crime against two innocent children. It is fairly obviously from the blurb on the back of the book what the ending is going to be and it is not a book full of surprises or twists and turns but it is an excellent read. The straightforward narrative follows the two women as, in their own ways, they try to discover what really happened all those years ago and the motivation for recent events.
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]]> The Well of the Dead by Clive Allan
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]]> Those Girls by Chevy Stevens
Those Girls is a dark, nail-bitingly tense page-turner of a story with violence towards women at its heart and the bond of sisters, secrets and the long-term effects of trauma. It is a fast-paced psychological thriller from beginning to end.
It’s very difficult to review this properly without giving too much of the plot away and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. The emotional response of the reader to the horror of what is happening on the page and how the characters are coping with it are the focus of the story rather than a complicated plot. The book is split into two parts starting in 1997 and initially told with a sense of retrospection as if looking back. The second part, set in 2015, is more immediate.
Set in Western Canada, Dani, Courtney and Jess Campbell are sisters who have lost their mother to cancer. Their father is struggling to cope with the loss of his wife and is drunk most of the time and violent with it. Fortunately their father works away a lot and the sisters struggle to survive alone on the ranch with what little money he gives them. The catalyst for the novel is the day violence gets out of hand and leads to fifteen year old Jess shooting her father. The girls go on the run but when their truck breaks down in the small run-down town of Cash Creek the girls find themselves in far worse danger and fear for their lives.
Eighteen years on, although the girls have changed their names and created new lives for themselves, they are still struggling to cope with what has happened. And when one of them goes missing everything starts to go wrong again and it looks as if this time the outcome will be even worse.
Chevvy Stevens really gets across a sense of place with the isolation on ranches and what can happen when there is no one around to hear you scream.
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]]> The Buzzer by David Mason
Set in Russia this gripping mystery thriller is based on the creepy urban legends surrounding the transmission of a buzz every other second on short wave radio.
Frustrated want-to-be journalist Natalya Kovalski forces her lecherous over-bearing boss to let her undertake a research project. But instead of the boring project he suggests Natalya stumbles upon the radio wave theory and sets about investigating it. She comes across Stepan Litvin, a short-wave radio enthusiast and computer programmer, and together they visit an abandoned military base in Povarovo, which is suspected to have once been the source of the transmissions. They discover links between the city of Luga and a Soviet Human Enhancement Project C-1 which was undertaken in World War 2. After discovering evidence suggesting that the Buzzer and the C-1 is an experiment on the population of Luga, they attempt to expose the experiment to the media in order to save the city.
David Mason has created a tense fast-paced novel, which is a real page-turner from the start. How horrific is the C1 experiment and just what danger are the two main characters (and the entire population of Russia) in as they proceed with their investigation? Unlike many books set in Russia, The Buzzer does not centre around the KGB. Instead it is the military who the protagonists are up against. Natalya and Stepan are likeable, ordinary people with flaws who sometimes make mistakes.
An excellent read that I struggled to put down.
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]]> Burned and Broken by Mark Hardie
The well-paced plot of this debut police procedural by Mark Hardie introduces us to the first in a series featuring DS Frank Pearson and DC Catherine (Cat) Russell. Set against the backdrop of a bleak Essex seaside town, it explores the themes of corruption and murder within the police force and the failure of our social care system over the children it is supposed to be protecting.
Told from multiple viewpoints, but largely DS Pearson and DC Russell, the main story focuses on the investigation of the burned body of Sean Carragher, a policeman who is under internal investigation for fraud and misconduct. Alongside of this is Donna’s story. Donna believes her friend, Alicia, who died the previous year, was murdered and is trying to get the case reopened. As the investigation explores the true character of the murdered policeman it becomes clear that any number of people had the motive to kill.
The book opens with the shocking scene of someone being set on fire in a car on the sea front followed by the start of an investigation. It is worth pointing out that although the story begins in such a grim way it is not a book full of gratuitous horrific scenes.
Mark Hardie’s clipped writing style gives the book great pace and the matter of fact dialogue in the police station comes across as totally credible. All of the characters are believable but all have their flaws, from the DS struggling to come to terms with the possibility of prostate cancer and the DC under suspicion of being involved in corruption to the isolated and disturbed character to Donna, a sixteen year old in her first year of living outside of care and apparently abandoned by the system.
With the twists and turns of the various plots and subplots this is one of those books that you have to concentrate on. The addition of timeline shifts between the investigation and the events that led up to the fire (including scenes told from the viewpoint of the now dead man) may not appeal to everyone but is an interesting technique for layering the reveal of information to the reader rather than one lengthy explanation at the end. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
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]]> Acts of Vanishing by Fredrik T Olsson
Acts of Vanishing is a exciting new Scandinavian thriller, the second in a series featuring William Sandberg. Told from multiple viewpoints in a cinematic-style, this who-dunnit will appeal to anyone who doesn’t want to get bogged down with the psychology or reasoning behind the main characters decisions and just wants the thrill of a fast-paced action story.
The concept of the book is an interesting one, if straying into the realms of science fiction. It raises questions of political morality, conspiratory theories, spying, politics and the use and abuse of the internet.
The story starts with the city of Stockholm plunged into darkness with a black out of radio, internet and phones. No one knows how or why the power cut has happened and the fear is that terrorists are behind it.
William Sandberg, is a disgraced military cryptologist who has been contacted by email immediately before the blackout. His former colleagues in the state military police aware of this correspondence assume he is in some way connected to the terrorist cell and are after him. William’s task throughout the book is to prove his innocence by finding out who is really behind the power failures. It soon becomes clear that they are happening in strategic places across the world, not just in Stockholm. William needs to find the link but everywhere he goes someone seems to be watching him, following his every move and putting him in mortal danger.
His estranged wife Christina, a newsroom journalist also tries to piece together what’s happening. She has a terrible feeling that somehow her ex-husband and their daughter Sara (who the reader knows from the start will die soon) are involved but she wants to believe they are innocent.
People that William knows are being killed. As the UK military get involved, things become more complicated and William realises the entire world is on the brink of disaster and time is running out.
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]]> Living Death by Graham Masterton
Living Death is the seventh book in the Katie Maguire series of police procedurals set in Ireland. Katie Maguire is a high ranking detective in the Cork Garda and at the start of the book she begins an investigation into a break in at boarding kennels and the disappearance of a large number of dogs. During the break in the owners wife is raped and one of the perpetrators shot dead, which turns a simple case of dognapping into a murder investigation.
Meanwhile a young woman, Siobhan, is abducted from outside of a nightclub and forced to endure horrific mutilation by the surgeon of a private clinic, the details of which are pretty gruesome. Siobhan isn’t the only one to go missing and as the book progresses the number of patients admitted to the clinic grows, each trying to cope with the unnecessary loss of sight, limbs and speech.
In contrast to the unnecessary mutilation of the victims, at home Katie is struggling to cope with having an ex-lover who has come to stay after the recent amputation of his legs, a situation she feels responsible for. The ex-lover is needy and trying to come to terms with the loss of his legs. He desperately tries to rekindle their relationship as if this will somehow make up for the loss.
With human mutilation and animal cruelty at it’s worst, this is not a book for everyone. However Living Death is full of light and shade with empathy and tenderness balancing the horror. Graham Masterton cleverly shows the manic lifestyle of a high ranking police officer. The mountain of paperwork and bureaucracy, as well as the day to day running of an investigation, and how it all impacts on a policewoman’s life.
This is a book of twists and turns, and threads that brilliantly weave throughout the book. No element is superfluous to the plot and there are surprises up to the very last page.
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]]> Close Quarters By Angus McAllister
Walter Bain is the self-appointed dictator of the tenement at 13 Oldberry Road in Glasgow’s cosmopolitan West End. For 35 years Walter has imposed his self-styled ‘family values’ upon his neighbours with rosters for cleaning the stairs, a regimented order on noise, and timetables for the movement of wheelie bins. While most of his neighbours appreciate that there needs to be co-operation so that the flats stay in good order, it is Walter’s bombastic approach that rubs everyone up the wrong way. Even the police and council are not exempt from Walter’s badgering with his persistent nuisance calls. Walter is like a terrier with a bone and no one is capable of standing up to his relentless tyranny. So when Walter is found dead everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
The novel follows the back stories of each of the neighbours whose lives have been dramatically affected, or ruined, by Walter Bain. Told in a variety of ways, including diary form, the reader learns about the main suspects and how Walter Bain’s bullying grinds everyone down, what he is capable of, and ultimately his lack of humanity. In fact, none of the main suspects has reason not to kill Walter Bain.
This isn’t the usual ‘whodunnit’ with clues scattered throughout. It is more of an exploration of the true character of the dead man and the main suspects, what has led up to his death and why those around him are glad to see the back of him. It comes as no surprise when the killer is revealed. The only real question is why no one bumped him off sooner.
It is probably not a book for those who like the more formulaic crime novels but written with a dry sense of humour, Close Quarters has a cosy, farcical, stage-like quality that I really enjoyed. I found it funny and poignant.
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]]> Mickey Take by Steven Hayward
The Blurb: When a debt goes bad… someone’s looking to make a killing. Michael Field just lost his City job and his beautiful wife in one fell swoop. Unemployed and down on his luck, he’s propositioned by one-time friend, Herbert Long. The job is non-negotiable. It’s pay-back for a cover-up years ago. But something’s not right; it all seems too easy. And it’s not just the job that doesn’t add up. Part of him is flattered by the improbable advances of the beautiful young woman who calls herself Grace de Manton, but his inner realist is suspicious. What is her game? Could she be connected with Herb somehow? He can’t shake the feeling he’s being watched. Then there’s the threatening voice of a stranger down the phone… and that man lurking in the shadows. In this complex criminal web, Mickey doesn’t know who to protect and who to fear. But with even those closest to him seemingly involved, who can he trust? A hapless pawn in a bigger game that’s playing out between local crime lords, all he knows is whatever happens, he’s not going back into that bloody chamber…
Review: 5* A great page turner.
Mickey’s wife has left him and he’s been fired from a good job as a city banker so he feels he has lost everything and doesn’t know how to move forward. Herb, a friend from his youth gets in touch and wants him to do a job for him. Herb has something over Mickey. With the void in his life, Mickey almost becomes an insecure teenager again as gets sucked into a world of crime.
This is a complex book and clever on many levels with a lot of twists and turns. I had no idea where it was going. The first person narrative works brilliantly as the reader follows the story through Mickey’s eyes and only knows as much as he does. Throughout the novel there are snippets from The Watcher’s perspective, which creates a dreadful sense of threat and foreboding as the implication from early on is that the watcher is capable of hideous crimes.
I liked the character of Mickey who is very upbeat and tells it like it is. Mickey’s real flaw is that he is too trusting and easily led by those around him and because of that he is quite vulnerable.
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]]> The Insect Farm by Stuart Prebble
The book starts with the discovery of two badly decomposed bodies in a shed on an allotment. The bodies have been ravaged by insects. Who are these people? What has happened to them? And how did they get there? These are the suspense premises of the story that keep the reader hooked.
Set in the early 1970s, the book is split into two halves with the first half devoted to the history of the relationship between Jonathan Maguire and his brother Roger.
Roger is a high functioning autistic who appears to have little understanding of the world around him. His obsession is the insect farm, which he has built since childhood in a shed on the allotment. While Roger can barely get himself dressed in the morning, he can relate facts about the insects in his world with incredible recall and minute detail.
Jonathan is the younger sibling, who after the mysterious death of their parents is forced to leave university to look after Roger. Jonathan’s own obsession is his girlfriend Harriet. Harriet is beautiful and admired by men but by one in particular. When Jonathan leaves university he is forced into a long-distance relationship with Harriet and this fuels his obsessive lack of trust in her and results in murder.
The themes of the book are complex and interesting. They revolve around the ideas of trust, jealousy and the lengths we will go to for our obsessions. The story explores the affects of disability on family life and the idea of how much someone with autism can actually comprehend and the decisions they are capable of.
This is a book you will probably either love or hate and the reviews on Amazon, which are split to the extremes, rather prove that. The story is narrated retrospectively by Jonathan. His detachment and meticulous attention to detail seem to imply that he might have Asperger Syndrone, also in the autistic spectrum. The resulting style of narration has the effect of making it feel more like a literary novel and this may be one of the reasons why reader’s responses are so mixed.
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