Book Review: Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas – a story of melancholy and nostalgia told through the senses

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I confess I had a couple of goes at this novel, which I’d heard such good things about. And it’s not as if it gets off to a slow start. I was soon swept up into the narrator’s story – a woman in her late thirties reminiscing about a relationship from over ten years before, and the man, Jude, whom she’s never quite forgotten.

I imagined some kind of reconciliation, a meeting of some kind. What would they say to each other? How would they feel about each other now? Would such a meeting rekindle old feelings? Would there be new revelations about what really happened?

But that’s not what happens. Thirst For Salt is a journey back to a year in the life of the narrator – do we ever learn her name? – viewed from the point of view of her older self. It’s a journey filled with nostalgia, melancholy and yearning.

Our narrator meets Jude at the beach where she and her mother have rented a cottage for a summer holiday. He’s an older man of 42, compared with the young woman’s 24. She swims a lot on her own and this attracts Jude’s concern – all kinds of creatures lurk in the water, he tells her, and there are no lifeguards at this beach. Sharkbait, he calls her.

The cool shock of the blue. Movement, water, salt, light, heat. I began every day that way, my first week at Sailors Beach. Rising up with the waves and kicking down into the depths, into those sudden cold patches where the sun didn’t reach. Patterns of light on the surface, shadows passing above, water darkening. The fear, sometimes, of something brushing past my leg – a tangle of kelp or a lone gull landing beside me. Rocks seemed to quiver on the silty bed below, and once, I caught sight of a silver ray.


Parallel to their story, is the narrator’s relationship with her mother, who was just 24 when her daughter was born, a relationship that’s almost sisterly. Her mother has always lived a Bohemian kind of life, her long separated father, an itinerant, so learning how a long-term relationship works isn’t easy. By contrast, Jude seems a more solid, settled kind of guy. He’s a man of steady habits, with his own routines. He’s even living in the old family beach house built by his father.

The novel is an intimate portrayal of a relationship that reminded me a little of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. It is also a story that evolves through all the senses – the feeling of the sea on skin, the sights and sounds of the beach, of nature, both summer and winter. There’s taste and scent as well, in the old things Jude has in his house, the meals they prepare together. And the writing is just gorgeous.

As I said, I put this book aside after the first third or so, a little frustrated at the lack of obvious plot. But I still wanted to know how it ended and found myself picking it up again as an audiobook, which in this case was read by the author. It seemed to work and Madelaine Lucas gives a nuanced and engaging performance, capturing perfectly the feelings of loss and sadness that haunt the pages. I’m glad I persevered; Thirst for Salt is a four star read from me.

Book Review: This Wild, Wild Country by Inga Vespa – old sins cast long shadows in hippy-era New Mexico

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In her latest book, Inga Vespa pairs another couple of outsiders to investigate a murder, while digging around among social issues of the twentieth century. In her debut, The Long, Long Afternoon, we had a stirring of civil rights, and the murder investigated by a disgraced cop and the African American maid who’s a key witness. It’s 1959 and so there’s misogyny as well, particularly in this strait-laced California suburb.

Moving on a decade This Wild, Wild Country takes us to Boldville, New Mexico, a town out of the Wild West with it’s faded shop fronts, a blink and you’ve missed it sort of place, that keeps going because of local mining interests. Once upon a time it had it’s share of gold-rush opportunists, but now it’s where Glitter – real-name Lauren Weiland – wants to set up a counterculture commune.

Glitter lives with her boyfriend Ziggy on a hippy-decorated bus which she’s parked by the cabin her mother used to rent out behind the family hotel, a little out of town. With a few friends they hope the commune will catch on and expand. The little group are mostly college drop-outs, flower children who are anti-war and full of new ideas and ideals that put them outside of society. The town folk are wary of them, particularly when Dutch and a couple of his motor cycle gang move in. The gang has a constant supply of drugs and bring an air of menace. If only Ziggy wasn’t quite so keen to keep them onside.

After a particularly wild night, Glitter wakes up to find her cousin, Mike, dead from a skull fracture. Sheriff Nickel writes the death off as an accident while under the influence, but Glitter knew Mike wasn’t the kind of guy to take the kind of hard drugs found in his pocket. Not surprisingly no one will take her seriously.

While all this is going on, Joanna Riley is on the run. She has left her bully of a husband, sporting bruises she attempts to conceal. With only two hundred dollars and not much gas in the car, she escapes Albuquerque and winds up in Boldville, where she finds Stovers Hotel, the hostelry belonging to Glitter’s mother. A former police officer, and married to another, Joanna’s cop senses are on alert when she hears about the mysterious death, witnessing the family’s grief, and begins to ask questions.

The road is a ribbon wrapping a gift never given. A million stars twinkle overhead. Dust fills her lungs and cleans away the taste of blood. The Datsun’s headlights pick out cactus ghosts and the spiky crowns of agave plants. Somewhere she’s read that the Native Americans use agave sap as a balm. But she cannot bring herself to stop and try some on her arm.
 The needle’s hitting eighty. She will never get far enough. He’ll find her. If she drives to Canada, he’ll come after her. And the tank is already running low.

The story also flips back to the 1930s, where Cordelia Stover is desperate: a hotel that’s losing money, a Depression that has lost her even more, and a young daughter to raise on her own. When she comes across a secret, she heads off for the hills on a borrowed mule, hoping for a windfall.

This Wild, Wild Country is a brilliant mystery that builds to an action-packed sequence of events towards the end, where, eventually, all is revealed. Inga Vespa ticks all the boxes for a great crime novel, particularly with two young heroines on a quest to uncover the truth, while the whole town seems to be against them – even the law. The book is also peopled with interesting minor characters: the menacing sheriff; the posturing mayor; Lonan, Cordelia’s Native American side-kick. It’s easy to imagine this novel as a movie, which could be down the evocative setting.

But there’s a lot more going on here. There’s all the issues raised by the counterculture movement and its ideals of freedom, love and peace, but the misogyny that pervades the establishment is here too – women taken advantage of quite horrifically. There’s racism in the way business interests are at odds with those of the local Native Americans as well as issues around power and the corruption that brings. So quite a lot going on, but not at the expense of character development or a gripping storyline. So it’s a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: The Mitford Affair by Marie Benedict – a novel about an extraordinary set of sisters and the politics that divided them

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I’ve been fascinated by the Mitfords ever since I saw a British TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate which aired in the 1980s. Nancy was a witty novelist who moved in literary circles during the 1930s and ’40s, rubbing shoulders with Evelyn Waugh and his ilk. She mined her family and the upper classes for material for her books, which are still very readable today. Nancy had five sisters and one brother, and with eccentric parents, each sibling seemed to be more extraordinary or oddball than the next.

These are the characters that people Marie Benedict’s novel The Mitford Affair, which concentrates on the years 1932 to 1941, with the rise of fascism in Europe and the opening chapters of World War II. Told from the viewpoints of sisters Nancy, Diana and Unity, you couldn’t ask for more varied characters, each with a very distinctive narrative voice. As the years pass, Nancy watches in horror as Diana goes to ever more extremes to promote the politics of her lover Oswald Mosley, and as Unity heads off to Germany to become a kind of Hitler acolyte. As war becomes inevitable, Nancy has to decide if her loyalty lies with family or her country.

As a reader, you feel very much on the side of Nancy, who seems to be the voice of reason among her sisters. She’s also dealing with a lot personally, in particular a problematic marriage and ever more desperate attempts to bear a child. Meanwhile Diana has ditched an adoring, wealthy and titled husband for a man who is already married and the voice of fascism in Britain. She devotes her energies to his cause even when Mosley declares he cannot offer her marriage or any kind of respectability.

Then there’s Unity. Always the least liked in her family – the only daughter to be sent to school so her mother didn’t have to put up with her – you get the feeling that today, Unity would be diagnosed with a mental condition, possibly as bipolar or a spectrum disorder. Much younger than Nancy or Diana, she’s only in her late teens when we meet her, her half of her bedroom festooned with pictures of Hitler and Mussolini, as opposed to Jessica who on her side of the room has etched the hammer and sickle into the window.

After the Olympia Hall rally and the violence of the Blackshirts inflicted at the slightest provocation, undoubtedly on Mosley’s orders, I could no longer even pretend to be in the same political ranks as my sisters. Did we not live in a society where free speech was guaranteed? Could Mosley not bear the slightest critique of BUF and his rule. The strutting, posturing, flag-waving, and shows of bravado I’d chuckled at privately now seem menacing rather than humorous, and I felt an urge to unmask Mosley and his dangerous army as hooligans through my writing. I also began to wonder if I could use my writing as a way to awaken my sisters from this madness.

Unity’s adoration for Hitler is like any ordinary girl’s crush on a matinee idol, but such is her fervour, that she talks her mother into sending her to a finishing school in Munich and staking out a café popular with Hitler himself. She’s a difficult character to be with, but Benedict captures her intensity with sympathy, despite her anti-semitism and support for a cruel totalitarian regime. Hers is the saddest story of the three, and you can’t help feeling that with affection from her family, and some half-decent parenting, Unity could have had a brighter future. But that’s not to be.

This is one of those books that is so much more extraordinary for being based on real events and real people. I found myself often heading to the internet for more background, and it’s all there. The Mitford Affair is an enthralling read, although not an easy one, considering what Diana and Unity were prepared to do for a political cause that would lead to such terrible events in Europe. But I couldn’t help feeling that the writing could have been sharper – there are some rather convoluted sentences, and a few Americanisms slip through now and then. As a study of how political fanaticism can take someone over, though, it does the trick. It’s a three star read from me.

Book Review: Prettier if She Smiled More by Toni Jordan – another hilarious round with the Schnabels

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I hadn’t realised until I started it, that Toni Jordan’s latest novel features a bunch of the same characters we met in Dinner with the Schnabels – one of my favourite reads from 2022. In Prettier if She Smiled More, we follow the story of Kylie Schnabel who at the start of the book is about to experience three disasters that upend her life – all before Wednesday. By the end of the week, nothing will be the same.

Kylie Schnabel, if you remember, is the oldest sibling, daughter of Schnabel matriarch Gloria. She works as a pharmacist and likes to think she has everything under control. She’s very serious and is a stickler for detail, hardworking and a little abrupt. She’s been working at the same small suburban pharmacy since she graduated, living frugally and planning her life around one day buying the shop from her genial boss Tim who’s approaching retirement.

Life’s all going to plan, until one day it isn’t. Kylie gets to work on Monday to discover that Tim is selling his shop to a chain of pharmacies, a big business conglomerate all set to modernise and refurb. Gail from Pharmacy King insists Kylie reapply for her job – just a formality, and even though Kylie has a work ethic second to none and has won a Young Pharmacist of the Year award, the reader knows it’s going to be tricky. Kylie’s sometimes grim, no-nonsense manner is going to be a problem.

Then there’s Colin, Kylie’s partner, who is supposedly away at a business conference but activity on his Fitbit suggests he’s getting up to some extra-curricular hanky-panky. Kylie suddenly sees unpatchable cracks in their relationship. When Gloria breaks her ankle and needs full-time care, Kylie finds herself back at her childhood home, dealing with a mother who doesn’t want to be looked after and somehow ends up baby-sitting Caesar, a tiny Pomeranian.

There are plenty of funny moments, and Kylie’s internal monologue is always entertaining – she’s such a force of nature. But coming home where the decor is still stuck in the 1980s and there are so many reminders of her childhood, suddenly the past comes back with a wallop. Why has Kylie’s bedroom been turned into a sewing room, while her siblings, Tansy and Nick’s rooms are still intact, just as they left them? Then there’s her parent’s acrimonious divorce and memories of her childhood anguish, of being the eldest and having to be the sensible one when her mother was in pieces.

‘Your … father, is this?’ Ramona said, picking up one of the photos. ‘Is very handsome, but familiar somehow?…
  …In those years before Photoshop, what could be done about David, who was in the centre of many of the said photos and who Gloria wished dead several times a day in a variety of painful ways? Facing the grinning face of her ex-husband every day in her own home was untenable.
  Gloria’s solution had been to cut out a range of Kevin Costner heads of varying sizes from different magazines and glue them over similarly sized David heads. Now the family photos lined up on the mantel were of Gloria and Kevin, standing proudly behind their children, young Kylie, Tansy and Nick.

There’s a lot for Kylie to deal with, all in one week, including a tennis open day for Gloria, who is a children’s tennis coach. There’s finding a nurse who will want to stay with her mother so that she can get back to work when Gloria has other ideas. Kylie’s brother Nick talks her into going on a date with one of his mates. And on top of everything, Kylie has agreed to host the family lunch on Sunday. As the pressure mounts, something has to give.

Prettier if She Smiled More is a smart and often hilarious second-chances kind of novel. The format is similar to Dinner with the Schnabels, with one character having a lot to get done as the days of a single week slip by and each day heralds more problems. The final chapter brings everything to a head and somehow everything gets fixed, but in a way Kylie, the meticulous over-planner, would never have predicted a week earlier. I loved it and wouldn’t say no to another Schnabel novel if Toni Jordan feels so inclined. This one’s gets an easy five out of five stars from me.

The Mother by T M Logan – a light, escapist thriller and perfect holiday read

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Another thriller seemed a good choice for the holiday season – something to while away the minutes between basting the turkey and digging out the good crystal. And this one certainly suited the day. An easy read with short chapters so you can pick up where you left off, and an opening scene that has you hooked from the beginning – a woman, assumedly the ‘mother’ of the title, watching her own funeral.

Yes, I’m sure this has been done before, but it’s always interesting to see a funeral from the late departed’s point of view. But for Heather (yes, another book about a Heather!), hiding behind heavy-framed glasses and dyed hair, she has the pain of seeing her own children for the first time in years and they are visibly distressed.

The story flips back to Heather’s former life, ten years before, when she was a busy mother of young boys, with a career in HR and a husband, Liam, who is a rising MP. They have a pleasant home in Bath, and it would seem a charmed life, if a little hectic. Then, one evening, once the children are in bed, Heather discovers Liam is hiding something from her – he’s unusually evasive and there’s the scent of cologne on his clothes. The two argue. Next morning Heather wakes to find her husband dead.

The story flips forward again and we’re with Heather as she’s released from prison. She’s on parole after serving a nine-year sentence, sharing a room at a hostel with three other women, and with serious conditions surrounding her release. These include keeping away from witnesses from her trial, and from her boys. How is she going to clear her name, let alone be a mother again?

Until Liam’s murder, I had never really appreciated how privileged I was – and what it might be like to lose that privilege overnight. Because from the moment Liam died, all of it – the police, the press, the courts, the system – had turned against me. And from the moment the guilty verdict was read out, I became the enemy, the outsider, the other, to be feared and reviled and never to be trusted again.

Heather is really up against it. Her former middle-class life is in tatters, and she has no one to turn to – her mother now dead and her in-laws refuse to have anything to do with her. Slowly she builds up a support group – Owen Tanner, the journalist who has never given up on her case and fellow hostel inmate, Jodi – a woman from the other side of the tracks. She even manages to convince sister-in-law Amy to help.

The story gathers steam as Heather pieces together facts from her case, helped in part by those Tanner has garnered that reveal something shady within Liam’s constituency office. The appearance of heavies that follow and threaten her would suggest that someone has got something to hide. Heather has to risk breaking the conditions of her parole again and again. Can she discover the truth before she’s sent back to prison?

T M Logan really knows how to plot an enthralling thriller that keeps you turning the pages. The unmasking of the killer near the end packs quite a surprise in a nail-biting finale. The character of Heather is an ‘everywoman’ type you can empathise with. Subordinate characters are interesting too, if a little lightly drawn. My only quibble is how did the police get it all so wrong. Why didn’t Heather’s defence team put up more of a fight? All the evidence seems to be circumstantial. On the other hand, perhaps this happens a lot more than we know. We hope the system is a fair one, but is it really?

The Mother is a pacy, escapist read, well-written and with engaging characters. But after A Bird in Winter it seemed a little ordinary. Oh, well. You can’t have everything. I’ll probably pick up another by this author when I want a book I can easily get lost in. This one’s a three-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: A Bird in Winter by Louise Doughty – a pacy thriller that’s more than meets the eye

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I’ve heard so many recommendations of Louise Doughty’s novels, among them Apple Tree Yard, which was also televised. So when A Bird in Winter appeared I snapped it up, expecting an intelligent thriller and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed.

The Bird of the title is Heather, nicknamed by her father who was a former intelligence officer in the British Secret Service. Heather makes a roundabout entrance into the service, too, shoulder-tapped and mentored by Richard, her father’s own former protégé. When the story begins Heather is a high-ranking official in the service, working out of an office in Birmingham that has been set up recently to seek out agents who have ‘turned’. A signal at a meeting and Heather abruptly leaves the building and goes on the run.

It’s a compelling beginning. We read with bated breath as Heather collects a stashed bag all set up for such an eventuality. There’s money, a burner phone, a fake passport and a couple disguises – she can be a homeless person one moment, or morph into a middle-aged hiker the next. She hops on and off trains and heads north for Scotland. So far, so James Bond.

Only it isn’t. This isn’t a convoluted espionage thriller, full of action set pieces and a showdown with the baddies at the end complete with guns and random mayhem. Although there is a storm at sea. As Heather waits out the time it will take for her rescue, the story slips into the past – Heather’s spell in the army which is where she meets Flavia. Heather and Flavia become like sisters, sticking up for each other against the misogyny they face daily. Then there’s the special connection Heather has with Flavia’s daughter, and events that lead to them losing contact.

The plot then picks up as Heather tries to piece together the clues to her betrayal, the weakness that was exploited and the treachery that has left her out in the cold. She still has one or two friends who will help her, but she knows she’s on borrowed time. Will she make it out alive?

  He was there that morning to give a PowerPoint presentation about various cases he had been involved with. We had quite a few of these sessions, historical examples of successful missions and, sometimes, the unsuccessful ones, everything that could and had gone wrong. In those talks, we got to learn from the missions the public never hears about – the terrorist attacks that were foiled and how, the demonstrations where invaluable intel was garnered, and why.
  And sometimes, we got to learn about the things that had been missed, the real reasons six or fourteen or thirty-two people had lost their lives when nobody should have died. The men and women who gave those talks had something haunted about them, sometimes apologetically so, sometimes tinged with defiance. Ancient Mariners, all of them.

While there is a lot going on and plenty to keep you turning the pages, A Bird in Winter is a subtler kind of thriller. Doughty takes her time with Heather, showing her as a multifaceted character – a woman who has sacrificed much for her career, and it’s lonely at times. She has all kinds of regrets, particularly around relationships, including Flavia, and also her mother. As a reader you want to like her, and so you become desperate for her to survive, to be able to start a new life, a happier life even.

We get brilliantly evocative settings as Heather adapts to her surroundings, as well as scenes of quiet domesticity, where she tries to be a normal person. But always in the background is the ever present danger. It’s a clever balancing act, and it makes you imagine yourself in Heather’s shoes. There’s also a darkness here, in the cold side of Heather’s make up, which means she can do what it takes, as well as the ever present violence that is for the most part just off stage.

This is such a well written and satisfying novel, definitely a slow-burner, and one that takes its genre into a more literary sphere. I shall be eager to read more by Louise Doughty. A Bird in Winter is a four out of five star read from me.

Book Review: The Stargazers by Harriet Evans – madness and music plus a crumbling country mansion

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The Stargazers is one of those family sagas spanning the generations where dark events of the past threaten to derail the younger generation’s future. At the centre of this story is Fane Hall, the grand family mansion that was once a glittering venue for parties and weekend guests.

But since the loss of Iris’s father in the Somme, the new Lord Ashley, Iris’s Uncle Clive, will be taking over Fane Hall and she and her mother will be forced to leave. Iris can never forget her belief that Fane belongs to her – if she had been a boy there would be no doubt – and for decades to follow, it is Iris’s searing ambition, to reclaim Fane.

The story flips forward to 1969 and we meet a young couple – Sarah a gifted cellist and her writer husband Daniel – who are delighted to have bought a house in The Row in London’s Hampstead. The house needs a lot of work which is why it’s so cheap, but the two are very much in love and soon settle in and make friends with the neighbours. Among them the beautiful Lara, who had lived in the house from childhood when it was bubbling with family life. Though she becomes friendly with Sarah she finds entering the house disturbing. There’s talk of her tragic family – the loss of a brother and her beloved parents.

Sarah’s own upbringing was the opposite. Iris was a cruel and remote parent and the story flips back to reveal a childhood of deprivation and abuse. She and her sister, Vic, now rarely speak, have fallen out years ago, but at one point Vic was Sarah’s saviour and the sisters were everything to each other. We go back to their time at school, to Sarah’s flowering talent as a cellist, to their time at Fane and meeting Uncle Clive, who is crumbling just as much as the house is.

Iris watches them all turn slowly towards her. What a disappointment she is, for if she had been born male, everything would have been all right. She would have saved the family, saved Fane Hall from Uncle Clive. This is not how it should have been. Because it is her house.

There are all these threads to untangle, questions to answer. Who is the mysterious Bird Boy, and what caused the rift between the sisters? What happened to the house at Fane and what is Iris’s hand in it all? But the story also captures the difficulties of being a parent – Sarah struggles with her moody, headstrong daughter and with being Daniel’s wife. And how do you raise a child with love, when your own childhood was so deprived? Daniel is charming and popular, bringing people into the house for all-day Sunday lunch, while Sarah would dearly love some peace and quiet, to be herself. Will she ever play the cello again?

The story slowly fills in the blanks, but builds in plenty of suspense as well. There’s danger, but there are surprises too making for a very engaging story. I thought the plot was great, the characters interesting, but the writing was a little sloppy at times, as if it needed a bit more crafting or an editorial eye. Even so, I was happy to while away a few hours immersed in Sarah’s story. I have a read a few novels by Harriet Evans and will no doubt pick her up again for a relaxing read. The Stargazers gets three and a half stars from me.

Book Review: The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction by Robert Goddard – the invisibly detecting Wada returns for a new puzzle in her home country

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Like Andrew Taylor (see previous post), Robert Goddard is a recipient of the CWA Diamond Dagger Award for his long career in putting out superbly plotted crime fiction. Mostly he’s a writer of stand-alone novels, but his latest book takes us back to Japan where we first met Umiko Wada in The Fine Art of Invisible Detection and a case that brought her to England and a convoluted mystery that helped her cut her teeth as a detective.

In The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction, Wada has taken over the investigative business set up by her late boss, Kazuto Kodaka. Wada is a middle-aged woman who was widowed young. She’s outwardly unremarkable and, like many fictional private investigators, her work is her life. With a brother in New York, it’s left to Wada to check in on her mother, which is problematic in more ways than one.

The story gets going with a new case, an elderly man who has lost contact with his son. Fumito Nagata is worried his son, Manjiro may be depressed, even suicidal, following the collapse of his business, but Fumito is unable to contact him. Mr Nagata wants Wada to find him and report back. The younger Nagata is also the nephew of Teruki Jinno, head of a prosperous construction business that has been in the family for decades, a business that did well out of rebuilding Tokyo after the war.

Wada’s investigation will take us back to those dark days after Tokyo was firebombed, into a labyrinthine plot full of strands but all focused on power and money. She’s also being pestered by her brother to see to what’s going on with their mother – she’s taken on a lodger, an ex-Sumo wrestler who has fallen from grace. Wada’s brother is appalled.

‘I have you down as a solitary person. Is that right?’
‘It is not wrong.’
He frowned at her. ‘Do you ever let your guard down, Wada?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘Am I likely to see it happen?’
‘Unlikely, I would say.’
Then he grinned. ‘See, that’s what I like about you. You’re just so damn honest.’

The story also slips back in time to the mid 1990s and a case being investigated by Kodaka, again involving the Jinno construction company. Kodaka is asked to determine the recipient of large sums of money, paid into a bank account by the late founder of the company for over fifty years. The case will also have Kodaka asking questions around the Kobe Sensitive, the mysterious woman who phoned in a prediction about the Kobe earthquake – a prediction that was ignored but proved to be tragically accurate.

The plot flips between the two time periods, and the cases of the two detectives that will, of course, show how they connect towards the end. There’s a lot going on and a raft of characters to remember – I made frequent use of the character list at the start of the book. But I persevered, because Goddard is such a brilliant storyteller, there’s a thread of humour running through it all and Wada is such an interesting character – one of those ordinary people flung into extraordinary circumstances and somehow coping surprisingly well.

Yes, there’s plenty of danger, and Wada can’t ever be sure who to trust. There’s her connection to Kodaka, a more typical fictional detective who drinks too much, but knows his stuff, and has a will to stand up for the underdog. I enjoyed how the story includes how the two met, and how Wada became involved in the tricky business of detecting, much to her mother’s disappointment.

The setting of Tokyo seems very real – we get the trains, the distinctive suburbs and Tokyo’s hinterland. There’s a visit to San Francisco too – both settings come to life on the page. Underneath what turns out to be a ripping good yarn, full of twists, are thoughts on the devastation and ongoing effects of war, and those who prosper from it. The possibility of predicting earthquakes – both scientifically and through a kind of ‘gift’ is a fairly original concept for a detective novel and adds a good deal of interest.

There are still plenty of surprises as it as it all comes together towards the end, and as a reader I felt I was in the hands of a seasoned professional, an author that makes it all work so cleverly, creating a supremely satisfying read. Not that I was surprised. He’s done it so often before. The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction is a four and a half star read from me.

Book Review: The Shadows of London by Andrew Taylor – a ripping read set during the reign of Charles II

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Andrew Taylor has had a lot of practice in the art of mystery-thriller writing. At one point in his long career he gave us the Bergerac series, which was also televised – I fondly remember watching it aeons ago with my parents. There have been numerous more series and standalone novels, and in 2009, Taylor was awarded the Diamond Dagger, the Crime Writers Association’s most prestigious award for a lifetime’s contribution to crime writing in the English language.

But in my view, he was just warming up. His latest series is one of my favourite historical mystery series – the James Marwood and Cat Lovett novels set in the years following the Great Fire of London – hence the series title: Ashes of London. The two main characters are frequently at odds with each other, but somehow their paths always cross, usually when there’s murder involved.

As you might recall, Marwood is a rising young man in the corridors of government and in The Shadows of London we catch up with him as an assistant to Lord Arlington, the King’s most trusted advisor. Cat has meanwhile been busy with her architecture business – there’s so much work to do in a city half destroyed by the Great Fire. Her latest project involves rebuilding an almshouse, but work grinds to a halt when a body is found at the site, the man’s face battered beyond recognition.

The local magistrate, Mr Rush, was previously involved in the project, but had a falling out with Cat’s client, Robert Hadgraft, and puts a hold on any work until the murder is resolved. Cat is desperate to resume work as she needs to keep her workers committed to the building work and somehow pay off her suppliers. She turns reluctantly to Marwood to see if he can persuade Arlington to intercede on her behalf. Before you know it, the two are investigating the murder, and yes, again, the unpleasantly conniving Duke of Buckingham appears on the scene.

Marwood has had run-ins with Buckingham before, in particular with the Duke’s vicious henchman, Durrell, whose distinctive appearance is noted by a witness connected to the recent murder. The story is all set for more regal intrigue and takes you to Newmarket, where the King and his court turn up for the spectacle of horse racing. But before we get there we meet Louise, a maid of honour to the Queen, left behind at Whitehall because of an ailment.

Louise is the other thread to the story – a young impoverished noblewoman, once a maid of honour to the King’s late sister. Charles II has given her a home along with one or two other French ladies-in-waiting following his sister’s death. But Louise is worried that her youthful beauty will be irresistible to the King. The Ashes of London series sheds a light on a number of the King’s characteristics, some of them endearing, but here we see him as something of a sexual predator. And Louise should be worried. On top of everything else she has as secret, a problem she’s turned to the Duke of Buckingham, of all people, to handle.

Louise thought with the cold, merciless clarity of a trapped animal that the ambassador would have made a fine preacher had he not chosen instead to be a pander.
Colbert leant even closer. He skewered her with those uncomfortable eyes. His voice hardened. ‘Kings are not like other men. They are chosen of God, and to serve them is a great blessing. To serve two would be doubly blessed. Do you agree?’
‘I seek to serve God and my king, sir,’ she said in a voice that was barely audible above the noises outside. ‘Always.’
He sat back and gave her a thin smile. ‘Of course. I had expected no less of you.’

Everything builds nicely into a thrilling well-paced story, as Marwood juggles the demands of his work with the murder investigation while his enemies close in. There’s a new love interest, and when all seems lost, help comes from a surprising direction. There’s a ton of period colour and insight into the workings of court so you know Taylor has done his homework. But also there’s the perilous situation for women of the time. Cat struggles to be taken seriously as an architect, but at least she strives to be independent. Other women, no matter what class they belong to, have little choice when it comes to their future, doing anything they can to keep a roof over their heads.

The Shadows of London is number six in the series, and I confess to feeling a lump in my throat as I turned the last page because I simply didn’t want it to end. Although it has a very good ending, and you have a feeling that Marwood and Buckingham will have more scores to settle, so there’s promise for more books. I certainly hope so – I’m sure there’s lots more to say about the era of Charles II, and loads more interesting history to mine. The Shadows of London gets five stars from me.

Book Review: A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe – a tragedy sparks this original coming-of-age story

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I was at a writers festival recently where a former bookshop owner declared she pressed this book into the hands of every customer she could that ventured into her shop. A Terrible Kindness had caught my eye before that, reminding me of the episode of The Crown (on Netflix) that describes the terrible events surrounding the Aberfan disaster. A colliery spoil tip collapsed after weeks of heavy rain, forming a slurry that slipped downhill and smothered houses but worst of all a school. The death toll topped 140; 116 of the victims were children.

A Terrible Kindness describes the life of newly qualified undertaker William Lavery. We meet him at an undertaker’s dinner, to which he’s finally had the courage to invite Gloria, the love of his life. He’s just nineteen and has a bright future with Lavery and Sons, the business run by his uncle Robert, and he’s come top of his class in embalming. But the dinner is interrupted by the news about Aberfan and the call goes out for embalmers to head to the mining town to prepare the bodies for burial. William is a good-hearted sort and immediately volunteers.

William’s experiences at Aberfan will change his life for ever. Today, anyone helping at such a disaster would be offered counselling. But this is 1966 and it’s back to business when William gets home. This isn’t the only traumatic event that’s happened to William. He lost his father to cancer as a young boy, and something has happened to him at school. A promising singer, he has been selected for a prestigious school in Cambridge where for training as a chorister, his voice full of potential.

Two pieces of music haunt the book. I’d never heard Myfanwy before, but it’s a popular (and achingly sad) Welsh song composed in 1875. The other is Allegri’s Miserere, which I was more familiar with. In fact if you think of boy sopranos, then this is probably the music that springs to mind.

As he sits next to the window on the tired upholstery, with a spring nudging him in the backside, William is unexpectedly overwhelmed with a sense of his mother. Not the mother who moved to Swansea without him and now manages the biggest music shop in Wales, but the mother who took him to Cambridge, who knelt on the gravel in her stockings to tell him how proud she was, trying so hard not to cry. He stares out of the window, not bothering to wipe his face until he feels drips on his hand.

But the book is about a lot more than tragedy and music. William has to navigate a problematic relationship with his very loving mother. Evelyn adores William, he’s all she has left, and has high hopes that singing will save him from the family undertaking business. Robert Lavery was her husband’s twin brother, a living breathing reminder of what she has lost, and Howard, also in the business is Robert’s other half. Homosexuality couldn’t come out of the closet in 1966 and it’s a lingering awkwardness between Evelyn and Robert. But they all love William. As does Martin, the great friend William makes at school, and Gloria of course but is she prepared to wait for him to sort himself out?

These are all wonderful characters, all loving William, but how do you love anyone back when your heart’s full of pain. Jo Browning Wroe puts William through a lot before letting him find some resolution. For such an apparently blameless young man he certainly creates a storm around him.

The Aberfan disaster is hauntingly made real in the descriptions of the work of kind strangers tasked with a terrible job. It’s sensitively done as is the work William does in the mortuary at Lavery and Sons. You develop a new respect for the work of undertakers and learn a lot of the process. It definitely takes a certain kind of person and the author, having herself grown up in the business, is just the writer for this story.

A Terrible Kindness has polarised reviewers, particularly the way the Aberfan disaster is employed as a device to change a character, suggesting this is a little insensitive. Much of the story has little to do with Aberfan, but then perhaps that’s true of lots of wider events that can affect a character, like war for instance. As a reading experience, I felt I disengaged a little – you can get a little frustrated with William – and the story lags a little. But a little after the middle things pick up and I was pulled into the story again.

Overall, I’m glad I read A Terrible Kindness and hope Jo Browning Wroe has another book in the pipeline. She’s created an original and heartfelt story and has brought Britain in the 1950s and 60s to life. Her characters are ordinary and yet special at the same time. This debut novel gets three and a half stars from me.