Tag: crime fiction

Book Review: The Wolf Tree by Laura McCluskey – a did he fall or was he pushed, Scottish Noir mystery

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

An island can provide just as much of a locked-room mystery as one in any building, particularly when it’s a remote island like Eilean Eadar, a wild and isolated spot off the West Coast of Scotland. In The Wolf Tree, we are in the shoes of DI Georgina (George) Lennox, who is just getting back to work after an attack that left her badly injured. This new case is supposed to be a box-ticking exercise, and she’s here along with her partner DI Richie Stewart to sign off on a probable suicide – a case to ease George back to work gently.

Of course, the reader knows that isn’t going to happen and things look problematic from the start. Even the boat crossing is wild and treacherous, the weather when they arrive, wet and freezing, the accommodation inconveniently at some distance from the little township. The two cops settle in, George doing her best to disguise from her older colleague and mentor her dependency on painkillers. The island has had to manage without a police presence, without a doctor, a school or social services of any kind for so long, so it isn’t surprising that the locals have learned to manage everything themselves. So they’re understandably reluctant to accept the interference of two cops from Glasgow.

Then there’s the case. Young Alan Ferguson, eighteen and busy applying for places at universities, had supposedly flung himself off the top of the island’s lighthouse. Alan was handsome and amiable, the only child of a widow, but she puts up a wall of animosity when George and Richie show up to ask questions. Hot on their tails, the priest arrives – a hearty, gregarious man, keen to help oil the wheels of the interview. The islanders, like Alan’s mother, are hostile towards mainlanders. It’s only the priest and the postmistress who are welcoming, or is that just nosiness?

People think that death by drowning would be peaceful. But if there is any truth to that, it’s a peace that comes after the worst thirty seconds of your life. And it’s a fate that, until today, George Lennox never considered might befall her.
With her jaw clenched against both the biting cold and sudden dips, George stands on the heaving deck of the police launch; constricted by the bulk of an orange life vest, a duffel bag over her shoulder. She clutches a leather briefcase in one hand, the slick railing with the other. The weather has changed dramatically in the last few hours. The soft white clouds that farewelled her on Skye have turned black and heavy, and the waves that claw at her feet are splintered iron, threatening to drag her down all twelve thousand feet to the sunless floor of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Wariness towards incomers goes way back – the islanders had seen off the Protestant Reformation which turned the other western isles and much of Scotland. But Eadar is still staunchly Catholic. Or is it? What is the strange design that adorns the lintels of many of the houses, and why is George warned not to go anywhere near the woods. Pagan beliefs, mythology and superstition seem to hover on the fringes of everyday life. Then there’s the sound of howling wolves that disturbs George at night in a place where surely no wolves exist.

At twenty-eight, George is young to be a Detective Inspector, so it’s easy to imagine in her a tenacity her partner, eager to get back home with his family, seems to lack. It’s this tenacity that sees George asking awkward questions that Richie has to smooth over to avoid unpleasant confrontations. What will she have to do to earn the locals trust enough to talk to her? And what of the three lighthouse keepers who disappeared a hundred years ago? Can this mystery possibly have a connection to the death of Alan Ferguson?

It’s hard to determine which is more hostile and dangerous, the weather on Eadar or the people who live there. By the time we get to the end of the book, there are some stunning revelations and some spookily atmospheric scenes. George, in spite of terrible headaches, manages to think on her feet and probe the truth out of people in a case that will shock the whole community and mainlanders alike. She upsets Richie again and again with her disregard for her personal safety, and this looks unlikely to change anytime soon.

A first of a series, The Wolf Tree is a suspenseful and entertaining read, promising more tricky investigations for our two very different DIs. The Cursed Road is due for publication early next year. I particularly enjoyed the audiobook version of The Wolf Tree, which was read by Kirsty Cox. It’s a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Red Shore by William Shore – an atmospheric new mystery series set on the Devon coast

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

William Shaw’s a well-regarded author of detective fiction; you may already have come across his Breen & Tozer, and Alexandra Cupidi series. In The Red Shore we meet London detective, Eden Driscoll, who gets a phone call out of the blue from Devon and Cornwall Police informing him that his sister is missing and her son taken into care. His understanding boss tells Eden to take as much time as he needs to sort things out. Eden thinks he’ll be back in a day or two, he’s working on an important case after all.

Eden hasn’t seen his sister Apple in over a decade, not since he ran away from his family at the age of fifteen. He felt bad about leaving his mother with Apple when his father died. But parenting was never their strong point, Dad being an overbearing man, his mother acquiescing too readily with his ambitions for a nomadic hippy lifestyle. Because of all this, Eden has never wanted a family of his own, doesn’t see himself settling down at all, let alone being a dad. He cringes from the idea of being the guardian of his nine-year-old nephew, Finn, a boy he never knew existed.

All this is an interesting story in itself, but layered on top is the mystery of what has happened to Apple. Eden’s sister, was an experienced sailor who seems to have gone overboard from her boat, the Calliope. Even more unlikely is the idea that she would have locked Finn in the cabin. When Eden asks for a look at the boat, DS Mike Sweet is sceptical when Eden assumes the presence of two recently used wine glasses suggests another person may have been on board. Sweet’s a nice chap, but seems inclined to go for easy options – suicide or an accident being the most likely scenarios.

Eden discovers that Apple was a loving mother, but also something of an eco-warrior, which got her into trouble from time to time. The reader can’t help thinking that she’s found out something about someone that led to her death. Guilt and a desire to learn more about his sister’s last days see Eden staying around, delving into Apple’s life. He has the help of Molly, Apple’s good friend who is something of a loose canon herself. Apple seems not to have left any kind of digital footprint – she was opposed to cell-towers and paranoid about identity theft via the Internet. But even Apple had a phone, which must have got lost when she disappeared.

So tracing the Apple’s movements will take a different kind of investigating. Molly’s irritating but she’s the only one who takes Eden seriously. There’s also Bisi, the social worker who is hoping Eden will find it in himself to be a father to Finn. Uncle and nephew don’t hit it off at first, but as Eden makes more of an effort, the idea that he could parent the boy starts to be a possibility, just as the trouble he gets into over his investigations causes alarm bells to go off with social services. This creates some terrific tension and emotional pull for the story, which also weaves in scenes from Eden’s childhood.

He went to the window and was shocked to see the familiar white hull of a sailing boat, moored on a pontoon just off the beach.
He blinked. It was Calliope. She had not been there yesterday.
He grabbed his trousers.
Calliope had been their parents’ yacht – their father’s really. Apple and Eden had lived in that 32-foot boat for almost two years. Eden had hated it, and, looking at it, he realised he still did.
Clearly Apple had not felt the same way about it. Seeing it on the news bulletins, rolling in the waves, loose boom crossing from side to side across the cockpit as it drifted, had been one thing. Seeing it here, right outside the window, was another.

On top of all this, you’ve got a fabulous setting. Apple’s cottage is right on the estuary of the seaside town of Teignmouth, with a living room that opens out onto a beach. You’ve got lots of boating going on, adventures at sea, and the special vibe seaside towns have, with busy cafés and pubs catering to tourists and weekenders. It all adds up to a very satisfying read, with a plot that has you racing through the pages as Eden’s discoveries take him towards increasing danger, not only personally, but also for Finn.

I was very happy to discover this book recently, a new series I imagine will appeal to readers of Ann Cleeves’s books. I can’t wait for the next book featuring Eden Driscoll to find out if he settles in to a new life on the Devon coast. The Burning Tide is due for release next July. The Red Shore is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse – a gripping mystery-thriller set in the Swiss Alps

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I like a good thriller set in an environment which hampers the investigation. There are plenty set in Scotland, but The Sanatorium might be the first I’ve read set in the Swiss Alps.

It’s January, so winter is well established, when Elin and her boyfriend, Will, arrive at a swanky hotel that was a former sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. They are there to help her brother celebrate his engagement to Laure, who works at the hotel, but before the other invitees arrive, the weather worsens, with avalanche warnings threatening the only road out.

Which is one problem. When Laure goes missing Elin starts digging. She’s a cop on extended leave after losing her mother to cancer and a particularly horrific case that left her traumatised. Elin’s also worried about her brother Isaac and has a score to settle. He was there when their young brother died, and because of their constant rivalry, of Isaac’s endless need to prove himself, Elin has often wondered if Isaac was being honest in his account of what happened all those years ago. So there’s that.

When weather conditions deteriorate to such an extent, the call goes out to evacuate the hotel, a body is found in the pool. Now that the last bus out has gone, the police can’t get in, so Elin is asked by the hotel owner, Lucas, to help. Despite her ongoing anxiety – she has panic attacks and flashbacks – Elin has to step up. She has been ignoring her boss’s frequent emails asking when she’s coming back to work, and trying not to think about Will’s wanting to make their relationship more permanent. So she’s got a lot going on in her personal life, too.

But the reader knows this is going to be Elin’s chance to prove her worth, without the support of her team, with a killer somewhere in the hotel, a missing woman and a dead body. The weather batters and threatens and the remaining guests and staff are unsettled. There’s also the mystery hovering in the background of what happened to Daniel, the hotel’s architect, who disappeared a couple of years before.

And then there’s the hotel itself. An austere architectural monstrosity, ground-breaking to some, like Will, who being an architect, is impressed. But Elin finds it unnerving. So much glass, and windows that don’t let you ignore the weather outside. But it’s the building’s former purpose that is really chilling. Laure shows Elin a storeroom before she disappears, which still houses some grim-looking equipment. Even the artwork that graces the hotel walls is a stark reminder that many people came here with incurable illnesses.

Bending, she gathers the fallen papers into a pile. She realises it’s not only papers but photographs. The image on top is haunting – a row of women sitting outside on the verandah. They’re thin, sickly looking, their eyes turned to the camera. Looking right into hers.
Patients, Elin thinks, shivering at this tangible intrusion of the hotel’s past into its present,, suddenly acutely aware of how little separates her from what came before.
All at once she feels a tightening in her throat. One breath is not following the other as it should, instead hiding, elusive, impossible to grasp. Her chest is heaving, her lungs feel like they’re filled with something liquid.
Don’t panic. Don’t let it take over. Not here. Not in front of Laure.
Laure looks at her closely. ‘Is something wrong?’
Elin fumbles in her pocket, clamping her hand around her inhaler. ‘I’m fine.’

So there’s an awful lot here to build tension, inside the hotel and out, with Elin’s inner struggles and the case to worry about. I started this novel as an audiobook which is really well-performed by Gemma Whelan, who has to do French and German accents and pulls off the characterisation with aplomb. But it was such an engrossing story, I wanted to get my hands on a physical copy as well. I galloped through it all and found it overall a pretty good escapist read – four stars – with the promise of two more mysteries in the Elin Warner series to look forward to.

Book Review: We Solve Murders by Richard Osman – a very funny crime caper and first of a series

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I came somewhat late to The Thursday Murder Club party, only picking the book up when a movie starring Helen Mirren and other big names was in the wind. It was such a fun read, I was keen to get my hands on the first of Richard Osman’s new series:, We Solve Murders. And I’m glad I did.

The story begins with Amy Wheeler, a private security officer – a body guard no less. Her current job is looking after world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio at her home on a remote island off the South Carolina coast. It should be a cinch, lots of relaxing by the pool and better than decent meals served by an ex-Navy Seal turned chef. But someone wants to kill Amy, and before you know it, she’s on the run with Rosie, who has her own plane, which comes in handy.

Next thing, the scene switches to the more hum-drum world of Amy’s father-in-law, Steve – an ex-copper turned private investigator. Living in a quiet English village in the New Forest, where ponies wander the streets as if they own the place, which they kind of do, his cases are no more tricky than missing pets and minor misdemeanours. He has mates at the pub and never misses Quiz Night, but still desperately misses Debbie, his late wife.

Amy and Steve are good pals, Amy on the phone to her father-in-law most days with her encouraging banter. So when she needs help, Steve’s the person she turns to. There follows a very complicated plot, involving money laundering, social media influencers trying to hit the big time, and the growing reality that Amy can’t trust anyone – except Rosie and Steve, that is.

The three make an odd team – Amy thrives on adrenaline and has passed her employer Jeff’s psychopath test with flying colours – Jeff’s criteria when hiring security staff. Rosie is all glamour, seemingly ageless, drinks everyone under the table and has an eye for the men. She’s quite keen on Steve, but he’s still devoted to Debbie and the quiet life. He also hates planes in spite being inveigled into joining an investigation that will take them to Dubai, via St Lucia and Ireland.

‘Cat, ginger, unapproachable. Haughty even, the little bugger. Mason’s Lane. Contact attempted but rebuffed. 3.58 a.m.’
Steve puts his Dictaphone back in his pocket. He hears the sound of the ginger cat inexpertly scaling a back fence. It was not often he saw an unfamiliar cat on his walk. It was almost certainly nothing, but almost everything was almost certainly nothing, wasn’t it? And yet some things did eventually turn out to be something. He once caught an armed robber because of a Twix wrapper in a blast furnace. One rarely knows the significance of things at the time, and it doesn’t cost a penny piece to note things down.

While there is a well-plotted mystery to keep you turning the pages and keep you guessing, for me the book was more about the characters and how they bounce off each other. Steve in particular has a stream of consciousness that is very funny, his ex-copper-like observations on a Cictaphone for seemingly ordinary things, his way of summing people up. But Steve, like pretty much everyone here, if full of surprises, even at times surprising himself.

This isn’t probably the book for you if you like to analyse every clue and figure it all out yourself through logic and deduction. But do pick it up if you’d like a lively, fun read to while away a wet weekend. There’s plenty of excitement – shootings, fights, helicopter, jet and jet-boat rides, and killers – plenty of those too. I imagine this would make another terrific movie or TV series – it’s full of visually interesting and unpredictable scenes, interesting characters and great dialogue. I loved it and will be keen for the next in the series. We Solve Murders is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey – a story about friendship, growing up and a small town’s dark secrets

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

The List of Suspicious Things is a debut novel which takes you back to 1979. Thatcher has just been elected PM and the Yorkshire Ripper is at large, killing young women, while the police have few clues to his identity. In Miv’s Yorkshire town the mills have closed down, so things are already tough, and likely to get tougher. At home, Miv’s mother never speaks, Auntie Jean delivers food to the table and terse comments, while her dad seems a bit lost.

When the family thinks a move down south might be a good idea, Miv is desperate. At twelve, she’s bright but a bit socially gauche, partly due to her home life, so her friendship with Sharon is too precious to lose. She’ll do anything to save it so decides to investigate and catch the Yorkshire Ripper. She buys a notebook and makes lists, and with Sharon’s help, begins to look for suspicious characters close to home.

As names are added to the list, the reader is introduced to the people of the town, beginning with Mr Bashir who runs the corner shop. He’s one of the nicest adults Miv knows but he has dark eyes and a moustache, so makes the list. There’s a truck driver from her father’s work, people she knows from church and a teacher among others. Other people in the community include Helen at the library – because where else do you go for information in 1979?

The people we saw on our way to school were like the buildings we passed: predictable and unchanging. At eight-fifteen we chimed, ‘Morning!’ in perfect unison to Mrs Pearson, out walking her snappy Jack Russell. After her, we knew we would say hello and stop for a chat with the man in the corner shop, as he would be outside by now, arranging the daily newspaper stand. He would call us the ‘Terrible Twosome’ and we would laugh, as if it were the first time he had said it.
Just before we got there, Sharon nudged me hard in the ribs and muttered, ‘Watch out!’ under her breath. Following her gaze, I saw another familiar person, the only person we didn’t say hello to on our journey and whose name we somehow knew was Brian, though we didn’t use it. To us, he was just ‘the man in the overalls’.

Of course, the girls don’t catch the Ripper, but their investigations uncover some of the darker elements going on in the town – the racism, the misogyny, the prejudice against those who are a bit different. Miv learns one or two secrets that are a bit close to home, and finds herself caught up in some of the fallout. She’s a girl who is left too much to her own devices, there’s just too much going on at home for consistent parenting. But then in 1979, kids were often left to find their own entertainment and the town is their playground.

Through Miv you also see the struggles of the adults in the story. Sometimes the narrative shifts to Austin, Miv’s dad; Helen; or Mr Bashir, who each have personal sadness and secrets. The setting – the late ’70s is well realised. Mr Bashir is always singing along to his favourite Elton John songs, jeans go from bellbottoms to stovepipes and Sharon buys a glittery lipgloss to try. And it’s also very Yorkshire, though not posh Yorkshire – the kids go ‘laiking about’ and at least one character’s house has an outdoor loo.

While overall I enjoyed the book, I did feel at times that it was rather overloaded with issues. So many dark things happen with a lot to fall on Miv’s small shoulders. Still, The List of Suspicious Things is a quirky and interesting novel, easy to get lost in. I was reminded of Joanna Cannon’s The Trouble with Goats and Sheep – another novel about two young girls investigating – in this case a neighbour’s disappearance – also set in the ’70s, and which is well worth checking out. The List of Suspicious Things is a three-star read from me.

Book Review: Still Life by Val McDermid – a layered cold case mystery with lots to keep you interested

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’d long known Val McDermid to be one of the top Scottish crime writers, ever since Wire in the Blood showed on our TV screens in the 2000s. While I enjoyed the characters, I’d never really taken to the books as I’m not such a fan of plots about serial killers. But the stories were always complex and the characters engaging. Then I came upon Still Life, a mystery in the Karen Pirie series.

Karen is a DCI from Fife working in a Historic Cases unit. When a body is found by fishermen in the Firth of Forth, Karen is called to investigate due to the dead man’s connection to a politically sensitive missing person’s case she’d had a hand in years before. Karen is a little reluctant as the local police have just started their investigations but is given no choice by her snooty boss “the Dog Biscuit” with Sergeant Daisy Mortimer as her back-up. Daisy is with the original team and with her French degree will be particularly useful when their case takes them to Paris..

This is an engrossing mystery not least because of the interesting characters. Victim James Auld had absconded when the police began to finger him for his brother’s presumed death, although the body of Ian Auld was never found. Ian was a high-level civil servant in the Scotland Office when he disappeared.

There’s a connection to art theft and a well-known Scottish artist who painted unique collage styled portraits of the rich and powerful, lost to suicide around a decade before. And throw in the fact that James had a seven-year stint in the Foreign Legion, and was a talented jazz musician and you start to feel a real interest in the victim. So many strands to investigate and very few clues.

‘He couldn’t have fallen and hit his head on the way in? There’s plenty of rocks along that part of the Fife coast.’
‘The injury’s too regular for that. If you pressed me, I’d be inclined towards a baseball bat or a steel pipe.’
‘So, homicide.’
The professor gave a sharp sigh. ‘You know it’s not my job to make that judgement.’
‘I wasn’t asking, Jenny.’ He softened his words with a bashful smile, then turned to DS Mortimer. ‘The passport?’
She spotted the evidence bags on the side counter and picked up the two relevant ones. ‘It’s a French passport. Issued just over two years ago to a Paul Allard. Like the prof said, he’s forty-nine. His driving licence was issued in Paris at the same time – ‘
‘What? Exactly the same time?’
‘Same date. That’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, nobody has a passport and a driving licence issued on the same date, do they?’

Meanwhile Karen’s Historic Cases sidekick, Jason Murray (the Mint), is left carrying on with the case of a three-year-old body found in a camper van parked in a garage. And if that’s not enough to keep the story humming along, Karen is also upset when the man who killed the love of her life is released from prison. A woman of strong emotions and fierce actions, her grief bubbles to the surface again, threatening to overwhelm a promising new relationship.

But in the end, it’s Karen’s intelligence that shines through. She’s an impressive tactician, works hard and is brilliant in the interview room. The story allows Jason and Daisy to show their strengths too in very different ways, with Daisy a new recruit for more in the series.

If you enjoy character-driven police procedurals, this is a great read with lively prose full of Scottish vernacular. This didn’t hamper my understanding of what was going on, but added an appealing touch of local colour. I broke my rule about reading a series in order – Still Life is number six in the Karen Pirie series – but it didn’t seem to matter; it worked fine as a standalone novel. I’ll be checking in with Karen again and definitely trying some other Val McDermid mysteries. She’s definitely reliable for a satisfying read. Still Life earns a comfortable four stars..

Book Review: Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards – a cosy mystery with plenty of Golden Age panache

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

I was in the mood for a cosy mystery and was intrigued by this new book by Martin Edwards, the fifth in a series about the investigations of Rachel Savernake, a young woman of private means with an interest in murder. Edwards has immaculate credentials, being something of an expert in Golden Age murder mysteries. He’s the President of the Detection Club, a group formed in 1930 by crime writers such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers and where Knox Commandments are sacrosanct.

These are rules about what a crime novel must and mustn’t do – things like the murderer must appear early on in the story, the detective must declare any clues they discover as they discover them and also must not be the killer. Among others. Martin Edwards has also been awarded the Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to crime fiction, so I felt this book was definitely worth a shot.

As Hemlock Bay begins, we are soon reading the diary of Basil Palmer who is planning a murder in the North of England seaside resort of the title. He wants to dispose of the man responsible for his wife’s death – someone he has never met. Pushing him off a cliff seems a good idea. Around the same time, our amateur sleuth, Rachel, has just bought a painting, also of Hemlock Bay, by well-known Surrealist painter Virginia Penrhos, which shows, if you look carefully enough, someone lying dead at the bottom of a cliff.

Rachel lives in a large London house with her chauffeur Trueman, his wife Hetty, and Trueman’s sister Martha. Hetty cooks and Martha is a kind of companion-maid, but they all get on well, as equals almost – a kind of family of amateur sleuths. There’s some history here that you no doubt get more of in the earlier books, which I have yet to read. While this scenario does arouse the reader’s curiosity, it was perfectly fine to read Hemlock Bay as a standalone novel.

When London crime reporter Jacob Flint interviews a clairvoyant claiming to have had a vision of someone being pushed from a cliff at Hemlock Bay, he pays a call on Rachel. What he reveals sets them all off together for a summer stay at the seaside resort with the aim of preventing the murder. Flint has had some previous lucky breaks following Rachel’s nous for crime – also in the previous books – and this seems set to happen again here.

‘… I’ve been told when and where the crime is due to take place, but there’s no clue to the identity of the victim, let alone whoever is planning the crime.’
‘Rachel pursed her lips. ‘A good start. Carry on.’
As Jacob described the letter and his meeting with Gareth Bellamy, alias The Great Hallemby, he was conscious of her intense concentration. Impossible not to feel a warm glow. He admired Rachel, and there was no doubt that she was extremely good-looking. But something set her apart from other attractive women. Her sudden shifts of mood were unpredictable and occasionally disturbing. When provoked into anger, she was capable of being astonishingly ruthless. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but there were moments when she scared him.
‘Hemlock Bay,’ Martha said as he reached the end of his story. ‘Well, well.’

The story is peppered with many interesting characters – among them Sir Harold Jackson, who with wife Sadie, turned Hemlock Bay into a luxury resort; Virginia Penrhos, who is staying there in a lighthouse with her moody lover, Fion, and Louis Carson, schemer an all-round dodgy character and his charming wife Pearl. The perspective flips around among our sleuths and Basil’s diary, with a lot of time spent with Flint, who is energetic and determined, and also a bit in love with Rachel.

It all comes together with a twisty plot and a barrel of surprises at the end, as Rachel reveals who did what and why – a scene rather like many a Golden Age mystery, with all the suspects and witnesses gathered together, listening with baited breath. Martin Edwards has set the story up with clues peppered throughout for the careful reader, and these are listed in the Cluefinder at the back of the book – a popular trope from fifty years ago.

The result is a pleasurable read, a clever cosy mystery, with engaging characters, plenty of warmth and humour and smart writing. Everything you could want with a relaxing crime story. In the background is enough period detail – talks of the Slump (it’s 1930, so we know hard times are a coming), fashionable pastimes for the wealthy (including naturism) – to add enough colour without slowing down the plot. Hemlock Bay is a treat – a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent – an enthralling mystery for word lovers

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

How to head up a book’s chapters is a big decision for any fiction author. Do you give them enticing titles or apposite quotes, or just leave them numbered? Susie Dent begins each of the chapters in Guilty by Definition with an interesting word and a dictionary-style description. Some are really old, like “mathom, noun (Old English): a precious thing; a valuable gift”; others more recent, like the verb “broggle (seventeenth century): to poke with a pointed instrument”; and there’s one or two that are quite new, like “zugzwang, (twentieth century): the obligation to make a move, but every move is detrimental”.

The main characters in the novel are lexicographers, editors for the Clarendon English Dictionary, so words are their thing. Not just words and their meanings, but their history, their earliest known usage and how they have changed over time. This alone would have been quite interesting as the characters are all engaging, have secrets and things happening in their personal lives. The team of four are headed by Martha, whose sister Charlie was a PhD student who went missing a decade before. Martha had escaped to Germany for a decade and hasn’t been long home, slotting back into the house she grew up in with her widowed father.

She’d known there would be ghosts in Oxford. Martha wasn’t afraid of any headless horsemen, or nuns haunting the local ruins; it was Charlie, always Charlie she was afraid would find her. There had been times in the first year after her sister’s disappearance when Martha’s heart would stop as she spotted her through the crowd: the long blonde hair, the shapeless cardigan draped over a thin cotton dress. She’d hear a laugh, throaty and sudden, or catch a movement, a walk, a twist in the shoulders, and she’d be certain. Just for a moment. Then the illusion would shatter and the person she knew to be her sister would resolve into a stranger.

Also working at Clarendon we have Alex, a stylish older woman with a penchant for nice things; Safiya, a lively young woman who shares a flat with others her age; and Simon, who misses family life since his divorce. Their boss is Jonathan, a Shakespearean expert who is television’s go-to commentator for all things to do with the bard. He has good looks and charm in spades, perfect for the media.

They’re all just puddling along, lost in the rarified world of words, when a cryptic letter, penned by someone calling themselves Chorus, has them reaching for their pencils to decipher its clues. The letter starts them off on a quest to investigate Charlie’s disappearance, something Martha feels very sensitive about, as you might expect. Charlie was the golden girl of the family, and with Martha’s mother now dead, her father is still apparently grieving all this time later.

Then there are the postcards. This Chorus seems to be sending them not just to the core group at Clarendon, but other witnesses they visit to ask about Charlie. Seemingly quotations from Shakespeare, some of them verge on “poison pen”. There are more letters, and some wonderful scenes as Martha and co. delve into archives, visit old acquaintances, and uncover some disturbing facts about Charlie. We see Oxford in all its glory – old ruins and scholarly institutions, May Day celebrations, cafés and watering holes, leafy parks ideal for cycling. I was often googling as I read for images so I could imagine the settings all the better.

It all adds up to a wonderful read, erudite and witty, but not without its darker moments, as you’d expect of a good whodunit. Which this is. If you love cryptic crosswords, this will be a delight, but there’s still plenty to enjoy without trying to figure out the clues. I am thrilled to see that Martha will be back next year in another mystery in the series – Death Writ Large, out next March. Guilty by Definition is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: The Unquiet Grave by Dervla McTiernan – a pacy new Cormac Reilly crime thriller

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

I’ll read anything by Dervla McTiernan, so was happy to put my hand up for her new book in the police Sergeant Cormac Reilly series, The Unquiet Grave, when it was offered by Netgalley. This is the fourth mystery featuring Reilly, and I’ve always found him an interesting character – unrelenting yet sensitive, logical but also good at reading people. He always seems to be up against it, whether it’s relationship problems, pressure to close a case early or issues with colleagues. Or all three – which is what we have here.

In previous books, Reilly has struggled to fit in, returning to Galway after years in the force in Dublin. A stickler for doing things by the book, he’s been a whistle blower, which is why, in the new book, he’s being headhunted to run a team investigating police malpractice – not a job to earn him popularity. While he’s mulling this over, he and his sidekick, Constable Peter Fisher, are called to a body discovered in a bog. Fitted out to look like a ritual killing, of the kind discovered in ancient burials, the presence of underwear suggests otherwise.

The body turns out to be that of a polarising head teacher at the local school – Thaddeus Grey, who disappeared two years ago. Found on the outskirts of town near his house, Grey expected high standards of the students, and it turns out, was a bit of a bully. Cormac soon narrows his focus to three students who particularly bore the brunt of Grey’s unpleasantness. But when another body is found in similar circumstances, his bosses and the press are jumping on the idea that it’s a serial killer. Cormac soon has a battle on his hands to bring the actual killer or killers to justice.

Meanwhile, Cormac’s ex-girlfriend, Emma, now married and expecting a child, is desperately worried about her husband Finn who has gone missing in Paris. The French police give her the brush off as he’s not a French citizen and she gets the feeling everyone thinks she’s a hysterical female, whose husband suddenly has cold feet about being a family man. Finn was a cyber security expert in the forces until recently, so Cormac pulls a few strings with an old army mate and gets things going with a police investigation. But nobody’s optimistic.

There’s a further plot thread involving a computer tech. wizard planning a fraud against the lottery company he works for. How all these story threads come together is a masterpiece of crime mystery plotting and keeps the story humming along. What makes it particularly interesting are the moral dilemmas faced by Cormac and Peter as they try to find justice for those caught up in crime, as well as problems in their personal lives.

These issues add layers of complexity that give the story a bit more heft. There’s danger too, with some pacy, edge-of-the-seat moments. Add the relentless Galway weather – it’s either freezing or raining or both, and we’ve got the atmospheric settings I’ve come to expect from McTiernan, who takes us to Paris, London, Dublin as well as some boggy rural corners.

All in all I wasn’t disappointed with The Unquiet Grave and it was great to check in with Cormac Reilly again – I do hope there will be more in the series. I really enjoyed the e-audiobook edition of the novel, published by HarperAudio and read by Aoife McMahon, who captured the personalities of all the characters, which were many and varied. With a publishing date of 30 April, The Unquiet Grave is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Stone Town by Margaret Hickey – atmospheric outback noir and a new case for our troubled cop

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This book is the second of Hickey’s books featuring Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Ariti, whose life was going nowhere in the first book, Cutter’s End, until he was rescued by a case that took him back to where he lived as a boy. Now he’s living in his late mother’s house in Booralama and has taken charge of the local police station with a wider region of small towns to look after. This is rural Australia, north of Adelaide, and Mark soon has a new case, bringing us to the small town of the title.

Mark is called out on a night of torrential rain. Three teenagers have discovered a body on land that was once mined for gold, now popular with bird-watchers. But what was Aidan Sleeth doing, wandering about at night, some distance from home. A property developer, he’d been buying up land to turn what was a haven for wildlife into sections for new homes and making enemies along the way. Which might be why he’s been shot in the head, execution style.

As it often goes in these country towns, no one wants to talk about it. The teenagers are too upset, their families protective. The neighbours are reluctant to get involved. Whether Mark likes it or not, two detectives are sent from Adelaide to help with the case, both in their own ways arrogant, the senior detective taking over his office, the junior detective making brash comments that jar. And they’re more worried about a missing officer than the murder they’re supposed to be investigating.

Stone Town, barely twenty-five kilometres from where he lived in Booralama, may as well have been another universe. Consisting mainly of old farming families and an influx of tree-changers, the area was known for its mines, remnants of settler stone houses scattered about the bush, and significant wheat yield.
Riveting, Mark remembered thinking in Year 10 local history. Take that, Machu Pichu.
But the gold from Stone Town was long gone and it had been years since farmers’ sons returned from boarding schools to make a life on the land.

Detective Sergeant Natalie Whitstead has been doing surveillance work on the wife of an organised crime boss, Tony Scopelliti, currently serving a sentence in prison. When her car is discovered near Stone Town, Mark can only assume she’s dead, her body thrown down a mineshaft. Brief chapters in italic type would suggest otherwise, making the reader feel like a child calling out at a Punch ‘n Judy show, “she’s over here” and hoping the police will find her in time.

Of course the two cases will at some point converge, and Mark, an experienced and sensible officer, will show up the Adelaide cops, who turn out to be more complex characters than first assumed. If that isn’t enough, his old mate Superintendent Conti has warned Mark that there’s a leak to suggest one of his new colleagues is getting information back to Scopelliti. Can Mark keep an ear out?

So Mark has a lot on his plate. To make things more interesting, he’s going through a few personal issues: missing his kids since his divorce, grief for his late mother, as well as that feeling you have when you’re over fifty and back at your childhood home – a sense that life has passed you by. As a reader you can’t but like the guy but also you worry about him.

What I really liked about the story was the way Hickey captures rural life, particularly the old allegiances among people who have grown up in an area and unfortunately for some, know all their secrets. Wherever Mark goes, people fondly remember his mother, a woman who was close friends with fellow members the Country Women’s Association, who to many seem to have a strong say on how things are done. Mark’s interactions with these women and other crusty characters, particularly at the pub, often add to the gentle humour that runs through the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed Stone Town, and will definitely be keen to check in with Senior Sergeant Ariti again. Hickey has written three in the series as well as a couple of stand-alone titles. If you’ve enjoyed other Aussie Rural Noir authors such as Jane Harper, Garry Disher and Sarah Bailey, Margaret Hickey is well worth giving a try. Stone Town is a four-star read from me.