Tag: family secrets

Book Review: Bone Lands by Pip Fioretti – first in an Outback Noir series and a cracking good story

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Pip Fioretti writes a kind of genre blending crime novel with Bone Lands, which combines everything that we love about Outback Noir – the big skies and harsh, dry landscapes, the Aussie battlers who live there – with a hardboiled policeman and puts it all in the historical setting of 1911. And as a character, mounted trooper Senior Constable Gus Hawkins has a lot going for him. He’s complex in that he’s well-educated and sounds it, with several tours in the Boer War behind him which have left him with both mental and physical scars. He’s smart and resourceful, but that old PTSD means he drinks too much and gets into fights.

But then, everyone here seems to get into fights, well, just about. It’s a hardscrabble existence out in the back-blocks of New South Wales. Hawkins’ little town of Calpa is a ‘blink and you miss it’ kind of place, with a pub, a post-office, the police station and not a lot else. It’s a one-man station, with tasks often concerned with managing unrest – there’s not a lot to do in Calpa but drink your wages away – local admin like gun permits and the like. But riding home from monitoring behaviour at a dance honouring the King’s coronation, Hawkins comes across a serious crime – three young members of the same family brutally murdered.

The Kirkbride family are well-off landowners, running a huge sheep station, and not well liked in this haves and have-nots kind of place. With the endless work required to make money from wool, they have a huge labour force of hardened men of the land. Life is cheap and violence comes easy. But when the violence is against their own, the grim landowner and patriarch Robert Kirkbride is oddly reluctant to have Hawkins nosing around too much, preferring to believe in the ‘robbery gone wrong’ theory. It doesn’t help that Gus has had a romantic connection with the remaining daughter, Flora.

It was a six-hour ride upriver to Bourke. In summer it was a bastard of a ride, one I preferred to do at night if I had a choice. The thing to do was carry a tin of Josephson’s Australian Ointment. Buckskin breeches were made so you didn’t chafe, but six or more hours in the saddle on a hot day and everything chafed, from balls to brain. The glare was blinding but our official hat was a jaunty pillbox affair, which would be just the thing for a Parisian gendarme but was ridiculous out here. I shoved it in a saddlebag and wore a cabbage-tree hat like every other man in the bush.
The sun was on its way across a vast blue sky, a westerly wind blowing. I noticed a shape ahead in the distance, moving slowly. Dancer stopped at the sight of it. He didn’t like things that moved, nor did he like things that didn’t move. So there we were, his ears pricked forward, completely still, every muscle tensed and ready to flee.
‘How’d you get into the police force, mate?’ I said, stroking his neck. ‘Bribed someone, eh?’

But Gus is determined to find out what happened. These were his friends and he wants to bring some closure for Flora, too, who has become unhinged by the deaths of her siblings. It doesn’t help when two detectives arrive from Sydney with their own way of doing things, but none of the nous for dealing with the locality or shifty farm labourers. If conflict is the linch pin of a good story, then this one has it in spades. You can’t help but feel for Gus, even if he is, quite often, his own worst enemy.

Other characters are interesting too, particularly in relation to Gus. His initial dislike of Trooper Lonergan, a somewhat wet behind the ears type, sent from Bourke to manage the station while Gus looks after the detectives, mellows into friendship. Other characters are lightly drawn but the author captures their essentials in a way that makes them immediate. The few female characters – this really is a man’s world – have to manage as best they can, and we can’t help but sympathise over how they’re treated. The plot steams along towards some surprising revelations to make for a very satisfying mystery.

Bone Lands is atmospheric and absorbing, with sentences that are nicely honed and laced with wit, making Gus Hawkins good company. It’s a great start to a series – there’s already a second book (Skull River) with another due out next year, which is good news. Bone Lands is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Buckeye by Patrick Ryan – a sweeping and emotional historical read

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Patrick Ryan’s novel, Buckeye, haunted me for days after I finished it. The story takes us to the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, starting off during World War II. We follow the lives of two couples, Becky and Cal Jenkins, and Margaret and Felix Salt, through the events of the war, and on to the lives of their children. Events of the twentieth century, wars certainly, but social changes too disturb their lives, but nothing compares to how they deal with events themselves.

All four of them have something that makes them different. Cal has one leg shorter than the other. This exempts him from military service, so he drifts into marriage with Becky, who has a gift. She can communicate with the dead. Astonishingly beautiful Margaret hides the secret of being abandoned as a baby at an orphanage, while Felix, who is gay, tries to lead a conventional life with her. The war shakes them all up, well and truely.

The story begins on the day victory is declared in Europe (VE Day), 1945, with a young Cal working in his father-in-law’s hardware store. He’s interrupted by the arrival of Margaret who has to know what all the commotion is all about and asks if Cal has a radio. They listen to the news together and exchange an unexpected kiss. From there we dip back into the past to discover Cal’s story and Margaret’s, each of which is tragic in its own way.

When he read, heard, and watched the news, he wondered how many people were out there doing the same thing he was—scratching their heads as they tried to figure out how to prioritize their worries and confront their prejudices; drawing their own maps with their fingers crossed.

Cal’s father Everett lives out of town, traumatised by a previous war as well as the loss of two children and his wife to illness, becoming irascible and a hoarder. I really enjoyed the character of Everett, particularly the way he writes angry letters to whichever president is in office at the time. His war service has made him fiercely against war and this theme recurs during the book as more wars upend people’s lives.

Margaret is an interesting character in that she never reveals anything about her upbringing, determined to appear ordinary – if only she knew what that looked like. And it’s hard to quietly figure that out when everyone, particularly men, see nothing but her stunning good looks. So she has secrets from Felix, who likewise hopes for a normal family life. If only the war hadn’t got in the way, he might have kept up the pretence.

Cal keeps on trying to make the best of things, dealing with a demanding father-in-law, as well as his own difficult father, who never shows him any affection. He struggles to understand his wife’s talent which puts her in demand for readings with people who have lost loved ones, some from WWI, and more when the next war rolls along. The complications of children put the characters through even more, with more secrets, but also possibilities.

Therein, she thought, lies the unbearable solitude of a lie: you’re alone when you tell it, alone when you live it, alone when you try to dismantle it.

Like many who lived through the twentieth century, the characters of Buckeye have had their lives overturned by world events. There’s trauma and the tragic losses incurred by war. The prosperous post-war period that imagined a bright future for people but with that a restrictive social order. The changing times with the Civil Rights movement, while gay rights and feminism also get a look in.

It all adds up to a gripping read and an emotional one, certainly enhanced by characters you sympathise with. And then there’s the fine writing. I shall certainly be looking out for more by this author. Buckeye is a five-star read from me.

Book Review: Tata by Valérie Perrin – an evocative story with a complex web of family secrets

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Valérie Perrin is well-known for her bestseller, Fresh Water for Flowers, a book that’s been on my to-read list for a little while. So when Tata popped up on Netgalley, I grabbed the chance to read it. And I’m so glad I did. Tata (which means Auntie) is such an engrossing story, bringing us into the world of Agnès Dugain, a film director who has been unable to work since her actor husband left her. A phone call out of the blue from a small town in Burgundy informs her that her beloved Aunt Colette has died. Which would be sad news, indeed, except Agnès believes her aunt was buried in the Gueugnon cemetery three years ago.

It soon transpires that Colette lived quietly in a secluded house for the last three years, carrying a secret. Agnès leaves Paris to view the body and to discover anything she can about her aunt’s final years to solve the mystery of who is buried in her aunt’s place. The story flips back to the 1950s and the farm where Colette grew up with her little brother, Jean. There’s not much parental love, and the children are expected to work, rather than further their education. But, in spite of this, Jean is discovered to be a musical prodigy.

Colette will do anything to protect Jean, but fortunately there’s help from Blaise, both her friend and the landowner’s son from the chateau, where there’s a magnificent piano. We learn of her apprenticeship to a cobbler in the town, and where Colette finds a niche and some happiness. Meanwhile, Agnès receives from Colette’s good friend and co-conspirator a suitcase full of cassette tapes and so listens to her aunt’s story in her own words.

There are numerous plot threads, and more secrets are slowly revealed. We’re taken to Gueugnon in the 1960s, and its football team, back further to events of the war and its legacy. You read about Agnès’s own career and how she met her famous actor husband. As she looks into the past, Agnès is forced out of the slump that has taken over her since her divorce and reconnects with old friends and makes new ones. She starts to think about a new story.

Throughout are numerous cultural references, including the movies that have inspired Agnès, the music of her father, the popular fashions and songs that evolved over time. I loved coming across film titles of movies I’d also loved, such as La Double Vie de Véronique, The Piano, and Un Coeur en Hiver, which I remember from a film festival. There are scenes in cafés, although Agnès doesn’t often have any appetite, but others eat and we’re treated to that as well. But at heart it’s a story about what we will do to protect the people we love, about friendship and the ties that make us a family. It’s heartbreaking – there are cruel characters as well as terrible historical events – but it’s also hopeful, charmingy written and full of wit.

Tata seemed to me a quintessentially French novel, and while I knew nothing of this particular small town, it was easy to imagine the stone houses, the narrow streets, the little shops and cafés. And the style of storytelling seems very French as well. I loved it. I could happily have started back at page one and read it all again. Tata is due for publication on 23 June, and I read it thanks to Netgalley and Europa Editions. It’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Sea Sisters by Louise Douglas – mystery, tragedy and suspense in a stunning setting

~ Judith ~ 3 Comments

Now here’s the perfect book if you’re feeling nostalgic for summer seaside holidays. The Sea Sisters, takes you to coastal Brittany, and the charming seaside town of Morranez. Here Mila Shepherd is one third of the Toussaints Detective Agency, for the most part helping to find missing persons. But Mila has her own private tragedy. She failed to answer a call from her step-sister Sophie the day Sophie died, drowned in a storm with husband Charlie in a boating accident.

Mila has given up her life in England to be a parent to Ani their teenage daughter and to atone for the guilt she feels. Discovering a note left in Sophie’s kitchen brings back questions about what Sophie and Charlie were doing taking their their boat out in a storm. But before she can dwell on that, she’s soon busy with a new case: the arrival of an English woman, Nicole Stevenson, who believes she is not who her family think she is.

Convinced that she is really Evie Albert, who went missing as a two year old during the annual Morvarc’h music festival, Nicole wants help to prove it. She and her sisters have discovered in their late father’s safe a folder of newspaper clippings about Evie’s disappearance and a photo of Evie’s mother Adeline who looks astonishingly like Nicole.

As the festival approaches for another year, and Ani makes plans with her friends, Mila is reminded of her summers spent with Sophie and the people she used to hang out with during her teens. Among them is her colleague Carter Jackson, who brings to the agency his expertise in dealing with police, and who zooms around the countryside on his Harley.

Soon the mystery of what happened to Evie is all-consuming. Nicole is frail, suffering from an auto-immune disease, so discovering the truth is time critical. We learn of Adeline’s transient lifestyle as a tarot card reader and her connection to the Holywell Commune, a cult-like group living in an old convent on the edge of town and who are distrustful of strangers. It’s going to take some ingenuity to discover if anyone there still remembers little Evie, as the commune is run by the domineering figure of Augustin Golliard.

The story takes some twists and turns as questions surface involving smuggling and petty crime. The two mysteries at times overlap and both Carter and Mila take risks which nicely builds suspense, with enough surprises to keep you interested right to the end. As I turned the last page, however, I was almost sad to be leaving Morranez as Douglas makes it feel like you are on holiday in a French seaside town in the height of summer.

I devoured this light, easy read which blended mystery, atmosphere and nostalgia and even a touch of romance in a well-plotted story. I’ll be keen to read the earlier books in Douglas’s Brittany series. The Sea Sisters, due to be published on 1 June, it’s a four-star read from me. My thanks to Netgalley and Boldwood Books for a reading copy in return for my review.

Book Review: Love Lane by Patrick Gale – part two in the Harry Cane story

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Patrick Gale has long been a favourite author of mine, so of course I’d read A Place Called Winter when it came out in 2015. I’m pretty sure it was one of my top reads for that year. Its story was inspired by the life of the author’s own great-grandfather, a man who had left his wife and young daughter to become a farmer in the Canadian prairies. The novel, set in the early part of the 20th century, describes a secret love, the effects of the Great War and following flu epidemic on its characters, as well as the difficulties of building a life out of nothing. It’s both fascinating and moving and like all Patrick Gale’s novels, beautifully written

In Love Lane, Gale picks up Harry Cane’s story when he sells his farm and makes a visit to his long lost family in England. A kind of mythology has grown up around Harry, known as Cowboy Grandpa, his grandchildren imagining an ageing Gary Cooper. And it isn’t surprising as no one has seen him for most of half a century. His daughter Betty has been brought up by a grandmother and a bunch of formidable aunts – her mother having died when she was twelve. As a young woman engaged to Terry, she feels the urge to write to Harry out of the blue. Terry has asked about Harry and getting married seems the right time to get in touch.

So begins a correspondence that doesn’t result in a visit from either side until Harry sells his farm and, wheat prices being down, has to accept a low offer. He turns up at the Liverpool docks, a shabby elderly man with few teeth and wearing a string tie. At first Betty doesn’t know what to do with him, Terry has a stressful job as a prison governor, but she determines to look after her father. Her flighty daughter Whistle takes a shine to him and so does the dog. There’s also something about Harry which makes women want to talk to him about their problems.

Harry had never gone so long without fresh air, walking the turbulent corridors, from the acid stink of his little, wood-veneered cabin to the bottomless, empty talk of the dining room to the echoing whoops of the bar and – now that he knew the way – down the service staircase to the cosy snug on the deck below. He was having, or listening in on, conversations that left him as dizzy as an inexperienced climber on a mountainside. It gave him the curious sense that – in transit from a young world to an older one – he had stumbled onto yet another, that was altogether older and wiser than either. By the time they had passed Ireland and were nosing into the mouth of the Mersey on a dazzling April morning, he was left with the slightly panicky feeling of someone worrying they’d bought a ticket to quite the wrong place.

The story flips between the points of view of Harry and Betty, as well as Terry, whose prison is one where executions are still performed, something which is hugely stressful. Harry goes on to stay with Pip, their elder daughter, so we get her narration as well. She’s married to Mike, also in the prison service and a man with secrets. Harry is, as ever, perceptive and inspires confidences.

The author does a terrific job of capturing post-war England, still with rationing, and even though both Mike and Terry have important jobs, there’s not a lot to spare. Women of their class didn’t work after marriage, and we get a lot of societal expectations in the 1950s on wives and young mothers in a patriarchal system. It was also a difficult time to be gay, with men outed for homosexual acts given stints in Terry’s prison, among them the tailor he brings Harry to for a new suit and shirts.

But best of all are the characters. Gale has done plenty of research on the one hand, but has had a wealth of letters and diaries, as well, no doubt, as his own memories of old family stories to sift through to inspire the novel. You get to know the characters and really empathise with them, which is something I always like about any of Gale’s books, he’s such a perceptive writer, perhaps having something of his own great-grandfather’s gift.

You can read Love Lane as a stand-alone novel, but I would really also recommend starting with A Place Called Winter, which I recall as a beautifully intense and emotional read. Love Lane is a welcome return to Harry’s story, and a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: My Sister and Other Lovers by Esther Freud – a return to the characters of Hideous Kinky

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Esther Freud is one of those authors I always read, so I was eager to check out her new book My Sister and Other Lovers. It’s a return to the characters of Hideous Kinky, her first novel, also made into a film starring Kate Winslett, which is well worth a viewing too, if you can find it. The earlier story follow’s two young girls, Lucy and Bea, when their mother abruptly leaves their father, taking them to Morocco in search of enlightenment in the 1960s. Their mother is very young, parental supervision is minimal and the children often left to themselves, sometimes frighteningly so.

In the new book, we pick up the story of Lucy, now fourteen, Bea soon disappears off to university, but there’s a little brother, Max, now, and the mother has recently left Max’s father. They eventually arrive at a commune, and again there are adults behaving badly, and no one minds what Lucy gets up to.

We follow Lucy’s story, her awkward relationship with her mother, as she goes on to study drama, and the remoteness of Bea. The past is a dangerous country, but inspires Bea to make a film of their childhood in Morocco, in which she reveals she never felt safe. Lucy seems continually in search of a family, men are predatory when they see a young girl without few parental boundaries. Later it seems impossible to establish a lasting relationship with any boyfriend. Men come and go, are unpredictable, sometimes just as lost as she is. She never seems to get close enough to anyone to really understand what’s going on with them, her sister included.

It was high summer when the police arrived. Someone must have let them in, and shown them up the stairs. They stood, a man and a woman, awkward in shirtsleeves, at the door. ‘What’s this about?’ my mother asked. Max clung to her skirt.
‘We have reason to believe your daughter may be implicated in a crime.’
I blanked my face. I’d seen it: Free Astrid Proll in red letters on the bus shelter. Baader-Meinhof scrawled across the Wartlington Hotel.
‘No.’ I shook my head.
‘We have information relating to a terrorist cell.’
‘Here, in East Sussex?’ My mother laughed.
I laughed too and they turned to look at me, in my school uniform, ink from a pen I’d used to do my homework staining my thumb.
‘We have the name Lucy on a list.’
‘Wrong Lucy.’ My mother crossed her arms.

We move through the decades and Lucy eventually builds a new career, has a chance to start a family, but nothing is easy, however hard she tries. It’s a very bohemian environment described, ephemeral and sometimes insubstantial and the language reflects this. I found myself at times rereading paragraphs to discover the underlining meaning. Esther Freud’s novels often delve into the autobiographical for inspiration and I couldn’t stop wondering where the real ended and the imagined began.

Esther Freud is the daughter of Lucien Freud, the artist, as well as the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud. If she was ever to write an autobiography, I’m sure it would be fascinating. In the meantime, her fiction is well worth exploring. My Sister and Other Lovers is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: The Silence In Between by Josie Ferguson – a remarkable historical novel about a family divided by the Berlin Wall

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

I’ve read quite a few books about World War II from the Allies’ point of view – the families caught up in the war, on either side of the Channel, the people who helped Jewish children escape at risk of their lives and the SOE recruits dropped behind enemy lines to help the Resistance or lead downed Allied airmen out of occupied territory. Loads about Bletchley Park too. But I haven’t come across nearly so many about what it was like from the German perspective.

While The Silence In Between describes what happens to ordinary people in East Berlin when the Wall went up, it also dips back to follow the lives of a mother and daughter during the war and the terrible treatment they received at the hands of Soviet forces in 1945. Events of both periods are firmly linked.

The book opens in 1961 with the Wall. Lisette has just had a baby, and while she is ready to take little Axel home, the hospital want to keep him in for a bit longer. She goes home to fetch some things for him and to spend the night with her husband and daughter, and that’s when the Wall goes up. Overnight, Lisette and Axel are separated. The situation is made more poignant by Lisette’s admission to herself that she loves Axel more than her daughter, teenage Elly. As the days and weeks pass with no means of contacting the hospital or any news of Axel, Lisette sinks into despair, losing her speech.

Elly’s life goes from carefree outings with friends to trying to manage her mother. She decides the only way to save her family is to bring Axel back herself. The Wall is patrolled by armed Soviet officers sent over from the USSR, ordered to shoot anyone attempting to cross the border. By chance Elly meets the one soldier who doesn’t shoot. She has a gift for hearing music in other people, and the music the soldier Andrei has tells her she can trust him. In the background is the awareness that there are people watching and reporting back, a spy in every apartment block. Secrecy is of the essence.

The voice on the radio crackles, static eating the man’s words. I recognise the presenter, but his voice sounds more high-pitched than usual, as if he’s being strangled.
‘A fence…barbed wire? What’s he talking about? When did this happen?’
‘Elly, please, stop with the questions.’ Papa is still crouched down beside Mama. ‘There will be a way to cross,’ he says. But I can hear he doesn’t believe his own words.
‘Come, let’s go down,’ he says, gently touching Mama’s shoulder. ‘We’ll speak to them at the border. Explain.’
Mama won’t look at me. She simply howls once more and it’s then I see the empty wooden cot in the bedroom beyond, the crumpled sheet poking through the bars. I finally understand the full horror of the situation.
‘Axel?’ My voice is a whisper.
Papa looks at me, his eyes strained. ‘He’s on the other side.’

The story follows Elly’s plan to cross to West Berlin, which is told from Elly’s perspective, interwoven with Lisette’s narrative of her survival in Berlin during WWII. Lisette witnesses many terrible events, the barely acknowledged rounding up of the Jews; the pressure from nosy neighbour, Frau Weber, to meet her nephew, a Nazi officer; the lack of food; the fear of bombing, which becomes a reality as the war progresses. We learn why she never bonds with Elly, her worries for Julius, the boy she loves, fighting on the Eastern Front in a war he doesn’t agree with.

Throughout the book is music. Lisette is an accomplished pianist and gives lessons to a young girl who becomes like a sister. Elly has her own kind of musical synasthesia and a keyboard in her bedroom, which she loves to play, but for reasons she doesn’t understand, it only upsets her mother. If you check out Josie Ferguson’s website, there are pieces of music you can listen to that relate to some of the characters, composed by the author’s brother.

The Silence in Between is a gripping novel, beautifully written that had me constantly on edge. On the one hand I couldn’t wait to see what happened next, while also being almost too anxious to find out. I almost broke my rule about not reading the back of the book to see how it ended. But the book is much more than its story, and gives a good picture of what life was like on either side of the Wall, and the lot of women in Berlin during the war. Some of this makes for grim reading.

The Silence in Between is a brilliant debut, well-researched and gripping, offering a different view of the war as well as Berlin in 1961. Well recommended, it’s a five-star read from me.

Book Review: The Red Shore by William Shaw – 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: Shadows of Winter Robins by Louise Wolhuter – a tense, dark, twisty story full of family secrets

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Shadows of Winter Robins is psychological suspense with a big emphasis on the psychological. Our main character, Winter Robins, is in therapy for something she did that was at best misjudged, at worst a chargeable offence. The therapist encourages Winter to dig deep, and soon we’re transported to a council house in Harrogate, 1994, and Winter’s childhood. There’s a twin brother Four (he’s the fourth in his line to take the name Lewis), and loving parents, Nancy and Lew. But when Nancy dies, Lew falls apart, and though she tries, Gran is just too old to manage.

Lew writes to Nancy’s family in Western Australia and an uncle they’ve never met arrives to bring Winter and Four home with him. Although the children quickly enjoy time with their uncle, who has the nickname Dog, it’s a heart-breaking wrench, but the possibility of an idyllic childhood is obvious. Grandfather Harry is a successful artist and lives with their grandmother on the coast, off the beaten track. So there’s the beach to enjoy and fresh air and good food. Such a change from England. There’s also the housekeeper’s boy, Gabe, the same age as Winter, who is friendly too.

But there’s a darkness to Harry – he has a temper and is domineering, and rarely kind to the children, or his wife. His housekeeper is obviously more than a housekeeper and so there’s tension, while Dog is always in and out of trouble. Terrible things happen here, and the freedom the children enjoy is tempered by a loss of innocence.

Nancy won’t be coming home.
And there it is: that pip of a moment. That instant. That fraction of a second. That weightless stillness at the very top of a ball’s bounce, between its going up and falling down.
Four and I held hands, suspended somewhere between the life we’d led as Nancy’s children and the one we were destined to live thereafter. Vi was on her feet, with both hands over her face, and the magazine drifting somewhere in the space where she’d been sitting. The cricket ball froze in its flight towards the bat, and the world hung still around us for a breath held, before it fell apart, with the crack of cork on willow, a howl from the aunty who was not, and the complete disintegration of our father.

The story follows Winter’s time at the beach house, before being sent to live with an aunt to attend school. These scenes weave in and out with the sessions two decades or so later with her therapist, as well as the discovery of what really happened at the beach house. Why did Dog have to leave in such a hurry? And why did the police arrive soon after? There’s an abundance of secrets and twists before you turn the last page and some shocking revelations, going back to the time Robins’s mother escaped to Europe with her best friend, Jan.

Louise Wolhuter has written a chilling but also gripping story that keeps you guessing until the end. There seem to be endless secrets that turn what we know on its head, again and again. It’s well written, too, with evocative prose, complex characterisation and an emotional pull. Underpinning the story is the notion of nature versus nurture, as Robin can’t help but worry about the kind of family she has been brought to live with, a family that can be cruel and morally dubious. The possibility of violence never seems far away.

Shadows of Winter Robins is a very clever thriller, but you might need a more cheerful read afterwards, as it left me with a chill down my spine. Even so I’ll be interested to see what the author comes up next. This one’s a four-star-read from me.