Tag: mysteries

Book Review: The Good Liars by Anita Frank – a haunting novel where old sins cast long shadows

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

It is interesting how claustrophobic a large country house can seem in a nicely gothic suspense novel like this. In spite of extensive grounds and views that take in woods and a river, the country house at the heart of Anita Frank’s latest novel, The Good Liars, is taut with post-war misery, its inhabitants hemmed in by events of the past.

We catch up with the Stilwell family in 1920. There’s Maurice Stilwell, who is mentally damaged by his time in the trenches. He lives at the atmospherically named Darkacre Hall with his beautiful and somewhat petulant wife, Ida, and his younger brother Leonard. There’s also Maurice’s great friend, Victor, manly and debonair, who was once in love with Ida, but with Maurice’s family money, was always going to be the losing suitor.

Unlike Maurice, Leonard is sound of mind, but a physical wreck, and this is why Sarah is taken on as his nurse, a great relief to Ida, as it has been nigh on impossible to find staff willing to stay at Darkacre Hall. It is soon clear that Ida has earned the hatred of the locals because of her actions in the early stages of the war, handing out white feathers to young men who needn’t have signed up, either because of their age or occupation. Many felt compelled to enlist and some lost their lives.

It’s a chilly, gloomy house, that Sarah has come to but being a good sort, she soon mucks in, not only helping Leonard but taking on a lot of the housekeeping. You can’t help wondering if she’s too good to be true, but she’s kindly and observant which helps the story along.

Sarah is beginning to find the dark wood that dominates the Hall horribly oppressive. The incessant panelling and ancient furniture greedily absorb all glimmers of light. Everything around her appears drab and morose. Even the silverware on the table – the candlesticks, the cruet set, the cutlery – is tarnished, and though the electric lights of the low-hanging brass candelabra above them are lit, two of the bulbs have blown, meaning that, beyond the immediate table, the features of the room are concealed in dense shadow, in which anyone – or anything – might lurk without fear of detection. She finds it a most unsettling thought.

Into this setting comes a police inspector who is looking into a cold case – the disappearance of a teenage boy in the summer of 1914. There’s been a letter apparently, and new information to suggest the boy was in the Darkacre Hall grounds when he went missing. A Sergeant Verity is sent to ask further questions, and this throws the household into a spin. Maurice becomes agitated, and Leonard even more miserable.

The reader is soon aware that there are secrets everyone is hiding, events from before and during the war that have never been accounted for. While everyone else quivers and frets, Victor, the man of action, makes a bold decision. Meanwhile Sarah has a sense that there is a ghostly presence at the Hall, which adds to the atmosphere. Can the aptly named Verity get to the bottom of things?

Anita Frank builds tension expertly, switching the point of view between characters who huddle in corners, or take drastic steps. As well as a major weather event that keeps everyone even more housebound, there are one or two surprises you probably won’t see coming. And while you get caught up in the story, desperate to know how it plays out, you’re treated to some excellent writing too.

While this may not be the cheeriest novel – the dark events of a terrible war haunt every moment for the characters, in more ways than one – it is all put together really well. I will be happy to look out for more by Anita Frank – The Good Liars is a four-star read from me.

Book Review: Cutters End by Margaret Hickey – a gripping new Aussie Noir series with a troubled cop

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

It’s hard not to pick up a book with a cover showing a dry Aussie outback setting. Those small towns in the rural backwaters of Australia just seem to seethe with all kinds of tension. Broken hearts and lost dreams, the struggle with a harsh environment wearing people down, young people abandoning home for the cities. You can’t help wondering if the author will be the next Jane Harper (author of The Dry).

With Cutters End, we’re in opal mining country, an industry on its last legs, the kind of place you pass through on the Stuart Highway heading north to Alice Springs. It’s also the place where a local hero and father met an unexplained death, discovered trapped beneath his vehicle and apparently burned to death. Back in 1990 this was explained as an accident at the inquest, but Suzanne Miller, a TV host with a flagging career, says it’s time for a reinvestigation. Michael Denby saved her and her mother from floodwaters when she was a small child and he deserves better.

DS Mark Ariti, similarly with a flagging career, is on leave when his superior officer discovers that he knew one of the witnesses at the time – one Ingrid Mathers who Mark dated at high school. Mark’s bumped up to Acting Inspector and sent to re-interview Ingrid and to see if he can jog her memory about the days around New Year 1990 when she was hitchhiking with her friend Joanne. But Ingrid’s not very forthcoming, although the reader has the inkling that she’s got a secret or two.

Mark catches up with Joanne, now living the high life in Sydney, similarly reticent. Why don’t the two women talk to each other any more? More clues pull Mark back to Cutters End, and the Mendamo Roadhouse, once owned by creepy Gerald, where Ingrid hitched a ride with somebody called Ron or Don. He bounces ideas off his new sidekick, DC Jagdeep Kaur, and picks up gossip at the three rather disappointing pubs in Cutters End.

Finally, Cutters End. The Stuart Highway a blade cutting through the centre of town, railway line alongside it like a rival sibling. Two main streets, a petrol station, the town hall, council offices, a supermarket, dingy motel, a primary school and, in the back streets, houses with sad facades and secret interiors.
The opal mining boom was bust, had been for decades, and although the welcome sign read ‘Cutters End, a town on the move!’ Mark doubted it. This town, like many across the country, had the look of a dying dog waiting to be shot. But still, he knew too well that dogs don’t die easy – those pleading eyes, that sense of loyalty and long history. The faded pride of what they once were.

When the woman at the service station where you get the best coffee in town tells Mark to find out about the two missing girls, the story goes in an interesting new direction. More than a couple of young women seem to have disappeared from the area, all of them hitching a ride and chancing their luck with whoever picks them up. Did they just move on and then take off overseas without letting anyone know? Build a better life? Or is there a more sinister explanation?

The story is peppered with interesting local characters: John Baber, the kindly ex-school teacher turned van driver who local businesses rely on for deliveries; mentally damaged Foobie who takes inappropriate pictures of people and becomes a source of useful information; Sergeant Darryl Wickman, the town’s long-serving police officer who has a way with the townspeople and a wise-cracking relationship with Jagdeep.

But it’s the undercurrent of evil so typical in these stories that has you on edge. The ugly circumstances of Denby’s death, the casual misogyny and disregard for vulnerable young women, the tight-lipped attitudes of the locals. Mark is struggling to make headway in all directions, either with his case or in his marriage, and like so many cops in these sorts of novels, never seems able to say the right thing.

There are evocative reminders of the time, not only the terrible haircuts and ugly sweaters, but also the real-life backpacker murders in New South Wales and the serial killer Ivan Milat. These crimes happened around the same time that our fictional Denby was killed. They conjure up all kinds of thoughts and feelings around how we protect our young people from predatory behaviour, about violence against women and whether anything much has changed for the better.

Cutters End is the first in a series about troubled cop, Mark Ariti. It’s a terrific read if you enjoy authors like Jane Harper, Garry Disher, Chris Hammer and Sarah Bailey, and a welcome addition to the genre. There are a couple more to look forward to (Stone Town and Broken Bay) with The Creeper out later this year. Can’t wait. Cutters End is a four star read from me.

Book Review: Zero Days by Ruth Ware – a compulsive thriller from a master of the genre

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

I always enjoy reading about an interesting new business or career I’ve not come across before – the processes, the clients, the marketing. In Ruth Ware’s latest book Zero Days we’ve got a couple of business penetration security specialists – husband and wife team Gabe Medway and Jacintha (Jack) Cross. Their business, Crossways Security, tests out security both inside and out for their customers. Gabe, an expert hacker does the computer side of things, leaving Jack, pint-sized but super fit, to break in at night, testing alarms, locks and security procedures. They make a great team.

The story begins with Jack entering a client’s premises, from climbing a six foot wall, through to avoiding CCTV cameras, sneaking through doors, disabling alarms and evading the security personnel. Gabe is constantly in her ear, helping her find safe corners and exit points. She has a few close calls but ultimately gets out unscathed, a bit like a character from a Mission Impossible movie.

But heading back to her car, she bumps into the head of security which means a trip to the police station where she tries to contact her client. The minutes tick by, and it’s the small hours before she gets home, only to find that Gabe has been murdered. Shock and anguish delay her call to the police leaving some hours not accounted for when she is later interviewed by the senior investigating officer, DS Malik. Her sister Helena implores her to get a lawyer – spouses are always the first suspect in a murder, they have the means and opportunity; all the police need is to find a motive.

Aside from the grief and shock Jack is experiencing, an email informing her of a life insurance policy to the value of a million pounds adds to her woes. And the way that Malik seems to be homing in on her during a voluntary visit to the station causes alarm bells. Suddenly it seems that the police have chosen their perpetrator, and if they lock up Jack, no one is ever going to find out who the real killer is, the same person who is framing her. With a few more security sidesteps, Jack exits the police station and goes on the run.

Inside the station it was noisy and smelled of cleaning fluid and used coffee cups. As I waited in line to speak to the officer behind the front desk, I couldn’t help scoping the place out as if I were on a job. Two exits – one to the street, unmanned; one to the interior of the station, no lock as far as I could see. There was probably an activation button under the desk. One fixed CCTV camera in the corner with a huge blind spot that covered most of the right-hand wall – not a very good design for a police station. The odd thing was that I had no memory of any of it from before. Shock had wiped half the night’s events from my brain – which felt strange, but no stranger than mechanically assessing the building’s risk profile in a world in which Gabe no longer existed.

The book is set for the most part over seven days, as Jack disguises herself, evades capture, copes with injury and tries to piece together what it was that Gabe was doing that got him killed. She has a bit of help from Helena, a busy mother of two, as well as Cole, Gabe’s best friend who was like a brother to the victim, and like Jack is devastated by the murder. At the heart of it all is some cyber crime that went a little over my head but makes for an interestingly different storyline. There are a lot more Mission Impossible type action scenes as Jack gets closer to the truth.

Zero Days was such a compulsive read, I was thankful for a weekend of cold, rainy weather. I inhaled this book, having to remind myself to eat. The writing is sharp and immediate, the tension non-stop, with first-person narration that makes you imagine yourself in Jack’s shoes. You can’t but wonder what would you would do in similar circumstances; how you would cope. The novel must surely add to Ruth Ware’s reputation as the Queen of Just One More Chapter. Zero Days is a four-and-a-half star read from me.

Book Review: The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig – a cracking novel of rural England, the plight of the middle classes, with a mystery thrown in

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes when you pick up a novel, you just instantly know you are in good hands. I felt like this about The Lie of the Land with its interesting premise – a couple desperate to divorce but can’t because they have no money. So they rent out their London house and find cheaper digs (together!) in the country with their children.

Stories where people ditch the city for the countryside for whatever reason have been around since the novel has, quite probably, or at least since Green Acres appeared on TV in the sixties. But there’s always fresh material to mine, particularly when you’ve got such complex characters as Quentin and Lottie Bredin. Quentin is older than Lottie and his career as a journalist has taken a dive – he’s rude and arrogant and has upset too many people. To make matters worse, Lottie has discovered he’s had several affairs, and all the while she’s been left to manage the home and her children.

Lottie was once an up-and-coming architect, and keeps her home like something out of House and Garden. Perhaps that is what makes her so difficult for Quentin to live with: her fastidiousness, her sharp tongue, plus her ongoing tiredness since the birth of their daughters – Rosie (6) and Stella (8). An opportunity to rent a farmhouse near Quentin’s parents in Devon ridiculously cheaply has them reluctantly leaving London and all its temptations behind.

The novel has a load of interesting plots woven together, with several main narrators. We’re with Lottie, angry and grieving over the way Quentin has treated her, while she tries to balance the books and economise. If they can stick it out for a year, they can clear their debts and sell the London house. This will pay for their divorce and leave enough capital to set up house separately.

Her daily walk includes a visit to the village shop, a Portakabin crouched in the church car park. The design makes her wince, but just to talk to another adult who doesn’t hate her is a relief.
 ’Home-made?’ she asks, pointing to pasties, keeping warm in front of the counter.
 ’Oh, yes. We don’t hold with Humbles.’
 ’It’s good that Shipcott still has a shop.’
 ’It doesn’t make a profit,’ the woman says, shyly. ‘We volunteer, though we all worry about being held up at gunpoint.’
 ’Do you really?’
 ’You’d be surprised. There’s crime here, my lovely, just like everywhere else. But how else are pensioners without cars going to get their food and money each week?’
 She has never known people like this, with their terrible teeth and terrible clothes and kindness. That’s what astonishes her most: the kindness.

We’ve also got Quentin, who can’t believe the nosedive his career has taken, but is still trying to keep in the swim while being a decent father. There’s Xan, Lottie’s eighteen-year-old son, desolate at missing out on a place at Cambridge and at the idea of his London life coming to a halt. Showing us the rural point of view, there’s Sally, a district health nurse with her own quiet grief.

While this seems to be mostly a novel of a marriage, there’s also a grim mystery with the hideous death of the previous tenant at Long Farm, an unsolved crime no one has told the Bredins about. You know you will find out the who and why of the crime by the end of the book, but in the meantime there’s so much character development, as rural life weaves its charm and throws up new challenges for the family.

We get plenty of insight into rural issues, particularly the struggles for farmers to make a living off the land in a competitive market-driven economy. The Polish immigrants that fill in doing unpleasant and exploitative work the locals avoid is evocatively depicted in scenes at Humbles Pie Factory where Xan picks up a casual job. Also the loss of a way of life, the closing of schools as people move away.

Then we’ve got a look at intergenerational relationships, particularly between Quentin and his dying father – the guilt, the disagreements and old scores. And about parenthood, both good and bad, as well as the redemptive power of music and literature. Quite a lot to think about then.

The writing sparkles with wit and vivid descriptions, and is polished and nuanced. You don’t have to like the characters, certainly not all the time – Craigs shows them warts and all – but you can’t complain they’re not interesting. Each finds themselves caught up in difficult dilemmas that give the story plenty of go. Meanwhile all the plates Craig keeps spinning are carefully balanced and then caught at the end for a cracking finish. I loved every minute of it and, although it’s not saying a lot – this being only February – The Lie of the Land is quite my favourite book of the year. A five star read from me.

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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.

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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 Last House Guest by Megan Miranda – a twisty tale, nicely turned, with a determined young protagonist

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

These psychological thrillers – or domestic noir, as they’re sometimes called – can become quite addictive. Megan Miranda’s novel The Last House Guest is a nicely-turned mystery full of suspense and that often used device of scenes from before woven in with those after. What starts out as a story of a young woman investigating the death of her best friend soon turns into a complex tale of family secrets, power and money.

Avery works for the Loman family who rent out summer cottages in the coastal town of Littleport, Maine. Every summer, the town is bursting at the seams with wealthy summer visitors, Avery doing the donkey work of managing these short-term tenancies, the Loman parents with other fish to fry back in Connecticut. At the end of the season, the younger Lomans – Sadie and Parker – organise a Plus-One party at one of the houses, until one year the party ends in disaster.

Nobody saw Sadie Loman at the last party, but somehow she has ended up lifeless in her party clothes at the bottom of a cliff. Avery doesn’t believe for a moment that Sadie killed herself, and Avery should know, they’d been best friends for years. The story flips back to fill in Avery’s story – the loss of her parents in a car crash, her wild teen years, and her rescue by the Lomans. And then there’s her friendship with Sadie and how it faltered not long before the party.

It was hard to simultaneously grieve and reconstruct your own alibi. It was tempting to accuse someone else just to give yourself some space. It would have been so easy. But none of us had done it, and I thought that was a testament to Sadie herself. Than none of us could imagine wanting her dead.

Odd things start to happen – electricity gong out, a break-in at one of the cottages. Another renter complaining that someone had lit some candles in their cottage while they were out. When Avery finds Sadie’s phone, shortly before a special remembrance ceremony for Sadie, Avery starts to piece together the events leading up to her death.

There’s a lot for Avery to worry about. If there’s a killer out there, she is surely in danger and she has no one she can trust. And her falling out with Sadie just before her death means she can’t go to the police without implicating herself. And the police are still sniffing around, Detective Ben Collins always hovering hoping to catch a word.

The story builds to a thrilling ending as more secrets are revealed, more is revealed from witnesses, more lies uncovered. There is enough of a twist at the end to keep the reader guessing, and tempers boil over in a final showdown with the killer. The before and after plotting is a little beguiling at times, but it works in that it reminds you what it’s like to be remembering things in bits or piecing together events as you find out more information.

I found the beginning of the book reminded me a little of Wuthering Heights, which I know seems a little crazy. Avery reminded me of Heathcliffe, a young person given a new chance, a cuckoo in the nest of the wealthy family. Her memories of Sadie veer into being obsessive, she also has a wildness about her, a temper that has got her into trouble in her youth. But then she’s had a rough time of it, losing her family so young. Her situation placing her not quite part of the wealthy Loman clan, but not well-regarded by the townsfolk makes her a maverick character and as such she’s alone and vulnerable. But as a reader, you can never quite know how much you can trust her version of events.

I’ll be happy to pick up another Megan Miranda novel when I feel like another dose of suspense – she does it well. The writing is smart, the characterisation interesting and the story never lets up. The Last House Guest is a four star read from me.