Tag: suspense

Book Review: The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan – a pacy legal thriller with a few dramatic twists

~ Judith ~ 1 Comment

Dervla McTiernan is the author of the Cormac Reilly series of crime novels set in Galway, Ireland. After three books McTiernan quickly earned a place on my must-read list. So imagine my surprise to find book number four, The Murder Rule, is a departure from the series and is set in Maine and Virginia.

We’re with Hannah, a law student near to graduation, who finds a place as an intern on The Innocence Project, a legal team that take on dodgy convictions, including death-row cases. As you can imagine, the work is intense, emotions running high.

“No one is innocent in this story” says the tagline on the cover, so I was expecting possibly an unreliable narrator. And yes, pretty much from the get-go, we learn Hannah will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. She shows this in how she persuades the Innocence Project director, Robert Parekh to take her on, and the hours she is willing to spend, long into the night to prove her worth.

What Hannah really wants is to be part of the small team focussed on the Michael Dandridge case. After eleven years in prison, his case has come up for retrial due to questionable evidence. Even so, he could still end up with the death penalty. Dandridge had been sent down for the rape and murder of a young mother, something he’s always denied – his confession, he says, beaten out of him by the sheriff. Hannah’s phone conversations with her fragile mother, Laura, reveals a hidden agenda.

 ”I’m sorry,” Hanna said, as sincerely as she could manage.
 ”You should be,” he said, still with a trace of amusement. “But here’s the thing.” He gestured broadly around the room. “Here at the Project, we are not the police and we’re not the FBI. We have a very limited budget to pay investigators. I need students who are imaginative, inventive, and willing to be creative when it comes to pursuing our cases. Working here does not mean sitting behind a desk drafting motions – our staff attorneys take care of that. We need students to do the hard grind of investigating facts and tracking down new evidence. If you could be as dogged with that as you were with trying to get a place here, maybe you could be of use to me.”
 Hannah could feel the flush rising in her cheeks. She made herself hold his gaze. This was not the time to play the shy girl.

Interspersed with Hannah’s narrative are entries from Laura’s diary describing her summer spent in Maine working for a cleaning company to save money for college. At one secluded summer house she meets Tom, the son of wealthy parents, and the two click. If only that creepy Mike wasn’t around. After seeing what he has hidden in his room, he makes her nervous.

The story builds towards the Dandridge trial, as Hannah does what she can to fulfil her promise to her mother, impressing her team with her commitment and ingenuity. However, fellow Dandridge interns Sean and Camila, are smart cookies too and soon ask questions. So there’s plenty of tension and no one Hannah can trust. Meanwhile her fragile mother is struggling with Hannah being away, so there are tearful phone conversations between them.

There’s a tense last act with plenty of danger and near misses as new facts come to light with some shocking twists. The scene’s all set for a dramatic courthouse finale which may seem a little unlikely in the real world, but is entertaining nevertheless. It all comes together in a pacy novel that’s perfect escapist reading. I kind of miss the Galway setting of the previous books though.

McTiernan is a brilliant storyteller and I’ll be on the look out for her next book, What Happened to Nina?, which is set in Vermont and due out soon. The Murder Rule is a four-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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book Review: The Patient by Jane Shemilt – a creepily suspenseful novel with two picturesque settings

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I felt sorry for Rachel from the first page of Jane Shemilt’s latest novel. Rachel’s a respected GP, and lives in the picturesque town of Salisbury with her teacher husband. But things are distant between them – a spark has died and life’s a bit dreary. And then there’s the daughter – Lizzie, who scarcely talks to Rachel, harbouring a grudge about the lack of quality time Rachel was able to give Lizzie growing up.

But that’s not the problem. The problem is Rachel has stepped over the line with a patient and now her world’s in chaos. She wasn’t even supposed to be working when a suicidal patient turned up at the medical centre. Rachel recently lost a patient to suicide, so gives Luc plenty of time, listening as he pours out his heart. When Rachel discovers Luc is a new neighbour, having renovated the old house she remembers belonging to a childhood friend, she also meets his glamorous American wife, Ophelia, and her charming brother and Ophelia’s little boy. The perfect family – or are they?

Luc has a everything, it seems, but he and Rachel are drawn to each other but, as we all know, doctors aren’t supposed to embark on relationships with their patients – especially vulnerable ones with a mental illness. We meet Rachel as she’s recollecting everything that happened in the months preceding – her lawyer has told her to write it all down while she’s in custody. As a reader we realise that Luc has gone off the rails, that a terrible crime has been committed and somehow Rachel’s involved.

The plot see-saws in time, back and forth, filling in the gaps – Rachel’s fear she’s being followed, her tricky relationship with a woman at work, an obsessive patient, her escape to a conference in France and her affair with Luc. It seems nobody’s on her side – apart from her dear neighbour Victoria, but she’s away on photo shoots a lot or off caring for a dying mother.

As the narrator, Rachel is the perfect character for a story like this. She’s intelligent, obviously, but very trusting, so the plot delivers plenty of surprises as facts rise to the surface. As a reader you are in the position of constantly yelling, look out behind you! And why is she so vague about whether or not she locked up her house? She really needs to be more careful. But she also seems to know her stuff as a doctor – you can tell Jane Shemilt’s own work as a GP inspired her story.

The setting is gorgeous. As well as Salisbury it takes you to the South of France, and the countryside around Arles, where Van Gogh painted his sunflowers. Luc’s mental illness is a kind of echo of Van Gogh’s. But inside of a prison cell is not so nice, particularly when you’re on the cusp of losing everything.

The Patient is a well put-together, nicely written addition to psychological thriller genre. There are plenty of surprises and the before and after timeframe maintains suspense nicely. I enjoyed the novel as an audiobook, read by Hilary McLean, who gave the character of Rachel just the right tone. It’s very easy to binge on psychological thrillers like these, they can be so compelling, particularly the good ones. The Patient is a four star read from me.

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

~ Judith ~ 1 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.

Book Review: The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott – a superbly atmospheric psychological thriller

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I was drawn to this novel by by the setting. Not only the rural Scottish village but the creepy old house, a large manse that dates back centuries and a history including blood-thirsty reprisals during the Jacobite rebellion. It’s bound to be haunted, and yes the opening sentence of Chapter One is ‘The Manse is watching me.’

The narrator of the story is Aisla Calder who has taken a break from her high-powered job based in London as a television news producer, following the death of her mother. She’s been left an old house in her mother’s will, but she is unable to sell it because the Manse is co-owned by Martin Calder, her father, who walked out on his family when Aisla was a child. He hasn’t been seen since and nobody knows if he is dead or alive. Also missing is the packet of diamonds he was carrying for the company he worked for. It’s all very suspicious.

Each chapter begins with an imaginary account of where he might have got to, while Aisla sets in motion the legal proceedings to prove that he’s dead. After living in the Manse a short time, she’s somewhat reluctant to stay. Thank goodness her sister Carrie has agreed to come to keep her company while she sorts things out. Carrie is a bright young actress in a play a commuter train’s ride away in Edinburgh, but there is a strain between them. Carrie can’t quite forgive Aisla for not being around as she grew up, not coming to see her on stage.

It’s bad enough having to deal with all the family stuff, the loss of a mother who was a terrific artist, but not at all loving, of an unsupportive relationship with a top TV news reporter, and having to negotiate the tricky waters of living with her sister. But there’s creepy stuff happening at the Manse too. Her neighbour, friendly Jamie drops in unannounced to explain about his weird sister, Fiona, who has a fascination with the place. It’s best she has her locks changed.

I want to feel that I am me, created from pure air, my genes unsullied by ancestry. I want to feel that my thoughts and reactions and decisions are mine and mine alone. But being here, in Scotland, in the Manse of all places, has me feeling the weight of my DNA, of the history and memories and behavioural patterns it carries. Of the impact it has had, or might yet have, on what I think of as me.

Aisla finds in the attic some old photos from before Aisla was born showing Jamie’s parents and her own – obviously friends. But what are those aerial maps all about? And then there are hostile locals to deal with – openly abusive old Morag – and nasty things left on the doorstep. The house doesn’t seem to like Aisla much either – the heating turns itself off, the smoke alarm goes in the middle of the night and the bathroom door keeps banging. Aisla was sure she’d closed the window.

An intelligent woman in her thirties, Aisla should be able to deal with a lot of this stuff rationally. But she’s always so tired and the emotional events of recent weeks have taken a toll. This all adds to the tension as things get more and more worrisome. She’s made friends with other locals, the handsome Ben who’s a bit of a player among them, and talks to Jamie’s father who was the policeman who investigated Martin Calder’s disappearance. If only Carrie hadn’t become so chummy with weird Fiona. It’s as if there’s no one she can really trust and as a reader you can’t help wondering which if them is plotting against Aisla. Elliott instills a nice undercurrent of menace.

It all builds to a dramatic, nail-biting showdown with the malefactor, the house creating an eerie backdrop, to say nothing of the Scottish weather. The Missing Years is a satisfying story, a brilliant psychological thriller, a breezy, engaging read that’s also nicely written. It’s sure to please fans of Ruth Ware and Clare Mackintosh. I’m keen to read more by Lexie Elliott – it’s hard to resist a title like How to Kill Your Best Friend. This novel gets four out of five stars from me.

Book Review: The War Pianist by Mandy Robotham – wartime danger across the airwaves

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This is one of those wartime novels featuring a heroine who is just an ordinary girl toughing it out against Hitler. She probably never wanted to get involved in the Resistance or working as a spy for SOE, but something has triggered her desire to get involved. There will be a couple of military aircraft from the era on the front cover, discretely in a corner so you know it’s a war story. A ton of books like this have been written lately, and they can be a fun read, but how do you tell which are the good ones?

I’d really enjoyed the audiobook version of The Resistance Girl by Mandy Robotham, which took me to the war in Norway. It had engaging characters, a really nasty malefactor, a bit of romance, plenty of suspenseful dodging of the enemy, and the promise of a happy ending. But I learned a lot about the war in Norway and how it affected people, the heroic ways they fought back. The story didn’t shy away from some of the horrific events of the war but describes them off-stage so nothing’s ever too harrowing for the reader.

And it’s much the same here with The War Pianist. Marnie works at the BBC in London helping to prepare radio scripts for airing. Her parents have decamped to Scotland and apart from cousin Susie who is wondering about leaving London too, her only family is Gilbert, her adored grandfather, still running his tailoring business near Trafalgar Square. But after a bombing raid by the Luftwaffe, Marnie is horrified to discover the shop has been levelled and her grandfather is dead.

Reeling with grief, Marnie goes back to the shop one day in search of a memento of her beloved relative only to find hidden away in a basement cupboard, a radio set for transmitting. Gilbert was a man with a secret, and Marnie worries that he might have been a spy. As she carries the radio away with her she is brought to a halt by an ARP warden who turns out to be someone else keeping a secret. Willem is a Dutch Resistance fighter in London to help shore up support from Britain on the behest of Queen Wilhelmina.

Willem persuades Marnie to take over from Gilbert, sending coded messages to Corrie, Willem’s fellow Resistance fighter in Amsterdam. Marnie knows all about radios from her work at the BBC, and she and her grandfather used to play games in Morse Code when she was young. So Marnie, fired up with rage against Hitler because of the Blitz and her grief, is the perfect recruit to step into Gilbert’s shoes. But she has to be careful, as there are reports of fifth columnists supporting the enemy at large, who are watching and listening. Who can she trust?

When the inevitable sirens stir the BBC’s populace into the basement that evening, something in her – she doesn’t know what – is drawn in the opposite direction, up onto the roof of Broadcasting House. Climbing out into a sky already glowing orange and a wind warmed by fiery destruction, she stands aghast. It’s as if Hitler has taken a match to a box of fireworks and simply sprinkled the contents across London – the red tracer fire of ack-ack guns meeting mandarin sparks from a fresh explosion, tiny pockets of green-blue glow like fireflies amid the rubble as the gas mains are hit below. A rainbow of destruction that’s both vivid and grotesque.

The story weaves Marnie’s story in with Corrie’s in Amsterdam, where things are a lot more desperate under the Nazi Occupation. It’s only 1940 and the resistance is in its early stages while reprisals and food shortages are the order of the day. There are reports of devastation in other cities like Rotterdam and fear is widespread. But Corrie continues with her radio, messages kept as brief as possible to avoid her site of transmission being pinpointed by the enemy.

The story takes Marnie across to Amsterdam where the plot ramps up a lot. Here the evil Nazi officer, Lothar Selig, is keen to make his mark – he also turns up in The Resistance Girl – when one of the Willem’s team disappears. There’s an emotional connection, so this gives the story a bit more punch. Marnie is also torn emotionally, but will do anything to help and her radio skills become crucial. The story builds to a taut ending and it’s a satisfying read, without ever being too grim centre stage.

I confess I didn’t enjoy this quite as much as The Resistance Girl, although it’s still a pacy read and interesting for the most part. The romantic element seemed a bit forced, maybe because the character of Willem is not particularly well developed. I might give Robotham another go, or if I’m in the mood for a good wartime story, I’ll head back to Pam Jenoff or Kate Quinn, who are pretty solid in this genre. The War Pianist gets three out of four stars from me.

Book Review: The White Hare by Jane Johnson – a haunting country house mystery with a touch of magic

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

We’re back in Cornwall for another novel set in the 1950s and I was in my happy place listening to this as an audiobook. I often hunt out these evocative country house stories.

The White Hare begins with a family of three arriving to take on a run-down country house with the aim of turning it into a guest-house. Somewhere comfortably-off urbanites might sojourn for a change of pace and some gentle pampering. This is Magda’s idea. In her fifties, Magda is an imperious, demanding and determined woman who won’t take no for an answer.

Her daughter, Mila, passively just does what her mother tells her, hoping to build a home for her and young Janey. But although she has strong feelings, she keeps them in check, because she owes her mother her salvation. A chance for a new start, having been duped by a bigamous husband and left with a five-year-old daughter. Remember, it’s the mid 1950s, when a woman’s reputation was everything.

The house is of course a mess, but in the barn they also discover an unwelcome guest. Jack, the interloper, says he hadn’t meant to trespass; he was just exploring the nearby countryside and would soon be on his way. But Janey has warmed to Jack, and when Jack reveals he can fix their car, and is handy with a hammer and nails, he becomes the women’s saviour when they face one crisis after another.

The locals don’t take kindly to strangers. It is said the house is haunted and when Mila mentions seeing a white hare on the road the day they arrived, all sorts of strange legends start to emerge. Then there’s Jack. He and Mila soon warm to each other, but Jack seems to be harbouring secrets. There’s also a creepy vicar, but fortunately for Mila, friendship and support are on hand from a local healer and her artist girlfriend.

The story follows Magda and Mila’s rocky relationship as they struggle to bring the house into a reasonable state of repair ahead of a lavish New Year’s Eve party Magda hopes will entice acceptance from the locals. The folklore of the area won’t leave Mila alone, and there are odd discoveries that hint at a tragedy involving the previous owners of the house.

To make things even more creepy, Janey seems to have discovered a way of communicating with an otherworldly presence through her toy rabbit. The story builds to a dramatic ending where the real and unreal converge and the present reveals, and can finally bury, past wrongs. The characters of Magda, Mila and Janey are interestingly developed – there’s nothing like adversity to bring people together.

I loved the story – the perfect sort of audiobook, narrated brilliantly by Danielle Cohen – intriguing and full of mystery with a bit Cornish history thrown in. Listening to a book like this takes me back to those old fireside tales that begin with, ‘let me tell you a story’. If you like books by Katherine Webb and Kate Morton, you’re sure to enjoy The White Hare, a four star read from me.