Tag: thrillers

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.

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

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

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 Bookseller of Inverness by S G MacLean – a stunning Scottish thriller of intrigue and revenge

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It’s hard for me not to feel a lump in my throat when reading a book that describes so vividly the events around the Jacobite uprisings that aimed to put a Stuart back on the throne. The butchery and barbarism of the government forces at the Battle of Culloden, the subsequent hunting down of Jacobites through Scotland and the harsh penalties enacted on those that were captured, including the ‘traitor’s death’, are hard to read about without feeling, well, rather cross.

With The Bookseller of Inverness, S G Maclean brings this history to life. It’s a murder mystery set in the Highland city of Inverness, the bookseller of the title, Iain MacGillivray, a veteran of Culloden who has somehow survived, though scarred both physically and mentally. He’s a brooding man of thirty-four, silent and dour as he runs his shop and lending library, coming to life a little at dances where he’s a popular fiddler.

Iain’s world is turned upside down and he is hauled out of his melancholy when several events happen in rapid succession. A stranger is found murdered in his bookshop – he’d previously been fossicking for a book he was desperate to find. And we have the return to Scotland of Iain’s father, Hector, who if found by the authorities will surely face death for his connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender.

On his desk lay a dirk like the one he had once habitually carried, before the bearing of arms or the wearing of tartan had been forbidden to Highlanders. Tied to the hilt of his knife, though, was a white silk rosette. Iain’s heart began to quicken. It was the white cockade, as worn in his own blue bonnet and in that of practically every other soldier of the prince’s army in the ’45. The white cockade, the most recognisable of all the Jacobite symbols, on the hilt of the knife that had been used to cut the throat of the man sitting dead in his locked bookshop.

Hector tells Iain about The Book of Forbidden Names, which has coded messages revealing traitors to the Jacobite cause. These are not just people who have sided with the government, but those who have ratted on the prince’s followers leading to their capture. Both sides would give their eye teeth for this book, including the victim found in Iain’s shop. Iain thinks he knows where another copy of the book might be, and soon more bodies turn up. It seems there is a killer out there with revenge in mind.

The novel is a brilliant murder mystery/thriller, but it is also an evocative imagining of Inverness in the 1750s, and boasts a wonderful cast of characters. There are the Grandes Dames, the elderly women who gather in Iain’s grandmother’s parlour who add a lighter tone to the story with their gossip; Mairi Farquharson, Iain’s grandmother rules the roost and is fearless in her standing up to English soldiers; Donald Mòr, Iain’s oddball bookbinder, is a master craftsman but spends most of the weekend either drunk or in the cells; the mysterious Ishbel MacLeod, the confectioner and her adopted son Tormod who hangs out with Donald.

Iain’s father Hector is a marvellous invention, a risk-taker and flirt, who in his sixties shows no signs of slowing down. Iain has a difficult time reining him in. There are some nasty English soldiers garrisoned at the town to collect rents and supposedly manage any Jacobite stirrings, but there are good army officers too.

MacLean has done loads of research and adds a lengthy bibliography at the end of the book. Here she explains also about the divisions within the Scots, those for or against the Jacobite cause, those who changed sides and those clans who were divided. Like all good historical fiction, her novel makes you want to read more about what really happened.

The background to the novel may sound a little grim, but The Bookseller of Inverness is a rollicking adventure laced with dry Scottish humour. There’s a bit of romance and the storyline has plenty of interesting twists. Iain is a bit of a hot-headed blunderer, not your Poirot kind of sleuth, and gets himself into some odd corners, but with people like his crazy bookbinder, Donald Mòr, at hand, he manages to get away with it. Underneath his terse manner lies a fierce loyalty to his family.

It would be terrific to think we might join Iain again for another mystery and some more Scottish history, but this book seems to be a stand-alone novel. And the ending leaves things nicely tied up too. But we can live in hope. I enjoyed it so much I’m giving it five stars, and can’t wait to read some more from S G MacLean.

Book Review: The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley – another excellent twisty read in an atmospheric setting

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

Lucy Foley really knows how to conjure an interesting setting. We’ve had a wedding venue on an island in The Guest List, luxury accomodation cut off by snow in The Hunting Party and here a gated apartment building in a posh part of Paris. I can see how her mind works. She’s seen a setting and wondered who lives or works there, like we all do, and then wondered what if there was a murder.

In The Paris Apartment, Jess is on the run from her job in England. She’s done something she shouldn’t have and hopped on the train for Paris to crash with her brother Ben. The two were separated as children when their mother killed herself. Ben who could charm anybody was quickly adopted and enjoyed the spoils of doting parents and a good education. Jess however, much younger and evidently not so charming, went from foster family to foster family, forever scarred by being the one to find their mother’s dead body. Her education has been minuscule which is why she’s been working in a dodgy bar.

Jess turns up at Ben’s Paris address, an apartment in a surprisingly luxurious building with an internal courtyard garden. The old lady concierge isn’t very welcoming and Ben isn’t home. But Jess is street-wise and manages to get inside anyway, fashioning her cheap hoop earrings into a device to pick the apartment lock. Inside, still no Ben, only a cat with blood on its fur. And it looks as if someone has scrubbed something off the floor using bleach. Jess begins to suspect the worst.

The gated apartment building offers a select bunch of suspects who Jess slowly gets to know. Nobody’s very friendly and nobody seems to know what Ben’s been up to lately. He’s a journalist so we can only suppose he was snooping around too much. The only one who is at all friendly is Nick, Ben’s friend who helped him secure this flat. Ben and Nick were at university together.

There’s also Sophie in the penthouse flat with her little dog and who is much nicer to the dog than people. She’s a high-maintenance middle-aged woman married to Jacques, who is mostly away on business – something to do with wine if the cellar down in the basement is anything to go by. There’s broody, menacing Antoine who frightens Jess when she first arrives. That leaves two young girls who share a flat: sensitive art student Mimi and her party-animal pal, Camille.

The story switches between the characters and backwards into the past to portray a picture of Ben, the charming Englishman interloper, from various points of view. Everyone seems to be afraid of something and they all seem to be hiding something. Just as everyone seems to have pieces missing from the puzzle. It’s going to have to be Jess who sorts it all out but who can she trust? The reader is all too aware that Ben has likely paid a price for asking too many questions. Thank goodness Jess’s got a bit of help from foreign correspondent Theo, who looks like a pirate but seems to be otherwise trustworthy because Jess is in way over her head.

Lucy Foley delivers another clever twisty mystery. How she manages to keep track of who knows what and a backwards and forward timeline suggests a pinboard covered in spreadsheets and graphs. Agatha Christie would have been impressed. Jess is the perfect character for Foley’s amateur sleuth because she is so completely at sea in this sophisticated Parisian setting, is barely educated and thoroughly naive. Instead she relies on gut instinct, driven by love for her brother and a determination for justice. The Paris Apartment comes together nicely to create a light but very satisfying read and gets a four out of five from me.

Book Review: Resurrection Bay by Emma Viskic – introducing an unforgettable new sleuth

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After such a run of historical novels, I was more than ready for a good, meaty mystery and what better than some Aussie Noir. I’d been meaning to pick up the first in this series for a while because I’d read good things and the idea of a hearing-impaired private investigator sparked my interest. Calum Zelic has been profoundly deaf since a childhood illness. Now in his thirties, he’s divorced and running a private investigation company. Mostly it’s small stuff, like the case he’s got now: the theft of cigarettes in bulk from a warehouse.

Caleb is interesting because he pretends he can hear just as well as anybody else, picking up what he can from lip reading, and signing with the people who know him better. And although Caleb has a talent for reading people through their body language, it’s just as well his trusty side-kick, tough-talking ex-cop, Frankie, is there to pick up anything he’s missed. The two create some terrific dialogue as they are always sparring with each other.

When his childhood friend, Gary, is murdered in an unspeakably violent way, Caleb is both grieving and flung into danger. Gary, a policeman, has been helping Caleb with his case – maybe it’s more than just cigarettes going in and out of that warehouse. Before his death he sent Caleb a text warning him about a man named Scott. Next thing you know, Frankie has gone missing, Caleb’s running for his life and turns to Kat, his ex-wife for help. The two hide out in Resurrection Bay, Gary and Caleb’s childhood home.

In Resurrection Bay we get snippets of Caleb’s childhood, and meet Anton, Caleb’s dodgy brother, who has done time for drug-related crime. Anton says he’s turned his life around, but can you ever trust an addict? We have some interesting dynamics between the two brothers, while Caleb still carries a torch for Kat. So with the case and all, he’s a bundle of conflicting emotions.

Viskic has created a pacy crime thriller but what kept me turning the pages was the smart dialogue and quirky characters. Caleb is constantly on the receiving end of a pasting, but somehow manages to keep going. He plays a cat and mouse game in several nail-biting scenes, and unable to rely on sounds, uses his remaining senses tuned up to the max. This makes for some very dramatic moments all the while propelling Caleb to a gritty showdown and a few twisty surprises.

My only gripe was that the ending just seemed to be a little too much – the violence and the twists. A little over-egging of the pudding perhaps. Although this is probably not uncommon in this genre and the book has garnered a bunch of awards. Overall, Resurrection Bay is a great start to a new series, and I will be happy to check out the next books because Caleb is such a brilliant creation. I even developed a hankering to learn sign language. This book gets a four out of five from me.

Book Review: The Fine Art of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard – a complex and original page-turner with a twist

~ Judith ~ 2 Comments

What does a Japanese crime boss, a chemical defence base in Cornwall and real estate in Iceland have in common? They are all part of a complex new thriller by Robert Goddard. I had really enjoyed Goddard’s Wide World trilogy set during the time of the Versailles treaty negotiations after World War One. So I knew Goddard could throw together a twisty, action packed story with engaging characters, witty writing and an ending you don’t see coming.

And so it is here. The Fine Art of Invisible Detection begins with a difficult case for the Kodaka Detective Agency in Tokyo. Umiko Wada mostly does the office work but a new case has her packing her bags for London to impersonate a client. Mrs Takenada wants to discover if her father really committed suicide on a business to London in 1977. Or did his connections with notorious career criminal, Nishizaki, lead to his murder? She’s received a letter from a Martin Caldwell asking to meet up. He has evidence about a former friend of his who worked as an interpreter for Mrs Takenada’s dad. But Mrs T’s family are cautious so Wada is sent in her place.

With the sudden suspicious death of her boss Wada might be biting off more than she can chew, but Wada is smart, careful and has one thing that many other private detectives might envy: she has the knack for blending in with a crowd. When Martin doesn’t arrive at the appointed time for their interview, you can’t help wondering if something has happened to him as well.

The story switches between Wada’s narrative and that of Nick Miller, an art teacher that Martin has been in touch with as well. Similarly Martin fails to show up to meet Nick and so Nick and Wada both conduct their own investigations into what Martin had been trying to tell them and why he might be missing.

The story takes the reader to Nancekuke in Cornwall where the British military had been conducting trials on chemical weapons, in particular sarin gas acquired from the Nazis at the end of World War Two. Wada has her own personal connection with sarin – her husband was a victim of the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo train in the 90s and took twelve years to die. But what could any of this have to do with her possible suicide victim in London? She and Nick will both find themselves travelling to Iceland to find out.

This is another brilliant twisty read with all kinds of story threads going off in different directions and then somehow coming back together. Wada is a great character, discovering as she goes on how to be a credible private detective. Fortunately she can think on her feet and has a cool head because someone is out to stop her. Nick is interesting because he is the mostly unlikely of heroes, but he has the strong emotional pull of someone grieving a parent, while trying to find the truth of his paternity. Goddard doesn’t let him sit around drinking tea and pondering what’s what however. Like Wada, he’s on and off planes, visiting crime-scenes, getting caught up in the action and fearing for his life.

The story builds to a thrilling ending and who knows, maybe another case for Wada, although Goddard mostly writes one-offs. Personally, I’d be happy to visit the Kodaka Detective Agency again. Wada is interesting company. Goddard manages to write from the point of view of a middle-aged Japanese woman and make her seem credible. The history around the Nancekuke base will have you searching the Internet and what you discover makes for some grim reading. I like it when you have a rip-roaring read with some substance and that’s certainly the case here. A four out of five read from me.

Book Review: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley – a tense mystery that keeps you guessing

~ Judith ~ Leave a comment

This novel is very similar in structure to The Guest List, Foley’s later book (which I reviewed last year) so it’s hard not to make comparisons. Both use the same before and now time shifts and leave the reader guessing not only who the murderer is – there are multiple candidates – but also the identity of the victim. The cast of characters – victims, witnesses and suspects – is cut off from the world by a weather event in both books. So beginning the earlier book, I asked myself, should I feel a little short-changed?

But in no time The Hunting Party swept me off into the story, because Foley is superb at creating tension and drama. The scenario is a group of nine friends who take the train for a weekend away in Scotland to see in the New Year at a remote hunting lodge. Most of them have been friends since university, although it is Emma, a more recent addition to the group, who arranges everything. She’s here as she’s Mark’s girlfriend. Mark is Julian’s best mate and Julian is married to Miranda, and these two are the alpha couple of the group. Julian and Miranda are fabulously wealthy and incredibly good looking. They seem to have it all and as we know that means trouble, particularly with their continued disregard for other people’s feelings.

The lodge is run by two live-in staff. Heather, recovering from loss, prefers her own company and the quiet of the remote setting. Doug is also running away from something – a checkered past that includes PTSD from his stints as a soldier in Afghanistan. His past is littered with violence, and he’s in charge of the shooting. You can’t help wondering what it might take to set him off. The presumptuousness and bad behaviour of a group of drunk friends might just do the trick.

Not long into the story there is a snow storm which turns the hunting lodge and its grounds into an island. When a body is found, emergency services are unable to send help until the weather lets up, leaving Heather and Doug to manage the situation – two very fragile people.

As I said, Foley is a master at building tension, the before and now time-frame keeps you guessing, but slowly fills you in with what’s going on in the heads of several characters, as well as their interactions with others. The party of friends are mostly people you wouldn’t want to spends a lot time with. There are supreme displays of arrogance and one-up-manship, and multiple secrets. Games of Twister and Truth or Dare oiled with an abundance of alcohol as well as drugs don’t help. It’s easy to empathise with Heather and even Doug, who appear vulnerable. Can they trust each other enough to keep things from boiling over?

The story bounces along to a tense ending where more violence is set to happen and the method and motives keep you guessing till the end. Overall I had to feel happy with the story as I was well entertained. The audiobook version I listened to was well-done and brought the book to life superbly. But I wonder if Lucy Foley will break out with a new type of story for her next novel. A better class of beach read, I’m going to give The Hunting Party a three and a half out of five.