Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Readerwhere you can share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading. You can also share from a book you want to highlight just because it caught your fancy.
I’m featuring The Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid, a book I’m currently reading.
The Prelude
All landscapes hold their own secrets.
ChapterOne:
Jane Gresham stared at what she had written, then with an impatient stroke of her pen crossed it through so firmly the paper tore and split in the wake of a nib. Bloody Jake, she thought angrily.
Also every Friday there is The Friday 56, hosted by Freda at Freda’s Voice, but she is taking a break and Anne at My Head is Full of Books has taken on hosting duties in her absence. You grab a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% of an eBook), find one or more interesting sentences (no spoilers), and post them.
‘The black tattoos. They’re the sort that sailors used to get in the South Seas back in the old days when sailing ships put in at the islands to take on stores and trade with the natives,’ Jake explained.
Description
The award-winning and Number One bestselling Val McDermid crafts an electrifying psychological suspense thriller that mixes history, heritage and heinous crimes.
A 200 year-old-secret is now a matter of life and death.And it could be worth a fortune.
It’s summer in the Lake District and heavy rain over the fells has uncovered a bizarrely tattooed body. Could it be linked to the old rumour that Fletcher Christian, mutinous First Mate on the Bounty, had secretly returned to England?
Scholar Jane Gresham wants to find out. She believes that the Lakeland poet William Wordsworth, a friend of Christian’s, may have sheltered the fugitive and turned his tale into an epic poem – which has since disappeared.
But as she follows each lead, death is hard on her heels. The centuries-old mystery is putting lives at risk. And it isn’t just the truth that is waiting to be discovered, but a bounty worth millions …
My favourite genres are crime fiction and historical fiction. So, the combination of the two really appeals to me. What do you think, does this book appeal to you? What are you currently reading?
Head of Zeus — an Aries Book| 12 September 2024 | 372 pages|e-book | Review copy| 4*
Description from Amazon UK:
Basil Palmer has decided to murder a man called Louis Carson. There’s only one he doesn’t know anything about his intended victim, not who he is or where he lives.
Basil learns that Carson owns Hemlock Bay, a resort for the wealthy and privileged. Knowing that his plan will only work if he covers his tracks, he invents a false identity and, posing as Dr Seamus Doyle, journeys to the coast plotting murder along the way.
Meanwhile Rachel Savernake buys an intriguing painting of a place called Hemlock Bay, one that she cannot get out of her head. Macabre and strange, the image shows a shape that seems to represent a dead body lying on the beach.
Convinced that there is something sinister lurking amongst the glamour of the bay, Rachel books a cottage there – where she meets a mysterious doctor called Seamus Doyle…
My thoughts:
This is the 5th Rachel Savernack book, written in the style of the golden age of crime. I loved the first two books in the series but somehow managed to miss the next two. I had high expectations for Hemlock Bay and certainly wasn’t disappointed as I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Like the other two Rachel Savernack books this is also a complex mystery, with several strands and plenty of twists and misdirections. It begins with a Prologue. It is July 1930 as an unnamed couple in a basement room in Temple, London hear a newspaper vendor announce the death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. They are discussing death, ending as the man lifts a revolver and squeezes the trigger. Then in January 1931 Basil Palmer makes a New Year resolution – to murder a man he has never met, Louis Carson. But he doesn’t know where he lives, nor what he looks like. This sets in motion a sequence of events, involving numerous people, all with their own agendas, all gathered together in Hemlock Bay.
Hemlock Bay is a seaside resort on the north-west coast of Lancashire. It was originally just ‘a small bay with a splendid beach, flanked by a stretch of sheer cliffs on one side and a tiny secluded cove on the other side of the steep headland‘ and on ‘a treacherous outcrop of rock was an old lighthouse‘. J M W Turner had visited the Bay on a sketching trip and said it was ‘as pretty as Paradise‘. In the past, ships were often wrecked on the shore and contraband was smuggled through a maze of underground passages. But after the end of the First World War it had been developed into a small and select seaside resort. Pleasure Grounds had been built on Hemlock Head, with provision for dancing and all sorts of amusements, known as Paradise, adopting Turner’s description. Jackson, a speculator, and his wife had bought the resort and then opened a new venture, the Hemlock Sun and Air Garden, a nudist club.
Rachel Savernack is intrigued by a surrealist painting of Hemlock Bay depicting a body stretched out below the lighthouse. She and Jacob Flint go to Hemlock Bay, where among others, she meets Virginia Penrhos, the woman who painted the picture, a reclusive doctor named Seamus Doyle, a man named Louis Carson and Basil Palmer under an assumed name. It’s a well plotted novel with interesting characters in a beautiful setting.
Martin Edwards’ Author’s Note at the end of the book is interesting, explaining that although Hemlock Bay is a fictional place it is based on Heysham in Lancashire, overlooking Morecombe Bay (where I enjoyed several holidays as a child). The information in the Heritage Centre in Heysham helped him with the description of Paradise. And the ‘Cluefinder’ at the back of the book listing hints and clues is most enlightening. But I resisted the temptation to read it before I read the book. It is a baffling and most enjoyable murder mystery.
My thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus — AriesFiction, the publishers for the ARC.
What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?
Currently I’m reading Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. This is the only book left I didn’t finish reading for my 20 Books of Summer Challenge 2024. It has been on my TBR list for a few years, so I am determined to read it soon. The reason I haven’t read it before now is that I have a paperback copy and I’ve got too used to reading on my Kindle with the ability to enlarge the text.
I have high hope that this psychological thriller will be good – maybe too high as so many people have enthused over this book. Can it live up to all the hype? Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno meet on a train. Bruno manipulates Guy into swapping murders with him. “Some people are better off dead,” Bruno remarks, “like your wife and my father, for instance.” It begins slowly though and so far, I’m doubtful it will.
I’m also reading Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths, the 5th Brighton Mystery novel, also called the DI Edgar Stephens and Max Mephisto series. It’s about three young women who have gone missing in Brighton. Edgar is now a Superintendent and his wife, Emma, formerly a police officer, is now a private detective. Edgar’s friend, magician Max Mephisto, is reinventing himself as a movie star and trying not to envy his daughter Ruby’s television fame. It seems a bit pedestrian so far, maybe too formulaic.
The last book I read was The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell, which I think is one of her best books I’ve read. It’s also a psychological thriller and compelling that I just didn’t want to stop reading until I finished it.
Description on Amazon
When Benet was about fourteen, she and her mother had been alone in a train carriage – and Mopsa had tried to stab her with a carving knife.
It has been some time since Benet had seen her psychologically disturbed mother. So when Mopsa arrives at the airport looking drab and colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tries not to hate her.
But when the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder in which three women are pushed to psychological extremes, family ties are strained to the absolute limit…
What will I read next? At the moment I have no idea. Once I’ve finished a challenge that involves reading from a planned list I have this great sense of freedom, that I can just decide on a whim what to read next.
Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stackson the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!
The optional theme this month is Water. These books all have water on the covers
A is for The Art of Drowning by Frances Fyfield, a very edgy and tense crime thriller.
Rachel Doe is a shy accountant at a low ebb in life when she meets charismatic Ivy Schneider, nee Wiseman, at her evening class and her life changes for the better. Ivy is her polar oppositte: strong, six years her senior and the romantic survivor of drug addiction, homelessness and the death of her child. Ivy does menial shift work, beholden to no one, and she inspires life; as do her farming parents, with their ramshackle house and its swan- filled lake, the lake where Ivy’s daughter drowned. As Rachel grows closer to them all she learns how Ivy came to be married to Carl, the son of a WWII prisoner, as well as the true nature of that marriage to a bullying and ambitious lawyer who has become a judge and who denies her access to her surviving child. Rachel wants justice for Ivy, but Ivy has another agenda and Rachel’s naive sense of fair play is no match for the manipulative qualities in the Wisemen women. (Goodreads)
U is for Undercurrent by Barney Norris, a moving and intimate portrait of love, of life and why we choose to share ours with the people we do.
The main story centres around Ed and his immediate family, but the narrative also includes the stories of his grandparents and great grandparents. He had a troubled childhood, living on a farm in Wales with his mother, stepfather and stepsister, Rachel. When he was ten At the age of 10 in an almost accidental moment of heroism, he saved Amy from drowning. Years later when he meets Amy again by chance they form a relationship. But then tragedy overtakes him, and Ed must decide whether to let history and duty define his life, or whether he should push against the tide and write his own story.
George Gently is called in to investigate a murder in Starmouth, a British seaside holiday resort. An unidentified body was found on the beach. The victim was naked, punctured with stab wounds. It was first published in 1956 and reflects that period of time. Gently smokes a pipe and puffs his way through the investigation often in a haze of smoke when questioning suspects who also smoke. And it has a very ‘English’ feel about it. The fifties were also the period where the death sentence was still in force and Gently and the main suspect discuss the ethics of killing comparing a hired killer with the hangman.
U is for The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan, a powerful and thought provoking story.
When Christopher Drayton’s body is found at the foot of the Scarborough Bluffs, Detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty are called to investigate his death. But as the secrets of his role in the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre surface, the harrowing significance of the case makes it difficult to remain objective. In a community haunted by the atrocities of war, anyone could be a suspect. And when the victim is a man with far more deaths to his name, could it be that justice has at long last been served?
S is for The Seagull by Ann Cleeves, crime fiction, set in Northumberland.
In Ann Cleeves’ eighth novel in her Vera Stanhope series Vera investigates a cold case involving her late father, Hector. he had been one of a ‘Gang of Four’, who had traded in rare birds’ eggs and sold raptors from the wild for considerable sums. Was he also involved in the Gang’s illegal activities? At the same time Vera and her team, Joe, Charlie and Holly – Vera’s own ‘gang of four’ – investigate a present day murder that looks very much as though it links in with their cold case. I enjoy watching Vera on TV, but I enjoy the books even more.
T is for Turn of the Tide by Margaret Skea, crime fiction set in 16th century Scotland.
This is historical fiction and it captivated me completely transporting me back in time to 16th century Scotland. If you have ever wondered, as I have, what it must have been like to live in a Tower House in the Scottish Borders then this book spells it out so clearly. And it puts you firmly in the middle of the centuries old feud between the Cunninghames and the Montgomeries, with all the drama of their battles, ambushes and schemes to further their standing with the young King James VI. It’s a tale of love, loyalty, tragedy and betrayal.
The next link up will be on September 7, 2024 when the optional theme will be Back to School.
Today I’m linking up with Davida @ The Chocolate Lady’s Book Review Blogfor Throwback Thursday. It takes place on the Thursday before the first Saturday of every month (i.e., the Thursday before the monthly #6Degrees post). The idea is to highlight one of your previously published book reviews and then link back to Davida’s blog.
Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve. I first reviewed it on February 5, 2008.
My review begins:
This was one of the best books I read in 2007. Philip Reeve is a new author to me. Here Lies Arthur is an adventure story, set in Britain in AD 500. I have always been fascinated by the legend of King Arthur and this book tells his story, casting a new and original slant on the ‘facts’. Very little historical evidence has survived to give concrete information about life in Britain from the fifth to the sixth centuries. The picture Reeve paints is of a turbulent and harsh world, with Arthur as a war-leader in a land where opposing war-bands fight for supremacy. Arthur is not the romantic hero of legend but a dangerous, quick-tempered man, ‘solid, big-boned with a thick neck and a fleshy face. ‘A bear of a man.’
What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next?
Currently I’m reading The Women of Troy by Pat Barker. this is the second book on The Women of Troy trilogy, a retelling of the classic Greek myth. I’ve recently read the first book, The Silence of the Girls (my review will follow shortly) which I loved. So far this second book looks as though it will be just as good. Troy has fallen but high winds are keeping the Greeks from sailing home.
Description from Goodreads:
Troy has fallen and the victorious Greeks are eager to return home with the spoils of an endless war—including the women of Troy themselves. They await a fair wind for the Aegean.
It does not come, because the gods are offended. The body of King Priam lies unburied and desecrated, and so the victors remain in suspension, camped in the shadows of the city they destroyed as the coalition that held them together begins to unravel. Old feuds resurface and new suspicions and rivalries begin to fester.
Largely unnoticed by her captors, the one time Trojan queen Briseis, formerly Achilles’s slave, now belonging to his companion Alcimus, quietly takes in these developments. She forges alliances when she can, with Priam’s aged wife the defiant Hecuba and with the disgraced soothsayer Calchas, all the while shrewdly seeking her path to revenge.
I’m also reading Into the Tangled Bank by Lev Parikian, non fiction about nature. It’s easy reading, Parikian writes with humour, in a chatty style, but also richly descriptive. I’m loving it, it is compulsive reading. He is a storyteller, so there are lots of anecdotes and stories, plus his thoughts on nature and how we view it. Amongst many other topics he ponders about the ethics of zoos – something that puzzles me too – and wonders if the definition of a nature lover is becoming that of one who loves nature programmes. There’s a lot packed into this book.
The last book I read was Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson, a review copy. My review will follow after the book is published on 22 August 2024. I have very mixed feelings about this book from loving parts of it to frustration at other parts.
Synopsis from Amazon:
The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed. Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers.
What will I read next? At the moment I have no idea.
BooksPlease 