Review Copy – Page 3

The House of Lost Whispers by Jenni Keer

Published on May 17, 2025 by Margaret2 Comments

Summary:

What if another world existed… where the Titanic had never sunk?

When the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic leaves Olivia Davenport orphaned, she’s sent to live with her guardians, the Fairchilds, in their huge Jacobean mansion. But the Fairchilds have more to worry about than a grieving young girl – with war in Europe imminent and four sons to protect.

Olivia feels alone and friendless. Until she hears a voice from behind the wall in her tower bedroom. A voice from a man called Seth. Convinced he’s merely a product of her grieving imagination, it’s not until after the heartbreak of war that Olivia discovers that he exists in an overlapping world, just a shudder in time away from her own. A world where the Titanic never sank… Where everything since has been just slightly… different.

All Olivia wants is to find a way into his reality. And not just to see the faces of her beloved parents once again. But also to meet Seth. Who might just be the love of her life…

I enjoyed reading Jenni Keer’s debut novel, The Hopes and Dreams of Lucy Baker several years ago and thought I’d like to read more of her books. This one is her eighth book, so I missed the books in between. I don’t often read romance or fantasy novels but The House of Lost Whispers has both elements and it’s also historical fiction set before, during and after the First World War. I preferred the historical element, especially the middle section about the War. But I also enjoyed reading the fantasy element about the anomaly in the magnetic field surrounding the earth causing vibrations, disrupting the fabric of space and time. This resulted in the formation of a duplicate earth, one parallel with our world, in which the Titanic did not sink on 12th April 1912.

I think this is a very interesting and possibly original idea, exploring what life would have been like for Olivia and her family if the Titanic had not been sunk. The book also explores loss and grief, family life, friendship and romantic relationships, as well as the devastating and horrific events of the First World War. As described in the blurb Olivia in the ‘real’ world and Seth in the parallel world can hear each other through the wall in her tower bedroom (the whispers), but despite their efforts they cannot break through to meet.

It’s beautifully descriptive, bringing the settings to life and there is also a murder mystery to solve. My only criticisms are that at times I did get a bit confused about Seth’s character and his parallel in the ‘real’ world, and I could have done without the love scenes (too descriptive in places). As I read on I was wondering how it would end and maybe Jenni Keer wondered too because the conclusion seemed rushed and rather neatly sown up. I was a bit disappointed, although I can’t imagine how else it could have ended. But overall it kept me reading, wanting to know what would happen next.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

Murder at Gull’s Nest by Jess Kidd

Published on March 16, 2025 by Margaret3 Comments

Summary from the publishers’ website:

The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.

After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit and set her sights on the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea. Why there? Why now? Instinct tells her it’s better not to reveal her reasons straight away. She takes a room at Gulls Nest guest house and settles in to watch and listen.

Somewhere in the north, a religious community meets for Vespers. Here on the southeast coast, Nora Breen prepares for braised liver and a dining room full of strangers.

Over disappointing – and sometimes downright inedible – dinners, Nora realises that she was right to keep quiet: her fellow lodgers are hiding something. At long last, she has found an outlet for her powers of observation and, well, nosiness: there is a mystery to solve, and she is the only person for the job.

My thoughts:

This is the first one of Jess Kidd’s books that I’ve read and I didn’t know what to expect. I enjoyed it. It’s quirky with some odd characters. At times it feels like a cosy crime mystery, but it’s also rather dark and foreboding, whereas at other times there’s some humour and also a hint of a romance. The setting is good in a fictional 1950s British seaside town.

It’s the mystery and the characters (there a lot) that stand out the most in my mind. Nora, the main character, is a no-nonsense person, who has just left a convent after 30 years, where she worked as a nurse. She went to the same guest house at Gore-on-Sea to find her friend, Frieda, a novice who had previously left the same convent due to ill health. Frieda had been writing to her weekly, but Nora hadn’t heard from her for some time and knew something was very wrong.

There are some very strange people. Among these people the ones who stood out for me are Nora, who is adjusting to life outside the outside world, whilst trying not to draw attention to herself. Dinah, who is eight years old, is the daughter of Helena, the owner of Gulls Nest, and is a very strange child. Nora first met Dinah hanging upside down from a curtain rail. Sometimes she hides in a small cupboard and doesn’t speak to anyone, living in a world of her own. Then there is old Professor Poppy, a Punch and Judy man with his puppets, and the mysterious Karel Jezek, who follows the young married couple Stella and Teddy. Teddy is suspicious of Karel, suspecting that something is going on between him and Stella.

Frieda had told Nora that she believed all the people at Gulls Nest were concealing some kind of secret. And indeed they were as Nora finds out. Life at Gulls Nest is tense, as all the residents’ secrets and past lives bubble away under the surface. Matters come to the boil as some of them die, or are they murdered? Nora helps Detective Inspector Rideout of the local police as he investigates the deaths as well as Frieda’s disappearance.

Overall I loved this book, crime fiction that is really in a category all of its own, that kept me wondering what was going on all the way to the end.

Jess Kidd was brought up in London as part of a large family from county Mayo and has been praised for her unique fictional voice. Her debut, Himself, was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards in 2016, the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award 2017 and longlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2017. Jess won the 2016 Costa Short Story Award. Her second novel, The Hoarder, also titled Mr. Flood’s Last Resort (U.S.), was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2019 and longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. Both books were BBC Radio 2 Book Club Picks. Her third book, the Victorian detective tale Things in Jars, has been released to critical acclaim. Jess’s work has been described as ‘Gabriel García Márquez meets The Pogues.’

Jess’s first book for children, Everyday Magic, was published in April 2021. Jess’s fourth novel for adults, The Night Ship, was released in August 2022. Murder at Gulls Nest, the first in the Nora Breen Investigates series will publish in Spring 2025. Jess is currently developing her own original TV projects with leading UK and international TV producers. (Copied from the C & W, a London-based literary agency’s website)

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

Published on March 5, 2025 by Margaret8 Comments

Quercus/ 13 February 2025/ 354 pages/review copy/e-book |Review copy| 5*

The Frozen People is the first in a new series, the Ali Dawson Mysteries, by Elly Griffiths. It’s not like her other books, but it’s still a murder mystery. Ali is fifty, a Detective Sergeant in a cold case team that investigates crimes in a unique way – by travelling back in time, physically, to do their research and interview the witnesses. You do need to suspend your disbelief but that wasn’t hard for me to do, as Elly Griffiths is an excellent storyteller.

I can’t say I understood how Serafina Jones, a physicist has developed a way of moving atoms in space. There are no concrete details about how it’s achieved and it’s all a bit vague. Jones explains it by saying it’s as if you create a space and then fill it with that exact person. The team calls it ‘going through the gate’. No matter, I never understood how Captain James T Kirk and his crew travelled through time and space in Star Trek, but I still loved it. And just as in Star Trek, Ali and her team are instructed not to interfere with historical events, and are required to maintain the timeline, to prevent history from being altered.

Ali and her colleague, Dina, have made a few trips back in time to collect evidence, but for their current case Ali has to go back in time further than she has gone before – to 1850, to the time and place when Ettie Moran, an artist’s model was murdered. She was found in a building used by artists owned by Cain Templeton, an influential man, who was a suspect, although he was never charged with the murder. He was part of a club called The Collectors. To be a member you had to have killed a woman. Cain’s great great grandson, Isaac, the MP Finn works, for is the Secretary of State for Justice and he wants to clear Cain’s name. So, Ali is assigned to the case. So far, so good. But it all starts to go wrong when Ali finds that she can’t get back to the present day it’s her biggest fear. She is stuck in 1850!

I was quickly drawn into this absorbing story. It’s a combination of two genres I love, crime fiction and historical fiction. The main characters come over as real people, the historical facts and the setting are detailed and convincing. And the plot held me captivated throughout.

I’m looking forward to reading more Ali Dawson books in the future.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

Only Murders in the Abbey by Beth Cowen-Erskine

Published on February 13, 2025February 10, 2025 by Margaret6 Comments

Hodder & Stoughton/ 13 February 2025/ 363 pages/e-book |Review copy| 5*

I read the first Loch Down Murder Mystery, Loch Down Abbey in 2021 and enjoyed it very much, so I was looking forward to reading Only Murders in the Abbey, set in 1930s Scotland . And I’m glad to say that I thought it was even better than the first one.

Description from the publishers:

Mrs MacBain, thank god it’s you.’ Without another word, he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the room, locking the door behind them. Mrs MacBain turned around, clearly offended at being manhandled, but then gasped, ‘Is that blood?’

Loch Down Abbey is full of guests for a Highland Ball. Including several uninvited members of the Inverkillen clan, the Abbey’s former residents. Housekeeper Mrs MacBain thinks her biggest challenge will be finding suitable rooms for everyone and keeping the peace at cocktail hour.

Until the morning after the ball, when one of the guests is discovered inside the Abbey’s library – as dead as a doornail.

Who would have had motive to want them dead? And how did they manage to commit their crime and escape while keeping the door locked from the inside?

With an Abbey full of suspects and secrets, it is down to Mrs MacBain to catch the killer before they strike again…

The Abbey, formerly the ancestral home of the Ogilvy-Sinclair family is now an hotel, owned by several of the long-standing employees and staffed mainly by the former servants, led by Mrs Alice McBain as the Director of Operations. The manager of the hotel is The Honourable Fergus Ogilvy-Sinclair, the youngest grandson of Lady Georgina, the Dowager Countess of Inverkillen. Her eldest grandson is Lord Angus Inverkillen, the current Earl of Inverkillen.

There are so many characters in this book including family members, hotel staff and guests that I found it difficult to keep track of all of them. However the main characters are very clearly defined and there is a list of all the characters at the beginning of the book, which is a great help.

The book begins the morning after a Highland Ball as Hudson, one of the co-owners of the Abbey, is doing his rounds when he finds a dead body in the Small Library, which had been locked for the Ball. The name of the victim is not revealed. The narrative then goes back to the fortnight before the Ball, introducing the characters and their relationships and it is not until the second half of the book that the identity of the victim is revealed.

Detective Inspector Jarvis from the local constabulary is called in to investigate, but as Mrs McBain thinks he is not ‘the sharpest axe in the shed’. And it is mainly down to her to get to the bottom of the mystery – how a murder could take place in a locked room, who had the motive to commit murder and how was the opium trade in Shanghai involved. As the victim had been stabbed to death the number of suspects includes all the men at the ball who were in Highland dress which includes a sgian-dubh, (pronounced ‘skeen doo’), a small single-edged knife, worn as part of Highland dress in the sock of a kilted Scot. So, there are many suspects, making the investigation tremendously complicated and involving many red herrings, and twists and turns as several secrets and scandals are revealed.The Epilogue introduces yet another unexpected turn.

How on earth Beth Cowan-Erskine kept so many strands in play, set in a richly described location and with believable characters is totally beyond me. But she did, with immense skill making this a most enjoyable book. As she describes it it is ‘a lunatic world’ that she has created. I really hope there will be a third Lock Down Murder Mystery.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

Published on September 26, 2024 by Margaret9 Comments

Description on Amazon UK:

After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle.

Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks – among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine – war-wife – to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death – and her own – while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra’s frenzies and the horrors to come.

Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet’s return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband’s choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts.

As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon’s death, one thing is certain: this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone’s fates forever.

My thoughts:

This is the third book in Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy trilogy. I loved the first two books, The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy both of which are based on Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid, so I was very keen to read The Voyage Home. I wasn’t disappointed but it is slightly different in that this third book is loosely based on the first part of Aeschylus’s Oresteia. The first two books are narrated by Briseis, who had been given to Achilles as a war prize, whereas Ritsa, a fictional character, replaces her as the narrator in the third book, which took me by surprise. I had been anticipating it would be Briseis again.

At the end of the Trojan War the Greeks and their prisoners eventually set sail for home. For King Agamemnon that is Mycenae, where Clytemnestra, his wife is waiting for him. But she is plotting his murder to avenge his sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia to appease the Gods and gain a fair wind to sail to Troy. After ten years she is still full of grief and rage, her determination to kill Agamemnon is stronger than ever.

Also in the same boat are the captured Trojan women including Cassandra, a princess of Troy, a daughter of Priam and Helen’s half sister. All I knew of her before is that she was a prophetess, whose prophecies were never believed. She’s a strong, beautiful woman but a very fragile character, often ranting and raving. She is demented, and manic, who Ritsa says is ‘as mad as a box of snakes’. Ritsa, her slave calls herself Cassandra’s ‘catch fart’.

The first part of the book covers their voyage to Mycenae and the second part is about what happened when they arrived. Barker doesn’t pull her punches. This is a well written, brutal, bloody tale of revenge told in a modern, colloquial style, and full of grim detail of horror and squalor. Most of the characters are unlikable, with the exception of Ritsa. I think the best book of the trilogy is The Silence of the Girls, but I did enjoy The Voyage Home.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin, the publishers for the ARC.

Hemlock Bay by Martin Edwards

Published on September 12, 2024 by Margaret3 Comments

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 — Aries Fiction, the publishers for the ARC.