Review Copy – Page 31

The Craftsman by Sharon Bolton

Published on June 11, 2018 by Margaret5 Comments

Orion Publishing Group 3 May 2018 |432 pages|e-book |Review copy|4.5*

Devoted father or merciless killer?

His secrets are buried with him.

Florence Lovelady’s career was made when she convicted coffin-maker Larry Glassbrook of a series of child murders 30 years ago. Like something from our worst nightmares the victims were buried…ALIVE.

Larry confessed to the crimes; it was an open and shut case. But now he’s dead, and events from the past start to repeat themselves.

Did she get it wrong all those years ago?
Or is there something much darker at play?

It’s been a while since I read one of Sharon Bolton’s books, so I was looking forward to reading her latest book – The Craftsman. I must admit that I was a bit dismayed when I realised that most of it is written in the present tense, but as soon as I began reading I was immediately drawn into the story, forgot about the tense, and just had to read on.

This is one of her standalone books and I have found each one really scary, creepy books and The Craftsman is no exception. In 1969 WPC Florence, ‘Flossie’, Lovelady began to work in Sabden, a small town in Lancashire under the shadow of Pendle Hill, notorious for witch trials back in the 17th century. But the book begins in 1999 when Florence, now an Assistant Commissioner returns to Sabden for the funeral of Larry Glassbrook who died after thirty years in prison, convicted for the murders of three teenagers buried alive in 1969. Taking her fifteen year old son Ben with her, she goes to Larry’s house where she had lodged and discovers a clay effigy similar to the ones found buried with the three teenagers. She revisits the scenes of the burials, meets some of her old colleagues and starts to think that maybe Larry wasn’t the murderer after all.

And so the nightmare begins, going back to 1969 as Flossie, a clever young woman, found it hard to be taken seriously at first by her colleagues in the police. And she was aware of how different she seemed to the local people in a place still steeped in superstition and belief in the supernatural. Her investigations, looking for connections between the victims, ad exploring the local history of witches and their covens raised an atmosphere of suspicion and near hysteria in the community.

Sharon Bolton’s writing is so descriptive, both of the beautiful landscape and the main characters, that I was inescapably drawn into this chilling and terrifying story with the horrors of being buried alive clearly described. She has produced a remarkably powerful book, full of tension and fear, but also focusing on the culture and attitudes of society at the end of the 1960s. I thought the pace of the book dragged a bit in the middle section only to be ramped up to the utmost as it drew to it conclusion, which I have to say I hadn’t expected and am not sure I can believe. It is a compelling and absorbing book that left me thinking about it days after I finished reading.

Many thanks to Orion Publishing Group for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Bats in the Belfry: A London Mystery (British Library Crime Classics ) by E C R Lorac

Published on June 7, 2018June 29, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

Poisoned Pen Press 2018 |233 pages|e-book |Review copy|4*

This was first published in 1937 by Collins Crime Club. This edition has an introduction by Martin Edwards.

Description:

Bruce Attleton dazzled London’s literary scene with his first two novels – but his early promise did not bear fruit. His wife Sybilla is a glittering actress, unforgiving of Bruce’s failure, and the couple lead separate lives in their house at Regent’s Park.

When Bruce is called away on a sudden trip to Paris, he vanishes completely – until his suitcase and passport are found in a sinister artist’s studio, the Belfry, in a crumbling house in Notting Hill. Inspector Macdonald must uncover Bruce’s secrets, and find out the identity of his mysterious blackmailer.

This intricate mystery from a classic writer is set in a superbly evoked London of the 1930s.

E C R Lorac was a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894-1958) who was a prolific writer of crime fiction from the 1930s to the 1950s, and a member of the prestigious Detection Club. Little has been written about her life. By the time of her death she had produced more that seventy books but she seems to have been a forgotten author and I hadn’t heard of E C R Lorac until quite recently.

I’m pleased to say that I enjoyed Bats in the Belfry, which is set in London in the 1930s. There is the occasional anti-Semitic comment, offensive now but it seems to reflect the period in which Lorac was writing. However, it’s full of descriptive writing painting vivid pictures of the streets of London and in particular the spooky, Gothic tower in which a corpse is discovered, ‘headless and handless‘. For a while the identity of the murdered man is in doubt – is it that of Bruce Attleton who had unaccountably disappeared or that of the mysterious stranger, Debrette who it seems had been blackmailing Bruce?

Chief Inspector Macdonald of New Scotland Yard is called in to investigate Bruce’s disappearance. I liked Macdonald, a ‘long lean faced’ Scot. He’s a shrewd detective, not easily ruffled or fooled. The other characters are well defined, including Bruce’s wife Sybilla, both of whom are having affairs, and his friends, one of whom, Robert Grenville, is in love with his ward Elizabeth, a lively and resourceful young woman. The plot is complex, with enough twists and turns to keep me guessing until very nearly the end of the book.

I think this is one of the better Golden Age Mysteries that I have read, and I’m now looking forward to reading another of her books, Fire in the Thatch, set in Devon.

Many thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner

Published on June 3, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

Description:

Second literary thriller from bestselling author of MISSING, PRESUMED.

A brutal murder. A detective with no one left to trust.

As dusk falls a young man staggers through a park, far from home, bleeding from a stab wound. He dies where he falls; cradled by a stranger, a woman’s name on his lips in his last seconds of life.

DI Manon Bradshaw can’t help taking an interest – these days she only handles cold cases, but the man died just yards from the police station where she works.

She’s horrified to discover that both victim and prime suspect are more closely linked to her than she could have imagined. And as the Cambridgeshire police force closes ranks against her, she is forced to contemplate the unthinkable.

How well does she know her loved ones, and are they capable of murder?

I loved Missing, Presumed (link to my post) so I was keen to read Persons Unknown. They are both written in the present tense which, if you read my blog regularly you will know, I usually find irritating. But for some unknown reason it didn’t bother me and as I read the books I completely forgot about the tense and was totally immersed in the mysteries. Persons Unknown is just as good, if not better than Missing, Presumed.

Although it’s the second Manon Bradshaw book I think it works well as a standalone book, particularly as her circumstances have changed since the end of the first book. She has moved from London to Cambridge and she and her adopted son Fly, aged twelve, are living with her sister Ellie, and Ellie’s nearly three-year-old son Solly. Fly is struggling to fit into school, a vast comprehensive school where he is the only black boy in the school, and Manon is five months pregnant and working on cold cases. She would have loved to be included in the investigation into the murder of Jon-Oliver Ross who was found stabbed to death in the local park. But that’s not possible when Ellie identifies him as Solly’s father and Fly is a suspect after he is spotted on CCTV near the body.

What I particularly like about this book is that it follows the events as they occur without flashbacks and although it’s a complicated story I found it easy to follow all the twists and turns and the multiple viewpoints. The characters are totally believable, their personalities clearly defined and explored with psychological depth. A number of issues are raised, such as the mix of work and home life, childcare and motherhood and racial prejudice. Manon, as the main character, stands out but some of the other characters, such as Birdie, the shopkeeper and Mark Talbot, a lawyer, who agrees to help Manon, are also memorable. At the same time it is tense and gripping as the events that led up to the murder are revealed.

Susie Steiner is currently writing the third Manon Bradshaw book – I hope it’ll be published soon!

Many thanks to The Borough Press/Harper Collins for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Published on May 25, 2018 by Margaret6 Comments

The Hunger

Description:

After having travelled west for weeks, the party of pioneers comes to a crossroads. It is time for their leader, George Donner, to make a choice. They face two diverging paths which lead to the same destination. One is well-documented – the other untested, but rumoured to be shorter.

Donner’s decision will shape the lives of everyone travelling with him. The searing heat of the desert gives way to biting winds and a bitter cold that freezes the cattle where they stand. Driven to the brink of madness, the ill-fated group struggles to survive and minor disagreements turn into violent confrontations. Then the children begin to disappear. As the survivors turn against each other, a few begin to realise that the threat they face reaches beyond the fury of the natural elements, to something more primal and far more deadly.

Based on the true story of The Donner Party, The Hunger is an eerie, shiver-inducing exploration of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu is a story about the Donner Party, comprising pioneers, people who were looking for a better life in the American West. They formed a wagon train under the leadership of George Donner and James Reed making their way west to California in 1846. This is historical fiction based on the true story of the Donner Party. I knew nothing about the history so it was all fascinating to me – especially as I’m always drawn to stories of pioneers.

Alma Katsu has taken the basic facts and has woven a fictional tale around them to explain what happened. She lists the sources she has used and explains where she has varied from the actual facts and added fictional characters. The Donner Party did set out to get to California, and they did take what was supposed to be a short cut that promised to cut 300 miles off their journey, following a trail called the Hastings Cutoff, from Fort Bridger, Wyoming and this proved to be their downfall – it wasn’t a short cut.

It took them into the Great Salt Lake Desert, a much harder and longer route, a long hard dry drive without water and without feed for the animals. So by the time they got to the Oregon trail to take them over the Sierra Nevada mountains it was late in the season, at the beginning of November and their way was blocked by heavy snowfall. The snow was head deep and impenetrable. Their supplies were low, many of them died of starvation, and some of them resorted to eating their animals and it is supposed, the deceased members of the group.

The facts alone are fascinating, but with Alma Katsu’s fiction interwoven with hints of the supernatural and Indian myths it becomes a thrilling, spine tingling horrific tale. And above all it is well written, describing the landscape the wagon trail takes through the heat of the desert, the lonely deserted plains, the isolated forts along the way, the forests where they had to hack a trail through, and the freezing cold of the snow filled mountains that finally blocked their way.

It has an impressive cast list of men, women and children, explaining their back stories and drawing a realistic picture of what their lives were like on the trail – their friendships, rivalries and hostilities, the ways they managed to survive and how they reacted to the frightening rumours of Indian rituals, especially when their children begin to disappear. It is a tense, menacing tale full of hope and also of desperation. I loved all of it.

Many thanks to Random House UK for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Her Hidden Life by V S Alexander

Published on May 14, 2018 by Margaret4 Comments

Description:

It’s 1943 and Hitler’s Germany is a terrifying place to be.
But Magda Ritter’s duty is the most dangerous of all…

Assigned to The Berghof, Hitler’s mountain retreat, she must serve the Reich by becoming the Führer’s ‘Taster’ – a woman who checks his food for poison. Magda can see no way out of this hellish existence until she meets Karl, an SS officer who has formed an underground resistance group within Hitler’s inner circle.

As their forbidden love grows, Magda and Karl see an opportunity to stop the atrocities of the madman leading their country. But in doing so, they risk their lives, their families and, above all, a love unlike either of them have ever known…

After I came to the end of Her Hidden Life I was left feeling there was something missing, something not quite right about it. I liked the basic premise of the book, written from the point of view of one of the tasters of Adolf Hitler’s food and the light it throws on the Second World War from the Germans’ viewpoint. The general public were kept unaware of the atrocities that the Reich carried out by the propaganda perpetrated by Joseph Goebbels.

But I felt as though I was distanced from it – there is a lot of ‘telling’, of recounting what happened. It is fiction, not fact, although it is based on the life of one of the fifteen women who tasted Hitler’s food – and that part is fascinating. Magda is an amazing character. But maybe that is part of my problem with the book – she is so amazing, beautiful, intelligent, resourceful, with a will and determination that carries her through all the difficulties and dangers that are thrown at her. And there is so much danger. She falls in love with Karl, a handsome SS officer, who makes her heart flutter – and despite what the blurb states their love is not forbidden – when Hitler realises they are in love he insists they marry and not only that, he is present at the ceremony and presents them with silver wedding rings, inscribed inside with his name.

Anderson’s descriptive writing is good especially when he is describing scenes at Hitler’s mountain retreat, the Berghof, at his bunker in Berlin and at the Wolf’s Lair, his military headquarters. The scenes in Berlin during the Allies bombing raid and Magda’s imprisonment in the women’s concentration camp at Bromberg-Ost are particularly dramatic and horrific. I liked his portrait of Hitler, showing his charismatic side and the hold he exerted over people.I know almost nothing about Eva Braun, and liked the picture Anderson drew, but was surprised at Eva’s friendship with Magda and the access that Magda had to both Hitler and Eva. There were many assassination attempts that failed or weren’t carried out and there have been speculations about how he died and who killed him – but I can’t accept Anderson’s fictional version of who killed Adolf Hitler, even though it was foreshadowed throughout the book.

I realise now that it is the fictional elements of Her Hidden Life that bother me. In his Author’s Note, Anderson explains that the idea for writing this novel came from the story of Margot Woelk, one of Hitler’s tasters. She had kept that fact a secret until she was ninety five. It is not an account of her life but several scenes are based on her experiences, although Anderson doesn’t specify which are factual. He relied on many sources, some of which differed, and states that he has made every attempt to marry fiction with history,

Overall, I did enjoy aspects of this book and am glad I read it, even though I think I would prefer a factual account rather than fiction revolving around a romantic love story that had, to my mind, a fairy tale ending.

My thanks to Avon Books for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link – published as The Taster

Snap by Belinda Bauer

Published on May 11, 2018May 11, 2018 by Margaret5 Comments

Random House UK|Review Copy|3.5*

This is Belinda Bauer’s 8th book but only the second one that I’ve read. I loved her first book, Blacklands, about a serial killer, told mainly from a child’s point of view, so I was looking forwarded to reading Snap. I enjoyed it but I was a bit disappointed as I read it, as it relies quite a lot on several coincidences and some of the characters were not much more than caricatures, particularly the police, Detective Inspector John Marvel, who is a bit of a maverick and Detective Sergeant Reynolds, who in contrast, is a stickler for correct procedure.

However, I think the children in this book come across as real characters. I liked the opening as eleven year old Jack and his sisters, Joy, nine years old and Merry aged three sit in their broken down car, in the sweltering sun, on the hard shoulder of the M5 motorway. Their pregnant mother didn’t have a mobile phone with her and had left them alone in the car as she walked up the road to find an emergency phone to call for help. She never returned.

Move forward three years to find Jack, now fourteen and his sisters living alone – their father couldn’t cope after his wife had been found dead by the motorway – supporting his sisters through breaking into houses to steal food and valuables. He is ‘guided’ in his criminal activities by Louis – in the same way that Fagin taught boys to pickpocket, Louis tells Jack which houses will be empty so that he can break in without fear of being caught. Then Catherine While and her husband Adam are brought into the story, when Jack breaks into their house thinking it is empty. However Catherine, pregnant, had stayed at home whilst her husband went out and is horrified to discover that she is not alone in the house. But for reasons of her own she doesn’t tell Adam or inform the police, which puts her in a dangerous situation.

The story is well paced and I was keen to find out what had happened to Jack’s mother, how he would cope with being responsible for his sisters, whether he would be caught and whether his father would return. And I was most concerned about Catherine’s safety! So overall I did enjoy it, despite the coincidences. It’s quirky and different from other crime fiction, which is refreshing.

Many thanks to Random House UK for a review copy via NetGalley.

Amazon UK link
Amazon US link

Details of Belinda Bauer’s books (copied from Fantastic Fiction)

Series

Exmoor trilogy
1. Blacklands (2009)
2. Darkside (2011)
3. Finders Keepers (2012)

Novels