Category: Thrillers

CC Spin #41 Book Review: Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Published on by Margaret13 Comments

The latest Classic Club Spin challenged you to read book 11 on your CC Spin #41 list by 24th August. That was Brighton Rock by Graham Greene for me.

Vintage Digital| 2 October 2010| 258 pages| e-book| 4*

Description on Amazon:

A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene’s gripping thriller exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the ‘dangerous edge of things.

In this gripping, terrifying, and unputdownable read, discover Greene’s iconic tale of the razor-wielding Pinkie.

I’ve enjoyed some of Greene’s books, so I’ve been meaning to get round to reading Brighton Rock for some years and I was pleased it came up as my Spin book. It was his ninth book, first published in 1938, and one of his Catholic Novels (the others being The End of the Affair, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter). In his Introduction J M Coetzee writes that it was his first serious novel, serious in the sense of working with serious ideas. Brighton in the 1930s had two faces, one the attractive seaside resort, and the other a nest of criminal activity in the desolate industrial suburbs.

The opening line sets the scene for a murder – “Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.’ Later he is found dead, apparently from a heart attack. Ida Arnold, who had met Fred as he tried to evade the gang, had left him alone for a few minutes and when she returned he was nowhere to be seen. She is determined to find out what really had happened to him as the official account of his death doesn’t match up with what she knew. So when the police ignore what she says she carries out her own investigation. She believes in Right and Wrong – to Ida death was the end of everything, she didn’t believe in heaven or hell, and she wants justice for Fred.

To say that Pinkie Brown, the teenage gangleader, is a complex character is an understatement. He is desperately trying to cover up his involvement with Fred. Rose is a young innocent girl who could reveal his guilt although she doesn’t realise it. Pinkie believes that if he marries her she wouldn’t be able to give evidence against him. Both of them are Roman Catholics. Rose believes in Good and Evil and salvation, whereas Pinkie believes in Hell fire and damnation, but is unsure about the existence of Heaven. He becomes increasingly paranoiac, more desperate and violent.

This novel is bleak, full of violence, menace and suspense, not a book I could enjoy. I struggled at first to understand what was going on and who all the characters were. It’s an odd mixture really – a crime is committed and the amount of violence is shocking, but it is also a psychological character study and an in-depth consideration of the questions of life and death. It’s a tough book to read and to review without giving away any spoilers, which is why I haven’t gone into much detail about the plot. Whilst it is not my favourite book by Graham Greene, it is well written with memorable characters and brilliantly described which brings it all vividly and terrifyingly to life.

One Dark Night by Hannah Richell

Published on by Margaret1 Comment

Simon & Schuster UK| 3 July 2025| 432 pages| e-book| Review copy| 5*

ELLIE
When the body of a young woman is discovered in the woods the morning after Halloween, arranged with ritualistic precision, teenager Ellie has more reason than most to be afraid …

RACHEL
 As both Ellie’s mum and the local school counsellor, Rachel, must grapple with the terror gripping the community, a tough job that’s made even harder when she realises her daughter is keeping secrets …

BEN
Police detective Ben Chase is desperate to solve the murder, but with his daughter Ellie struggling and the noose circling ever tighter, can he catch the killer before they strike again?

My thoughts:

I requested One Dark Night by Hannah Richell from NetGalley because I thought I’d like it when I read the blurb. And I was right! I haven’t read any of Richell’s books before but I’m certainly going to try some of her six earlier novels, all of them stand-alone stories. On her website she describes her work as suspenseful novels about families and friends tangled in secrets and lies. I’m drawn to buildings that creak with stories, to landscapes that shape the characters moving through them, and to the rich and often complex relationships between mothers, daughters and sisters.

One Dark Night is her sixth book, which she says is inspired by a real-life stretch of woodland and an old stone folly near where I currently live, supposedly one of the most haunted spots in England. Yes, it is very creepy.

I loved the spooky, tense atmosphere and as soon as I started reading it I knew I was going to enjoy this book. The settings are vividly described, the characters come across as real people, and the plot is amazing, multi- layered, with plenty of suspects for the murder and numerous twists and turns to throw me off the scent. For quite a while you don’t even know the name of the victim, who was found in the woods, called ‘Sally in the Wood’. It’s a police procedural centred on Ellie, a pupil at the private school, where her mother Rachel works as the school counsellor and her father, Ben, a detective sergeant who is on the investigation team. Ellie is struggling, having just started at the school and also because her parents are newly divorced.

In the Acknowledgements the author explains that the novel is loosely inspired by the place and stories of Sally in the Wood and the nearby stone folly, but the surroundings are drawn purely from her imagination. She had the idea for the novel after her daughter took part in a Girl Guides night hike to the stone folly above the spooky wood.

I found more information about the origins of the road, Sally in the Wood, on the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre. The road forms a curved section of the A363 road on the Somerset-Wiltshire border that cuts through dense woodland near Bath – a perfect place to set a murder mystery. There are a few explanations for the name – one being that a girl called Sally was murdered in the woods or imprisoned in nearby Brown’s Folly, or that she was an actual road accident victim. It has a reputation of being an eerie place, where ‘no birds sing’, so you never know…

I loved it, one of the best books I’ve read so far this year!

The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell

Published on by Margaret3 Comments

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Description from Amazon UK

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…

The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell is one of my TBRs. It’s a book I bought nine years ago from Barter Books in Alnwick. I don’t know why I haven’t read it before now as it is really good – one of the best books I’ve read this year, and one of her best standalone books. I read it this year as one of my 20 Books of Summer.

Why I enjoyed it so much is that it thoroughly gripped me and made me want to read on and on. It’s a psychological thriller, full of suspense, with several twists and turns that made me unsure how it would end. I was delighted by the final twist!

Benet’s son, James aged four dies from croup whilst in hospital soon after Mopsa, her mother with a history of mental illness, comes to visit. Meanwhile Carol, a young widow with three kids, two of them in care, is living nearby with Barry, her younger boyfriend. He adores her but she doesn’t want to marry him, content for him to do all the housework and look after Jason her two year old son when he is not being looked after by babysitters. The trouble starts when Mopsa kidnaps Jason and brings him back to Benet as a replacement for James.

The tree of hands in the title is taken from the collage on the hospital playroom wall:

On the white paper base sheet had been drawn a tree with a straight brown trunk and branches and twigs, and all over the tree, on the branches, nestling among the twigs, protruding like fungus from the trunk, were paper hands. All were exactly the same shape, presumably cut out by individual children using a template of an open hand with the fingers spread slightly apart. (page 46)

Benet found them horrible, as though the hands were begging for relief, or freedom, or oblivion. She thought there was a mad quality about them, ‘all the hands upraised, supplicating, praying.’ And she fell forward in a faint when the doctor told her James had died.

This is a dark and disturbing book about what happens to Jason, Benet, Carol and Barry. It’s well written and I could easily visualise the characters and the setting. It’s emotionally challenging and it both fascinated and horrified me in equal measure. It won the CWA Silver Dagger Award in 1984, an award given annually by the Crime Writers’ Association of the United Kingdom since 1960 for the best crime novel of the year. 

NB I’m currently reading Rendell’s The Girl Next Door because I enjoyed The Tree of Hands so much.

The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Description from Amazon UK

How do you survive the unthinkable?

Passengers boarding the 10.35 train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston are bound for work, reunions, holidays and new starts, with no idea that the journey is about to change their lives for ever…

Holly has just landed her dream job and Jeff is heading for his first ever work interview. Onboard customer service assistant Naz dreams of better things as he collects rubbish from the passengers. And among the others travelling are Nick with his young family; pensioner Meg setting off on a walking holiday with her dog; Caroline, run ragged by the competing demands of her stroppy teenagers and her demented mother; and Rhona, unhappy at work and desperate to get home. And in the middle of the carriage sits Saheel, carrying a deadly rucksack . . .

And in the aftermath, amidst the destruction and desolation, new bonds are formed, new friendships made… and we find hope in the most unlikely of places and among the most unlikely people.

The Silence Between Breaths is a book I’ve been meaning to read for ages, so I am really pleased that at long last I have read it. It’s on my 20 Books of Summer list and has been for several years and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. This is one of those books that is difficult to write about without giving away spoilers. You know early on both from the description on Amazon and from the back cover that one of the passengers, Saheel, has a ‘deadly secret’ ie a bomb, in his rucksack. So, the tension is there from the beginning of the book and I was wondering when he was going to the let off the bomb and what would happen to the passengers.

Chapter 1 introduces the main characters with little snippets about each of them. They are Jeff, who nearly missed the train, sitting next to Holly, who is going to London for training for her new job as an Event-Management assistant; Caroline who is worried about her mum who has dementia; Naz who wants to own his own restaurant; elderly Meg and Diana with their dog, Boss, going on a walking holiday; Nick, Lisa and their young children Eddie and Evie, going to a wedding; Rhona travelling with her boss Felicity and colleague, Agata, worried about her little daughter Maisie at home; and Saheel trying not draw attention to himself. One other person is Kulsoom, Saheel’s younger sister at home, who plays a big part in the story.

The next chapters, 3,4, and 5 give more information about each character, as the train makes its way to London. The tension builds and I became increasingly anxious about all of them as they became real people to me. I knew what was going to happen and I was willing something to happen to stop it. The remaining chapters, 6 to 10 complete the story, telling the harrowing and heart breaking consequences of Saheel’s actions. I just couldn’t stop reading even though it was so hard to read. The characterisation is superb, so that I cared about each person, the setting is so well described in such detail that it all happened before my eyes and the drama and tension grew as the events played out. One of the standout books that I’ve read this year.

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Constable (22 Sept. 2016)
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3360 KB
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 291 pages
  • Source: I bought my copy
  • My rating: 5*

Book Beginnings on Friday & The Friday 56: Archangel by Robert Harris

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Every Friday Book Beginnings on Friday is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader where 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 Archangel by Robert Harris, one of my TBRs, a book I bought five years ago. It is a thriller set in late 20th century Russia.

Book Beginning:

Late one night a long time ago – before you were even born, boy – a bodyguard stood on the verandah at the back of a big house in Moscow, smoking a cigarette.

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.

Page 56:

Stalin had suffered a catastrophic haemorrhage in the left cerebral hemisphere some time when he was alone in his room between 4 am and 10 pm on Sunday March 1 1953. Academician Vinogradov, who examined the brain after death, found serious hardening of the cerebral arteries which suggested Stalin had probably been half-crazy for a long while, maybe even years.

Synopsis from Amazon:

When historian Fluke Kelso learns of the existence of a secret notebook belonging to Josef Stalin he is determined to track it down, whatever the consequences. From the violent political intrigue and decadence of modern Moscow he heads north – to the vast forests surrounding the White Sea port of Archangel, and a terrifying encounter with Russia’s unburied past.

~~~

What do you think, does it appeal to you? What are you currently reading?

My Blog Break is over & The Man With No Face

Published on by Margaret12 Comments

I’m back home and looking forward to getting back into blogging. I was in hospital for three weeks – but now I’m recovering, trying to get back to ‘normal’.

It has been very odd as I lacked the desire to read, or concentrate on anything really. I’ve read just one book so far this month – The Man With No Face by Peter May, which I’d started before I went into hospital. This was first published in 1981. May made ‘some very minor changes’, before it was republished in 2018.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Description from Goodreads:

A POWERFUL AND PRESCIENT THRILLER FROM THE MILLION-SELLING AUTHOR OF I’LL KEEP YOU SAFE, COFFIN ROAD AND THE BLACKHOUSE.

A REPORTER WITH NO FEAR

Jaded Edinburgh journalist Neil Bannerman is sent to Brussels, intent on digging up dirt. Yet it is danger he discovers, when two British men are found murdered.

A CHILD WITH NO FATHER

One victim is a journalist, the other a Cabinet Minister: the double-assassination witnessed by the former’s autistic daughter. This girl recalls every detail about her father’s killer – except for one.

THE MAN WITH NO FACE

With the city rocked by the tragedy, Bannerman is compelled to follow his instincts. He is now fighting to expose a murderous conspiracy, protect a helpless child, and unmask a remorseless killer.

I did find it a bit repetitive, which for once was good as it kept reminding me what was going on. It’s a complex plot told mainly from Bannerman’s perspective with insights into the hired assassin’s and daughter’s viewpoints. It’s called ‘The Man with no Face’ because Tania, the daughter is a talented artist and she draws the scene with the assassin’s face left blank.

There’s a lot more I could say about the book. It’s a thriller with some violence but nothing I couldn’t cope with – and I’m squeamish! I thoroughly enjoyed it with all its twists and turns and increasing level of danger right up to the climax. Highly recommended!