“She thought nothing could be told and be accurate. Feeble words dropped earnestly and haphazardly over the large stretched-out fabric of life with all its knots and bumps”

The Burgess Boys is the fifth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Elizabeth Strout. Susan Burgess Olson stayed in her Maine hometown of Shirley Falls even when Steve Olson left her to return to Sweden. Her brothers, high-profile attorney Jim Burgess, and her twin, appellate lawyer Bob Burgess, ended up in New York. But now, she has a crisis with her nineteen-year-old son, Zachary, and they need to return.

Shirley Falls has become a destination for Somali refugees, and Zachary Olson does a stupid thing, as a joke, that understandably causes huge upset within that community and sees him facing court for his actions. His Uncle Bob drops everything to travel to Shirley Falls to support his twin and her son, even though he and Susan don’t get on, while Jim and his wife Helen don’t alter their planned vacation on St Kitts.

Jim does organise the best local lawyer he can find for Zach, later speaks at a rally for goodwill which, in hindsight, does more damage than good to Zach’s case, and is there to support his nephew at the court hearing. But the judge’s orders then are not an end to it, and Jim and Helen’s lives are repeatedly interrupted with new dramas concerning Zach.

Bob is always there to lend support, even though his contribution is belittled by Jim and not exactly appreciated by Susan. It’s on one of these occasions, when Jim has imbibed more than usual, that he reveals to his brother the truth about something that has plagued Bob since he was a boy: a shocking truth that turns his world upside-down.

Strout uses multiple narrators to tell the story, and from their different perspectives, the reader also learns about each character. Jim seems to be basically a good guy but hates Maine, hates Shirley Falls and treats his younger brother badly, heaping on the insults and criticism at every encounter. His wife Helen is entirely focussed on her own family and has nothing but disdain for the Burgess family members, except of course Jim.

Bob has a big heart and is kind to everyone, despite being the subject of his brother’s scorn from a very young age. Bob’s ex, Pam still considers the Burgesses her family, still loves them despite being married to Ted and bearing his sons. Police Chief Gerry O’Hare tries his best for the citizens of Shirley Falls, but has to maintain a balance between the various factions who support or revile the immigrants.

As a child, Susan suffered under her mother’s cruelty and was determined to better as a mother, but is at a complete loss with her quiet, friendless son. Abdikarim Ahmed has witnessed so much horror in his life, including the violent loss of his son, yet can see that Zachary is just a frightened boy, but the wheels of justice turn relentless.

Strout has a talent for describing ordinary people living ordinary lives occasionally punctuated by extraordinary events that bring great joy or sorrow or excitement. Over the course of about a year, she gives the reader significant episodes in the lives of the people from this small Maine town, and the reader can’t help feeling for them and hoping for positive outcomes.

Strout treats the reader to some gorgeous descriptive prose: “…the incident was an irritant rubbing already against the fine fabric or her family, and she felt right now the small pricks of anxiety that precede insomnia” and “…she learned – freshly, scorchingly – of the privacy of sorrow. It was as though she had been escorted through a door into some large and private club that she had not even known existed. Women who miscarried. And the women in the club mostly passed each other silently” and “No exchange rate for the confidence of youth” are examples.

Also: “The silence – where there had been for so long the sound of Pam’s voice, her chatter, her laughter, her sharp opinions, her sudden bursting forth of tears – the absence of all that, the silence of no showers running, nu bureau doors opening and shutting, even the silence of Bob’s own voice, for he did not speak when he came home, did not recount to anyone his day – the silence almost killed him” and “…he went about his life unencumbered by the crust of doubt he’d been so used to that he had not known it covered him until it was gone.” Moving and uplifting.

The Lewis Man is the second book in the Lewis Trilogy by award-winning British journalist and author, Peter May. Ten months on from losing his young son to a hit-and-run, Fin Macleod has quit his police job, divorced his wife of fourteen years, and is back on the Isle of Lewis, renovating the derelict white house on his late parents’ croft. Will he stay? Uncertain.

He’s tentatively connecting with Fionnlagh, the teenaged son he didn’t know he had (although he feels the same is unlikely with his first love, Marsaili, the young man’s widowed mother), when DS George Gunn brings puzzling news. A young man’s body, the victim of a brutal attack, has been uncovered in the local peat bog.

This corpse, though, was not buried hundreds of years ago, but perhaps less than sixty, and DNA indicates a sibling relationship to Tormod Macdonald, father of Marsaili. The match makes the old man the prime and only suspect, but Tormod always claimed to be an only child, and now has rapidly deteriorating dementia, which will make identifying the body a challenge.

While Gunn and Marsaili feel that anything Tormod tells them can’t be relied upon, Fin believes that the old man’s scattered recollections and fragments of memory are probably accurate, and that he would have no reason to lie. He regards what seem to be irrational ravings as potential clues and, with a somewhat reluctant Gunn, follows up on them to make a startling discovery.

Before the truth is revealed, there are trips to Eriskay and Edinburgh, to a tiny seaside village with an unusual church, and chats with a genealogist, an archivist, a former orphanage inmate, and a well-known Edinburgh crime figure. The friction between Catholic and Protestant, the “homers” taken from orphanages and often forced into slave labour, the traditional knitting patterns of Eriskay, and a St Christopher medal, all play significant parts.

May employs twin narratives to tell the story: Fin’s details present day events while Tormod recalls incidents from his youth, six decades earlier. As always, May’s gorgeous descriptive prose evokes the rugged beauty of his setting: “All along the ragged coastline, the sea sucked and frothed and growled, tireless legions of riderless white horses crashing up against the stubborn stone of unyielding black cliffs.” is one example.

Another: “The sky was black and blue, brooding, contused, rolling in off the ocean low and unbroken. The first spits of rain were smeared across his windscreen by the intermittent passage of its wipers. The pewter of the ocean itself was punctuated by the whites of breaking waves ten or fifteen feet high, and the solitary blue flashing light of the police car next to the ambulance was swallowed into insignificance by the vastness of the landscape.” The third instalment of this excellent Scottish crime trilogy, The Chessmen, is eagerly anticipated.

Olive Kitteridge is the first book in the Olive Kitteridge series by award-winning, best-selling American author, Elizabeth Strout. The small coastal Maine town of Crosby is where Olive Kitteridge and her husband Henry have lived most of their lives. Olive taught math at the Junior High School for thirty-two years; Henry was a pharmacist in the next town over until he retired.

Olive is a bit of an enigma: many in Crosby wonder how Henry puts up with her; she can be direct to the point of rudeness, never suffers fools, is petty and vindictive when it suits her, manages to unwittingly estrange those she cares about to the extent of her own heartbreak, yet can be uncannily perceptive to what others in distress need. When, in her early seventies, her son finally has the wherewithal to be candid, telling her she is bad tempered, her moods capricious, she is mystified and hurt.

Strout has a talent for describing ordinary people living ordinary lives occasionally punctuated by extraordinary events that bring great joy or sorrow or excitement. She gives the reader significant episodes in the lives of the people of Crosby, told from multiple perspectives, and while Olive narrates only some, she features in each one, sometimes as a bystander, sometimes in a more important role.

Related in separate chapters are instances of infidelity, accidental killing and the ensuing grief, a suicide thwarted, ageing, anorexia, an armed hold-up during which are uttered cruel words that can never be unsaid, superficial friends, a couple become reclusive through the actions of their son, early widowhood, confessions of adultery, the aftermath of a last-minute wedding cancellation, a progression from petty theft to arson, and late-in-life relationships. “But here they were, and Olive pictured two slices of Swiss Cheese pressed together, such holes they brought to this union – what pieces life took out of you.”

Strout treats the reader to some gorgeous descriptive prose: “At the very moment Kevin became aware of liking the sound of her voice, he felt adrenaline pour through him, the familiar, awful intensity, the indefatigable system that wanted to endure. He squinted hard toward the ocean. Great gray clouds were blowing in, and yet the sun, as though in contest, streamed yellow rays beneath them so that parts of the water sparkled with frenzied gaiety.”

When, at a certain point, Olive feels “something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat; the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water – seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it”, Kevin’s perception is different: “Hope was a cancer inside him. He didn’t want it; he did not want it. He could not bear these tender green shoots of hope springing up within him any longer.” A deserving prize-winner.

“It wasn’t until she took a playwriting course that she realized the only thing mightier than giving a stellar performance was being the person who crafted the words an actor spoke.”

By Any Other Name is the twenty-ninth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Jodi Picoult. At Bard College, Melina Green’s professor encourages her to enter into a collegiate playwriting competition something that will make her feel vulnerable. But the savaging meted out by the young NYT theatre critic judging the entrants ruins her prospects and dampens her creative enthusiasm.

Ten years on, she’s had only minor successes when her dad mentions an ancestor on her mother’s side who lived in Elizabethan times and was the first published female poet in England. Melina is intrigued and goes to her favourite place, the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives room, to research this fascinating woman.

The more she reads, the more certain she becomes that Emilia Bassano was not only the first published female poet in England. She might very well have been a playwright, too. The playwright, actually. The most famous one in history. It’s the inspiration and impetus she needs to write a new play, which she titles By Any Other Name.

Emilia Bassano was born into a family of court musicians who had emigrated from Italy. After her father dies, her mother goes into service elsewhere, and her patroness’s new husband is heading to Holland, Emilia is traded to a peer by her cousin Jeronimo for his family’s job security. She has lessons with a courtesan and, at age thirteen, Emilia becomes mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey.

But she had been educated whilst with her patroness, and had the opportunity to travel. In the Lord Chamberlain’s study, she gets to see the “foul” copies of plays before they are approved and, attending a performance, she marvels that: “A playwright had taken a fresh, blank sheet of paper and from it, had made three thousand strangers feel.” She begins to write.

But women aren’t permitted to write plays, so eventually she acquiesces to her friend Christopher Marlowe’s suggestion to sell her work to a male playwright. He tells her “It does not matter if they know you. It only matters that they heard what you had to say.”

Soon enough, “She believed words written by a woman about women might allow audiences to see them more fully, to realize that they had thoughts and dreams and worth. The fact that she had to borrow a man’s name to do that was a small price to pay.”

Melina faces almost the same hurdle: even in the twenty-first Century, the work of a female playwright is much less likely to be chosen, especially by white male producers. So her best friend and roommate, Andre Washington, black, gay, also unpublished, submits her work under the gender-ambiguous Mel Green. When it is lauded by the same critic who savaged her earlier work, and fast-tracked for performance, it presents them with a dilemma: be honest about the authorship, or be produced?

Picoult gives the reader a fabulous collision of reality and imagination, interweaving fact with fiction, all of it rich in historical detail, and featuring a marvellously diverse cast of real people and fictional characters. The depth of her research is apparent on every page and her descriptive prose is very evocative.

She tells her story through three narrators and a dual timeline, adding excerpts from the rehearsal script of Melina’s play. Her characters are multi-dimensional and easily attract the reader’s care and concern for their fate. There are parallels and echoes between the two stories, and quite a few twists to make it even more interesting.

She gives her characters wise words and insightful observations: “Love was a religion all its own, one that could damn you or save you or turn you into a zealot” and “When the only stories told are by straight white men, it becomes the norm. People assume that the only stories that will turn a profit are stories about that particular experience— when in fact there are whole untapped audiences who would love to see their lives replicated on a stage” are examples.

The premise that Emilia Bassano, a brilliant woman who had been silenced by societal restrictions, might have written some of Shakespeare’s plays, is convincingly presented, as is the assertion that little has changed in the world of theatre for female playwrights (and those of other marginalised groups). Picoult’s work is always topical and thought-provoking, and this one is sure to polarise readers.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.

The Fox Wife is the third novel by best-selling Malaysian-Chinese author, Yangsze Choo. Bao is a sixty-three-year-old widower, a school teacher until his wife died, now a detective. It’s 1908 in Manchuria, and he has had a fascination since early childhood with foxes, perhaps because his nanny used to take him to the fox shrine, perhaps because a childhood playmate described her encounter with a fox.

Lacking any formal qualifications as a detective, he is aided by a singular talent he acquired as a child, of perceiving falsehood. It also means that “Bao won’t lie. He’s scrupulously, almost compulsively honest. The dull buzz of falsehoods makes him physically ill.”

When a Mukden restaurant owner finds a woman frozen to death on the back step of his establishment, he asks Bao, for the sake of helping her spirit to rest, to find out who she was. Two things strike him in that process: he has a strong feeling that foxes are somehow involved; and he’s not the only one looking for a certain Manchurian photographer who may hold a clue to her identity.

Even after discovering the dead woman’s name, each fact he uncovers seems to point him towards a beautiful young woman also on the elusive photographer’s trail, a woman who, from all descriptions, seems to be one of the fabled, a fox in human form.

She tells us “I exist as either a small canid with thick fur, pointed ears, and neat black feet, or a young woman. Neither are safe forms in a world run by men.”

Calling herself Snow Bu, after two years of grieving, the young woman sets out to take her revenge on Bektu Nikan, the Manchurian photographer responsible for her distress. She follows his trail from Mukden to the port city of Dalian, where she finds herself in service to the matriarch of a famous Huang Medicine Shop family. The family is apparently strangely cursed: the firstborn son never survives beyond the age of twenty-four, after which the second-born inherits.

When the young woman learns of the current first-born son, Bohai’s recent association with Bektu Nikan, it seems an opportunity for her, but also influencing the young man is a charismatic individual, someone she recognises from her past, a fox who can’t be trusted, who doesn’t follow the rules that keep them safe: “Helping others, by the way, is one of the duties of a virtuous fox. Others include abstaining from lying, money-laundering, and killing people.”

Choo gives the reader a cleverly plotted tale of shapeshifters, murder, blackmail, enchantment, revenge, imprisonment and escape, and more. While Bao’s narrative often mentions human perceptions, folk superstitions and beliefs about foxes, Snow’s narrative includes personal footnotes and little backstories about what foxes might be up to, literally on the margins of society.

Thus: “Foxes are naturally wary, though that’s balanced by our insatiable curiosity. Capable of immense deception, they’re constantly tripped up by their own frivolous behaviour.” Bao is a clever and persistent detective although he will probably never know the full story. And presenting part of the story from the perspective of a fox is interesting and different. A thoroughly captivating read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Quercus.

Death At The Sign Of The Rook is the sixth book in the popular Jackson Brodie series by award-winning best-selling British author, Kate Atkinson. When Dorothy Padgett dies, Jackson is asked by her twins, Hazel and Ian, to look for a painting missing from her bedroom.

It’s a Renaissance-era portrait and they claim not to know if it’s worth anything, but want it back for sentimental reasons. They believe that Dorothy’s carer, Melanie Hope took it when she left but they don’t want to involve the police, and Jackson feels there’s something decidedly shifty about the pair.

He quickly deduces Melanie’s phone is a burner, checks out the address (fake), chases the painting’s provenance (something dodgy there too) and then does a little research into art theft. A couple of interesting items online have him wondering if the same woman is posing in roles that virtually guarantee her invisibility (cleaner, carer, housekeeper) and then making off with valuable artwork.

One of the thefts was from Burton Makepeace House, the home of the Marquess and Marchioness Milton, and DC Reggie Chase investigated without success. A call from Jackson Brodie, about this, or anything, isn’t really welcome: “Jackson Brodie’s MO was disruption. His attitude to the law was like that of a Wild West sheriff. All that coincidence-being-an-explanation-waiting-to-happen baloney was just a cover for not following procedure.”

“She was reluctant to let him back into her life. He constituted part of the mess out there on the mean streets. Whenever she saw him, he brought a tsunami of it in his wake that would have defeated Marie Kondo.” But what he tells her is certainly intriguing…

Atkinson’s plot is interesting and topical, and before Reggie and Jackson find themselves in the midst of a Murder Mystery Weekend where not all the corpses are actors, and not all the guns are props, there is a visit to a funeral parlour and a crusty old neighbour, and Nancy Styles novels left behind. Atkinson throws a snowstorm and a murderous prison escapee into the mix just to add a bit more excitement. By the time DCS Louise Monroe and her team turn up, Reggie has been reminded that Jackson “was always making the distinction between justice and the law. She was always trying not to.”

But Atkinson’s strength is her characters and some of their inner monologues are an absolute joy, filled with dry British (and often very black) humour and understatement. Jackson’s narrative is peppered with Julia’s (previously delivered or else anticipated, but inevitably critical) comments, or those of what he calls his “pop-up Court of Women” any time female issues come up, while Reggie is often plagued by Jackson Brodie comments.

Atkinson carefully builds up her characters until the reader is invested in them and really cares about their fate. Of those characters, Honoria Milton delights while Ben and Simon pull at the heartstrings. There is humour, too, in certain situations and the snappy dialogue, with its tangents and asides, including many laugh-out-loud moments.

Atkinson has a wonderful way with words and some of her passages are superbly evocative and vividly descriptive. While it is not essential to have read the earlier books of this series, denying yourself that pleasure is surely cruel. This is another Atkinson masterpiece.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld.

The Spy Coast is the first book in the Martini Club series by award-winning, best-selling American author, Tess Gerritsen. When someone is asking about her at the post office in Purity on the Maine coast, Maggie Bird is on immediate alert. She has had Blackberry Farm for two years and is happy raising chickens and warding off foxes. She has nice neighbours and regularly gets together with some other villagers for book club martinis and a meal.

The young woman she finds in her kitchen when she returns home is a CIA operative who brings news of a data breach, and wants to know if Maggie can point them to a former operative who has disappeared. It stirs up unwanted memories of an earlier operation that saw her quitting the CIA and trying to find a place under the radar to exist peacefully. Until now, that place was Purity.

When that same young woman then turns up in Maggie’s driveway with marks of torture and two bullets in her brain, Acting Police Chief Jo Thibodeau gets involved. But so do Maggie’s book club friends, who pretend an amateur interest in crime solving, but whose knowledge, contacts and talents belie that pretence.

Jo has to hand the case over to State Police, but gets to see Maggie’s CCTV footage of the drop, and keeps tabs on their progress. She is as puzzled as the local ME when the body is whisked off to Boston mid-autopsy, now under another agency’s control.

But when an attempt is made on Maggie’s life, her really friends spring into action, and Jo is frustrated at how much they know about the attack before she does. Maggie reluctantly reveals the details of Operation Cyrano, something that went down in Malta sixteen years ago, successful for the Agency, less so for her personally.

Once they determine from where the threat is coming, some are hopping on planes while others hold the fort and provide back-up. Before matters are resolved, there are more assassinations, a kidnap, and quite a bit of action.

Gerritsen’s plot takes a few unexpected turns, the dialogue is often blackly funny, and the settings are well-rendered. More of her clever and quirky cast “five old spies with five lifetimes’ worth of experience. Retired does not mean useless. Everyone here has brought their individual tricks of the trade”, of the acting chief of police, and of others in small town Maine will be most welcome. Martini Club #2 is eagerly anticipated.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer.

4.5

“People around here seemed to live in a cloud of defeat, self-wrought and inherited. Whites had the lost cause; Blacks had slavery.”

Holy City is the first novel by American poet, photographer and author, Henry Wise. After a decade in Virginia’s Holy City, Richmond, Will Seems returns to his hometown of Dawn and works as a Deputy with the Euphoria County Sheriff’s Department. He doesn’t share his reason for returning although some make educated guesses.

When he spots a fire at the Turkey Creek home of former high school football star, Tom Janders, he risks his life to drag Tom out of the burning house. When Sheriff Jefferson Mills arrives, he immediately rules it murder: Tom has been stabbed in the back. Sawmill worker, Zeke Hathom is spotted fleeing the scene, and Will reluctantly arrests him. The Sheriff has soon charged Zeke with Tom’s murder, but neither Will, nor the victim’s mother, nor many of the town folk, are convinced that Zeke could kill his neighbour.

Will finds Zeke’s story plausible and, while prints on the murder weapon implicate him, Will feels he owes Zeke and his family, so he decides to properly investigate despite the Sheriff’s lukewarm response. Zeke’s wife, Floressa has no confidence that justice will be served. She engages disgraced Richmond cop, Bennico Watts to solve the murder and exonerate her husband. And she insists that Bennico, a woman who always works alone, teams up with Will.

Will has a problem with the idea too: he’s harbouring a fugitive in his dilapidated old family home. And his opposition to the Sheriff’s attitude threatens his access to information about the case. There’s talk of a cash debt, and some disgruntled gamblers who lost big to Tom on the night he died. Will (and Bennico) are thorough in their enquiries, becoming steadily more certain that Zeke is innocent and someone else deserves their scrutiny.

The astute reader will wonder early on about the Sheriff’s motivation and, while the murderer is revealed to the reader at the halfway mark, the journey to this being generally acknowledged, and the aftermath, definitely keep the pages turning. Readers may appreciate a trigger warning: there are several explicit descriptions of deviant sexual behaviour, and the ambiguous ending may not be to everyone’s liking.

Wise’s characters are complex, and he certainly challenges them with difficult dilemmas. His protagonist is plagued with a long-standing guilt that affects his reasoning. Bennico has Will summed up fairly quickly: “wearing that badge just to carry out a personal vendetta you haven’t had the courage to complete.”

He does give them some wise words: “You have to ask yourself if you really want to solve a problem or if you’ve learned to use it as a crutch. Sometimes, we learn to savor our pain. Ask yourself if this is more about some guilt you feel than it is about bringing them to justice. No act undoes the past” and insightful observations “Things that don’t get said are just as true as those that do.”

He fills his debut novel with gorgeous descriptive prose: “They could hear, beyond the roar of wind through the open windows, the life buzzing and skittering out over the wide openness of the fields, ending in trees and vines thick and tall over the road, the sound of cicadas and other insects ebbing and searing, subsiding again when the land opened up to new fields where tall trees like explosions broke the sky” and “They drove, the sun long gone, the glowing headlights scanning the cowled land for whatever might emerge, the gradual highway undulating in serpentine curves and straightaways where you could see, far ahead, the gleaming road like a blade under the moon” are examples.

Atmospheric, haunting and beautifully written, this is literary crime fiction at its best. More of Henry Wise will be eagerly anticipated.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Grove Atlantic.

A Talent For Murder is the third book in the Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner series by award-winning American author, Peter Swanson. When Martha Ratliff begins to suspect that Alan Peralta, her husband of barely a year, might be a serial killer, her options seem equally unsatisfactory: whether she confronts him or tells the police, her marriage will likely be over, even if he’s innocent.

That’s when she thinks of Lily Kintner. When they were in grad school at Birkbeck, Lily helped her out of a disturbing relationship with a charismatic adjunct professor. They lost touch, but Martha is a librarian, and knows how to research; she has soon tracked Lily down to her parents’ home in Shepaug.

As she’s explaining to Lily how her husband is often away at conferences, selling his wares to school teachers, and that she has found at least five unsolved murders at times when Alan was at those locations, she’s hoping that Lily will tell her she’s crazy, that it’s just her imagination: “Honestly, I think I’m here with you just hoping you’ll say I’m being silly and that I should just forget the whole thing.”

But Lily doesn’t. she considers carefully, tells Martha they need more information, and they each try to find out more. Martha uncovers something that definitely puts Alan in the frame for one of the murders, and Lily decides she’ll attend his next conference to observe. But there’s an unexpected development and, a bit later, she decides to ask her friend, PI Henry Kimball for his help.

And much more can’t be said without massive spoilers, but Swanson does manage to throw in a brilliant twist, a shock, a kidnap and a nail-biting climax. He also gives the reader a good dose of black humour. And then, just when you think the twists are all done, another, and it’s a doozy! More of this addictive series will be most welcome.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber.

Death In The Details is the first novel by American author, Katie Tietjen. It’s October 1946 and, eight weeks after losing the husband who volunteered as a doctor in France, Maple Bishop learns that, despite the Government life insurance cheque, she is virtually penniless. And she may be the first woman to graduate from the Boston City Law School, but in Elderberry, Vermont, no-one will employ her in that capacity. If she doesn’t make the soon-due mortgage payment, she’ll be homeless.

Her one solace is making her miniatures: fully fitted, furnished and populated dollhouses. She has quite a lot of them, but can’t resist making more. When she’s at Ben Crenshaw’s hardware store picking up bits and pieces for a new one, he makes a suggestion that might benefit them both: display her houses in his window, and set up a work table in the store so customers can watch them being made. Maple’s rejection of the gossipy sewing group led by Elderberry’s self-appointed social chair, Ginger Comstock, makes her an outsider just as Ben's mixed race does.

When delivering one of her finished works, Maple stumbles on a grisly scene: the much-disliked husband of Angela Wallace is hanging from a noose in his barn, quite dead. She goes into the deserted house to call the Sheriff, but back in the barn, takes in various odd details. Maple is shocked when the Sheriff deems it a suicide not requiring investigation, and her troubled mind won’t rest until she has rendered each detail her photographic memory recorded into a miniature death scene complete with victim.

Not only does the Sheriff dismiss her ideas, he throws her out of the station. But when officer-in-training, Kenny Quirk returns her “death scene in a nutshell” he wants her to join him in a covert investigation. Perhaps not the wisest move, but his intentions are pure, and Maple finds it difficult to resist…

Tietjen offers an original plot with several twists and turns to keep the reader guessing and the pages turning right up to the exciting climax. She renders her setting and era well, deftly illustrating some of the hardships faced by communities in the early post-war years.

Her protagonist is a gutsy, no-nonsense woman describe by one friend as hard to like. She admits to using vinegar when honey would work better in interpersonal relations, finds people exhausting, prefers her stray orange cat’s straightforwardness and emotional transparency.

The story is inspired by the real-life Frances Lee Glessner, who made crafted miniature crime scenes, and the Author’s Note makes interesting background reading. The blurb describes this as a series debut, and more of this cast is most definitely welcome. Excellent historical crime fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.

Lucy By The Sea is the fourth book in the Amgash series by best-selling, Pulitzer Prize winning American author, Elizabeth Strout. In early 2020, Lucy Barton’s ex-husband, parasitologist William Gerhardt is deeply concerned about the new virus spreading around the world. He urges his daughters to leave New York City for somewhere safer. Chrissie and her asthmatic husband, Michael readily take his advice, heading to his parents’ house in Connecticut.

Becka and Trey are resistant, opting to stay. Lucy feels sure he’s overreacting, but allows him to sweep her up and drive them both to a vacant house his friend, Bob Burgess is managing in the little town of Crosby in coastal Maine. They self-isolate for two weeks. Initially, Lucy isn’t impressed by the house or the town, where out-of-towners, especially New Yorkers, are not welcome.

Gradually, the idea of working from home, masks and social distancing is accepted. They spend their time walking, and have books, games and puzzles at their disposal. Lucy starts off rather petulant, her priorities a bit skewed, and is often vocal about it to William: “I hate this kind of thing” to which he calmly replies “Lucy, we’re in lockdown, stop hating everything.” But she does find herself worrying about those friends and acquaintances left behind in NYC, and those essential and emergency workers she sees on the TV news who are exposed daily to the virus.

Lucy observes “Even as all of this went on, even with the knowledge that my doctor had said it would be a year, I still did not… I don’t know how to say it, but my mind was having trouble taking things in. it was as though each day was like a huge stretch of ice I had to walk over. And in the ice were small trees stuck there and twigs, this is the only way I can describe it, as though the world had become a different landscape and I had to make it through each day without knowing when it would stop, and it seemed it would not stop, so I felt a great uneasiness”, something that will resonate with many who experienced the pandemic.

After a while, Lucy finds herself taking pleasure in nature: sunsets, a robin’s egg, dandelions, the view of the islands, thunderstorms, sea creatures, autumn colours. Separated from their former lives, it’s a time of reflection, connection and reconnection: they get to know some neighbours, volunteers, and Bob and his wife. They share worries over their daughters, and discover things about themselves.

Initially blocked, when she observes some teens and a policeman while they are out on a jaunt, “I wondered, What is it like to be a policeman, especially now, these days? What is it like to be you? This is the question that has made me a writer; always a deep desire to know what it feels like to be a different person.” She begins writing again.

And Lucy finds some empathy for certain reviled protestors: “I suddenly felt that I saw what these people were feeling. They had been made to feel poorly about themselves, they were looked at with disdain, and they could no longer stand it.”

Strout gives her characters palpable emotions, wise words and insightful observations. While Lucy admits to self-interest leading her to do something of which she’s not proud, she also details the compassion she encounters. And of the many kindnesses Lucy mentions, some from unexpected quarters, outstanding for her is William, infinitely kind, perceptive and resourceful. Olive Kitteridge gets a mention as an acquaintance of someone she meets.

Strout’s writing, its quality, style and subject matter, is reminiscent of Sebastian Barry with shades of Anne Tyler. Strout writes about ordinary people leading what they believe are ordinary lives (although there are definitely some quirky ones doing strange things amongst them, and life in a pandemic is far from ordinary) and she does it with exquisite yet succinct prose. Such a moving, powerful read.

A Room Full Of Bones is the fourth book in the Ruth Galloway series by award-winning British author, Elly Griffiths. Curator of the Smith Museum in Kings Lynn, Neil Topham is excited to receive the coffin of a fourteenth Century ancestor, Bishop Augustine Smith, due to be opened later in the day to great fanfare and media attention. When archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway arrives, a little early for the opening, she’s shocked to find Neil, fatally injured, on the floor beside the coffin.

While it’s not clear if Neil has expired naturally or been murdered, DCI Harry Nelson attends the scene and questions the only witness, his first encounter with Ruth since his wife discovered that he is the father of Kate, Ruth’s now-one-year-old daughter. He finds it very distracting, as does Ruth.

In Neil’s desk, he discovers a bag of white powder, and threatening letters. It seems someone wants their ancestors’ remains, taken by museum founder, Percival Lord Smith, and held by the museum, returned. When he mentions the threats to current owner of the museum, wealthy horse trainer, Danforth Lord Smith, the peer admits to ignoring similar correspondence from a group calling themselves The Elginists: his ancestor brought the bones here, and they belong in the museum.

Meanwhile, Ruth finds she has a new neighbour: Bob Woonunga is an indigenous Australian poet and author currently lecturing at the University of East Anglia, and a friend of local druid, Cathbad. Her cat Flint seems taken with him, and Kate is fascinated when he plays the didgeridoo. But does he have a hidden agenda?

When the Bishop’s coffin is eventually opened, there’s quite a surprise inside, and after they meet, Danforth asks Ruth if she will examine the bones Lord Percival collected to determine if they are all human bones. He’s especially proud of the four Australian Aborigine skulls, which he has no intention of relinquishing. Ruth is appalled to find that Percival’s haul is kept, unlabelled, in boxes that fill a forgotten basement room of the museum.

As he makes little progress with the drug trafficking case occupying the team, Nelson is a little concerned at how uncharacteristically quiet his best DS, Judy Johnson is, but then his attention must go to the second death associated with the museum. It surely can’t be coincidence?

In this instalment: Nelson’s difficulty with political correctness has him biting his tongue multiple times; Cathbad performs a ritual to remove a curse he’s convinced has been put on someone important to them all; Judy is having trouble with her marriage vows; Nelson’s wife, Michelle makes a surprising request from Ruth; and Clough has a closer encounter with horseflesh that he ever desired. There’s an excellent twist, and Judy is both very smart and very dumb when she’s put in charge.

The question of where excavated bones belong is explored, and Ruth tentatively reconnects with U of Sussex archaeologist, Max Grey. Horses feature, and snakes play a large part, although archaeology takes a bit of a back seat. The Aboriginal mysticism won’t appeal to all, and while some relationship issues are (sort of) resolved, others seem to be getting more complicated. The free filler short story that follows this, Ruth’s First Christmas Tree, is lots of fun, and #5, The Dying Fall is eagerly awaited. An addictive series.

How To Solve Your Own Murder is the first adult novel by British author, Kristen Perrin. The audio version is narrated by Alexandra Dowling and Jaye Jacobs. Recently jobless, aspiring murder mystery writer Annabelle Adams is living with her mother in her great aunt Frances’s Chelsea house when she receives a summons from the woman’s lawyers.

Annie has been made the sole benefactor of her great aunt’s estate and assets, a woman she’s never met, and is attend her at Gravesdown Hall in the Dorset village of Castle Knoll to learn what responsibilities this entails. But when she arrives there, in the company of the lawyer and other interested parties, they find Frances Adams quite dead.

Since she had been told a fortune predicting her murder at a summer fair at age sixteen, Frances had always been wary of certain items, and had made it her business to know everything about everyone, in case they might end up trying to kill her. It didn’t increase her popularity in Castle Knoll.

The special conditions of her will require potential beneficiaries to reside at Gravesdown Hall and pits them against one another to solve her murder, for it is indeed murder, within a week, or the place will be sold off to developers, a premise that really is rather contrived. There’s a large cast so many of them lack depth and appeal.

The story is told over dual timelines, with the 1960’s narrative in the form of diary entries whose dating is a little confusing. It turns out that Frances Adams has the dirt on most of the people around her, giving them ample motive to kill her off. But Annie is distracted from her investigations by the unsolved disappearance back in 1966 of one of two teenaged friends with whom Frances had a toxic closeness.

The plot is quite convoluted and several aspects require the reader to don their disbelief suspenders. There are some twists and surprises, a dramatic climax, and a sequel that some readers may be interested to read. An adequate debut.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Quercus Books.

Where The Crawdads Sing is the first novel by award-winning, best-selling American wildlife scientist and author, Delia Owens. In 1952, when she is almost seven, Miss Catherine Daniella Clark, known to everyone as Kya, watches her mother leave. She doesn’t return, and her older siblings, fed up with their abusive, alcoholic father, quietly slip away, one by one, leaving her to deal with her Pa, Jake Clark in their North Carolina marsh shack on her own.

They form an uneasy alliance: Pa is often gone for days at a time, and Kya learns to look after herself, conceal her mother’s absence from nosy Barkley Cove shopkeepers, hide from truant officers, and appreciate the beauty of the marsh and its creatures. Things get more difficult when she’s ten: Pa goes off and doesn’t return, meaning the sporadic cash he gives her from his disability cheques dries up and she has to fend for herself if she doesn’t want to give herself up to the authorities. Which she doesn’t.

She does have Pa’s boat, can travel the marsh waters to the estuary, pick mussels and oysters to trade. She covers the fact that Pa is gone, trying to stay under the radar, but there is a boy for whom she keeps an eye out: Tate Walker was kind to her once, shares her love of the marsh, and doesn’t feel dangerous like some do. She’s unaware that some others are looking out for her, concerned about her welfare and surreptitiously providing some of what she needs.

By the time she’s fourteen, she’s adept at fending for herself and staying under the radar. Her interest in marsh flora and fauna is boundless; she collects and sketches specimens, and when Tate offers to teach her to read and write, she’s able to record what she knows and observes. Abandoned by everyone in her family, she’s wary of giving her love, but takes a chance with Tate. Then he goes off to college to study the thing they’re both interested in, and breaks his promise to return.

Kya is absorbed in her study of the marsh, but still lonely, until Chase Andrews begins to take an interest in her…

In late October 1969, Sheriff Ed Jackson is alerted of the death of a local by two young boys who have caught sight of the corpse near an abandoned fire tower. Chase Andrews, star quarterback, town hotshot and favourite son of Barkley Cove, has been dead some ten hours, and when the Sheriff and Deputy Joe Purdue examine the scene, they are mystified: there are no tyre tracks or foot prints anywhere near the body. It looks like Chase fell from the tower, but neither are there fingerprints.

There’s plenty of speculation in the town: despite being married to Pearl, Chase was known for his tomcatting, so perhaps he fell foul of a jealous husband? But Barkley Cove is a small town, and enough people knew of his regular visits to the Marsh Girl that suspicion falls on Kya.

Owens gives the reader a dual-timeline coming-of-age tale, a love story, a murder mystery and a courtroom drama, all enclosed in some gorgeous lyrical prose. Her vivid descriptions really evoke the setting, the peace and beauty of the marsh, and the era, while there is enough intrigue to keep most readers guessing about the young man’s fate until the final reveal. Moving, heart-breaking and beautifully written, this is an outstanding debut.

The Lost Man is a stand-alone novel by award-winning, best-selling Australian author, Jane Harper. In outback Queensland, Nathan Bright and his teenaged son, Xander abandon the fence-mending chore on his own property to return to the family’s holding when they learn that Nathan’s younger brother is dead.

Cameron Bright was meant to meet the youngest Bright brother, Bub, at Lehmann’s Hill for a repair job on Wednesday. Instead, he lies dead against a remote gravestone in the blistering mid-December heat, his car, replete with food and water, parked nine kilometers away. His brothers are mystified.

Sergeant Ladlow, a city-trained stand-in for their local cop, Sergeant Glenn McKenna, asks about Cameron’s mood over the previous weeks: it’s clear he believes Cam walked away from his car intending to end his life, although how he could have attained that distance in the heat is a puzzle.

With just days until what will be a very subdued Christmas, the family gathers at the homestead, stunned at the news, incredulous, asking each other when they last saw Cam and was there any sign that this was in his mind.

A few things niggle at Nathan: that the two British backpackers employed as hands seem wary of police; the very particular way Cam’s car keys were placed in his car; that their farm manager, Harry Bledsoe located the car so easily; and Bub’s light mood in the face of such a grave situation. And Xander draws Nathan’s attention to the thorough preparations Cam made for the planned repair, hardly the actions of a man intending suicide.

The presence of Cam’s wife (now widow), Ilse is also distracting: there is a history between them, and despite his avoidance, the attraction is still there. Nathan’s self-imposed exile, born of the same incident that saw him ostracised by the entire community of Balamara, means that he has missed a lot of what has transpired at his family’s home. Over the next few days, the funeral and Christmas, what he sees and hears gradually reveals exactly what has happened.

Harper easily evokes the outback setting and the prevalent community attitudes. She gives the reader a tale that features isolation, loneliness and suicide risk, as well as domestic violence, coercive control and sexual harassment. Fans may note that the events of Harper’s first novel in KIewarra, The Dry, intersect with the story at a certain point. Brilliant Aussie slow-burn crime fiction.

A Lonesome Place For Dying is the first book to feature Ethan Brand by award-winning Canadian-born author, Sam Wiebe, writing as Nolan Chase. On the morning he’s due to take over from Police Chief Frank Keogh in the Washington State border town of Blaine, someone has left on Ethan Brand’s doorstep a heart (too large to be human) and a printed note telling him to leave. Ethan is not inclined to leave his home town: he heads off to work.

Before he can even be sworn in by the mayor, he’s out by the railway line near Mo’s scrapyard, examining the body of a young woman. She has been stabbed, but there’s nothing to identify her, nor any sign of how she got there.

There are quite a few candidates potentially responsible for the gory warning (which soon escalates to a death threat), including a disgruntled suspended cop, rivals for the position of chief, criminals whose activities he has curtailed, and a romantic indiscretion, but Ethan has to put that aside to focus on solving the murder (and proving his suitability as chief).

While he has a handful of conscientious and competent officers who between them manage to give the Jane Doe a name and find other evidence, Ethan is frustrated that his two senior officers are squabbling rather than working as a team.

Diligent investigation uncovers an impersonation, another murder and a missing person. As well, there’s a white-suited character in town who looks and acts very much like a hit-man: who is paying him and who might be his target? Ethan is convinced the local drug smugglers, the McCandless family must be involved.

Ethan is an interesting protagonist, a lawman with integrity, insight and intelligence, and a few quirks (his chess game with the diner waitress, his fondness for the blue-eyed coyote, his rapport with various locals, his naivete with the non-binary journalist) that will endear him to the reader.

Chase gives the reader cleverly-plotted crime fiction with a few twists and surprises, a dramatic climax and a very satisfactory resolution. He easily evokes his setting, and Jerry Todd’s cover is striking. Chase has set up the town and its inhabitants with plenty of scope for further books in this location, and more of this cast would be most welcome.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books.

The House At Sea’s End is the third book in the Ruth Galloway series by award-winning British author, Elly Griffiths. Trace and Irish Ted lead a team of archaeologists conducting a survey on coastal erosion when one of them stumbles across what turns out to be a mass grave in a ravine under the cliff below the home of MEP Jack Hastings: six skeletons with bullet wounds, hands bound behind their backs.

Dr Ruth Galloway, back at work now that Kate is five months old, helps with the rush job to remove them before the tide takes them. The autopsies determine that the men were likely executed; Ruth estimated the remains are less than a century old, aged between 21 and 40; her tests reveal they were probably from Germany. A German journalist turns up on Ruth’s doorstep and gives them names.

DCI Harry Nelson has a historic multiple murder case on his hands, and something that the Hastings matriarch says sends him looking for members of the local Home Guard, one of whom is the grandfather of his Superintendent, Gerald Whitcliffe. These men would be his best chance for information about the deaths. It turns out, though, that of these old men, High Anselm, who alerted the journalist to the murders, has died recently, apparently of a stroke.

Archie Whitcliffe, when Nelson talks to him, says a few cryptic things, including something about a blood oath, things that cannot be later clarified when the man dies that night. His carer says his enigmatic last word was Lucifer, and Nelson is not convinced he died a natural death, which has him also wondering about Hugh Anselm’s demise.

As Nelson and the soon-to-be-married DS Judy Johnson search for elderly Broughton residents who might recall the events of almost seventy years previous, as they page through old parish bulletins and sort through Hugh Anselm’s papers, a body washes up on the beach, and it isn’t an accidental drowning or a fall from the cliff. It is beginning to look like someone wants the circumstances of the deaths to remain secret.

In this instalment, as well as digging up bones and lecturing students, Ruth endures (rather than enjoys) a hen party, solves a secret code, attends a wedding, irretrievably loses her mobile phone, is criticised for her mothering, and almost drowns. There’s both a naming ceremony and a baptism for baby Kate, a Bosnian archaeologist comes for a short stay, and Nelson gets the kiss of life. The final body count, if a historical suicide is included, runs to an even ten. And with lots of speculation going on, the secret of Kate’s paternity looks to be on thin ice. The fourth book, A Room Full Of Bones, is eagerly anticipated.

Tell Me Who You Are is the fourth stand-alone novel by award-winning American author, Louisa Luna. During the twenty years she has been a psychiatrist, Dr Carolne Strange’s patients have confided many unusual things in the safe space she provides in the basement of her Brooklyn Brownstone, but what her newest patient, Nelson Schack tells her is certainly unique: in virtually the same breath, he says that he is going to kill someone, and that he knows who Caroline really is.

It's not until Detective Makeda Marks and her sidekick, Detective Miguel Jiminez come to her door to question her about the disappearance of journalist Ellen Garcia that she decides it merits breaking patient confidentiality to mention part of Nelson’s statement. Ellen Garcia included Dr Caroline in a highly critical article on doctors, and any of those targeted might hold a grudge. Some days after putting out her recycling on the kerb, Ellen is very surprised to come to in a dark basement, thirsty, hungry and afraid.

Dr Caroline (as she likes patients to call her) doesn’t reveal the extent of her communication with Ellen. Nor does she mention a well-publicised incident from her youth: Caroline really wants the police to focus on Nelson, rather than looking at her, as they seem to want to do…

In 1993 in Glen Grove, Wisconsin, Gordon Strong has just lost his brewery job, something that contributes to a downward spiral that involves drinking to excess and a paranoid delusion that his wife is having an affair with their neighbour, Chuck Strange. When his control finally breaks, and he murders his family with a pair of garden shears, then hangs himself, the only survivor is the neighbour’s teenaged daughter, on a sleep-over with her best friend.

Luna easily evokes her era and setting, and the reason that her main protagonist seems initially to live up to her name becomes clear as the story progresses. It is told over two timelines and from three perspectives: Caroline Strange, Ellen Garcia and Gordon Strong.

None of the characters are particularly nice people: Caroline’s nicknames for her patients seem to contradict the care she professes to feel for them; Gordon is clearly a lazy, entitled chauvinist, a toxic male; and, while she’s an innocent victim who in no way deserves what happens to her, Ellen does lack journalistic integrity. It gradually becomes clear that the reliability of at least two of the narratives is questionable, which serves to keep the reader thoroughly invested in the outcome. Often blackly funny, Luna’s latest is a cleverly-plotted page-turner.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

The Janus Stone is the second book in the Ruth Galloway series by award-winning British author, Elly Griffiths. The audio version is narrated by Jane McDowell. As Head of Forensic Archaeology at the University of North Norfolk, Ruth Galloway is called in by U of Sussex’s Dr Max Grey when a dig at Swaffham produces a small skeleton minus its skull, buried under a doorway: an offering to one of the Roman gods, Janus or Terminus?

She’s surprised when DCI Harry Nelson turns up there: she hasn’t yet told him she’s three months pregnant with his child. Ruth knows she will have to reveal her pregnancy before it becomes too obvious, and justifiably dreads the reaction of some.

Soon after, Ruth attends a demolition site at the request of the field archaeologist, when another small skeleton is found, again minus skull, again buried under a doorway, where a children’s home existed more than thirty years previous. Ruth calls in DCI Harry Nelson in case the bones prove to be more recent than Iron Age, as the burial looks more modern. The developer, Edward Spens is building seventy-five modern units, and is displeased when Nelson puts the work on hold citing a possible murder investigation.

Nelson’s sidekick, Sergeant Clough is convinced that in any home run by Catholic nuns and priests, there’s bound to be abuse, possibly foul play, but interviews with former staff and residents show no evidence of this. What might be significant is the mysterious disappearance of siblings Martin and Elizabeth Black, in 1973.

But post-mortem evidence eventually proves the bones too old to be children’s home residents, and Nelson’s investigation heads in a direction that is uncomfortable for some, not that that will stop him probing where he sees fit. He is distracted, though, when he learns that he is to be a father for the third time, and not quite sure how he feels about that.

Meanwhile, Ruth has the decidedly uncomfortable sensation that someone is watching, someone apparently fixated on her, who starts leaving vaguely sinister messages and objects both at the digs and on her doorstep. Nelson’s reaction is to assign DC Judy Johnson to watch over her. But after she has done some research into the former residents of the Woolmarket house, Judy needs to revisit her interview with Sister Immaculata: the ageing nun must know more than she’s told so far…

Griffiths uses Ruth and Harry as her main narrators, with occasional passages from the perspective of an anonymous person apparently making blood sacrifices to appease the gods. The plot is believable, the archaeology interesting and the characters, not all of whom are what they seem, are quite convincing for all their flaws and quirks.

It is certainly refreshing to read a female protagonist who is not slim and gorgeous. There are twists and red herrings to keep the reader guessing right up to the final chapters, and a nail-biting climax in which Ruth fires a gun. Returning to this cast in The House At Seas End is eagerly anticipated.

And Then She Fell is the first novel by award-winning, best-selling Canadian Mohawk editor and author, Alicia Elliott. At twenty-six, Haudenosaunee woman Alice Dostator is married to Steve Macdonald, a white man, has a six-week-old daughter, Dawn, is living off reservation in the city of Toronto, and is still grieving the loss of her mother, when she once again begins hearing voices. It’s not the first time, but as a teen, she blocked them out with alcohol and pot.

Now, she’s having difficulty connecting with her baby, is getting very little sleep, and is expected to behave in a manner that makes her an asset to Steve’s attempt to get tenure in the anthropology department. She’s getting nowhere with her writing, a retelling of the Haudenosaunee Creation Story that she now regrets telling Steve about, regrets telling anyone about.

What she’s hearing, and seeing, has her worried: her mom said her grandma was crazy; but her Aunt Rachel assures her that Grandma was a medicine woman, spoke to spirits and saw the future. And this respected elder said that Alice has the gifts to see what others can’t. Her cousin Tanya talks about portals and gatekeepers, and the voices are telling her it’s important to complete her writing, although other voices aren’t so positive.

It's quickly clear from her auditory and visual hallucinations, her out-of-body experiences, her delusions, and her paranoia, that Alice is not a reliable narrator. She second-guesses her own thoughts and reactions, is increasingly unsure whom she can trust, and feels the need to keep her thoughts secret even from those closest to her. Or is what she’s seeing, hearing and feeling, real?

Elliott’s depiction of post-partum mental illness is highly credible and, informed as it is by her own experience, brims with authenticity. The novel explores white attitudes to Natives, the racism that is often unconscious or unintentional, motherhood, and Mohawk myth and legend. While more likely to resonate with Canadian readers, this is a cleverly written, interesting and thought-provoking read.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Allen & Unwin.