“’I wasn’t expecting that. I should have stretched first.’ The truth was, it had been some time since I’d wrapped myself like a pretzel around someone I was trying to kill, to say nothing of choking someone out. It’s more a matter of leverage than brute strength, but you always feel it in your biceps and traps as soon as you’re finished if you’ve done it right.”

Killers Of A Certain Age is the first contemporary novel by best-selling American author, Deanna Raybourn. After forty years as highly-trained assassins, Billie Webster and the three other women who make up Project Sphinx surely deserve the Caribbean Cruise they’ve been given on their retirement from The Museum, an extra-governmental organisation targeting Nazis, drug dealers, sex traffickers and other nasty types.

But while she has turned sixty, Billie hasn’t lost an ounce of her training, so she instantly spots the assassin. She and her friends quickly act to learn who his target is (them!!), then efficiently neutralise him. Shock that they are being taken out after their loyal service only galvanises their actions: they ensure that innocent souls will not be lost and make their way to safety. The aftermath includes a rather large explosion.

“For all our experience, we were used to the luxury of an entire organization at our disposal, ready to pluck us out of the field if we were in danger, prepared to clean up our messes, remove us from the line of fire. For the first time in forty years, we were on our own.”

Putting their talents and resources to good use, the four make it to Billie’s New Orleans safe house where they regroup and then work out what next. Learning the why of it is a priority; they contact one person they believe they can trust, only to soon find out they can’t. But they do find out that there’s a bounty on their heads. Quite why takes some more investigation, and they quickly realise that running and hiding is not really an option: they have to fight back.

It's truly enjoyable to watch these women being underestimated, both as old and as women, and then robustly proving that neither is a valid reason. This is a novel that will especially appeal to readers of a certain vintage, who will be pleased to see that these older women still have it, in spades, thank you very much! And the twist is excellent.

Any novel that starts with “AUTHOR’S NOTE Some of the dates are misleading; some of the names are lies. I’m not trying to protect the innocent. I’m trying to protect the guilty. You’ll understand soon enough” promises a very entertaining read, and Deanna Raybourn certainly delivers.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton.

Old God’s Time is a stand-alone novel by award-winning Irish author, Sebastian Barry. Now nine months retired after forty years in the Gardai, Tom Kettle lives in the Annex Flat of Queenstown Castle on Dalkey Island. His existence is fairly solitary, frugal and uncomplicated. He sees his landlord, wealthy Mr Tomelty, weeding the garden, and sometimes catches sight of the boy who lives with his actress mother in the Turret Flat, or hears the cellist in the Drawing Room Flat shooting at cormorants from his balcony.

But on a storm-threatening February afternoon, Gardai Wilson and O’Casey come wanting the former Detective Sergeant’s input on their latest case, a difficult and sensitive matter: a priest whose previous molestation case had been quashed by the higher-ups, now to be prosecuted. What they want to know about stirs all sorts of memories Tom would rather not think about.

“Yes, he had grown to love this interesting inactivity and privacy – perhaps too much, he thought, and duty still lurked in him. The shaky imperative of forty years in the police, despite everything.”

Then a special request from his former CO, Detective Superintendent Jake Fleming brings him in to Harcourt Street. He’s asked to share what he recalls of the investigation that he and his meticulous colleague, Billy Drury carried out into a pair of priests in the early eighties. He relates how frustrating it was that the evidence provided by Scotland Yard was passed, on order of the Chief Commissioner, to the Archbishop to handle, with the expected non-result.

Mention is made of what they believe to be a spurious accusation by the priest now under charges, about the murder of his priestly colleague, not long after the detectives investigation. The memories that dredges up, Tom would also wish to avoid. Now a decade widowed, Tom is thrust into memories of meeting his wife, and the confessions, made to each other, of their awful childhoods in Catholic-run orphanages, revelations that bonded them.

It eventually becomes clear that Tom might not be the most reliable of narrators: some of what he relates is definitely imagined. As people, places and conversations trigger long-repressed memories, Tom’s thoughts gradually reveal the truth of events, of a crime unsolved, and the reasons this good man is now utterly alone in a tiny flat surrounded by books still in boxes. “A sort of blossoming sense of relief maybe, that the wretched Fates had done with him. Had noticed his great happiness long ago, and emblem by emblem taken it away from him.”

This story is very much a slow burn: Barry indulges in digressions and tangents that sometimes seem to be unrelated but all add to the rich tapestry of the lives he is describing. In a story that powerfully demonstrates the devastating effect, on so many lives, of the Church’s systemic cover-up of abuse by those entrusted with the care of children, and the power of the Catholic Church, even into high levels of the legal system, over Irish society, Barry gives Tom one final, dramatic act to save a child from that danger.

As always, Barry’s descriptive prose, be it applied to characters or setting, is exquisite: “O’Casey, a long thin person, with that severe leanness that probably made all his clothes look too big on him, to the despair of his wife, if he had one” and “The sunlight stuck its million pins into the pollocky sea, the whole expanse sparked, and sparkled, as if on the very verge of a true conflagration” and “he found he couldn’t tidy his frazzled mind” are just a few examples. This is a beautifully written, intensely affecting read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber

“Some words stretched so far back in time that our modern understanding of them was nothing more than an echo of the original, a distortion. I used to think it was the other way around, that the misshapen words of the past were clumsy drafts of what they would become; that the words formed on our tongues, in our time were true and complete. But everything that comes after that first utterance is a corruption.”

The Dictionary of Lost Words is the first novel by English-born Australian author, Pip Williams. Ever since she was a little girl, sitting under the sorting table at her Da’s feet, in the loftily-titled Scriptorium (the old iron shed lined with pigeonholes in the back garden of Sunnyside), Esme has loved words.

Under the direction of the editor, Dr James Murray, and with several other assistant lexicographers, her Da, Henry Nicoll was compiling a dictionary: the Oxford English Dictionary. The words, their meanings and their use in quotes came on slips of paper, to be sorted and debated (sometimes quite vociferously) and included or rejected.

“Whenever we came across a word I didn’t know, he would read the quotation it came with and help me work out what it meant. If I asked the right questions, he would try to find the book the quotation came from and read me more. It was like a treasure hunt, and sometimes I struck gold.”

The slips might be discarded, the word rejected if the definition was incomplete, or a duplicate. Esme hated the idea that words would be lost. And sometimes slips were dropped. Esme began to save these words. They would go into her Dictionary of Lost Words.

This unusual, inquisitive little girl wasn’t going to fit the middle-class wife-and-mother mould. At school: “If all the children at St Barnabas were a single word, most would be examples of the main definition. But I’d be some rarely used sense, one that’s spelled strangely. One that’s no use to anyone.” Esme was happiest when working in the Scriptorium.

Eventually, “I had a desk and would be given tasks… I would serve the words as they served the words.” She later came to realise that words would not be included for various reasons, but the one that most troubled her was that the word did not appear in print, even if it was commonly used.

“I’m sure that there are plenty of wonderful words flying around that have never been written on a slip of paper. I want to record them. … Because I think they are just as important as the words Dr Murray and Da collect. … I think sometimes the proper words mustn’t be quite right, and so people make new words up, or use old words differently.”

But it was when she was exposed to a charismatic suffragette that she began to notice how the process was skewed against women, the poor and the disenfranchised. And if motherless Esme wasn’t brave enough to take their type of militant action, her female mentor could suggest a less blatant way.

Williams populates her novel with a marvellous cast of characters: quirky, diligent, loyal, nasty, loving and wise, they’re all there, and emotional investment in Esme and her friends is difficult to resist. She deftly demonstrates the power of words: sometimes, just one will bring a lump to the throat, a tear to the eye.

Her extensive research is clear from every page: so much interesting information, both historical and philological, is woven into this wonderful tale. Especially fascinating to any lover of words is the process of making a new dictionary, illustrating the reason it takes so long. Laugh, cry and incidentally, learn a lot in this brilliant debut.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Affirm Press.

4.5?s
“What’s interesting is the families that pretend to be happy, that have a carefully constructed facade, just barely propped up by secrets and lies. One breath and it all falls down.”

Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six is the twentieth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Lisa Unger. In today’s high-pressure world, what could be better than a weekend getaway in a secluded cabin in the woods in Georgia? Hannah’s brother Mako is treating them all: Hannah and Bruce, Hannah’s best friend Cricket and her new man, Joshua, Mako and his wife Liza. What they find on the Friday afternoon, though, is more like a mansion: every luxury, including a hot tub, a chef and waitress.

Hannah hopes Bruce will take a break from work; Bruce hints at problems with her brother’s gaming software franchise; Mako seems intent on playing the magnanimous host; Liza is struck down with a migraine just when she would like to be connecting with Mako; Cricket thinks she’s falling in love; and their host, Bracken Jameison, is looking forward to some interesting viewing from his cameras.

No one is expecting that, within hours of their arrival, one of their number will be missing, with fresh blood indicating this is no benign walk-off-in-a-huff.

Unger sets a scene with so much potential for conflict: Hannah, anxious about leaving her toddler for the first time, and worried about Bruce’s uncharacteristic behaviour; Liza holding a guilty secret whose consequence might break her marriage; Cricket’s anticipation about her brand new relationship clashing with her ongoing attraction to her ex; a new beau on the scene who is an unknown quantity; an unsettling murder/suicide story about the cabin; a cabin host whose disregard of his guests’ privacy might be something other than titillation.

Then there’s the disgruntled PA bent on revenge. Add to that the intrigue generated by the apparently unrelated narrative, set twenty years earlier, of a boy named Henry whose origin and connection are a mystery. Also, for some, troubling DNA test results. And the edges of a hurricane that will, in all likelihood, cause a power outage. Lies and secrets, red herrings and distractions, all make for plenty of tension that keeps the reader guessing right up to the nail-biting climax. A page turner.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Legend Press.

The Kind Worth Killing is the first book in the Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner series by award-winning American author, Peter Swanson. On his way back to Boston from London, Ted Severson is still stewing about his wife’s recently-discovered infidelity. Flight delayed, he’s in the business-class lounge filling up on martinis when he shares his anger with a stranger. After all, he won’t see this woman again after today.

But the discussion is interesting: he admits to Lily that he’d like to kill Miranda, and she agrees that Miranda deserves to die. And she’s prepared to help him do it. Eventually, he’s satisfied that she’s not a cop wearing a wire, that she’s serious and genuine.

She tells him “The way to commit murder and not get caught is to hide the body so well that no one ill ever find it. If there was never a murder, then there can’t be a murderer. But there are many ways to hide a body. You can leave a body out in the open but make it look like the opposite of what actually happened.” Lily Kintner would know: she has first-hand experience.

The first half of the story is told through narratives alternating between Ted and Lily: Ted’s in the present day, while Lily’s begins when she was thirteen, from which it soon becomes quite clear what her attitude is to murder.

Thereafter, the first of several excellent twists (pre-book a chiro appointment?) precludes revealing further details without spoilers. Other characters take up the tale, one of those being Boston PD Detective Henry Kimball. When he eventually talks to Lily, he’s sure that she’s lying about something, and he’s unwilling to let it go.

Henry amuses himself (and the reader) writing dirty little limericks about those involved in the cases he’s investigating, something that turns out to be his undoing. And the ending? Well, who knows quite what is going to happen there. Readers who enjoy this brilliant crime thriller will be very pleased to learn there’s a sequel, The Kind Worth Saving.

Less Is Lost is the sequel to Pulitzer-winning novel, Less. It’s when Less and Freddy have been together nine months, our favourite Minor American Novelist has completed his first novel and is on his way to give a lecture when two calls derail his day: his agent has lined up a paying gig he doesn’t want to take; and a long-time rival for certain affections brings sad news. The sad news includes a funeral, and notification of a huge debt that Less naively never anticipated. Homelessness is on the horizon.

During all this, Freddy is in Maine, on a course, and receiving detailed daily calls that allow him to chronicle for the reader this upheaval in his partner’s (and his) life. Less decides to throw himself into the gigs he flatly rejected earlier, to cover the debt and save his beloved Shack on the Vulcan Steps: interview and profile sci-fi author, H.H.H. Mandern; part of a jury for a literary prize; a personal appearance with the theatre troupe performing one of his short stories, and anything else that comes up.

Mandern, however, throws a wrinkle into his ambitious plans, and Less finds he has inexplicably agreed to drive the author from Pams Springs to Santa Fe in an antique converted live-in van called Rosina, accompanied by a sleek black pug called Dolly. It’s not until they are well underway that Mandern reveals their mission.

Even more surprised is he to be driving Rosina further across the country, with Dolly as his faithful companion, and the daunting prospect of reconnecting with someone from his past looming. Mandern tells him: “You may not know it, Arthur Less, but you’re full of adventure. You’re a reckless man.”

Greer’s protagonist might remind some readers of those that David Nicholls creates: inept, accident-prone, awkward, sometimes graceless, and his ineptitude is often a source of humour: his woeful German language skills, his rogue moustache razor, blueberries that aren’t, an unintentional flood, a donkey ride, becoming an RVer, surviving a hurricane.

Indeed, Less bumbles his way through encounters with communes, Navajo guides, beertenders, propositioning campers, and his alter-ego. He regularly makes a fool of himself, yet things seem to fall into place for him somehow. Freddy expands quite a bit on what the reader already knows about him, Less and Robert Brownburn, making it hard not to fall even harder for this middle-aged gay white novelist. Greer’s plot, characters and prose are entertaining and enjoyable and more of this cast will be most welcome.

4.5?s
“I had wanted people to care, to notice, but I hadn’t wanted them to put their own hands all over it, to try to claim it. But how do you stop something like that? You just tried to make more of it so you didn’t lose your claim to what was inside of you.”

Now Is Not The Time To Panic is the fourth novel by award-winning American author, Kevin Wilson. It’s a phone call from a stranger that casts Frances Budge’s mind back twenty years. Mazzy Brower is an art critic, writing about the Coalfield Panic of 1996, and she’s convinced that Frankie Budge started it. She’d be right, but does Frances want to talk about it?

Back during the summer vacation of ‘96, Frankie was sixteen, her mom was working, her triplet brothers flipping burgers at fast-food places, and her dad long gone, in Milwaukee with a new family. She was bored and a bit lonely. And so was Zeke, new in town from Memphis, his mom catatonic with grief over her cheating husband.

An aspiring novelist (Frankie), an aspiring artist (Zeke), a stolen photocopier, lots of paper and toner, and an idea: what could go wrong?

Their poster had an enigmatic slogan (The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us) surrounded by some strange illustrations. They made copies, lots of copies, and put them up around town. And they made a solemn vow to tell no-one that they were the ones who made it.

The reaction initially pleased them, but the analysis of the meaning, that was a bit upsetting: “I kind of wanted other people to not understand it in ways that they assumed a really cool artist had made it. I didn’t want them to not understand it in a way that they think we’re devil worshippers who abduct kids.”

And then, in that pre-internet-as-we-know-it-now world, it went viral. It spawned copy-cats and a weird and dangerous dad militia, The Poster Posse. Violence, lives lost, none of that was what they wanted. But at sixteen, they too naïve to realise that once you release something into the world, you lose all control over it.

They never did tell anyone, so how does Mazzy Brower know? And if she tells the world, then what?

Wilson paints a vivid picture of how a single piece of American pop culture, a culture-altering poster, can expand into a phenomenon and cause mass hysteria. His characters are appealing for all their very realistic flaws; some of their seemingly inexplicable choices can be attributed to their tender ages but they can’t fail to elicit the reader’s empathy. Funny and thought-provoking, this is a marvellous coming-of-age tale.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Text Publishing.

“Vitelli looked at Lucrezia for a long moment. His eyes travelled from her hair, divided down the centre, to her temples, to her eyes, cheeks, neck, arms, hands. Lucrezia quailed, trembling. She felt like a floor being swept by a brush, again and again.”

The Marriage Portrait is the ninth novel by award-winning, best-selling British author, Maggie O’Farrell. From the moment that Lucretia di Cosimo de’ Medici learns she is to be given to Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara in marriage, she is afraid. The twelve-year-old already senses there will be danger in this contract. Yet, she is indeed married to him at fifteen and dead, less than a year later.

In a dual time-line narrative, O’Farrell details the day that Alfonso takes his young bride away from her servants, her women in the castello at Ferrara, to an isolated fortezza near Bondeno; and describes Lucrezia’s life in the decade and a half that precedes it. With exquisitely beautiful descriptive prose, she expands the scant known historical record into an enthralling tale rich in interesting minutiae.

Lucretia is a fascinating protagonist: her mother Eleanora blames her own distraction at the time of conception for the restlessness and intractability of her fifth child. Lucretia is intelligent and aware, a talented artist, but lacks close connection to her parents and siblings, feeling more love from her wet nurse and her mother’s nurse, Sofia, than her family.

“She recalled every word of the story the tutor told them last week – it was the way her mind worked. Words pressed themselves into her memory, like a shoe sole into soft mud, which would dry and solidify, the shoe print preserved forever.”

She pleads not to be wed to Alfonso, to have to leave Florence and live far away in Ferrara, but such is the mindset of the Grand Duke of Tuscany: children are for marrying off, matches necessary to form strong alliances; of course the wedding will go ahead.

The first weeks of her marriage are spent in the delizia near Veghiera, learning her imperious husband’s mercurial moods and understanding that this marriage will be nothing like the loving relationship her parents still enjoy. Her only ally is her maid-servant, Emilia, the daughter of her wet nurse.

When she can’t paint, any boredom or unpleasantness, she endures through dissociation. A disguise allows her to explore: “A maid in a brown dress might as well be a table or a sconce on the wall. She has access suddenly to the private hidden life of the castello, the wrong side of its embroidery, with all the knots and weave and secrets on display.”

Finally in Ferrara, while Alfonso is ever-busy with matters of state, Lucrezia is swept into the company of his sisters: Elisabetta, she takes to immediately; Nunciata, not at all. Alfonso engages an artist, assisted by apprentices, to paint Lucrezia’s marriage portrait.

O’Farrell’s extensive research is apparent on every page, but never is this a dreary tome full of dry historical facts; rather, the reader is gripped by the progress towards Lucrezia’s inevitable fate and the breathtaking final chapter.

And the prose! It’s hard to limit the quotes: “The tigress didn’t so much pace as pour herself, as if her very essence was molten, simmering, like the ooze from a volcano. It was hard to distinguish the bars of the cage from the dark, repeating stripes on the creature’s fur. The animal was orange, burnished gold, fire made flesh; she was power and anger, she was vicious and exquisite; she carried on her body the barred marks of a prison, as if she had been branded for exactly this, as if captivity had been her destiny all along.”

Also “The sentence seems to slide from her mouth and gather like smoke in the air between them” and “Sleep will not come for her; it is a steed she cannot catch or harness; it throws her off, it takes flight if she comes near, it refuses her entreaties” are examples. Maggie O’Farrell never disappoints.

The Bullet That Missed is the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series by British TV presenter, producer, director, and novelist, Richard Osman. Back in 2013, TV journalist Bethany Waites was about to crack wide open a massive case of VAT fraud when her car went off Shakespeare Cliff. Her body was never found. This is the cold case that Joyce Meadowcroft has selected for Coopers Chase’s Thursday Murder Club to next examine.

It turns out that the pretext under which they invite Bethany’s colleague, the very well-known journalist/newsreader Mike Waghorn to join them, is totally unnecessary: Mike is very forthcoming, happy to share any skerrick of information he has with these four elderly sleuths. Elizabeth Best, though, is a little distracted by a series of vaguely threatening text messages.

It’s after Ibrahim visits a prison to ask an inmate for help that the object of their interest, a woman jailed for the VAT fraud, is murdered. Joyce enlists her daughter to look over the financials, giving the TMC a bit of direction for their investigation. Eventually, in the interests of gaining information, Ron shares a pleasant afternoon of snooker with a crook and a former KGB colonel.

Elizabeth and Stephen are abducted, treated civilly and released; Ron endures a massage; Elizabeth and Joyce attend the taping of a TV game show and Elizabeth does a bit of acting; it becomes clear that Ibrahim’s talent is definitely not cracking poetic code, although he’s quite good at anagrams; DC Donna De Freitas becomes a TV star.

Joyce dabbles in cryptocurrency; Ron’s new lady is called on to use her talents on a body in a freshly-dug grave; Stephen’s observational skills make a significant contribution; a money-launderer chooses the wrong mug of tea; Joyce tries her hand at writing crime fiction, though it seems she’s better, in this instance, at solving real-life crime.

Osman lays a few interesting trails for the reader and then drags some red herrings across them to keep everyone guessing right up to the reveal. And then adds a few more excellent twists just when you thought you had it all straight. All the regulars appear and Ron’s grandson Kendrick even makes a quick but important appearance.

By the final pages there’s a significant body count that could have been higher had a certain money launderer got his way. And also, had he not. Also, by the end of this instalment, quite a few rather delightful pairings have formed. As before, there’s plenty of humour, some of it quite black, as well as a lump-in-the-throat moment. More of this cast is most definitely welcome.

Demon Copperhead is the ninth novel by award-winning best-selling American author, Barbara Kingsolver. It’s in August of his eleventh year that life falls apart for Damon Fields. Despite his inauspicious beginning and life in a double-wide trailer with his single mother, his first ten years are happy ones.

With strong Melungeon features, flame red hair, green eyes and darker skin, inherited from a father who died before he was born, Damon soon acquires the name Copperhead, Demon being the natural warp of his given name. A good student with a talent for drawing, he excels at school and enjoys spending his free time with his best friend, Maggot, grandson of his mother’s landlady, Nance Peggot.

The catalyst for change seems to be the arrival into their lives of Murrell Stone, known as Stoner, whom Damon quickly assesses as bad news. That he is a bully, expert in gaslighting, is soon obvious: “Mom took up with a guy that believed in educating with his fists, that bullied and brainwashed her till the day she died.”

By the time he arrives in his father’s hometown in Tennessee, the now-eleven-year-old has suffered the physical and psychological abuse of his new step-father, lost his pregnant mother, been fostered out into two differently neglectful homes, done hard physical labour, worked an illegal job, missed school to harvest tobacco, been half-starved, and robbed.

From there, the story follows Demon’s rollercoaster fortunes in life: patronage from his paternal grandmother, a football coach and an art teacher; recognition of his talents and abilities; injury and drug addiction; the deterioration and loss of people close to him. He proves to be resilient, and eventually learns that not all the people he chooses end up being true friends.

With her reinvented David Copperfield set in modern-day Appalachia, Kingsolver illustrates the potent impact on young lives of the poor choices that people themselves make, or are made by those charged with their care, often when there is, realistically, no choice at all.

When those people in his life who have good intentions but no means are unable to step up, her protagonist ends up at the mercy of people rorting the welfare system for their own gain or merely their survival, under the supposed care of poorly-paid and under-resourced people stuck in a poorly funded and disorganised system. All of this will feel wholly realistic to those with experience of said system.

Shown, too, is the Appalachian(?) mindset perpetuated by some teachers at less well-off schools that their students lack the intelligence to compete academically with richer schools. This can result is students believing, often to their detriment, injury-wise, that sport or unskilled labour is their only option. Credibly presented is the casually indiscriminate use of prescribed narcotics in teens with its ensuing downward spiral into addiction, and also the power of the intelligent cartoon.

Damon’s feels like an authentic voice which gives the story added credibility. Kingsolver gives her young protagonist insight: “A mean side to people comes out at such times, where their only concern is what did the misfortunate person do to put themselves in their sorry fix. They’re building a wall to keep out the bad luck.”

And makes him perceptive: “A dead parent is a tricky kind of ghost. If you can make it into more like a doll, putting it in the real house and clothes and such that they had, it helps you to picture them as a person instead of just a person-shaped hole in the air. Which helps you feel less like a person-shaped invisible kid.”

And, of course, the reader can rely on Kingsolver for gorgeous descriptive prose: “I found a good rock and watched the sun melt into the Cumberlands. Layers of orange like a buttermilk pie cooling on the horizon. Clouds scooting past, throwing spots of light and dark over the mountainheads. The light looked drinkable. It poured on a mountain so I saw the curve of every treetop edged in gold, like the scales of a fish. Then poured off, easing them back into shadow.”

Many of Dickens’ characters are easily identifiable by their slightly altered names and roles; several are sterling characters, although the one with that name is the polar opposite. Those familiar with it will find elements of the story somewhat reminiscent of AB Facey’s memoir A Fortunate Life. Included is a bonus essay revealing Kingsolver’s inspiration for this tale. Moving and thought-provoking: a wonderful read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Faber & Faber.

Less is the first novel in the Less series by award-winning best-selling American author, Andrew Sean Greer. Quickly approaching fifty, Arthur Less is dismayed to be invited to the wedding of a former lover. Attending is out of the question: Arthur Less devises a “cats cradle of junkets” that will ensure he is out of the country and very busy while Freddy Pelu marries Tom Dennis in Sonoma, CA.

First on his itinerary is New York City, interviewing an author of a sci-fi series with a cult following. This is preceded by a lunch with his agent, the outcome of which is a shock: his new novel will need a rewrite if it is to attract a publisher.

From there, Mexico City (an interview about his famous lover, poet Robert Brownburn), Turin (nominated for a book award), Berlin (teaching a five-week course), a short, unplanned stop-over in Paris (catch up with a friend), Morocco (to celebrate the birthday of a friend of a friend, and his own), India (a writing retreat, to fix his novel?), and Japan (to review some restaurant meals).

But at each destination, and often, during his travels, Arthur is overwhelmed by reminiscences, reveries, flashbacks, courtesy of those he meets, old friends and new acquaintances, and of little incidents that occur. Much as he would rather not, he recalls not just past lovers, but those he truly loved (and perhaps still does?), and fails to scrub Freddy from his mind and heart.

It’s on his fiftieth birthday that he is blessed with an epiphany about his apparently unwanted novel, and it’s a delightful irony that it just about describes what Greer has written: “What if it isn’t a poignant, wistful novel at all? What if it isn’t the story of a sad middle-aged man on a tour of his hometown, remembering the past and fearing the future; a peripateticism of humiliation and regret; the erosion of a single male soul? What if it isn’t even sad?”

Greer’s protagonist might remind some readers of those that David Nicholls creates: inept, accident-prone, awkward, subject to “those writerly humiliations planned by the universe to suck at the bones of minor artists like him”, whose “brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before”.

And towards the end, his friend/rival tells him “You are the most absurd person I’ve ever met. You’ve bumbled through every moment and been a fool; you’ve misunderstood and misspoken and tripped over absolutely everything and everyone in your path, and you’ve won. And you don’t even realize it.”

The story is related by an unnamed narrator whose identity gradually becomes clear. Greer’s plot, characters and prose are entertaining and enjoyable, and it’s no surprise that this novel was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Fans will be pleased to know they can look forward to a sequel, Less Is Lost.

“The war was history, and history didn’t interest Freda, she’d had no part in it. She was vibrant with the present and hungry for the future.”

Shrines Of Gaiety is the fifth stand-alone novel by award-winning, best-selling British author Kate Atkinson. It’s in the late spring of 1926 that the notorious Nellie Coker is released from Holloway prison, having served six months for a liquor licencing offence. Clearly, her paid policeman, DI Arthur Maddox, has fallen down on the job. Probably intentionally, Nellie thinks, and planning to take over her business as his own.

Her five nightclubs have been operating under the management of her adult children, but her stint in jail has diminished her. Nellie has her finger firmly on the pulse, though: she realises that Maddox isn’t the only threat she faces, and she won’t go down without a fight.

Gwendolen Kelling has come from York to look for two fourteen-year-old runaway girls. Freda Murgatroyd, half-sister of Gwendolen’s friend, Cissy has dragged her best friend Florence Ingram to London, promising a singing and dancing career on the stage. The reality isn’t as sparkly as they had hoped, but Freda is determined. She may not be entirely street-smart, but she’s far from the naiveté Florence evinces.

Having lost two brothers in the war, a father to illness, and then cared for her demanding, dying mother, Gwendolen quits her job at the library and seeks out DCI John Frobisher at Bow Street Police Station, assured that he is the man to help her find the girls. Frobisher is, indeed, concerned about the number of girls going missing in London over the last few months, believing that Nellie Coker’s clubs are swallowing them up.

Frobisher is on secondment from Scotland Yard, at Bow Street to root out the corruption that is rife. He is convinced that Maddox is the main actor, but the man remains frustratingly absent from duty, and Frobisher is unsure which of the men at Bow Street can be trusted: who knows if they are in league with Maddox? The ones that aren’t lazy or stupid, that is.

Frobisher quickly decides that there is clearly more to this librarian than meets the eye, and Miss Kelling’s timely arrival somehow has him sending a civilian undercover into Nellie’s citadel club, The Amethyst. She might spot her runaways there; she might just see something else useful…

Once again, Atkinson has written a brilliant story with a wholly believable plot that twists and surprises. In a tale that includes murder, blackmail, theft, corruption, and a prostitution racket, there is also plenty of dark humour, some delicious irony, a few farcical near-misses, and dialogue with many amusing mental asides. Loyalty, trust and a perceived lack thereof, also feature.

As well as main characters of surprising depth, Atkinson gives the reader a marvellously entertaining support cast: a war veteran who rescues damsels in distress, a somewhat precocious, perceptive pre-teen who fends well for herself, an aspiring novelist inclined to melodrama, a dissolute gossip columnist, and a jewel thief bent on revenge.

She gives them insightful observations: “Men talked in order to convey information or to ruminate on cricket scores and campaign statistics. Women, on the other hand, talked in an effort to understand the foibles of human behaviour. If men were to ‘gossip’, the world might be a better place. There would certainly be fewer wars”

Her extensive research into the era is apparent on every page, and as always, she is expert at setting a scene rich in detail with succinct descriptive prose: “The Cokers all had very eloquent eyebrows. They could conduct entire conversations with them, without saying a word” and “Sometimes he thought he could feel the weight of history in London pressing down on the top of his head” and “Much as he disliked being chained to his desk – Frobisher bound, his liver pecked at by bureaucracy – this pointless trailing around was time-wasting” are examples. Superlative historical fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld

Dark Horse is the seventh book in the Orphan X series by best-selling American author, Gregg Hurwitz. Evan Smoak is busy restoring his refuge on the twenty-first floor of the Castle Heights Residential Tower to its former pristine state when he gets a call for the NOWHERE MAN. Aragon Urrea’s daughter has been taken from their South Texas town by a Mexican drug cartel.

When he eventually decides that he can work on this man’s behalf, if certain strict conditions are met, Joey’s online skills give him an entry into the much-feared Leon Cartel, and his talent for bluff gets him in close to El Moreno, to the chagrin of the man’s lieutenants. When he eventually connects with Anjelina Urrea, there’s a wrinkle in the situation that need a massive alteration of his plans.

In this instalment, Evan spends a good bit of time in a sewer, watches an ultrasound, is faced with numerous scenes that really challenge his control over his OCD, and is distracted from his main mission by a medical emergency involving his ongoing love interest.

A visit to Evan’s personal arms dealer, Tommy Stojack is required for some very fancy gear and, as well as the usual firearms, knives, fists and feet, weapons wielded include a pencil, a scalpel, a defibrillator, a crowbar, a fully grown lion, and a Mont Blanc fountain pen. Readers should be prepared for a lot of violence, some of it especially cruel, some truly nasty characters, and a very high body count.

Joey Morales is a breath of fresh air and the perfect foil for serious Evan: every page that features Joey is pure entertainment. Her assistance, in his absence, with refurbishing Evan’s recently-destroyed condo becomes a bone of contention, though. His Castle Heights neighbours always add humour and tension relief. As usual with this series, it’s best to don your disbelief suspenders from page one and just enjoy the ride. Entertaining action drama.

4.5?s
The It Girl is the seventh novel by best-selling British author, Ruth Ware. When Hannah Jones arrives at Pelham College in October 2011 to begin her three years at Oxford, the last thing she expects is to be part of a group of six funny, clever students, but sharing a suite with intimidatingly beautiful and conspicuously wealthy April Clarke-Cliveden turns out to confer automatic acceptance.

“Now, as she stood there, her head spinning a little from the champagne she had drunk, she had the strangest feeling— almost as if she were surveying herself from a distance, marveling at the fact that she— Hannah Jones—had found herself surrounded by these exotic, clever, glamorous creatures.”

About the only fly in the ointment is that the guy who renders her weak at the knees, Will de Chastaigne, hooks up with April. None of them could ever have predicted that, less than a year later, April would be strangled to death. And Hannah would find her body.

Ten years on, Hannah and Will are expecting their first baby. Will is working crazy hours, trying to make full partner: they’re gong to need the income when Hannah has to give up her bookshop job. The nightmares and PTSD have finally decreased to manageable levels. Hannah has always felt guilty, both for surviving when April didn’t, and living the life April should have been living, with the husband she should have had, and now the baby she could have had.

Then, the news that the man convicted of April’s murder on Hannah’s evidence has died in prison. John Neville was absolutely resolute from the trial onward that he had nothing to do with her death and mounted several unsuccessful appeals. Will his death finally put an end to the media circus, the emails and calls that surround every appeal?

It seems that journalist Geraint Williams wants to look further into claims that the police and the court got it wrong, and his words have Hannah wondering, as do remarks made about the whole awful incident by others in that close group who re-establish contact: did she get it wrong? Did she put an innocent man into prison?

Hannah recalls that while brilliant, luminously beautiful April could be charming, beguiling and kind, she also had a malicious streak, revelling in cruel pranks, and what Hannah now learns from those friends has her guessing and second-guessing about who might have had motive and opportunity, other than John Neville.

Ware has crafted a dual-timeline mystery that is hard to put down: plenty of clues and red herrings and a brilliant twist to distract the reader in the lead-up to a nail-biting climax. It does lose half a star for a poorly-researched factual error that is integral to the resolution, but the Oxford scenes cannot fail to strike a chord with anyone who has lived in the residential college of a long-established university. A gripping thriller.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Australia.

Two Nights In Lisbon is the fifth novel by best-selling American author, Chris Pavone. When Ariel Pryce wakes up alone in a Lisbon hotel on a July Monday morning, she expects to find her (ten years younger) husband of three months in the dining room having breakfast. She doesn’t. John Wright hasn’t been seen by the staff; everything but his phone is still there; the phone goes to voicemail.

When Ariel takes her concern to the local police, they are almost dismissive: he hasn’t been gone long enough for it to be a concern. But they do find her interesting enough to tail. From the smirks the smarmy fellow at the US Embassy gives her it’s clear he is equally indifferent, although he does take some intriguing information about the couple to the CIA Chief of Station down the corridor. An American journalist hanging around the embassy offers help, which Ariel politely declines. No sign of John at the hospitals she contacts.

The hotel’s CCTV shows him leaving early in the morning, not dressed for the client business meetings he has scheduled, and maybe getting into a car. The male cop is still sceptical: Ariel’s ignorance of her husband’s clients doesn’t help. But his female colleague is a little more willing to make an effort. What happens next changes the complexion of his absence, but much more can’t be said without spoilers.

The opening chapters are intriguing enough to draw the reader in, but it’s not until things hot up that Ariel’s steel is revealed. And how! With flashbacks to her recent past, and a bit of action with a tail, Ariel demonstrates just how self-sufficient she can be. And it’s those scenes where she is fending for herself that provide plenty of dark humour.

It’s soon clear that neither Ariel nor John is quite who they seem; nor do all those claiming to want to help find John have entirely benign intentions, but most of them definitely want to know what is behind Ariel’s apparent power over a certain influential figure.

The main narrative is carried by Ariel, but many of the minor characters contribute, and the narrative often switches between them, relying only on context to denote whose perspective is being given. Rather than adding confusion, this seems to give the story an immediacy that keeps the reader engrossed.

While there are hints at espionage and the influence of foreign powers, the apparent immunity to prosecution of privileged white males who indulges in sexual harassment of the worst kind (and who closely resembles a certain president), is central to the story.

Very little suspension of disbelief is required in this tightly plotted story which has plenty of red herrings and enough twists to possibly necessitate a chiropractic consult. Pavone’s latest is definitely a page-turner.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

“So this is how it works. This is what families do for each other - hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses. And little cruelties.”

French Braid is the twenty-fourth novel by best-selling, award-winning American author, Anne Tyler. The Garrett family, people would tell you, is fairly unremarkable. They’re living what they see as fairly unremarkable lives Baltimore. Yes, there are little quirks, minor grudges, small resentments, as in every family. But also love in its many manifestations.

To pique our initial interest, there’s Serena Drew, meeting her (newish) boyfriend’s Philadelphia parents. A chance encounter, on the journey home to Baltimore, with her cousin, draws attention to the fact that the Garretts don’t see each other very much, unlike the boyfriend’s sprawling family. To understand why, we need to go back to the late 1950s.

The Garret family on their one and only vacation, at Deep Creek Lake: Robin demonstrates his inexperience with relaxing; Mercy gets out her sketchbook and pencils and indulges in her art; seventeen-year-old Alice takes over the responsibility of feeding the family and watching over her siblings; at fifteen, Lily is quickly distracted from her sulk about leaving one boy behind by the attentions of another, older one, from whom she seems to expect a proposal; and David, to his father’s frustration, is uninterested in the water, or learning to swim.

It is always such a pleasure to read a book by Anne Tyler, and this one has you chickling all the way through, unless you are laughing out loud or saying “oh, dear” or “oh, my”, and once or twice, choking up or shedding a tear. Nothing terribly dramatic happens: readers wanting action and excitement need to look elsewhere; but Tyler’s special talent is making ordinary lives shine.

Tyler is wonderful at character description: “It always puzzled Alice, how boys would flock to Lily. Oh, she was pretty enough, in a round-faced, dimply sort of way, but that didn't explain why they grew so alert when she walked into a room. It seemed she gave off some kind of high-pitched signal that only male ears could detect. (Grown men as well as boys. Alice had noticed more than one friend's father sending Lily the same sharp arrows of awareness.)”

As always, many of her characters are a little eccentric, but their observations on life are insightful at the same time as being amusing. Serena illustrates “I can criticise my family, but you can’t”; Mercy tells her granddaughter “Sometimes people live first one life and then another life... First a family life and then later a whole other kind of life. That's what I'm doing” but she does it subtly to spare feelings from being hurt; Alice considers herself the sensible one, even if some see her as a killjoy.

Each of eight chapters is from the perspective of a different family member, giving their particular view of certain events or circumstances. If Lily’s husband sees the Garretts as narrow and unfriendly and judgemental, it’s not how they see themselves.

And Tyler’s prose is a joy: “The only sounds in the studio were the whiskery strokes of their two brushes. She'd grown used to hearing old-people music but evidently Mercy preferred to work in silence, and Candle saw her point. Silence made what she was doing seem more important, somehow - more purposeful, almost like praying.” Wonderful, as always!

The Unsinkable Greta James is a novel by best-selling American author, Jennifer E. Smith. It is literally the last place Greta James wants to be: on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska. Her mother had planned the week-long cruise as a celebration of forty years of marriage. But three months earlier, an aneurysm had put Helen James into an early grave. Now here she is with her father and two other couples of his vintage: Helen and Conrad’s best friends over the last several decades, having the vacation Helen can’t.

Losing her mother plunged Greta into such deep grief that she had a meltdown on stage during her last live show, a week after Helen died. A meltdown that went viral. Despite pressure from the label, her manager and her publicist, Greta has withdrawn from public life since then. She knows if her career as an indie singer/songwriter/guitarist is to survive, she needs to come back controlled and confident, with a new song. A song that’s not coming…

On top of all that, she’s broken up with her boyfriend and just learned the man who’s been her fallback most of her life has gotten engaged.

So she’s on a ship full of mostly oldies who haven’t a clue about her, which is OK. The two other couples provide a buffer between her and Conrad, necessary because, although she’s here to keep an eye on him (at her brother’s insistence), they haven’t seen eye to eye since she entered her teens. Her mother may have been her greatest fan, but her father still thinks she should, at age thirty-six, have quit travelling, got a real job, and settled into a steady relationship, like her brother.

While she can relax in relative anonymity, an enthusiastic young teen of south Asian descent is thrilled to meet her idol, and Greta recalls her own teenaged obsession with making music. And among the activities to which she does accompany Conrad and his friends, a talk by Ben Wilder, a history professor at Columbia with a best-selling novel: an enigmatic figure who piques Greta’s interest. Somehow they connect, and see unexpected parallels in their lives.

It’s when she’s agreed to spend a whole day excursion with her father, meticulously pre-arranged by her mother, that things with Conrad come to a head. Can they salvage something from their decades-long estrangement?

In this novel, Smith offers a well-rounded protagonist and an appealing support cast, most of whom endear themselves to the reader despite, or perhaps because of, their very human flaws and foibles. Her portrayal of the various relationships is convincing and certain turns of the plot are likely to have the eyes filling with tears and a lump forming in the throat, although there is also plenty of humour, especially in the witty dialogue.

Smith’s depiction of the cruise, the activities and excursions, and life aboard a cruise ship perfectly captures the atmosphere and she so skilfully sets the scene of Greta’s performances, readers will wish they could be there. A tale that examines family dynamics and throws in a little romance, this one is funny, moving, heart-warming and uplifting.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Quercus Books

The Midnight Hour is the sixth book in The Brighton Mysteries series by British author, Elly Griffiths. When elderly impresario Bert Billington’s youngest son, Aaron suggests to the Brighton Police that his mother, former variety dancer, Verity Malone poisoned her husband, she engages Holmes and Collins Detective Agency to investigate.

It’s a little awkward: the first time Emma Holmes is at odds with her husband, Superintendent Edgar Stephens, as his team tries to discover who fed Bert rat poison. Police and PIs question many of the same people for information, but sometimes their methods yield different results. What does come to light is that there are plenty of people with potential grudges against the old man, and that there was a mystery caller to the house in the hours before Bert died.

And then there is another murder: a different MO, but with certain common aspects, with the result that Emma and WDC Meg Connolly head to Liverpool to interview a couple with a historical bearing on the cases, and from there, unexpectedly to Whitby, where Bert and Verity’s middle son Seth and Max Mephisto are filming a Dracula movie.

Bert’s reputation as a philanderer swells the list of those with grievances to the families of used and discarded women, some of whose lives he ruined without qualm. Nor do all of his own family hold him in high esteem. But the second victim was a favourite with almost everyone: what could the motive be?

Griffiths certainly has the reader second-guessing themselves as they settle on a perpetrator, only to be pointed elsewhere as further facts come to light. There are a number of red herrings and plenty of misdirection, from both the characters and the author. At one stage Emma reminds herself that she is dealing with “Actors and acting. Costume and disguise.”

Once again, Griffiths uses multiple narrators to convey different parts of the story as well as to give different perspectives on events. The story plays out over about six weeks against a background of The Moors Murders. The mid-1960’s era ensures the absence of mobile phones, internet, DNA and even many personal vehicles; thus the detective work relies on heavily on legwork, and intelligent deduction.

Fans will be pleased to have another peek into the lives of this particular cast as the characters grow and develop and face the challenges of the changing world that was the nineteen-sixties. Despite the still-rampant sexual discrimination to which they are subject, Emma, Sam, Meg and Ruby are coming into their own, quietly taking charge of their lives and making their own decisions. This is addictive historical crime fiction.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Now You See Them is the fifth book in the Stephens and Mephisto Mystery series (now apparently titled The Brighton Mysteries) by British author, Elly Griffiths. It is set over ten years after the events of The Vanishing Box. DI Bob Willis and Superintendent Edgar Stephens are called out of a post-funeral gathering for one of the wartime Magic Men: a teenaged girl is missing from her exclusive boarding school, Roedean. Her father, local MP Sir Crispian Miles demands their immediate action.

Rhonda Miles left a note claiming she has gone to London, and her friends are convinced she’s there to see matinee idol Bobby Hambro: they are all manic fans. It happens that the star’s agent is trying to entice Max Mephisto to co-star in a proposed film with Bobby: Edgar enlists Max’s help to gain access to Bobby to request vigilance for Rhonda among his many fans.

Edgar’s wife Emma, formerly DS Holmes, is finding marriage and motherhood less than stimulating and jumps at the chance to be more involved when her friend, journalist Sam Collins brings news of two earlier, unreported, disappearances of young women who have left similar notes. The women hatch a scheme to draw out the kidnapper, much to Edgar’s disapproval.

Meanwhile DI Bob Willis sends WPC Meg Connolly to London undercover to mingle with the loyal Bobby Hambro fans massed outside his hotel, hoping to gain information about Rhonda’s whereabouts. She returns with something that links her disappearance to the previous two. And then a body is discovered along the undercliff walk at Rotterdean.

In this instalment, Griffiths uses four narrators, Max, Edgar, Emma and Meg, to convey different parts of the story as well as to give different perspectives on events. The story plays out over three weeks. The mid-1960’s era ensures the absence of mobile phones, internet, DNA and even many personal vehicles; thus the detective work relies on heavily on legwork, and intelligent deduction.

Griffiths gives the reader a tale that set against a background of conflict erupting between mods and rockers, and includes smugglers tunnels, a prison escape, pop-star hysteria, racial discrimination and the emergence of a hitherto unknown group: teenagers. The kidnappings come very close to home for the main protagonists before a dramatic climax reveals who is responsible.

In different ways, Emma, Sam and Meg are subject to sexual discrimination, being relegated to menial tasks, denied the right to work, not permitted to drive a police car, denigrated by comments from colleagues, denied promotion and always expected to make the tea. But these women have plans!

Griffiths gives the reader characters that are real and flawed; some are immature but eager; others are distracted by their emotions. The plot is clever and original and even the most astute reader is unlikely to guess the perpetrator. The atmosphere of sixties Britain is skilfully evoked with description, dialogue and the attitudes common at the time. Excellent historical crime fiction, once again.

4.5?s
Cast Iron is the sixth book in the Enzo Macleod Investigation series by Scottish journalist, screenwriter and author, Peter May. After refreshing himself on the details of Roger Raffin’s sixth cold case with him, Enzo heads in the direction of Bordeaux to meet the parents of Lucie Martin, whose unexplained disappearance in 1989 became a murder case when a nearby lake dried up during the drought of 2003, revealing her skeleton.

But not long after meeting the Martins, Enzo feels ambushed when he finds himself in the middle of a gathering of the families of six young women who are missing or dead, all of whom believe a certain killer of three prostitutes is to blame. While a letter from pimp Régis Blanc was found in Lucie’s bedroom, he has a cast iron alibi for when she disappeared.

Enzo talks to Lucie’s boyfriend, the ex-cop whom the families of the Bordeaux Six hired to investigate, Blanc’s wife and the women he pimped. He locates Lucie’s missing skull and makes a discovery that changes the whole complexion of the case. The more he hears, the less he is convinced that Blanc is Lucie’s killer.

When he meets Blanc in Lannemezan Prison, he becomes intrigued by the motive for the three murders for which this enigmatic man was incarcerated. But then he is distracted by his younger daughter. And in the crisis that follows, Enzo, true to form, has four women falling over themselves to assist in any way they can.

Sophie and her fiancé Bertrand discover first-hand just how dangerous being beloved of Enzo can be when his investigations displease certain people. Bertrand certainly gets a chance to prove his love, and Sophie shows herself to be resourceful and undefeated by challenging circumstances.

In what feels like the final book in the series, the action ranges from Paris to Cahors to Bordeaux to Biarritz. Some clever deduction and plenty of legwork is done, and there are plenty of twists and red herrings before the shocking reveal of just who is trying to kill Enzo, and why.

Both of Roger Raffin’s remaining cold cases are solved and loose ends are tied in a fairly neat bow, so fans of the series will doubtless be interested to know what May has planned for Enzo and crew in the seventh book of the series, The Night Gate. Enjoyable crime fiction.