Category Archives: Crime

A detective story with a difference

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Rivers_of_LondonWhen PC Peter Grant stumbles across a key witness with a first-hand account of a violent crime, he sees it as an opportunity to save himself from the tedium of a career in paperwork. The only problem – his witness is a ghost.

As a result of this encounter with the supernatural, Peter is swiftly recruited into a special unit within the Met police – designed to help solve the cases where fact and reason have failed. He soon discovers a whole new side of London policing, complete with rivers that walk on two feet and ghosts that steal people’s faces.

Ben Aaronovitch’s creation has all the lure of the paranormal combined with the mystery, suspense and action of the crime novel. Continue reading →

Hannah Kent’s ‘Burial Rites’

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Burial RitesSet in rural Iceland in the late 1820’s, ‘Burial Rites’ is based on a real life double murder case. In the absence of places to detain criminals for any length of time, the convicted murderers are each sent to stay with different families across the area.

One of these prisoners is Agnes. The family she is assigned to rails against her presence, refusing to call her by name, and the youngest daughter in particular is shamed to have her living under their roof. In the months leading up to her execution, Agnes internally rages against her conviction. Gradually, through Agnes’ stories to her priest, and eventually to the family themselves, the truth behind the death of her two alleged victims is uncovered.

As Agnes tells her story, the family also get to know her and start to accept her presence, forcing them to question their prejudices. This asks the larger question of whether the legal system can be trusted to make the right decision Continue reading →

A courtroom thriller

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appletreeyard‘Apple Tree Yard’ opens in a courtroom, with our narrator in the dock, although we don’t yet know her crime. To explain how she got there, Yvonne takes us right back to the beginning – to the events that set everything in motion.

Yvonne is 52, married, has two children and is a successful geneticist. She could be any one of us. As she takes pains to point out – her life is ordinary. But the choices she makes over the course of a few short months will take her down a road that Yvonne never thought she would travel.

The direction of the book continually changes as it progresses. Every time we think we can see where the story is leading, something shifts, changing with it our perceptions of characters. The end, when it comes, is a tense and anxious experience, all building up to the one moment that has the potential to change her life forever. Continue reading →

Pierre Lemaitre’s ‘Alex’

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Alex PLIt’s very difficult to explain the plot of ‘Pierre Lemaitre’s Alex’ without giving away too much. We open with the kidnapping and torture of a girl. The attempts of the police to track down this girl, with no evidence to show that a kidnapping has even taken place, help to start unravelling a web of lies, violence and deceit.

The book is split into three separate sections, each of which turns the story on its head and takes t in a completely new direction. It’s like solving a mystery within a mystery – each section throws up a new conundrum and completely changes our views on what has come before.

All of the characters are hiding secrets and our perceptions of different people shifted depending on the titbits of information that the author slowly released over the course of the novel. The pace moves along at a breakneck pace, shifting how we see characters with just a few short sentences and well-timed revelations. Continue reading →

‘The Son’ by Jo Nesbo

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When Sonny was a teenager, his father took his own life. His suicide note revealed that he was a mole in the Oslo police force, passing information to the mysterious and shadowy figure of the Twin, a dangerous criminal with a network of resources at his disposal. This shattering revelation set his family on a path of destruction and ruin.

The SonNow a heroin addict, Sonny has been in prison for 12 years. Since his incarceration, he’s gained an almost mythical status amongst his fellow inmates as a receiver of confessions and a cleanser of souls. But when one of these confessions strikes particularly close to home, it throws everything that Sonny has ever believed about his father’s death into question.

Homicide Inspector Simon Kefas was once Sonny’s father best friend. On the surface, his current cases are random acts of violence, driven by petty theft or drugs. But as Simon investigates, he begins to suspect that the perpetrator is driven by a much more powerful motive. And he isn’t finished. When the crimes of the present become caught up with the ghosts of the past, Simon may be the only one that can help Sonny to uncover the truth he needs.

‘The Son’ is filled with a whole cast of unsavoury and untrustworthy characters and layer upon layer of deceit. But somehow, Jo Nesbo manages to turn our perceptions of good and bad completely on their head, as the lines between justice and law and right and wrong become increasingly blurred. Continue reading →

‘The Rose Petal Beach’ by Dorothy Koomson

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One seemingly normal evening, Tamia Challey’s life is shattered by a knock on the door. Her husband, Scott, has been accused of something terrible, and his accuser is Tami’s best friend. Placed in an impossible dilemma, Tami has to face the fact that one of the people that she trusts most in the world is lying to her. But which one?

the-rose-petal-beach-1As Tami becomes increasingly suspicious of the people in her life, tragedy strikes and the situation escalates still further. Over the course of the book, Tami’s life gradually falls apart as she’s forced to make some hard choices and face up to some devastating truths.

As well as the main thread following the present day crime and its implications, The Rose Petal Beach also reaches back through time to give us a back story of Tami’s relationships with the main players in the story. This not only helps to build up a picture of the past, but also to allow readers to understand how tensions have reached breaking point.

The Rose Petal Beach is a dark and intense thriller that not only aims to solve a crime, but also to offer a deep insight into the psychological effects of events as they unfold. Seen through the eyes of three very different women, we’re presented with three very different perspectives on the situation. Together, these three narratives merge to create an overall picture that just doesn’t quite fit together.

Ultimately it’s a study of relationships, whether that’s between parents and their children, between friends or between lovers. For me, the aspect of the novel that carried the most weight was that no matter how close we are to people, you can never really know everything about them.

The author writes cleverly and emotionally, really connecting her readers to the characters. It was the perfect holiday read, but I can’t help thinking that Dorothy Koomson has used this formula before. That said, you can’t argue with something that’s tried and tested and she continues to come out with gripping and thought-provoking reads.

Review of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl

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With over 2 million copies sold worldwide, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was one of the most talked about books of the last year- and rightly so.

Gone GirlA dark and disturbing thriller, Gone Girl is the story of the disappearance of a seemingly perfect wife on her fifth wedding anniversary. For Nick, left behind in smalltown Carthage, Missouri, Amy’s disappearance plunges him into a waking nightmare. As the police and the American public begin to turn against him, it’s clear that something about his take on recent events doesn’t quite add up.

The first part of the novel switches between Nick’s first hand experiences of the days immediately after the disappearance and Amy’s diary entry’s, dating back to the day that they first met. But as the book progresses, we begin to realise that the two narratives we’re hearing are telling very different stories, and that at least one of the two of them is not telling the whole truth. In fact, they’re telling anything but the truth.

Then – and there are spoilers coming up so if you don’t want to know, don’t read ahead – the second half of the book hits and we realise that we have two very unreliable and wholly unlikeable characters on our hands. Both Nick and Amy are lying, concealing and misleading both themselves and the reader. It’s a bold move from Gillian Flynn, as she runs the risk of alienating her audience. Not everyone wants to read a whole novel with central characters they can’t relate to.

But in this case, it’s a risk that really paid off. Nick and Amy are human and throughout the novel they display very human weaknesses. Whether they have any redeeming qualities is a very different matter.

Gillian Flynn really ramps up the tension and holds her readers in suspense the whole way through. I was hooked and couldn’t put it down until I turned last pages in the (very) early hours of the morning! Ultimately, in Gone Girl Gillian Flynn has created a master psychological thriller that thoroughly deserves the praise that has been heaped upon it.

Whether you like true crime, romance or fantasy, this year’s Quick Read’s collection has something for everyone…

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Today might be Valentines Day, but the 14th February also marks another very special occasion – the launch of the Quick Reads 2013 collection.

Formed in 2006, Quick Reads is a fantastic charity that aims to encourage adults across the UK to pick up a book and discover the joys of reading. Every year, it enlists some of the biggest and brightest names in literature to write a series of short books designed to deliver an entertaining and engaging story in no more than 128 pages.

Quick_Reads_Logo_BlackWith some pretty compelling research that suggests that some 12 million adults in the UK find reading difficult and may never as picked up a book, the project is a great way of building confidence in those who may not have been readers in the past – whether that’s because they find books intimidating, because they think reading is boring or simply because they just don’t think that they want to.

It’s a brilliant and unique project, and this year, Quick Reads is pulling out all the stops to build awareness and encourage people to take part. Available from most major retailers and libraries, the books are not just intended for the general public, they have proved to be a vital educational tool for environments such as further education colleges, prisons, family centres, care homes and workplace learning centres. Plus, there’s also the knock-on effect on the next generation, as adults who discover reading through the Quick Reads charity are much more likely to encourage their children to read.

When it comes to the books themselves, there’s something for everyone. I’m particularly looking forward to ‘A Dreadful Murder’ by Minette Walters. Based on a true story, the book reconstructs the events of a mysterious murder on the grounds of a large country estate in a bid to uncover the culprit. It sounds to me like it might have echoes of Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

But if crime’s not your thing, there’s plenty more on offer in the form of a new Doctor Who story from Mike Tucker as well as a feel good romantic adventure in ‘Love is Blind’ by Kathy Lette.

Former SAS operative and soldier Andy McNab has also contributed to the collection with a brand new book reflecting on his time in the forces. Recruited following a stint in a juvenile detention facility at the age of sixteen, but with a reading age of just eleven, ‘Today Everything Changes’ tells of how his own experience of the Army education system changed his life forever.

I’ll post again with details of the individual books as soon as I’ve had a chance to read and review, but for now, this is just a short shout out to encourage everyone to spread the word!

More information on Quick Reads as well as all of this year’s books and authors can be found at http://www.quickreads.org.uk/ 

Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboat

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Disturbing, intense and claustrophobic, Charlotte Rogan’s The Lifeboat follows the lives of 39 passengers following the sinking of an ocean liner in 1914. Adrift in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with the possibility of rescue looking less and less likely, the lifeboat is dangerously over-full and provisions increasingly scarce.Charlotte Rogan's The Lifeboat

Thrown together in the confined space of the boat, the passengers face moral dilemmas and difficult decisions in their struggle for survival. Newly formed relationships are pushed to the limit as personalities clash and the survivors’ battle to take control of their surroundings. The Lifeboat tackles the darkest places of the human psyche and also reminds us of the wild and brutal potential of the natural world.

The novel is told through the words of 22-year-old Grace Winter, who came on board the doomed ship with her new husband, Henry, and was left widowed after the accident. However, throughout the book, we start to suspect that Grace may not be a very reliable source. Her narrative tone becomes increasingly distant and dispassionate, and the truth behind events is thrown into question.

As we follow the passengers from their perilous situation on the open seas to the trials of the courtroom on their eventual return, Charlotte Rogan tackles potentially contentious issues as she challenges everything from religious belief to inequality in gender roles.

I raced through this book and had to stop myself from reading ahead to the end. Some people have commented that it’s hard to sympathise with the characters, but I thought this just added to the overall tone of the novel. The author deliberately doesn’t write characters that are likeable. Instead, she uses the passengers of the lifeboat to explore the depths of human nature and personalities, both good and bad, as well as the lengths we will go to survive.

It’s impossible to imagine how we ourselves would react if we were forced into the same situation and you can’t help but put yourself in their place. It’s a gripping, and thought-provoking read, and although admittedly it did make for slightly uncomfortable reading I’d definitely recommend it.