#review - Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway

Karla's Choice 

Nick Harkaway
Penguin, 24 October 2024
Available as: HB, 320pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780241714904

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Karla's Choice  to consider for review.

This is the first of I hope many continuations by Harkaway of his father, David Cornwall (John le Carré)'s series of books about the British Secret Intelligence Service (the 'Circus') in the mid-20th century. Harkaway explains in his prologue that there were always intended to be more of these books, focussing on George Smiley, and indeed le Carré published a couple shortly before his death.

In Karla's Choice, we return to Smiley's heyday, the 1960s, and see George, who has temporarily left the Circus after the events of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, called back in a crisis (as of course would happen several more times and it's nice to see how Harkaway docks his Smiley seamlessly with the one in his father's books). In true le Carré fashion, an apparently minor event has set alarm bells ringing in the corridors of the Circus and someone is needed to attend to business.

So we get to see the Circus again, perhaps not quite in all its pomp (we'd have to go back to wartime for that) but as a more powerful organisation than the burnt out shell it becomes later. And we also meet its denizens, not least the mole who will be unmasked in earlier books (if you follow the sequence). I won't name them in case you haven't read those books yet, but the knowledge of that person's later betrayal certainly provides a frisson here when secrets are being discussed... 

In the best tradition of these stories, Karla's Choice offers us an apparently dry narration enlivened by a lot of erudition and plenty of secrets - tradecraft, ruminations on the Cold War, both practical and moral, and, of course, humour. There is also the tension between the grizzled inmates of the Circus and a young woman - a Hungarian refugee, Susanna Gero - who is about to be immersed in their life when the secret world, the world of Smiley and Karla, reaches out for her. How and why it does that - and why her boss has disappeared - unfolds unhurriedly, but in detail, throughout the book. There's a sense here of the story being deeply rooted in history, the history of the 20th century yes, very recent events to the protagonists such as the Hungarian uprising but also the century's backstory, the old Tsarist days which led to Soviet Russia. 

Relationships are also central, especially the one that develops in this book between George and Susannah. This is complex. One of them is reluctant to keep playing these games, disillusioned even in his own mind, but still accepting of the twisted logic of the looking-glass war, if always on the verge of smashing the mirror. The other is new to the whole scene and inclined to be judgemental - but also, seems to have a more ruthless streak, understandably given she's crossed Europe seeking refuge (people were still allowed to do that in the 60s).  Perhaps she actually knows more than she's letting on?

We also see various stranded and beached figures who will become the famous faces of the chronologically later stories - incipient alcoholic Connie, for example; Control, before the catastrophe that is a few years down the line. And of course George's wife, with Karla's Choice perhaps equally deserving of the title Ann's Choice...

All in all, a fascinating and thrilling addition to the Smiley canon, the plot meaty, the tone perfect, the revelations and embroidering of the Circus mythology rich, fitting and gorgeous. Harkaway shows here that, yes, the menu is excellent and the chef really can cook.

For more information about Karla's Choice, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Vengeance by Emma Newman

The Vengeance (The Vampires of Dumas, 1)

Emma Newman
Solaris, 8 May 2025
Available as: PB, 386pp, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781837861644

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Vengeance to consider for review.

While I feel I'm reviewing this way ahead of its release date next Spring, I'm so excited to see something new from Emma Newman and I want to shout about it. I expect this to be a highlight of 2025's reading for many!

The Vengeance is a really enjoyable adventure romp, taking us the Caribbean and to 18th century France and throwing vampires and werewolves into the mix. The story follows Morgane, a young woman who's grown up at sea as a pirate, believing herself to be the daughter of Anne Marie, fearsome captain of the Vengeance. Anne Marie has a particular hatred for the French "Four Chains Trading Company", whose vessels she hunts down without mercy. One day, this vendetta will that lead Morgane to surprising knowledge, and to danger and a quest for revenge.

Basically a "fish out of water" story as Morgane is forced to travel to France to discover who she really is, The Vengeance is at its very best showing the young pirate absorbing the ways of the land, discovering love, and trying to learn about her own origins. Her determination and courage are never in doubt, though her wisdom and self-restraint may be, as she stirs up enemies she never dreamed of. (You know, don't you, that when Anne Marie warns Morgane never to try and find her family, that the warning will be ignored, and that there will be Consequences?) 

By telling a story from an outsider's viewpoint, Newman is able to show up many injustices and wrongs in her imagined (but not so far from history) version of France, and the complacency and resignation of those involved. It's not only wrongs and tyrannies we will be familiar with from history, but a whole layer of the supernatural too. This sets up formidable obstacles for Morgane, but they don't overshadow the story, rather at its centre is a complex and tender portrayal of someone who is still a very young protagonist and who has to find her way as an adult in the world. That theme is given room to breathe, with due space too to a comedic subplot where Morgane, as a notorious pirate, thinks herself much more adult, much more experienced and much more capable than she really is. 

Witnessing this sea dog offered the services of a governess when her father eventually catches up with her is hilarious, but Newman doesn't only play it for laughs, the relationship with Lisette will be important to Morgane in future.

(Indeed it will I think be a strained relationship in some ways - Morgane, as a pirate born and bred, is clearly relaxed with the idea of a life driven by theft and murder. While this is something Newman perhaps chooses not to emphasise, Lisette is alive to it and will not, I think, tolerate it for long. I expect sparks to fly...)

Introducing and setting up many threads that will I'm sure be important in future stories, The Vengeance is a fun read with the sense of moral and psychological complexity I always expect from this author.

For more information about The Vengeance, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen

The Burning Stones
Antti Tuomainen (tran David Hackston)
Orenda Books, 24 October 2024
Available as: HB, 276pp, PB audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788329

I'm grateful to Orenda for sending me a copy of The Burning Stones to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Anni Korpinen is the star saleswoman at sauna stove maker Steam Devil.

But is Anni also a serial killer?

All the facts seem to suggest it. Anni's colleagues have her down as a cold-blooded killer (albeit one who employs hot steam for her murders) and local police chief Kiimaleinen is determined to make charges stick. 

Only one person believes in Anni's innocence - herself. But can she really hold out in the teeth of the evidence?

The Burning Stones was a fun book to read. It's described as comedy crime, but I think the truth is more nuanced than that - while the story does have its humorous aspects, it's a very dark humour, and the comedy arises from a desperate human predicament. The crime we see is also very, very gruesome. And the eventual revelation of who the killer is and what their motives are points less at human wickedness but at small, rather pathetic and plaintive motives - certainly compared with the nature of the killings. So it's equally a rather sad book, the record of a few days that turn Anni's world upside down, stressing all her relationships and breaking some behind repair. 

I enjoyed the way that Tuomainen throws the burden of proving her innocence on a woman who manifestly has no special talents in that line. As she repeats several times, she is a saleswoman (though a very good one) not a detective. Anni's attempts at tracking down the real killer often seem apt to land her in more trouble, and there's a murky secret in her past that makes it hard for her to be frank with (possibly) sympathetic policemen who might be willing to help - so she's very much on her own, surrounded by colleagues who mistrust her and who, lets be plain, all have questions to answer themselves.

Anni does though have one resource to fall back on - the peace she gains from her regular sauna sessions and swimming in the local lake. Many times in the story she retreats to ponder matters in the steam. But might even this, her understanding of the uses of the sauna, be evidence of her guilt? 

A real mystery, an involving and enjoyable story with well drawn and plausible characters and a tale with ratcheting tension, as Anni waits for that knock on the door, this is a book I'd strongly recommend. It's also a window onto Finnish sauna culture which was enlightening to say the least! I'd never, for example, heard about the concept of a "bumlet" (you'll just have to read the book!) I think that David Hackston's translation is brilliant here, it's as though Tuomainen is deliberately posing challenges, using colloquialisms, songs and jingles, technical terms and very specific language for which, clearly, there are no direct English equivalents and which require words to be created. Hackston deals with all this and more with aplomb and gives us a very readable text besides.

For more information about The Burning Stones, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Burning Stones from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

#Review - Dark as Night by Lilja Sigurðóttir

Dark as Night (Áróra Investigates)

Lilja Sigurðóttir (trans by Lorenza Garcia)
Orenda Books, 10 February 2024 
Available as: PB, 241pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788367

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Dark as Night  to consider for review.

I've become addicted to Sigurðóttir's fast-moving, involving series featuring Áróra and her group of friends and colleagues - Daníel, Helena and, of course, Daníel's tenant, drag queen Lady Gúgúlú.

In Dark as Night, all their lives are about to be shaken up and some answers given - though not perhaps ones we'd welcome. Áróra is still searching for her missing sister, but now news comes of a child who seems to be dead Ísafold reincarnated. And Gúgúlú has vanished din the night, leaving no word - but three menacing strangers are on her track. In both cases, Daníel finds his status as a policeman of little help.

Plus, Áróra's behaving erratically...

I love the moment in a series when he writer can trust the readers, and the characters, knowing that if things get a little strange, the latter will continue to enchant the former. The Áróra we see here isn't someone who, met for the first time, you'll necessarily want to know more about, but we have come to understand and like Áróra and so will be patient with a woman who's been through a lot. Similarly Gúgúlú has been a great support to Daníel while remaining on the margins of these stories so it's good to learn more about here, and indeed to learn things which rather blow open the nature of these stories. As to the latter, I felt there was always a bit more going on than the standard price procedural and it's good to have that confirmed, although I don't want to say too much for fear of spoilers. 

Through all this, the relationship between Áróra and Daníel continues to intrigue the reader and deepen at the same time. It's not an easy one - while she may be on the side of the angels she doesn't always play by the rules, and has her own secrets, which are straining things here - but a sense does come through of two people who are at bottom devoted to one another and that each will do anything for the other. (Given the kinds of threats which arise in Sigurðóttir's Idecalnd, the latter is perhaps more a matter of when, than if, some great sacrifice will be needed).

Lorenza Garcia's translation is excellent in what must have been a challenging task given the nature of some of the content, and I would love to ask a few questions about how certain things were tackled!

For more information about Dark as Night, see the publisher's website here.

#review - Lights Out by Louise Swanson

Lights Out

Louise Swanson
Hodder, 5 September 2024 
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529396140

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Lights Out  to consider for review.

In Lights Out, Louise Swanson strikes the perfect balance between a 'high concept" thriller and a study of relationships and psychology.

Taking place, like many of Swanson's stories written both under this name and as Louise Beech, in Hull, the story is rooted in the everyday but transcends that ordinariness by having external forces impose something weird on the local population - in this case, a power outage every night, intended to save energy. Reminding me somewhat of the power cuts of the 70s, which I lived through, it also evokes the dislocation of the Covid lockdown and some of the social strains and tensions that emerged than and since (while I think not intended, I also saw some resonance with this summer's riots). So, while the main device is invented, it also feels close to recent experience.

At the centre of things is Grace, for whom the loss of light on these dark winter evenings is a huge deal because she has a terror of the dark following some murky events in her childhood (which will gradually be revealed). It doesn't help that a prowler is abroad, assaulting women when the lights are off - and that someone (whether or not the same intruder) begins to enter her house at night leave odd presents and messages. Creepy or what?

So things get very menacing very early on. In other hands, this could go very wrong - where, exactly, do you go next with the story? - but Swanson knows how to wind up the tension still further, and then stiller further, if that makes sense. There's an almost palpable strain - a kind of mental keening - as Grace attempts to balance her day job (and sometimes night - she works shifts at a hospice) with her fear of the dark, to maintain her relationship with an (obviously no-good) husband, a domineering mother and that abiding mystery (an element of which is that her dad went missing when she was a kid). Honestly, at times I had to put the book down and just BREATHE, so tense does it get. But I never left it sitting there for long.

A book with a strong sense of how hurts from the past can fester - a major theme is the need to remember and confront, and to resist the easy solution of forgetting - and of how parents can mess up their kids' lives (they may not mean to but they do) this is also a taut, nailbitting thriller yet has many tender moments. You'll be rooting for Grace, I guarantee. This is Louise Swanson at the top of her game.

For more information about Lights Out, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Small Bomb at Dimperley
Lissa Evans
Doubleday, 5 September 2024
Available as: HB, 309pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857528292

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of Small Bomb at Dimperley to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Small Bomb at Dimperley sees Lissa Evans returning to 1940s England with a new novel set just after the end of the Second World War. It’s a standalone, not part of the same sequence as Old Baggage, Crooked Heart and V For Victory although many of the same themes are here. We see the improvisational quality of life, especially for those on the margins (here, a woman who has to make her way through a world that doesn't want to admit she exists - or wouldn't if it knew that she was a single mother). We see people making do, adapting, living the hands they've been dealt. 

And we see them triumphing in odd, unexpected ways - even remaking themselves, admidst the societal dislocation and change of the war years and the immediate and postwar. 

Also evident is Evans’s ease with the setting and atmosphere as she unfolds her story in a decade that now seems so remote and different. It's only twenty years before I was born, but so much seems strange. It's not just distance in time, but a particular moment. The war is over, the future has not yet begun. A tide of change is poised, an Empire about to be dismantled - but it hasn't begun yet. The country is balanced, many wishing for a return to older ways, others already taking advantage of the new. I say Evans does this with ease, that isn't really fair, it must of course have  have taken fearsome amounts of research, of empathy, but to me the story feels very real (as did her earlier novels).

 

Small Bomb at Dimperley is set in rural Buckinghamshire. It's imbued with the rhythms and incidents of  a vanished world: ploughing competitions, knackers’ vans, market days that fill country towns with animals and farmers in damp tweed, a decaying country house, a decaying, cash-strapped gentry. The story follows the minorly aristocratic family which lives in that house and which has, due to an accumulation of deaths, ill-advised investments, and social change, come to the end of its financial road. They now face having to sell up. As a reader I had mixed feelings about that. These country houses and estates were often built on cleared villages, using wealth earned from exploitation abroad. Irene, ("My Lady") the dowager of the family (one of the dowagers - it's complicated) almost invites the thought: serves her right, as she looks down on the lower orders and plots an entitled future by marrying Valentine off to an heiress. 

Almost invites it. The redeeming quality of Irene is her tender care for her son, a young man who has a learning disability. The matter of fact moments between the two as they live their days are very touching. And Ceddy - Cecil - isn't a token figure here, he is a vital part of things.

Also appearing are Valentine, the reluctant heir to Dimperley, invalided out of the Army to manage the ruin that has been made of the family's finances and Zena, a no-nonsense young woman employed as secretary to eccentric Alaric. (He's writing a history of the family, which nobody will read). Zena has in effect found refuge at Dimperley, as will Priss and Kitty, Valentine's nieces, back from evacuation in the USA and full of modern ideas about showers and deodorant. Their mother, Barbara, occupies an uneasy space between Irene's disapproval and the adolescent scorn of her daughters. 

This is a gallery of smart, opinionated characters though they probably need an entire country house at their disposal or they'd all murder each other by page 2, and it isn't that sort of book at all. As it is, they have some space and Evans honours them all, pulling off what I always feel much be the most difficult trick a novelist can, persuading the reader to be interested in, and even sympathetic to, people who in real life one would avoid on principle. This is how we enter minds and hearts and begin to understand and appreciate others. This is the wonder of a great storyteller.

Small Bomb at Dimperley is a vivid, active book whose pages simply fly by. It has a subtle perspective combining as it does the outsider's critique of a society and a family - Kitty, Zena - the staunch traditionalist's defence of both - Alaric, Irene - and the pragmatism that just wants to keep the show on the road (Valentine, Barbara). It's not a social history, but at the same time, does tell us something about that pivotal time, about the choices that were made then, and about how they have cascaded down the years to influence the county we live in (well, that I live in) today.

There's also romance, a certain degree of growing-up, and a few shocks and surprises.

It is a wonderful read, great fun, and, in an undemonstrative way, rather moving.

For more information about Small Bomb at Dimplerley, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Small Bomb at Dimperley from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones. Other online retailers are available.

#Blogtour #Review - Living is a Problem by Doug Johnstone

Living is a Problem (Skelfs, #6)
Doug Johnstone
Orenda Books, 12 September 2024
Available as: PB, 276pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788268

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Living is a Problem to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Living is a Problem sees the Skelf women - grandmother Dorothy, mother and daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah - perhaps face their toughest trial yet in this series. And if you've been following the brilliant #SkelfSummer recap of the previous 5 books, you'll know that's saying something.

The challenges that confront the three here don't arise, at least not directly, from perplexing mysteries. If you've read any of the earlier Skelf books you'll know that the family are undertakers in Edinburgh, but also private investigators. Naturally, the latter role can create complex scenarios to unravel, and there are some of those here. The funeral of an Edinburgh gangster, disrupted by parties unknown. The grave of a child disturbed. A missing woman, a refugee from Ukraine.

For once though, these cases are "solved" fairly straightforwardly. There isn't a lot of subtle detecting. But in these books, and never more so that in Living is a Problem, just establishing the facts is only the beginning. The harder part of the Skelfs' work only begins after that. The cases aren't really "solved" till parties are reconciled; difficult decisions made; compromises reached. Because it's not really about the crime, it's about the opposite of crime, to paraphrase the title of the last book, The Opposite of Lonely. Peace is not the same as the absence of war. How will the networks of people affected by all these events learn to live with themselves - and with each other - after what's come out?

That question hangs heavy over Living is a Problem from the start. The Skelfs, and their associates - Archie, Brodie, Thomas - still have to reckon with the events of the earlier books. Dorothy's and Thomas's relationship has been particularly strained after the dangers and violence in The Opposite of Lonely. Thomas has taken things hard. The antagonists in that book, corrupt police Webster and Low, have been taken down, but continue to exert a malign influence. Hannah, knowing that her father was a wrong'un, still mourns him and the life that she and Jenny might have had if he had been a decent man. It's complicated. Living is a problem, as Scottish band Biffy Clyro sang, Because Everything Dies. To which I might oppose Bruce Springsteen singing Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, But maybe everything that dies some day comes back. (Sorry, I am going to work The Boss into any review I can, of course I am). 

To be less oblique, the funeral side of the Skelf business might seem like the last word in finality - what is more final than death - but this book teases the idea that due to our interrelatedness, death is not the end. A dead child affects the living, and how we deal with the death may be important. Or how we fail to deal with it. Death has a way of fossilising, of sanctifying, from Old Dead White Guy statues in Edinburgh which belie the deeds of those men (they are always men) to the trouble of living with the legacy of a war hero in the family to dealing with unacknowledged grief.

And that is really the essence of the Skelf books. It may be convenient to see them as crime fiction, because I'm not sure there's a label for what they really are - moral fiction? human fiction? Something like that? Whatever it is has at its heart the wonderfulness and the sadness of being human and the need to be on the side of those in need. That's what the Skelfs are about and long may they continue it.

For more information about Living is a Problem, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Living is a Problem from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones. Other online retailers are available.