Review - Small Fires by Ronnie Turner

Small Fires
Ronnie Turner
Orenda Books, 27 February 2025
Available as: PB, 300pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788473

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Booksfor sending me a copy of Small Fires to consider for review.

After the mysterious but violent deaths of their parents, sisters Della and Lily flee their home in Cornwall to a remote and nameless Scottish island known only as the home of the "God-forgotten". Public opinion has the girls down as killers, despite there being no proof (the complicated truth emerges through this story) and they're the subject of keen discussion not least in the blogosphere(!) and among podcasters. 

Perhaps the island will be a refuge, despite the damning words of the boatman who finally agrees to take them to it - he sees them as a curse that he hopes will bring harm to the strange community known as "the Folk".

Or perhaps it will be the end of them.

As the two women explore the island we learn what a truly strange place it is. Owing fealty to a devil - if not perhaps the Devil - known to the Folk as their "Warden", the island is haunted by dark stories. Cut off from the mainland that the Folk never visit, instead living in fear and accepting their own dark fate, it is though plugged into events in the wider world, so that rumours of the Pedley sisters' evil have reached the place (as has news of the dark goings on at Berry and Vincent, chronicled in Turner's So Pretty). Della and Lily soon learn these stories - horrific, Gothic tales of cruelty, abandonment, revenge and murder. 

The sisters struggle to make sense of these. That struggle is itself, I think, an inherent part of the Gothic - I remember first reading The Castle of Otranto and being struck not so much by the magnitude of the weird but by its simple presence, its lack of a rationale. There is talk in Small Fires of curses and darkness affecting the island or its Folk, but no, at it were, actionable intelligence, so sense of an origin and so, no sense of a solution.

There are though hints, with a constant theme - present in the Gothic background but also in the present day action of the abusive treatment of women and girls by men. One of these girls ends up on the island, telling how, even with its evil reputation, it's safer for her than the father she's left. But the danger doesn't end at the water's edge, among the Folk there are men with the same dark desires.

The sisters, too, are troubling. The island, and the Folk are, we are told, somehow toxic, poisoned, serving a dark power. The stories we hear about their past are twisted, many of the personalities we meet are gruesome - only Silas, the sort-of hereditary leader, appears even remotely normal. But equally, Della and Lily seem to have secrets and stories of their own. 

Which is worse? Where does the darkness come from? Can evil overpower evil?

Written in short chapters told from the point of view of a man and woman, Small Fires contains bitter little nuggets of plot, of emotion, of character. It's a book where every word counts, where the mental and the spiritual is expressed, even extruded, though the physical, with pains, wounds and injuries, with stress and fear, visited as people clutch stomachs, poke, prod and clasp one another, draw blood. On the Island, it seems, there is licence to injure. The normal constraints and boundaries don't seem to exist.

Instead, we have dangerous games played in the half dark. Different characters play them by different rules, convinced they hold the winning cards but not knowing how they're about to be outbid. A pervading sense of masculine entitlement is part of it, but by no means all. We also see - illustrated through those stories - bitter jealousies and hatreds within families and abusive cycles between generations (not only inherited, but eagerly fostered and anticipated for the future).

There is a lot here that may hard to stomach, and I'd definitely say it's a high pressure book, one you may want to take a break from. But it's equally one that will grow on you, in you, and that can't be left alone for long. All in all a remarkable piece of writing, and calling it horror, folk-horror or even gothic barely scratches the surface of this disturbing, thought-provoking story.

For more information about Small Fires, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Little Red Death by A K Benedict

Little Red Death
AK Benedict
Simon & Shuster, 13 February 2025
Available as: HB, 367, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781398519879

I'm grateful to Anne at Random Things Tours for sending me a copy of Little Red Death to consider for review, and  for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

(If you think I'm being slightly oblique in this review, it's necessary because of what this book is and no, I can't explain that, for spoiler related reasons but I hope you will read the book and then conclude that my review makes more sense).

AK Benedict's latest is a crime novel, and a puzzle novel, and also a novel about writers and writing, and it's about friendship and childhood and loss and... this is difficult to put into words... I suppose it's about the essence of what a crime novel is?

Most of all though, it's a superb read. 

It's a crime novel, in that we meet DI Lyla Rondell, an efficient and driven young detective taking the lead on her first murder enquiry when a young woman is kidnapped and murdered. 

It's a puzzle, in that, like Benedict's recent Christmas novels, there's a game to play here, a contest between writer and reader. 

It's about friendship, because Lyla has a deep hurt, relating to her childhood friend Allison. Lyla's childhood matters, both because, for a mere character on a page, Benedict makes Lyla real, motivated and true and her childhood is part of that. 

Loss, because, yes, loss.

That death in the woods is only the first. The book features a series of murders which are inspired by fairy stories. There is a Wolf. There are woods. There is also a woman imprisoned, made to perform an impossible task,  trying to spin straw into gold, as it were, to save her life and maybe, earn her freedom. Her plight takes us into the essential dilemma of this story. Crime as entertainment. Cosy crime. Murder on demand. How does that even work, ethically? Are we, as readers, not just clients, commissioning our hit -men and -women authors to off victims simply for our pleasure and amusement? (As an aside, when did "crime" fiction become murder fiction?)

The question is especially piquant here because of the situation that author KT Hexen is in, writing death scenes which will then be enacted by a serial killer. Is she somehow responsible? How far should she cooperate with a killer? At what point do you, dear reader, at what point do I, have to accept that some of the blood is on your - or my - own hands?

As the layers of the story build up - the forensic investigation, the pressure from the boss, the prurient Press, the leaks from the enquiry, the taunting notes from the killer - that moral greyness spreads, because we're also seeing things from another perspective, as it were, we're reading messages. The messages keep getting clearer, perhaps, but will we, at the end of the story, still be dancing in the dark?

This is a story that, to succeed, has to function at several different levels. It needs to be a good police procedural. It needs to make us fear for the next death. It needs to make us love Lyla. And above all, it needs to work properly in retrospect, when, so to speak, the curtain is pulled aside and we see what's happening. And all that without any jarring effect, any suspicion that things are off. Benedict achieves all this and more creating something rather different, eminently readable, and also fun. (The Author, in her endnote, does refer to a trail of breadcrumbs, and I think I spotted these, it's almost as if she left consecrated bread throughout the book, but I don't count those as a jarring element at all, they have a purpose here in terms of what's going on).

Strongly recommended.

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

Blogtour review - The Weekenders by David F Ross

The Weekenders (Raskine House, 1) 
David F Ross
Orenda Books, 27 February 2025
Available as: PB, 292pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN( PB): 9781916788305

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for sending me a copy of The Weekenders to consider for review, and to Anne of Random Things Tours for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

It's always great to see a new book from David F Ross and it's even better that this is the first of a trilogy. 

The Weekenders introduces us to the mysterious, troubling country mansion mansion Raskine House. I think I see thematic connections between the troubling goings on there and those in Ross's Welcome to the Heady Heights which was, like this book, partly set in 1960s Glasgow. There are also some common characters. So while she doesn't appear I have hopes that in later parts we may meet Barbara Sherman again.

While The Weekenders mostly takes place in the later 1960s, it also looks back to the Second World War where a central relationship - between Jamesie Campbell, later a Glasgow trades unionist and politician, and Michael McTavish - is forged when they meet as soldiers in the nightmare of the Italian campaign. Nobody comes out well from that section of the narrative, neither Campbell nor McTavish, nor the sadistic officers who pretty much betray them. Rather, these events are a bitter prelude to the later story. The writing here makes no bones about what happened in the war: at times the book is a hard read.

Later we see what the two men have become, and what Glasgow has become, both being discovered by two outsider figures, Stevie 'Minto' Milloy and Donald 'Doodle' Malpass. Milloy is an ex-footballer, dropped from the game after a cruel injury and turned reporter, while Malpass is a courtroom sketch artist who sometimes assists the police. Several years apart, the two investigate the murders of young foreign students which seem to be connected to Raskine House and its rumoured weekend no-holds-barred parties. (one of the links I saw to 'Heady Heights'). 

As a background to that, Ross brings alive a raucous, surface-confident, but, I felt, also a hurting, city which both Milloy and Malpass are part of but are also distanced from. They have their roles, yes, but there is an Establishment, which they're not in. Both men live in a sense on sufferance from that, as does John Meikle, the veteran reporter who's Milloy's mentor. It's an Establishment that has grown fat and canny over the centuries, profiting first from enslavement and Empire, then from war, and more recently, from the ideological polarisation of the 20th century. Money and power before ideology or truth, and these puppet masters aren't going to let go a whit of its money or power.

There is another darkness here too associated with Raskine House itself - a darkness which the muck-and-brass merchants don't wholly comprehend. In this book, Glasgow is far from a safe place, whether you're a visiting student, police, nosy reporter or even one of those who think they pull the strings. Glasgow itself will, I think, have the last word here.

If all that sounds rather remote and grim, this book was, as are all of Ross's stories, also immensely entertaining, featuring rich and vivid characters who don't so much populate the page as march off it and sit down with you for a drink and a chat. Their voices sing in your head, their lives move and affect, their fates - some of them - sadden you as if they were old friends. Ross shows us real people showing how their desire simply to live and enjoy that living is baffled, diverted, sometimes blocked, but never - until the last breath - wholly defeated. (Ross's characters are all the more real for speaking in authentic language).

I am really looking forward to the rest of this trilogy!

For more information about The Weekenders, 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 Weekenders from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

Review - Triggernometry Finals by Stark Holborn

Triggernometry Finals

Stark Holborn (illustrated by Philip Harris)

Rattleback Books, 4 February 2025
Available as: e, print length 63pp   
Source: advance copy
ASIN: B0DT6S5PW5

I'm grateful to the author for sending me a copy of Triggernometry Finals to consider for review.

As the title may suggest this is the final book in the Triggernometry sequence, following Triggernometry and Advanced Triggernometry, showing us the ultimate fate of  Professor “Mad” Malago Browne and her desperate associates in an alt-West where academics in general, but especially mathematicians, have been persecuted and banished, knowledge trampled down, and ignorance exalted. Any resemblance to the present day is I'd conjecture, purely intentional, especially in the glimpse we're give at the start of the book of how this state of affairs originated.

Anyway, as the story opens, things are more perilous than ever, with the forces of the Capitol closing in and our little band of reluctant "math" heroes losing one of its leading analysts. It seems only one desperate, last play remains to them...

As in the other books, the writing here is great fun, Holborn clearly combining mathematics with the genre of the Western so that geometrical instruments, solutions to equations, and infinite series (among other things) are weaponised and deployed among guns and dynamite to make mayhem. There are gunfights in bars, parched desert and lawless towns where Browne's face appears on "Wanted" posters. The atmosphere of violence reminds us of the underlying concerns that Browne had in the first book when she was, you may remember, lying low not only from fear for her life but from disgust at the destruction her field had wrought and which was part of its downfall.

We are though beyond that ambiguity now, with various mathematical heroes brought out of the pages of journals and assembled in one company, ready to take on the forces of reaction and darkness. Their presence in one time and place may be anachronistic but it works, Holborn infusing each with a recognisable character that reflects their body of work. Taken as a whole they do of course show how any academic discipline evolves in dialogue with its past. 

It's a swift moving story, with plenty of darkness and fear as to how things might turn out, and some shocking twists. The Capitol has its way of suborning the "mathmos" - gold talks, and can everyone really be trusted?

A suitable, and enjoyable, conclusion to this fast-shooting series, one which keeps all the plates spinning right to the end and then, as it were, shoots them all down with one fantastic trick shot. Strongly recommended.

For more information about Triggernometry Finals, or to purchase it, see the author's website here.

Review - The Crimson Road by Angela Slatter

The Crimson Road

Angela Slatter
Titan Books, 11 February 2025
Available as: PB, 368pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803364568

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

I loved returning to the world of Slatter's Sourdough stories, for a tale that draws together the threads of her recent novels, All The Murmuring Bones, The Path of Thorns and The Briar Book of the Dead.

Like the young women who are central to of those stories, Violet Zennor is alone in what is ostensibly a very male world. A young heiress surrounded by men in authority - the lawyer, the Bishop - she might balk at the prospect that her story will be all about being married off (and indeed, there is a suitor in the wings). But in a twist the made me smile, Violet is already actually busy balking at the other plans her father laid for her, plans that involved her training relentlessly from childhood for deadly combat - and also involve somewhere mysterious called the "Anchorhold". So relieved is Violet by her father's untimely death, and at not having to live the fate that he laid down for her, that the idea of marriage may almost be welcome to her.

But life never goes smoothly for a protagonist in Slatter's world. Across those earlier books we have seen her explore ideas of inheritance, of coming into adulthood and of women finding a way to survive with integrity and freedom in that male world. These ways are never as simple as "having a lot of wealth" because, really, the sources of wealth are always murky (as Violet's proves). They are though various, though often magical, and I was eager to see how Violet would deal with this predicament. As her arm begins to be twisted to follow the course planned for her, we may wonder if she will ever be able to control her own destiny? 

Of course as we have also seen in those earlier books there are ways around, even if not through. And Violet is aided by a sisterhood of the women we've already met. This could have come across as a bit of a whistlestop tour of the earlier protagonists, but Slatter is better than that. These are all women whose own stories clearly had more to be told, so in visiting them again, she answers the need any reader will have to learn a bit more about what happened next. Their various life lessons, magics and centres of protection act both as supports for Violet in her time of need and as little candles of hope in what has become a very dark world for her, hunted as she is by both dark monsters and the hypocritical church, which is willing to use the women it condemns to protect itself from those same monsters.

It all culminates, of course, in absolute bloody slaughter, not unlike the cause her father steered Violet towards - but with one key difference: that victory, and survival - if she can find them - won't be primarily through those hours and years of martial training but through friendship, love and solidarity.

A fine and gripping book, and one that rounds off this quartet of Sourdough novels (though I hope there will be more to come in future).

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

Review - Lie of the Land by Kerry Hadley-Pryce

Lie of the Land

Kerry Hadley-Pryce
Salt Publications, 6 January 2025
Available as: PB, 224pp, e   
Source: Advance e-copy, purchased copy
ISBN(PB): 9781784633318

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

I have been blogging here for more than ten years, and reviewing books online for longer than that, and in all that time I have, but very rarely, perhaps five or six times, come across a book so stunning, so good, that it's actually hard to know what to say about it (beyond "read this").

Lie of the Land is such a book.

Superficially, it's straightforward. Solicitor Jemma and accountant Rory have recently met and decide to move in to together. The house they choose - deliberately a "doer upper" - proves to be a nightmare, and being there leads to tragedy, guilt and despair. 

But the story. Oh, the story. What depths of conflicted motivation are revealed here. What layers of deceit and misdirection.

It's told mainly in a slippery, indirect voice, almost as if narrated by a third party (but who?) which informs us what Jemma "will say":

'Jemma will say she watched Rory, she observed him in a way she hadn't since they'd first met...'

'But she'll say this now, she'll say she wasn't frightened, not then, not yet.'

Is this telling us what Jemma has actually said, on various occasions? As though the story is reporting an account she's previously given, one we may be partially familiar with, as though she's already notorious? Is it rehearsing a line that Jemma is planning to bring out, if questioned? (Why might she be questioned?)  Or should we  pay attention to the word 'say' as being distinct from what is actually true? Through this book, these questions arise again and again, the narrative voice layering doubt upon doubt, an effect only heightened as certain awkward facts emerge about Jemma, Rory, and Rory's previous girlfriend, Sophie.

From the moment that Jemma wakes in Rory's and Sophie's flat, the moment that, she 'will say', she discovered Sophie's existence, there is, I think, a doubt. We are ostensibly hearing the story exclusively from Jemma's perspective - though the narrator takes care to plant uncertainty, pointing out for example that Jemma is very motivated by money, that she wants out of the area. (So, is the narrator an investigator of some sort?) Whether that is supposed to suggest that her behaviour is more considered than the chapter of accidents presented in the book, or, perhaps, to be read in hindsight as a comment on what actually becomes of Jemma, is unclear.

What is clear - once the central catastrophe of this book falls, numbing both Jemma and Rory - is that the layers of motivation, the failures of empathy and the presence, frankly, of evil - coil round both of them, and round their neighbours Ed and Catherine (who occasion a bit of Abigail's Party-esque light relief at first, but later add more than a touch of darkness) like mist rising from the troubled Black Country earth. 

At one level the book reads as though all Jemma's troubles arose from buying that house, as though the land was contaminated (not unlikely in that area) or contained old workings except it seems to be moral contamination, ethical or relationship workings, that lie beneath The Rocks. Hadley-Pryce uses all those tropes about an old, toxic house to underscore this point. Sure, we may think, given the various references to how things might have turned out if they hadn't bought the house, it must be something akin to a haunting that is in play here (even if it's a moral rather than a spectral painting?)

But - in another level of narrative altogether - maybe not. The chronology of the book also suggests that there has been a misstep even before the house was bought. Perhaps it is only responding to what's been brought into it? There is a whole business with Jemma and Sophie that we only hear about gradually but which precedes all else. 

Either way, the playing out of mounting horror, the numbing of guilt, reflected in the bitter cold of that place, the feeble rumblings of the boiler that can never heat it, the noises off, all add to a sense of deepening crisis, one that's only made worse when a particular moment of unbelievable tension passes. Hadley-Pryce is adapt at playing on her readers' fears here, seeming to present one awful thing while actually the truth is something else as bad, or even worse.

It's not always an easy book. (Typing this just now I first wrote "it's not always an evil book" - and frankly I don't know what that says!) There are, as I said, moments of almost unbearable tension. There are times you want to look away. Though short, I had to read it slowly, taking time to think about what I'd read, and to read and reread certain parts, to mark and inwardly digest them. And it kind of haunted me after I had read it. 

But, oh this book. What a captivating, sly, cutting experience reading it was. What multitudes it contains. What weirdness. What darkness.

For more information about Lie of the Land, see the publisher's website here.