#Blogtour review - Under the Blazing Sun by Jenny Lund Madsen

Under the Blazing Sun
Jenney Lund Madsen (trans by Paul Russell Garrett)
Orenda Books, 21 may 2026
Available as: HB, 275pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781917764155

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

Jenny Lund Madsen's Under the Blazing Sun follows her reluctant hero, crime author Hannah, on a new writing assignment - and into a new murder mystery.

Lund Madsen's previous book, Thirty Days of Darkness, introduced Hannah, a somewhat self-important literary writer who talked herself into writing crime (how hard can it be?) Packed off to Iceland by her editor, Hannah blunders into a real life crime, from which she however is able to draw inspiration, ending up with a whole new career and a book that's more popular that her earlier, more earnest, writing.

I was eager to see what Jenny Lund Madsen would do for this follow-up. Can the same idea really work again? It turns out that it can, and in Under the Blazing Sun that's triumphantly proven. Hannah, who's rather self-pitying at the start not only because she can't get that second book written but because she's missing her girlfriend Margrét, is an unlikeable character at first sight. She hates her crime novel, Murder Island - the book of hers that people want to read - and would prefer to be known for her litfic. When her long suffering editor Bastian gets Hannah on a popular TV show, she has a tantrum and walks off set. I, like, I suspect, many other readers, would have not blamed Bastian at this point for dropping her, yet instead he sends her off to Sicily to stay in a villa where she can write, far away from mundane distractions.

Instead she sets about swigging wine and enjoying the local food. And of course, Hannah being Hannah, catastrophe strikes - and soon she's trying to clear name of murder. It's here that Hannah's more attractive side shows. While you might expect her to collapse in a heap of self-pity and demand rescue, she doesn't. She sets about investigating the crime. Hannah is dogged and determined, almost to an embarrassing degree, milking the police for information, shoving her nose in wherever it's not wanted (up to and including running around Sicily asking question and the Mafia, does this woman have a death wish?). There's something admirable in Hannah's sheer persistence, even if you cringe at times at the situations she's getting herself into.

Of course, Hannah being Hannah, she manages this while still downing prodigious quantities of wine, and is also painfully, exasperatingly demanding of Margrét who's yet to disentangle herself of her husband in Iceland. One might almost feel that the distraction of the murder is taking Hannah's mind off her personal difficulties (though, she does also let herself get distracted by a cute young policewoman). And you fundamentally feel that Hannah's right about a couple of things - that the murder is linked to local corruption, that the police don't care and are simply trying to pin the crime on an obvious suspect - and that she's being targeted by somebody, as threatening notes begin to arrive. As matters become tense, it seems a race between Hannah blundering on the truth through sheer audacity, and a clever and motivated criminal catching her first. The tension builds in the final quarter of the book as Hannah, finally, acquires an ally, and as the villain makes their move.

All in all, Under the Blazing Sun is an enjoyable and distracting romp of a crime story with a unique protagonist and a rather bewitching setting. Yes, Hannah's put through the wringer, but (I hope) she gets another book out of that and she even seems to take some steps to self-understanding and to being just a little less selfish. Perhaps. This is also a very funny book, Hannah's habit of putting her foot in it carrying her not only into danger but into some humorous situations (often at the same time).

The translation, by Paul Russell Garrett, is excellent and lucid.

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

Review - Quite Ugly One Evening

Quite Ugly one Evening

Chris Brookmyre
Abacus, 7 May 2026
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780349145822

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Quite Ugly one Evening to consider for review.

In a sense I feel that reviewing Quite Ugly One Evening, Chris Brookmyre's new Jack Parlabane novel, is rather superfluous, on at least two levels. First, Brookmyre is already a phenomenon, an industry to himself almost and trying to comment on it feels as though I am the ant sitting on the axletree of the wagon and shouting "see how much dust I raise!"

Then there's the point that this is not just a Brookmyre book, but a Brookmyre Parlabane book, and that is something his fans always want to see more of. What can I say that could change this (in either direction)? Perhaps this level of fannish investment is a bit of a double edged sword for an author (see Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes) but we are where we are. For many readers the reappearance of Mr Parlabane alone will make this a must-read.

All that said - I think there is more to QUOE (can I coin that?) than fan-pleasing. A lot more

For a start, as we know well, Parlabane isn't a cardboard cutout character. That is the point of him, of course, he matures, he learns (or not) from his mistakes. But still I feel that the man we see here is, while recognisable and clearly the Parlabane of old, also a beautiful study in (middle) aging, regret, and loneliness.

In QUOE, Parlabane is approaching 60 and is suddenly orphaned after his mum dies (something that happened to me a couple of years back, so I can confirm Brookmyre's handling of this sensitive subject and Parlabane's stunned, regretful and confused response). The mystery of the father who abandoned mother and son years before remains. At a loose end after a(another) story goes wrong and with his job on the line (again), Parlabane goes rogue and - perhaps - repeats an earlier mistake, accepting work from MI5.

(Will he never learn...?)

For reasons that don't make a lot of sense to begin with (they will make more by the end of the story) Five send Parlabane off on a luxury transatlantic cruise, tasking him to get close to an eccentric British family, the Maskyns. The Maskyns own a beloved 1960s puppet series that is NOT, I repeat NOT, Thunderbirds. (But clearly it also is).

The Imaginators is, unlike its real-life model, embroiled in culture-war shenanigans. Vastly popular through a spin-off role-playing game, it has become beloved of keyboard warriors who resent the idea of an updating, let along one that might pay deference to modern sensitivities regarding race, gender, colonialism and so on. At the same time, the IP is drowning in debt and a hostile takeover bid looms. All of which comes to a head on that luxury liner, currently hosting a themed cruise with most of the Maskyn family aboard. Business feuds, personal disputes, family politics and general skullduggery will all come to a head - with Parlabane the potential and handy fall guy.

But why, exactly, are the spooks interested...?

I was impressed by the sheer verve of this book. That's quite a feat for Brookmyre to pull off, when his lead character is already jaded and disenchanted and has just suffered a bereavement. Yet there's something about the combination of the writing, the very real peril, and the acerbic commentary on the modern cultural landscape, that makes QUOE a gripping page-turner. 

Almost incidentally it's also a brilliant example of the locked-room mystery - indeed a double locked-room mystery as we have a locked room on a mid-Atlantic liner. Parlabane (whose fear of being isolated on the ship adds a sense of peril) has to deploy all his skills and keep his wits about him to reach the finishing line here. And he may not like everything he discovers.

Something of an old-fashioned mystery (but aren't hose the best?) but imbued with very modern dilemmas, Quite Ugly One Evening really invigorates this series. This book isn't just one more in its franchise, it shows that Parlabane's countercultural instincts and bloody-mindedness remain vital and relevant. I would strongly recommend. 

For more information about Quite Ugly one Evening, see the publisher's website here.

Review - A Forest, Darkly by A G Slatter

A Forest, Darkly

AG Slatter
Titan Books, 10 February 2026
Available as: PB, 368pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(B): 9781835412565

I'm grateful to Titan for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of A Forest, Darkly to consider for review.

I think we all have authors whose books are a must read - you just need to know they’re coming to have them on pre-order. Angela (AG) Slatter is one of mine, and her “Sourdough” universe books, especially so.

A Forest, Darkly is described as a “standalone” in that universe. I think that means that the book isn’t directly connected to the recent sequence All the Murmuring Bones/ The Path of Thorns/ The Briar Book of the Dead/ The Crimson Road rather than that it is necessarily ensure unto itself - because having finished Forest, I can see so many ways that Slatter might expand on it; by giving us Mehrab, the forest witch’s, earlier life; or her later history; or the story of Rhea, the young girl who seeks her help. So much to explore and I hope to read some of those in future? It was fitting, though, to begin things with the middle-aged Mehrab, a splendid character.

Mehrab herself came to the forest seeking sanctuary. As a woman practicing magic, she’s hunted in this world, women like her persecuted by the Church and its “godhounds”. While some witches, like the Briars of The Briar Book of the Dead, are able to negotiate a precarious truce, most can only expect torture and death if they are captured, so they hide in obscure places like Berhta’s Forge, a town too insignificant to have either a church or a Lord. Mehrab's made a life there, a life disturbed when Rhea arrives, trailing a whiff of danger.

As if that’s not enough, Mehrab has begun to sense a change in the forest, an upset among the ancient spirits and demigods that live there. Something tries to trap her.

Then children begin to disappear in the village - and the villagers to turn against Mehrab…

While I may be biased (see my comments above!) I really did find A Forest, Darkly a meaty and entrancing read. Mehrab is such a rounded character, down to earth and competent at everything she she does: rather different from the stereotype fantasy lead which tends to be a young person out of their depth and trying to understand life as it changes around them. Indeed, as an older person (by no means old!) Mehrab has a perspective, faces challenges, and has to deal with issues, that are all very distinct. And also baggage from her past, both the distant past she fled from to the Forest, and her more recent life in the woods. Baggage such as lovers, natural and supernatural. Baggage such as her place in the village community. Baggage such as guilt for the things she did.

It all makes for an absorbing and well-realised story with plenty of surprises and new takes on older themes, and for Mehrab, something of a reckoning with her past.

A strong addition to the Sourdough books.

For more information about A Forest, Darkly, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The People's Republic of Love by Heather Child

The People's Republic of Love 

Heather Child
SRL Publishing, 31 March 2026, 
Available as: PB, 420pp, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781915073563

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

I'm writing this review with a degree of irony, ion time when the Gulf states, abode of influencers, tax exiles - and of course a number of hardworking, unfortunate people too - are being consumed by the sort of world catastrophe to which they were supposed to be immune.

In a near future, Tamsin is an engineer, working for a contractor patching up the London Tube. Inspired by her great hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and sharing his short stature, she posts on her socials as TunnelFairy.

Tamsin’s friend Charlotte is a struggling actor, who had success with a reality show, Six on the Beach, but whose career hasn’t really taken off. She’s now signed up for Get Outta My Room, an escape room themed show being filmed in The People’s Republic of Love, a collection of artificial islands in the Caribbean. The Republic is a libertarian paradise with little government, only an AI administration presided over by a Governor chosen on the basis of follower count.

It’s a Republic of clicks and likes, a world of performance and image, vastly different from Tamsin’s world of forces, tunnels and calculations. 

Yet when Charlotte finds herself in real danger on her show, it’s Tamsin who has to enter that world to find out what is going on - drawing on her own disastrous early attempts at stardom. Can she do better this time?

This was an intriguing and very different story from Heather Child. The juxtaposition between the two worlds is clever. The book might appear to contrast the evanescent one of crypto, image-making and trends with a solid, "real" universe of facts and numbers, but as Tamsin's battered copy of Brunel's biography makes clear, the great engineer wasn't above leaps of faith and fantasy and he was much concerned with his image. Tamsin discovers that her employer, too, is far from solid and reliable and is also preoccupied with publicity and spin.

There is in contrast a real sense of solidity to the relationship between the two women - grounded in their childhood friendship and their later experience acting in a calamitous version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. We see a lot about what this means to both, and why it’s Tamsin that Charlotte reaches out too. It's a relationship that is tested severely through the book, with Charlotte unable to be sure that Tamsin will rescue her and as Charlotte seems to lose herself in the world she's had to enter, yet the bonds are strong.

We also see how the evil genius behind the escape room show plays on Charlotte’s insecurities, and especially the death of her mother, to disorientate and terrify her. This is a glimpse of a world where your entire history - every message, every post, every moment caught by ubiquitous cameras and mikes - can be reassembled and weaponised against you. The Republic eagerly buys into this radical openness, with residents deported if they won’t update their socials. Tamsin reflects on how it affects one’s private behaviours, every move and gesture apart geared towards those watching.

This turns out to be a game that Tamsin is very good at, however. Forced to play it for the safety and freedom of her friend, she is transformed from the dowdy engineer in her PPE to an uber-influencer in designer couture and heels. The question is, how much of what makes Tamsin, Tamsin, will be left by the time she’s done?

An absorbing story that really makes you care about its main characters - and which shows how things are never really over, even after the hero’s pulled off an impossible rescue. Recommended.

For more information about The People's Republic of Love, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Misheard World by Aliya Whiteley

The Misheard World

Aliya Whiteley
Solaris, 24 February 2026 
Available as: HB, 272pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy 
ISBN(HB): 9781837866915

I'm grateful to Solaris for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Misheard World to consider for review.

Oh this is a tricksy book. How much to say in a review? That's also tricky.

To start as the book starts, then, Elize Janview is a soldier, in an army, fighting an existential war against a deadly enemy. She's fighting for the South, against the North, in a struggle that follows a long period of coexistence. (If you're asking, South of what? North of where? those are good questions - but I won't enlighten you, you'll need to read the book). 

The war started after the North used a dreadful weapon against a city where people from North and South lived together, worked together, made art together. Now the South is desperate to copy that weapon, before the North can use it again. And there's an urgency since the North is winning and war comes closer and closer. 

We see Elize and her comrades defending Crag, a fortress used as a prison for captured soldiers from the North. Whiteley's portrayal of Elize and her little circle is great, showing the moments of boredom made bearable by endless gambling, bets on anything and everything. The food. Elize's helping out in the bakery. It all helps build up a picture.

Then, suddenly, the South has a stroke of luck. The notorious Northern spy, Marius Mondegreen, has been captured! His great enemy, the Allynx Syld, will interrogate him at Crag - and Janview is invited to witness the process. Surely Mondegreen (a magician who goes by the stage name 'The Misheard Word') will reveal the secret of the Weapon?

So the first part of this story proceeds. The land where North and South fight has, perhaps, something of the Ruritantian about it, these two minutely realised antagonists lying in mountainous country apparently isolated from anywhere else and in a seemingly pre-Modern world. Distrust abounds between the two (and did before the War) so things in Crag are complex - though perhaps Crag forms a third little world, with North and South again living and working together. 

And at the heart of that is Mondegreen's interrogation. It's clear that something lies between him and the Allynx (a Northern title) but we don't learn what until the final catastrophe, after Crag's fall when he and  Janview are on the run. Then there's a whole different story that she finds incomprehensible and unlikely, though for us, reading this book, it will be more familiar and will put the nature of Janview's world in a rather different perspective.

For her, though, she's now forced to choose between impossible absurdities. A survivor of that terrible weapon - one of few - she had joined the army to get revenge. Now she's faced with the possibility that her time has been wasted, that her enemies are elsewhere (but where?) and that her world may be doomed.

In The Misheard World, Whiteley deploys a brilliant concept, a wonderfully realised nesting of realities that operates on multiple levels. There's the question of what's really going on, the answers to which emerge, but only in part, as a result of the interplays between those realities. There's a question behind that - a why and how question - that isn't answered, but which preys on the mind of the reader: you will perhaps create your own answers to that. Finally, there's the wonderfully realised story of Mondegreen and the Allynx who, as I have said, have History - they almost step off the page (the kind of thing that could easily happen in this book) as real, living people with their own history and setting.

And of course, there's Janview who is also vivid and rather touching in her impossible situation.

How does it all end? Whiteley very definitely leaves that open. The book is in the end, I think, about how reality is written, and rewritten, and part of that concerns just what we mean by "end". This author refuses to be definite, and I loved the way she achieved that.

A mind-bending, worlds-spanning SFF treat that you really mustn't miss. Strongly recommended.

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

Review - First Date by Gemma Amor

First Date
Gemma Amor
Datura, 10 February 2026
Available as: PB, 400pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781915523808

I'm grateful to the publisher for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of First Date to consider for review. Apologies that I'm a little tardy publishing my review.

Amandine and Connor’s first date doesn’t go quite as they expected.

At one level, it’s not a surprise to Amandine. She never had high expectations, and she nearly bailed on the whole thing. Amor paints Amandine sympathetically, showing her psychology, her expectations that things will go badly - based on bitter experience, including the man who wanted to throw her down the stairs because he would “get off” on that. Behind all that is her sense of loss, after the accident that killed her parents and a growing certainty that she doesn't see the world quite as others do: she has trouble with life and resorts to coping mechanisms such "miracle words" to focus and channel the world where she needs it to be.

Amor also shows us Amandine’s determination, courage and ability to cope with a world that views her as, in Connor’s words, “neurospicy”. Naturally she’s wary of Connor. She tries to read the runes of his messaging. Is he texting her too much, a potential stalker? What does he mean by his emojis? Amandine anxiously watches for “red flags”, signs that, “the Internet” warns her, will perhaps disclose a bad man. 

But there are so many signs, and so many bad men. 

For his part, Connor also lacks confidence. He's still in his 30s and living with his dad. How can he take a woman home, even if things do go well? Will he put his foot in it? How much interest in Amandine is too much? How will she see him?

There is a tender story to be written of the two, their tentative first date - which actually goes well, until it doesn't - their growing attraction to one another, and the happily ever after to which it leads.

This isn’t, though, that book. 

Instead, Amor introduces us to a third person, never named, referred to as the “Lone Diner”. We see him from both Amandine’s and Connor’s perspectives. (Lots of red flags, she thinks. An unpleasant slob, he thinks). That’s bad enough.

We also though see his first person persona. This is just gross. I have to stress that was one of the most unpleasant reading experiences I’ve had for a long time, perhaps ever. Gemma Amor is a brilliant writer with a wonderful ability to write personality, psychology and, well, character. She is - as she proves here - as brilliant at that where the character is sleazy, vile and evil as where they are good, or even, just middling.

The result is an almost active experience of taint, as though even by following the Diner’s thought processes, his obsessive Internet creeping, his scorn for his wife, for women in general - as though even reading these things will corrupt, infect, debase. It’s simply visceral, a brilliant emotional achievement, an experience that will shake you, as you follow the story of those ill-fated would-be lovers. 

That atmosphere of darkness and horror is the true heart of this story, intensified by the ordeal that the Diner inflicts on Amandine and Connor. We hope they'll avoid it, somehow, that they will turn the tables. Even though we saw the endpoint of the Lone Diner's hate in the opening of the story, how much worse is it to follow the process, the working out of the horror?

A grim book, for sure, and I’d certainly want to point at potential triggers here for abuse, stalking, kidnapping, torture even. This won’t be for everyone. But if it is something you can bear to read, I’d strongly recommend it both as a story of courage and resilience and as a simply enthralling, stunning read from an author who’s just a real star. This is the book that kept me up past my bedtime, the book I just had to finish. The book that lurked in dark corners of my mind afterwards.

It's safe to say, you won't find any happily-ever-afters here, or redemption, or triumph. But what there is, makes it a spellbinding read.

For more information about First Date, see the publisher's website here.

Cover Reveal - Under the Blazing Sun by Jenny Lund Madsen

Today I'm sharing the cover for Jenny Lund Madsen's new book, Under the Blazing Sun.

I so much loved Thirty Days of Darkness, and here's Jenny Lund Madsen with a followup - Hannah, the reluctant crime writer (who thought it would be SO EASY changing genre) is back. Here's what we've been told so far.

Hannah is miserable. Her love life is in ruins, her contract demands a sequel to her bestselling crime debut – and she's out of ideas. After a mortifying TV interview, her agent ships her off to a sun-drenched Sicilian villa with a simple order: finish the book. No distractions. No excuses.

But inspiration doesn't strike – murder does.

When a night out ends in murder, Hannah finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation … again. The police want her out of the way, and the only person who seems to believe her is a young but charming Italian police officer. That is, until she doesn't.

Soon Hannah is chasing suspects, fleeing crime scenes, and doing whatever it takes to avoid becoming the next victim. She came to write a crime novel. Now she's trapped inside one.

Dark, sly and deliciously atmospheric, Under the Blazing Sun is the second novel in the award-winning series featuring accidental sleuth and disgruntled literary author Hannah, whose pursuit of plot twists keeps turning dangerously real.

Translated by Paul Russell Garrett, Under the Blazing Sun is out from Orenda Books on 21 May in hardback and e-book. Get your preorders in now. You can buy from your local highstreet bookshops, via the Orenda site  (with more info about the books) or from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

Now, that cover...

I like that! It also echoes the cover of Thirty Days of Darkness.

I'm going to enjoy reading this one, I can tell already.