Rod Reynolds
Orenda Books, 22 May 2025
Available as: PB, 355pp audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788091
I like talking about books, reading books, buying books, dusting books... er, just being with books.
I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with advance access to an e-copy of South of Nowhere via NetGalley.
In the latest instalment of Deaver's compulsive readable Colter Shaw series (though, I'm not sure Deaver writes anything that isn't compulsively readable) our hero is pitted not only against the bad guys but against the forces of nature itself.
Amidst a general drought, the Californian town of Hinowah is threatened by, of all things, flooding, due to snow melt in the mountains. The levee that protects the town has been allowed to fall into disrepair, and it's threatening to give way. In the heart-stopping prelude to the story, we see travellers on the levee road facing the threat of being swept away by the floodwaters, and later, Shaw's cool analysis of how they might survive (if you're trapped in a submerged car with a pocket of air, it will last longer if you wee on the carpet, apparently, so you'd better hope the car's upright).
How, and why, Shaw comes to be in Hinowah and what allies - and enemies - he has there, will be revealed in the book. At the start he's worrying about a development from his troubled father's past, one that may place the family in danger again. That thread is picked up in the book as something that may feature in future stories, but mostly, this one is about the peril in Hinowah. We see an agreeable set of figures battle against the crisis - Army engineers, a disaster response professional who happened to than be passing by, the town boss who fancies taking over as police chief and sees the whole episode as a "test" for him, a new police recruit who's who most competent person on his team, and, of course, Shaw himself.
Laced with Deaver's brand of informed analysis on issues ranging from river law (and law), to flood risk to the history of the California goldrush to modern tech and its insatiable demand for water, and his meticulous plotting, the story isn't without the human touch either - whether it's Shaw himself finding romance or seeing the inhabitants of a small town respond in realistic ways to the threat hanging over them (spoiler: realistic ways doesn't always mean sensible ways).
There are subplots and wheels within wheels and a feature I love with these novels, a Survivalist family who are not far Right crazies - and whose skills and talents are particularly well suited to the crisis unfolding in South of Nowhere. We also see some bad actors about their business (but what, exactly, is their business, amidst a natural disaster?) and there are some surprises about who is up to what.
As ever, immense fun, and those same bad actors provide enough of a whodunnit/ whytheydunnit element to leaven the straight disaster narrative, if that's your thing, although for me , that drama was nalibiting enough in itself.
Strongly recommended, but if you pick this up, be sure to clear your diary for the next few days because you won't willingly out it down again till you reach the end.
For more information about South of Nowhere see the publisher's website here.
Ivy Grime's debut novel, The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion, is I think an updating the Bluebeard story. That is clear from the title alone but we also have a mysterious husband (one in a line of mysterious husbands, in fact) marrying a new bride (Ruby, the main protagonist) who is taken to the Scary Mansion. There is talk of previous wives (what became of them?) and Ruby is forbidden to go into a particular room.
As expected in fact. Only, Ruby's new husband, Glaucon, and his creepy house (castle?) are by no means the only weird elements of the plot. Or indeed, the weirdest. Ruby's, and her sister, Opal's, lives are strange even before her wedding changes everything. They live in a remote house in the woods where their mother, terrified of bears and strangers, keeps them a secret as much as she can. Walking in the woods, Ruby and Opal encounter the enigmatic Phew, so called because he is the Nephew of God, and a prophet. Also, a talking possum and a distracted Frenchman, seeking his daughter.
Grimes's deadpan, real-but-dreamlike tone makes such odd developments seem real and obvious, albeit it's clear this isn't a fantasy world where such things are simply accepted, so the story hardly needs to change its affect when Blaubart Mansion itself comes to the centre of things with an array of enigmatic servants, ghosts, cast-off wives (they aren't executed anymore, just retired to a kind of rest home in the grounds) and mysterious architecture. However there is more going on here than just the gothic. Blaubart is, as much as a home, a grand machine dedicated to laundering and celebrating a certain sort of history... located in the US South you might expect this is a certain sort of White, moneyed, history, and so it proves.
Putting me in mind of Gormenghast with its enigmatic rituals, isolation (though, unlike Gormenghast, Blaubart is located in a recognisably modern location), sprawling, generational construction and its celebration of a skewed history, Blaubart soon reveals itself as suffering from a certain dis-ease. The wives are the least of it: maintaining the traditions seems to exact a price from all involved. How will Ruby free herself of this place (which she married into mainly to provide medical care for her sick mother, to be promptly forbidden from ever seeing her again) without becoming a murderer in turn?
The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion is a complex and allusive story which works on many different levels, blending honest to goodness horror with a real sense of the past tainting and corrupting the present. Ruby's escape will require her own courage ind ingenuity, the forging of unlikely alliances - and facing the truth of her and Opal's family and its refuge in the woods. Though short, it packs a lot in. As I have said, it's part Bluebeard, part Gormenghast and there is also a sense of Cold Comfort Farm in the sensible heroine stranded amidst the grotesque. But it is its powerful own thing - a disturbing book that takes a scalpel to the decorous rituals of modern society and reveals the canker beneath.
Recommended.
For more information about The Ghosts of Blaubart Mansion, see the publisher's website here.