#Blogtour - The Betrayal of Thomas True by A J West

The Betrayal of Thomas True
A J West
Orenda Books, 4 July 2024
Available as: HB, 301pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788152

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda for sending me a copy of The Betrayal of Thomas True to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The Betrayal of Thomas True is a novel about growth, about recognising and becoming what one was meant to be, and about about loyalty. It is also a novel about betrayal, about prejudice and about persecution.

Above all, it is a novel about love.

Though the book is set in the roiling metropolis of early 18th century London, the precise date that this story takes place is kept vague. However, while St Paul's Cathedral is nearly complete (so some decades after the Great Fire), Sir Christopher Wren is still alive, so the action takes place before 1723. It's early enough though to pick up something of the brimstone of Restoration drama, opening as young Thomas arrives in London on the stagecoach, fleeing staid and respectable Highgate for a life of passion. Convention would dictate the naive young country boy suffering all manner of indignity at the hands of worldly Londoners, and in a way he does, beginning with his grasping aunt and uncle demand 6 months' rent for a decaying attic room on London Bridge. But hold. Master Thomas isn't some lost innocent. Alive to who he meets and what they hint, he comes to the city with a purpose, and soon seeks out the molly houses, and in particular, the most notorious of them all, Clap's. There he can be Verity True-tongue, taking a woman's gown and mingling with others - some respectable and wealthy, others less so - who must also conceal their true natures from friends, family and neighbours.

It is a fraught and dangerous double life, for, among the ranks of the mollies is a rat, selling them out to their persecutors...

I loved the sheer joy of this book, the teeming life of London depicted in all its variety, its glory and grossness. This is the London of Jonathan Wilde, of thief-takers, cutpurses, Bedlam, Newgate and the Tyburn jig. It's a London impossible to police, a place of rookeries and hidden houses of resort, of double identities and split loyalties. Remember, civil war and religious differences are only a generation back, with the Crown and the faith still dubiously founded. London is a town of spies, full of those on the make and those daring to live fully after decades of turmoil. And it's full of the self-righteous, those who are terrified that somebody, somewhere, might be enjoying themself. All's a perfomance - respectability or defiance - on the widest stage in the world, as True Thomas takes his place.

Against that setting, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a thriller of sorts, following Gabriel Griffin ("Lotty Lump" is his Molly name), the guard of Mother Clap's, as he pursues the rat. Mollies are being murdered, and only one of a few can be to blame. Consumed by grief at the loss of his wife and baby three years before, Gabriel stalks his quarry. Meanwhile, a pair of wandering justices, Myre and Grimp, approach London, consumed with their own plans and plots and determined to feed the Tyburn tree. This pair - who at first seem like the comic relief from a Shakespeare play, a Shallow and Simple, perhaps - grow steadily more disturbing as their true natures and motivation are revealed.

It's a complex story where appearances deceive and no-one can be trusted. Division among the mollies will be fatal, and yet bodies pile up provoking suspicion and recrimination. Their motto, "Always together", begins to seem hollow yet as we will see, it can bear several meanings.

Building to a tremendous conclusion asking vital questions about authenticity, solidarity and the nature of love,  The Betrayal of Thomas True reveals a London at once both utterly alien and rather familiar. It's the story that might have been written between chapters of Joseph Andrews or Tom Jones - both obvious (yes, of course this is what was going on on the other side of the page) and deeply revealing.

A great read and a book I'd strongly recommend.

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

Cover reveal - The Other People by CB Everett

I'm excited today to be able to join in the reveal for THE OTHER PEOPLE by C.B. EVERETT, out on 10 April 2025 in hardback, e-book and audiobook from Simon & Schuster

Forget what you think you know.

Ten strangers.

An old dark house.

A killer picking them off one by one.

And a missing girl who’s running out of time…

Ten strangers wake up inside an old, locked house. They have no recollection of how they got there.

In order to escape, they have to solve the disappearance of a young woman. But a killer also stalks the halls of the house and soon the body count starts to rise. Who are these strangers? Why were they chosen? Why would someone want to kill them? And who – or what – is the Beast in the Cellar?

Because while you can trust yourself, can you really trust THE OTHER PEOPLE?

Praise for C B Everett

‘One of the very best crime writers we have, simple as that’ ― Mark Billingham

‘One of the brightest stars in the British crime writing’― John Connolly

‘A guaranteed thrill-ride’ ― Sarah Pinborough

‘Crime fiction royalty’ ― Steve Cavanagh

'(A) master storyteller’ ― Ragnar Jonasson

So - are you ready for that cover?  

Well here goes...

I think that's gorgeous - and it promises to be a gorgeous mystery as well.

You can pre-order The Other People here 

#Blogtour #Review - Dead Fall by A K Turner

Dead Fall (Cassie Raven, 4)
AK Turner
Zaffre, 18 July 2024 
Available as: PB, 352pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781804181591

I'm grateful to the publisher for allowing me access to an advance e-copy of Dead Fall to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

I only discovered Cassie Raven last year so I was excited to see a new book coming. In case you haven't caught on yet, goth Cassie is a mortuary technician working in trendy Camden, in London. Living on a canal boat with her cat, she has weathered a lot in her life so far, which gives her sympathy for the casualties of life who wash up, as it were, on the mortuary slab. And a natural antipathy for powers and principalities such as her own managers, or the local police.

Cassie also has a special talent - the ability (sometimes) to hear the dead, enabling her to resolve issues for her deceased clients. 

Such as solving their murders.

A supernatural twist like this could easily be overdone, made into a Get Out of Jail Free card, but Turner avoids this, using the idea in these books with great subtlety. Cassie gets hints and feelings from the dead, not their detailed memories. It is, though, enough to spur her on to pursue justice where it seems to be lacking. This special sense is though somehow bound up with Cassie's own rather traumatic past, so she's very alert to the danger of simply projecting her own feelings onto the corpses she encounters in her job.

And in Dead Fall, she needs to be. Local up-and-coming young singer Bronte, who has apparently taken her own life, is someone Cassie had unfinished business with from way back - unfinished business that leaves her feeling guilty, and means there is a real risk that she's turning nothing into something when she concludes that Bronte was, in fact, murdered. Nevertheless, Cassie's not going to fail Bronte a second time, and begins to look into the girl's troubled life and background.

In a novel that therefore explores the pressures of fame and success - and the exploitative nature of the music industry - Turner riffs off Camden's reputation as an edgy, creative but diverse sort of place as well as documenting the hounding, online and offline, of a vulnerable young woman. Of course in the background is the tragedy that befell Amy Winehouse, another notable Camden figure as well as the prurient interest of the Press, the fans - and the bitter attentions of patriarchy.

In Dead Fall we get a real zinger of a story: a perplexing mystery with a contemporary edge, one which draws on a very human tragedy. At the same time, Cassie is trying to make sense of her relationship the genial, Hooray Henryish, Archie, a wealthy doctor who wants to take her out of Camden to a life in his own wholesome, rural milieu. There's a struggle for integrity here too, I think, with Cassie equally tempted by ex DS Phyllida Flyte. Buttoned up Flyte recently came out, and Turner creates a real romantic tension between the two women, a tension even more piquant because of Cassie's distaste for police. Given the circumstances in which Phyllida left the Force in the last book, Case Sensitive, it's perhaps a little unlikely that she would be involved in a  Camden case, as here, so soon, but I can let that go given the edge that her and Cassie's relationship brings to these books.

All in all, another great episode in this series and I can't rate it highly enough. Get this one ordered in.

For more information about Dead Fall, see the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

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

#Blogtour #Review - Shrouded by Sólveig Pálsdóttir

Shrouded (Ice and Crime, 7) 
Sólveig Pálsdóttir (translated by Quentin Bates)
Cory's Books, 25 July 2024e, 
Available as: PB, 270pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 97817392989-6-8 

I'm grateful to Corylus Books for sending me a copy of Shrouded to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

This was a welcome return for the Ice and Crime series. Shrouded is the seventh book in the series but the fourth to have been published in English (so, there's more goodness to come!) and I hadn't realised until I started on it how much I've come to rely on having one of these in my life each year.

It's also a welcome return to Guðgeir Fransson and Elsa Guðrún, the detectives who have to identify the killer of reclusive, set-in-her-ways Arnhildur. The pair are now familiar bookfriends, and it was great catching up on their families and preoccupations.

So, to the murder... we see Arnhildur's death at the start of the novel, and a creepy set-up it is if ever there was one, involving a séance and a spooky graveyard at night. Once the investigation begins, the question inevitably arises - Is this the sort of woman one would expect to be at a séance - what brought her there, and who was the mysterious man she left with?

In fact, "spooky" is a good word to sum up this story. As the investigation proceeds on its scientific, 21st century course, we start to see glimpses of another, older Iceland, a country of different beliefs, of inherited abilities, a country that takes the weird in its stride. I was particularly struck that, while some of the characters here choose not to pursue that spooky side of things, nobody outright rejects it. The interplay between the two attitudes is fascinating, contributing to a sense that something is just a little bit off, a sense that builds into a rising tension as the story unfolds.

At the centre of that "spooky" strand is an unusual young man, the medium from the séance, who seems to be going through his own torment. Is he involved in the crime? Is he a charlatan? Or does he have insights that might help crack the case. If he does, they're certainly tormenting him. If he doesn't, surely his guilt is clear? Either way, he seems to know too much.

Through all this, a pattern of events gradually unfolds, a pattern rooted in the history of Arnhildur and her family. Drawing together old wrongs, a bitter feud over family property and a whole set of lives blighted by a tragic accident, the book illustrates - perhaps - the consequences of holding grievances and indulging in too much stubborn self-reliance. The story is, in the end, intricate, twisty, and, while I kind-of anticipated the penultimate twist, still surprising to the very end.

Apart from the intricacies of the crime itself, Shrouded has plenty of incident (and interest) as it records the lives of Guðgeir, Elsa and their families. It's actually rather comforting to see them going about their lives around the investigation, though a new strain of tension is added by Guðgeir's concerns about his and Elsa's boss, Særós, who's somehow slightly distracted and less meticulous than usual. What can be wrong, in such a well-ordered life?

Another excellent instalment in this series which gives us more than just mysteries, but also heart in its varied cast of characters and their complex lives. As ever, Quentin Bates's translation is crisp and readable, providing a good idiomatic read while still making it clear, with a distinct use of language, that we are not in Britain now.

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

#Review - The Days of Our Birth by Charlie Laidlaw

The Days of Our Birth

Charlie Laidlaw
Rampart Books, 27 June 2024
Available as: e   
Source: Advance copy
ASIN: B0D3B87HHD

I'm grateful to the author for sending me a copy of The Days of Our Birth to consider for review.

The Days of Our Birth follows the lives of Sarah and Peter, born on the same day and who live next door to one another as kids in the coastal town of North Berwick, a few miles from Edinburgh. Birthdays are key moments in this book as the two move towards adulthood, growing into a joint tradition for the two, into joint celebrations.

Until they're not...

We meet Sarah first, 20 years on, working in an office job in London - and separate from Pete. We then gradually learn the how and the why of that separation, returning to their sixth birthday where the story proper begins then moving forward as the two kids grow up. It's in many ways an ordinary story, leading us through school, family tensions, adolescence and loss. But in many ways it's not "ordinary" at all - what does that even mean when we are all so different? - and Laidlaw captures well, I think, that awkward fence-sitting we all do as we process where we - and our friends - fit in. 

Or don't. 

This is encapsulated by the difference between Peter and Sarah, and the nature of Sarah herself. She doesn't fit in easily with other kids - 'psycho Sarah' they call her at school. Nor is she comfortable in her office job, or perhaps, no, she is comfortable but others aren't comfortable with her. It takes her deliberate effort to understand what others pick up unconsciously. Sarah tends to take things literally. She is, people increasingly decide, on a spectrum, of some kind. Yet to Pete, Sarah is just, well, Sarah.

As the parent of two children diagnosed with special needs, I felt that Laidlaw's portrayal of Sarah was sensitive, nuanced and, above all, rounded. That's partly achieved by the way this book is constructed - showing both kids developing, but doing it from different perspectives, both Peter's and Sarah's, sometimes exploring the same incident immediately from both points of view, sometimes allowing one or the other to comment on it later in light of experience, of adulthood, and of their later understanding. The book takes time to explore the messy reality of human beings, showing what led to the two being the people they are and sometimes, using that adult perspective, what was going that we weren't told about first time round. Thus it can catch the reader out in making assumptions which are later corrected.

This is, indeed, a book that challenges assumptions and shows that, regardless of what boxes we're told we tick, each and every one of us is a unique, complex individual. Peter and Sarah make many mistakes in the course of their fascinating relationship - as do those around them - but it's only when losing sight of this truth that things really go wrong for either of them. Lose sight of it they do from time to time, though, and it's a mark I think of how real Laidlaw has made these characters that when we see that happening it actually hurts, these are people you want to prosper emotionally - but in a harsh world with lots of other noise and so much to learn, is it realistic to believe that may ever be possible?

A super, stunning book from Charlie Laidlaw.

For more information about The Days of Our Birth, see the author's website here and the publisher here. You can purchase it from Amazon here.

#Review - Ashram Assassin by Andrew Cartmel

Ashram Assassin (Paperback Sleuth 2) 

Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 25 June 2024
Available as: PB, 320pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803367927

I'm grateful to Titan for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Ashram Assassin to consider for review.

The Paperback Sleuth is back!

Yes, Cordelia Stanmer, brother of the execrable Stinky, the Vinyl Detective's nemesis, is in print again. Not to mention, in deadly danger.

Of course Cordelia's much nicer than her brother (though I wouldn't let her into my library and turn my back) and three hundred pages spent in her company was just what I needed among the current gloom (and manky weather). In this story, she's managed to weasel her way back into the yoga ashram from which she was earlier banned for dealing weed - but only if she can track down a cache of rare books that were stolen from the Silverlight Yoga Centre. (No, Cordelia didn't nick them herself). There's a substantial amount of money on offer too, so she sets about the task eagerly - but soon the bodies begin to pile up, and close to home.

Like the Vinyl Detective stories, Cartmel gives us a great sense of place in this story as Cordelia ranges through Putney and Barnes dodging various perils and meeting up with a number of curious characters (there is a little crossover with the other series, notably in an episode that involves Agatha and Nevada). Apart from the detecting, there's plenty of book-hunting in charity shops, sales and also a focus on food with poor Cordelia constantly baulked in her quest for the fine product from the kitchen of Carrie Quinn, the Curry Queen.

Carmel also has a good eye for character, and from the yummy mummies who seem to represent the modern clientele of the ashram to a medley of more raffish characters who have hung on from its past. he's good at exposing the contradictions and pretensions of modern life (sorry, yes that sentence is my entry for Pseud's Corner, but at the same time, it's true) especially in this perplexing semidetached part of London where buying a shed in the 70s makes you a millionaire in the 20s. I don't think there';s meant to be any moral in all that, but at the same time, the complexity of life and the murkiness of motivation behind the most seemingly noble actions is laid bare.

In Ashram Assassin, at any rate, this complexity also masks the truth about the theft. Red herrings abound and the Sleuth needs all her wits about her, because the disappearance of the books is entwined with an unlikely history that is rooted in the ashram's past, and which threatens its future - as well as hers.

With sharp characterisation, witty dialogue and abundant surprises, Ashram Assassin is compulsively readable, perhaps (slightly) even more so than Death in Fine Condition, but, above all, simply fun. 

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Ashram Assassin, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

A Novel Love Story

Ashley Poston
HQ (Harpercollins), 25 June 2024 
Available as: HB, 384pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780593640999

I'm grateful to the publisher for  giving me access to an advance e-copy of A Novel Love Story  to consider for review.

"There was only one road in, and one road out of Eloraton, New York, and most people never took it.'

I've been enjoying Poston's novels - The Dead Romantics, The Seven Year Slip - which take modern women in a romantic dilemma and put them in a setting with just a touch of magic or fantasy. Often set in the literary or publishing worlds they both fulfil and reference the romance genre, though also creating a background to that which allows things to be seen from quite a different perspective.

And they're all compelling, deeply readable and funny.

In A Novel Love Story, Eileen (don't, please, mention That Song to her) finds herself on a road trip to the remote (it's a 2 day drive!) New York State cabin where she will meet with her book group for a week's escape from a life with which it's clear she feels increasingly frustrated. Professionally she's stuck, romantically, she was dumped by her fiancé on the eve of their wedding. Book group has helped her get over that, up to a point, but as becomes clear, only up to a point.

So when Eileen gets lost in a rainstorm and drives into Eloraton she's perhaps more than ready - though she doesn't know it - for a slightly out of this world romantic adventure. Eloraton really is the perfect town, with sweet little shops, cosy cafes, a bookshop, a square and clocktower, and friendly residents. In Eloraton, it always rains in the afternoon, and the burgers in the Grumpy Possum Cafe are always overcooked (but redeemed by the town's famed hot sauce). 

Best of all, Eileen knows Eloraton, and she knows the townsfolk, because it is the setting for her favourite series of romances, sadly uncompleted since the author, Rachel Flowers, passed away. Perhaps while she's staying, Eileen can discover what Rachel intended for the last book of the series, which she never finished? Or perhaps she can lend a little help to the characters from the earlier books, who seem, well, a little... stuck... since their creator passed on?

What she's NOT going to do, of course, is get involved with Anders, the man she nearly ran down when she arrived. The grumpy man who runs the town bookshop but who never appeared in any of the stories. No, Eileen has no interest in Anders AT ALL.

What follows is fun and funny and meta (Eileen knows the rules of these stories, the Happy-for-Nows, the happy-ever-Afters). She also knows much more about the background of everyone she meets than she dares let on, she's read the books, after all). There's a mystery to the Brigadoon-like Eloraton, a mystery which seems to be bound up with Anders. Who can Rachel have intended him to fall in love with, and how can Eileen make sure she doesn't interrupt that?

Because, once Eileen arrives things do begin to change...

I really, really loved this story. Eileen is a great character to spend time with. An academic, she's feeling stalled at work - she always get assigned to teach the 8am class - and is pleased to throw herself into sorting out the good poeople of Eloraton, who she thinks she understands so well. But knowledge is not wisdom and Eileen can be, perhaps, rather over direct in her ways as she tries to set people on their right path. Eileen is great to spend time with but also, perhaps, annoying at times. So it's not surprising when sparks fly between  her and Anders. Poston sets about this central relationship with glee. Of course there are conventions to be met here but also, conventions to be subverted. Both Anders and Eileen are well aware of these, making their relationship even more spiky and even more funny (at times).

A satisfying book to read, pretty hard to put down and one where the keen eyed reader will spot some links to other parts of the Poston-verse.

I'd strongly recommend.

For more information about A Novel Love Story, see the publisher's website here.