#Review - The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North

The Last Song of Penelope (The Songs of Penelope, 3)

Claire North
Orbit, 20 June 2024
Available as: HB, 388pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780356516110

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of The Last Song of Penelope to consider for review.

The stories of Penelope and of Odysseus her husband, who was ten years away from Ithaca at the Trojan War and ten years returning, are part of the DNA of Western culture and I can remember when I first heard then, in a (necessarily bowdlerised!) version when I was about eight years old. 

Even then, I thought, this was rather odd. 

It wasn't so much the somewhat random escapades of Odysseus as he made his leisurely way home (though he could have hurried up a bit couldn't he?) but the way Penelope was treated as she waited for him. Why didn't someone just chase those suitors away? Why did Penelope have to stage an elaborate ruse, weaving her father-in-law's shroud just to delay them? Of course, nobody was going to teach the kids in an English rural primary school in the 70s about sexism and the patriarchy - and I'd never really gone back and revisited the stories until Claire North's trilogy began to appear - so long-buried questions and puzzlement bubbled up as soon as I began reading these books. I have been intrigued and captivated by the way that North deals with them. By the cool affect of her narration, the way she integrates human affairs with the Greek pantheon, the puzzled outsider's view of Egyptian Kenamon. But most of all, by the often-exasperated Penelope - a woman on the edge in more ways than one - as she deals with indignity after indignity and triumphs every time.

Last Song is the third (and last) book, and if you haven't read the others (Ithaca and House of Odysseus) you simply must go back and do so before you start this one. Not because spoilers (this is a three thousand year old story!) but because you have such a reading treat in store. You mustn't miss out. So promise me you'll do that, please?

Assuming you have, you'll be a bit more clued up with the setting. In her husband's prolonged absence, Penelope is Queen of Ithaca, a remote and much-maligned corner of the Ancient Greek world, a modest place and one which tends, shrewdly, to exaggerate its modesty. With so many ravening kings, pirates, psychotic gods and such loose on the wine-dark sea, the less tempting a kingdom appears, the safer it will be.

The general set-up is that Penelope, a wise and determined woman, mustn't be seen to exercise ;power, so this is left to her somewhat bumbling counsellors. In reality she is, though, firmly in control and is playing a long game, keeping the suitors, who wish to marry her (and inherit the kingdom) at arm's length while also preserving Ithaca's independence from its stronger neighbours. 

In the earlier books we saw Penelope skilfully navigate various crises, cultivating allies and bamboozling various would-be enemies. In The Last Song, though, she faces her stiffest challenge when Odysseus, finally, returns, upsetting careful calculations and overturning the delicate balance that Penelope has maintained. Soon Ithaca will be at war with itself for reasons utterly predictable to anyone who's been watching the absurd, strutting men who inhabit these tales. 

All of that is complicated by our narrator, the goddess Athena, who, as she informs us, is far from reliable. Indeed, she admits that she has a certain purpose in shaping events, and she will, obviously, adhere to a certain view of how things develop. While it might be nice if this involved female solidarity with Penelope and her lieutenants and maids, that will only go so far. Athena is in the business of writing her story, and she will have an eye to the audience down the ages who will receive it. 

So, as events unfold, we're getting two narratives (at least). There is what - we may imagine - "really" went on (but which we're not told all of) and what the "poets" will sing of in future days. Sometimes these align, more often not. I would venture to say though that the former is what eight year old me would like to have been told. By giving us this, North therefore corrects the record, though, as Athena warns us, there can be no reliability when one goes beyond the words of poets...

But what a story this is. There is war here, both force of arms and force of cunning. There is pride, rage, revenge. There is greed. Above all - or at the centre of all - there is love, or loves. Love that might have been, love that has been worn down and lost but might be regrown. The relationship between Penelope and the returned Odysseus is knotted and complex, he revealed to be, perhaps, less the pig headed patriarch than some of his peers. But equally complex is Penelope's relationship with her son Telemachus - though it is rather one to which she has lost, and can't seem to find, the key.

There is also bitterness and cruelty here with some moments of real horror - The Last Song of Penelope is not a book for the faint of heart. Long-suffering as she is, Penelope is not spotless herself - for example, even she does not really, I think, see her maids, who are slaves, as people, however much she clearly loves them. So we are trapped by layers of assumptions and social norms.

The Last Song of Penelope is a brilliant, satisfying, heart-wrenching and absorbing conclusion to North's trilogy. The writing shows North at her formidable best, but more, it takes these ancient stories and imbues them with a sense of heart, a deep empathy for people of long ago, who are living half in myth, half in history. I think it's that heart, that empathy which is perhaps what is missing from so many modern retellings, eroded by the act of translation and the familiarity of the story. North gifts her version with both. 

I would STRONGLY RECOMMEND this book!

For more information about The Last Song of Penelope, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour - Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Cursed Under London
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
Farrago Books, 11 July 2024
Available as: HB, 255pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781788425032

I'm grateful to Black Crow for sending me a copy of Cursed Under London to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Cursed Under London is an engaging and entertaining urban fantasy, with a real subcurrent of romance. It's also one of the oddest books - in a good way - that I've read in ages.

In an alternate Tudor London, under Good Queen Bess's rule, a separate realm has been established underground, and more widely, under England, for magical creatures - fae, vampires, werewolves and a host more. There the undead mingle with creatures from myth and legend, following their own laws (human meat definitely ON the menu).

The outcome of a past war, this state of affairs is delicate and it needs continual diplomatic effort to keep it working and prevent fresh conflict. So when a deadly consignment is stolen from the Fae by surface gangs, Her Majesty's guards become involved in the investigation. Frustrating them at every turn, however, are the renegades Fang (a distant traveller from the Ming empire) and Lazare de Quitte-Beuf (a flailing, not to say failing, actor). Both have come under a strange curse which they attribute to Deep London. All roads lead, it seems, down the Tubes...

I loved this book for its verve - the story just keeps rolling on, throwing wonders and moments of terror off in all directions - its characters - Fang and Lazare develop a delightful, will-they, won't-they relationship whose bitterness and joy turns on some real emotional knots and awful experiences in their pasts - and its sly humour (simply too many examples to be able to quote, the story had me giggling on my commute). The busy, detailed view of a different London is always great fun and it's incredible how the author makes some seemingly bizarre ideas work: Christopher Marlowe as a zombie? You'll believe he was! A swan as Elizabeth R's jaded, hard bitten head of guards? Meet Captain Dame Isobel Honkensby! It's all gloriously inventive, rather convincing, and, well, a lot of fun.

Opening, I hope, a series, Cursed Under London draws on knowing references to London and Londoners, genre fiction, romance, crime politics, culture and a myriad other themes to paint its world - the darkness as well as the light. Because, don't be mistaken, there is darkness here - the wonders of Upper and Deep London are wonders, but they can be misused and real harm caused. Behind the fun and games, there's somebody trying to do just that.

I'd strongly recommend this book, and can't wait to see where the story goes next.

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

#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.