#Blogtour #Review - The Legacy of Arniston House by T L Huchu

The Legacy of Arniston House (Edinburgh Nights, 4) 
T L Huchu
Tor (Pan Macmillan), 7 November 2024 
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529097771

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Legacy of Arniston House to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

I've been really enjoying Huchu's Edinburgh Nights series, of which The Legacy of Arniston House is book 4. The setting is a chastened Scotland, humbled in the aftermath of a "Catastrophe" and held down by a resurgent England. Its capital has complex politics, criminal networks, magic and, above all, the authentic texture of an alternate Edinburgh.

Huchu's main character, Ropa Moyo, is engaging and spiky, a marginalised figure (literally - she and her gran live squatters' lives in a caravan encampment on the edge of the city) who is trying to make her way in the world of Scottish magic whose leading lights, snooty and entitled as they are, don't want to be bothering with her. At the end of the previous book, The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle, Ropa seemed to have caught a break when she was hired by the English Sorcerer Royal. While I was concerned this might take her away from Edinburgh, I need not have worried: it seems that Lord Samarasinghe has ongoing business in the North. (That can't bode well, can it...?) Ropa is therefore still hanging round her old home town, albeit cut off from magical society, something that pains her more than she expected. She's even able to revive her old gig as a ghost talker, albeit not everything seems to be well in the spirit realms... there could be trouble ahead.

Huchu definitely ramps up the tension in this book. After a deceptively calm opening (if you've read the first few chapters you may say to yourself "David's talking nonsense again" because they don't seem that calm, but JUST YOU WAIT, IT'S ALL RELATIVE) mayhem of all sorts erupts with rioting, mischief and Ropa being hunted by both magicians and Police. She's framed for a heinous crime and  the whole world she was used tseems about to be torn apart. All this leads up to a fast-moving conclusion in which we learn more both about Ropa's past and about recent Scottish history - and are then left, literally, on a cliffhanger. 

Or perhaps, over one.

Compared with the first three books, which were more self-contained, The Legacy of Arniston House represents a clear change of gear and of focus. There is, as in each of the others, a self-contained mystery and an injustice to be solved and righted (you might think, actually, several). But there is also a much more intricate and visible connection to the plot that's been glimpsable in the background, with certain puzzles finally closed from those earlier stories. At the same time, the implications of Ropa's own history and background are made plain for the first time.

A fun return to what is shaping up to be one of the most interesting and readable series of the past few years. I'll wait for the next book with a great deal of anticipation.

For more information about The Legacy of Arniston House, see the publisher's website here. 

You can buy The Legacy of Arniston House from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones.

#Review - The Proof of my Innocence by Jonathan Coe

The Proof of my Innocence

Jonathan Coe
Penguin, 7 November 2024 
Available as: HB, 352pp, PB, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780241678411

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

Reading a review this weekend of a new TV series set in the 80s, I found myself agreeing with the writer's point that to portray the 80s, you need to stir in a good deal of the 70s. Coe would I think agree, at least one of the characters in his novel would, asking as she does when the 80s began? (The answer isn't 1 January 1980).

The 80s 'beginning' is code in this discussion for the onset of the individualistic, consensus-breaking phase in UK national life which has often been a theme, or lurking in the background, of Coe's novels. It's particularly appropriate here since The Proof of my Innocence focusses on what one may hope is the end, or the beginning of the end, of that worldview, with a bunch of highly unattractive and ideologically bent conservatives meeting in a rural hotel to set their world to rights. This takes place as the Queen (THE Queen: sorry, but that's what she'll always be even for this anti-monarchist) dies, and Liz Truss is appointed to her catastrophic period as PM. (When I reviewed Coe's last novel, Bournville, which appeared just after that time and had a key episode around most of the significant points of post war British history, I noted it was a shame that publication timetables meant he had missed that one - he does though take it in here, most notably The Queue, is a sequence that could almost be a coda to the earlier book).  

Coe is though slightly playing games with the reader: the conference section is in a part of the book that also, or perhaps primarily, explores the conventions and settings of the cosy crime genre (the out-of-this-world setting, the eccentric detective, the unlikely murder) as subsequent sections do dark academia and autofiction (in a pleasingly meta way). They're not parodies or pastiches of those genres, still less I think meant as straight examples, but those styles do influence the events and characters. So after the gruesome country house section introduces a foodie detective who's about to retire, we get a memoir of 80s Cambridge which touches on a cabal who meet behind locked doors (and I think a walk on part by Coe himself?) and then a jointly narrated section by the two young women whose story frames this book, inspired by autofiction.

What these three interrelated stories are all about though is unpicking the tragic story of a novelist, Peter Cockerel, who committed suicide, also in the 1980s. He's a shadowy figure whose books have been given a posthumous revival by an academic, also an attendee at that conference. Cockerill's voice gives Coe an opportunity to explore a conservative worldview and vision at one remove, or two, perhaps, with something of the same distancing effect that MR James might use in a ghost: here is something I found, in the last quarter of the previous century, in an old manuscript; and here is the trouble it got me into. That distancing is I think important here as it creates a separation between what is at least a fairly human view of conservatism and the grotesque cult that it now seems to be.  Perhaps that's a true difference of perhaps it's just nostalgia. In either case Coe demonstrates, and comments on, the difference, and suggests how it perhaps arose (that moment when the 80s began!) but he is wise enough to not try to diagnose it in detail. 

Rather, the point is illustrated, in a variety of settings, throughout the book in encounters with lift controls, overheard chat on a train, and even a character who, unwittingly, sings in his sleep. What goes on in our heads, and our ability to empathise with what goes on own others' minds, is important here. Some things should be shared and others, not. Both individuality and the collective experience matter, but the boundaries between the two can shift and that is not a light matter.

In a book that features murder (perhaps more than once), suicide, and other deaths, it's hardly surprising that bereavement and how we cope with it, or don't, is also a theme. Death is of course one of the great internal/ external events in life so is a suitable part of the book's subject.

As always with Coe's books, I found The Proof of my Innocence very entertaining and funny, but it also made me think hard about appearances and reality (as I said, he plays some games). As the husband of a vicar, and someone who has far too many books, I also took the opening scenes, in a book infested rectory, very personally, and wondered if, indeed, Coe doesn't have uncanny abilities to see into others' minds...

For more information about The Proof of my Innocence, see the publisher's website here. 

#Review - Ice Town by Will Dean

Ice Town (Tuva Moodyson, 6)

Will Dean
Hodder & Stoughton, 7 November 2024
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781399717342

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

Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

The sun is spent, and now his flasks

Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

The world's whole sap is sunk...

- John Donne

Two years on from the shocking events that rounded off Book 4 in this series, Bad Apples, Tuva is keeping on keeping on. She fell back into binge drinking, but has come through that with the support of a good friend, though unsurprisingly she is still not looking after herself very well (when does he ever?) as we see with her diet. Life in Toytown is though quiet, and perhaps Tuva needs the atmosphere of a major evolving story - so she seizes the chance to drive 20 hours north to cover the search for a missing Deaf teenager in a VERY remote town.

Esseberg is something else, even among the strange locations that Dean has given us so far in this series. Entirely surrounded by mountains, it's accessible only through a single-lane tunnel that is shared between road and rail. One must wait for a time slot to drive through and, once inside the town, there is no escape when the tunnel shuts down for the night.

This place is then even more isolated, inward looking and suspicious than Gavrik - and Tuva has no standing here, no relationship with the police, and no base to operate from (she's staying at a B&B that doesn't serve breakfast, and that is also the town's tanning salon, popular in the Winter months).

Tenacious as ever Tuva goes about her work, against a background of severe cold and short days, trying to establish what has happened to Peter even as bodies begin to turn up. Dean exploits a real flair for the gothic here vin portraying how this remote community reacts to the tragedy unfolding. Several times Tuva is put in danger - visits to the creepy hotel accessible only by chairlift are especially skin crawling. St Lucy's Day, the shortest day (and the subject of Donne's poem which I've quoted above, because that last line, The world's whole sap is sunk, just seems to me to sum up the atmosphere here) is approaching. Normally this would be a big deal as the world turns back to light, but the mood is hardly celebratory rather the villagers begin to go out only in pairs and the local biker gang patrols the streets as vigilantes.

It is great to meet Tuva again. This stubborn, lonely, and often, suffering, woman has been through a lot in earlier books but she still reaches out to help others, whether it's the missing Deaf young man here or her neighbour's kid (and at the moving climax of this book, we hear of another). Strictly she's out of her own domain and has no business here, but she sets about unpicking the threads of life in a small town, allowing us encounters with many interesting characters - whether it's the ex-con ski lift manager, the self-absorbed true crime podcaster, or creepy Eric at the hotel. As ever, Tuva has to balance the need to push these people for info, to go further than the police can, with her position as a stranger, an outsider in Ice Town, someone who may herself be at risk in a tight-knit community where survival depends on the community and somebody who throws round accusations or asks awkward questions may just slip out of that circle of support...

The writing here is good - one senses a warmth from Dean for his protagonist - and we learn more about her complicated early life, but while unexpected, the details don't come as just dropped in, it all makes sense in the context of the character. Billed as a standalone episode in the series, presumably because it's set "away", this book nevertheless feels fully integrated with what's gone before and sets up plotlines and hints for the future.

It's great to this series powering forward so strongly and I am eager to hear more about Tuva Moodyson.

For more information about Ice Town, see the publisher's website here.

#review - Karla's Choice by Nick Harkaway

Karla's Choice 

Nick Harkaway
Penguin, 24 October 2024
Available as: HB, 320pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9780241714904

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

This is the first of I hope many continuations by Harkaway of his father, David Cornwall (John le Carré)'s series of books about the British Secret Intelligence Service (the 'Circus') in the mid-20th century. Harkaway explains in his prologue that there were always intended to be more of these books, focussing on George Smiley, and indeed le Carré published a couple shortly before his death.

In Karla's Choice, we return to Smiley's heyday, the 1960s, and see George, who has temporarily left the Circus after the events of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, called back in a crisis (as of course would happen several more times and it's nice to see how Harkaway docks his Smiley seamlessly with the one in his father's books). In true le Carré fashion, an apparently minor event has set alarm bells ringing in the corridors of the Circus and someone is needed to attend to business.

So we get to see the Circus again, perhaps not quite in all its pomp (we'd have to go back to wartime for that) but as a more powerful organisation than the burnt out shell it becomes later. And we also meet its denizens, not least the mole who will be unmasked in earlier books (if you follow the sequence). I won't name them in case you haven't read those books yet, but the knowledge of that person's later betrayal certainly provides a frisson here when secrets are being discussed... 

In the best tradition of these stories, Karla's Choice offers us an apparently dry narration enlivened by a lot of erudition and plenty of secrets - tradecraft, ruminations on the Cold War, both practical and moral, and, of course, humour. There is also the tension between the grizzled inmates of the Circus and a young woman - a Hungarian refugee, Susanna Gero - who is about to be immersed in their life when the secret world, the world of Smiley and Karla, reaches out for her. How and why it does that - and why her boss has disappeared - unfolds unhurriedly, but in detail, throughout the book. There's a sense here of the story being deeply rooted in history, the history of the 20th century yes, very recent events to the protagonists such as the Hungarian uprising but also the century's backstory, the old Tsarist days which led to Soviet Russia. 

Relationships are also central, especially the one that develops in this book between George and Susannah. This is complex. One of them is reluctant to keep playing these games, disillusioned even in his own mind, but still accepting of the twisted logic of the looking-glass war, if always on the verge of smashing the mirror. The other is new to the whole scene and inclined to be judgemental - but also, seems to have a more ruthless streak, understandably given she's crossed Europe seeking refuge (people were still allowed to do that in the 60s).  Perhaps she actually knows more than she's letting on?

We also see various stranded and beached figures who will become the famous faces of the chronologically later stories - incipient alcoholic Connie, for example; Control, before the catastrophe that is a few years down the line. And of course George's wife, with Karla's Choice perhaps equally deserving of the title Ann's Choice...

All in all, a fascinating and thrilling addition to the Smiley canon, the plot meaty, the tone perfect, the revelations and embroidering of the Circus mythology rich, fitting and gorgeous. Harkaway shows here that, yes, the menu is excellent and the chef really can cook.

For more information about Karla's Choice, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Vengeance by Emma Newman

The Vengeance (The Vampires of Dumas, 1)

Emma Newman
Solaris, 8 May 2025
Available as: PB, 386pp, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781837861644

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

While I feel I'm reviewing this way ahead of its release date next Spring, I'm so excited to see something new from Emma Newman and I want to shout about it. I expect this to be a highlight of 2025's reading for many!

The Vengeance is a really enjoyable adventure romp, taking us the Caribbean and to 18th century France and throwing vampires and werewolves into the mix. The story follows Morgane, a young woman who's grown up at sea as a pirate, believing herself to be the daughter of Anne Marie, fearsome captain of the Vengeance. Anne Marie has a particular hatred for the French "Four Chains Trading Company", whose vessels she hunts down without mercy. One day, this vendetta will that lead Morgane to surprising knowledge, and to danger and a quest for revenge.

Basically a "fish out of water" story as Morgane is forced to travel to France to discover who she really is, The Vengeance is at its very best showing the young pirate absorbing the ways of the land, discovering love, and trying to learn about her own origins. Her determination and courage are never in doubt, though her wisdom and self-restraint may be, as she stirs up enemies she never dreamed of. (You know, don't you, that when Anne Marie warns Morgane never to try and find her family, that the warning will be ignored, and that there will be Consequences?) 

By telling a story from an outsider's viewpoint, Newman is able to show up many injustices and wrongs in her imagined (but not so far from history) version of France, and the complacency and resignation of those involved. It's not only wrongs and tyrannies we will be familiar with from history, but a whole layer of the supernatural too. This sets up formidable obstacles for Morgane, but they don't overshadow the story, rather at its centre is a complex and tender portrayal of someone who is still a very young protagonist and who has to find her way as an adult in the world. That theme is given room to breathe, with due space too to a comedic subplot where Morgane, as a notorious pirate, thinks herself much more adult, much more experienced and much more capable than she really is. 

Witnessing this sea dog offered the services of a governess when her father eventually catches up with her is hilarious, but Newman doesn't only play it for laughs, the relationship with Lisette will be important to Morgane in future.

(Indeed it will I think be a strained relationship in some ways - Morgane, as a pirate born and bred, is clearly relaxed with the idea of a life driven by theft and murder. While this is something Newman perhaps chooses not to emphasise, Lisette is alive to it and will not, I think, tolerate it for long. I expect sparks to fly...)

Introducing and setting up many threads that will I'm sure be important in future stories, The Vengeance is a fun read with the sense of moral and psychological complexity I always expect from this author.

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

#Blogtour #Review - The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen

The Burning Stones
Antti Tuomainen (tran David Hackston)
Orenda Books, 24 October 2024
Available as: HB, 276pp, PB audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788329

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

Anni Korpinen is the star saleswoman at sauna stove maker Steam Devil.

But is Anni also a serial killer?

All the facts seem to suggest it. Anni's colleagues have her down as a cold-blooded killer (albeit one who employs hot steam for her murders) and local police chief Kiimaleinen is determined to make charges stick. 

Only one person believes in Anni's innocence - herself. But can she really hold out in the teeth of the evidence?

The Burning Stones was a fun book to read. It's described as comedy crime, but I think the truth is more nuanced than that - while the story does have its humorous aspects, it's a very dark humour, and the comedy arises from a desperate human predicament. The crime we see is also very, very gruesome. And the eventual revelation of who the killer is and what their motives are points less at human wickedness but at small, rather pathetic and plaintive motives - certainly compared with the nature of the killings. So it's equally a rather sad book, the record of a few days that turn Anni's world upside down, stressing all her relationships and breaking some behind repair. 

I enjoyed the way that Tuomainen throws the burden of proving her innocence on a woman who manifestly has no special talents in that line. As she repeats several times, she is a saleswoman (though a very good one) not a detective. Anni's attempts at tracking down the real killer often seem apt to land her in more trouble, and there's a murky secret in her past that makes it hard for her to be frank with (possibly) sympathetic policemen who might be willing to help - so she's very much on her own, surrounded by colleagues who mistrust her and who, lets be plain, all have questions to answer themselves.

Anni does though have one resource to fall back on - the peace she gains from her regular sauna sessions and swimming in the local lake. Many times in the story she retreats to ponder matters in the steam. But might even this, her understanding of the uses of the sauna, be evidence of her guilt? 

A real mystery, an involving and enjoyable story with well drawn and plausible characters and a tale with ratcheting tension, as Anni waits for that knock on the door, this is a book I'd strongly recommend. It's also a window onto Finnish sauna culture which was enlightening to say the least! I'd never, for example, heard about the concept of a "bumlet" (you'll just have to read the book!) I think that David Hackston's translation is brilliant here, it's as though Tuomainen is deliberately posing challenges, using colloquialisms, songs and jingles, technical terms and very specific language for which, clearly, there are no direct English equivalents and which require words to be created. Hackston deals with all this and more with aplomb and gives us a very readable text besides.

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

#Review - Dark as Night by Lilja Sigurðóttir

Dark as Night (Áróra Investigates)

Lilja Sigurðóttir (trans by Lorenza Garcia)
Orenda Books, 10 February 2024 
Available as: PB, 241pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788367

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Dark as Night  to consider for review.

I've become addicted to Sigurðóttir's fast-moving, involving series featuring Áróra and her group of friends and colleagues - Daníel, Helena and, of course, Daníel's tenant, drag queen Lady Gúgúlú.

In Dark as Night, all their lives are about to be shaken up and some answers given - though not perhaps ones we'd welcome. Áróra is still searching for her missing sister, but now news comes of a child who seems to be dead Ísafold reincarnated. And Gúgúlú has vanished din the night, leaving no word - but three menacing strangers are on her track. In both cases, Daníel finds his status as a policeman of little help.

Plus, Áróra's behaving erratically...

I love the moment in a series when he writer can trust the readers, and the characters, knowing that if things get a little strange, the latter will continue to enchant the former. The Áróra we see here isn't someone who, met for the first time, you'll necessarily want to know more about, but we have come to understand and like Áróra and so will be patient with a woman who's been through a lot. Similarly Gúgúlú has been a great support to Daníel while remaining on the margins of these stories so it's good to learn more about here, and indeed to learn things which rather blow open the nature of these stories. As to the latter, I felt there was always a bit more going on than the standard price procedural and it's good to have that confirmed, although I don't want to say too much for fear of spoilers. 

Through all this, the relationship between Áróra and Daníel continues to intrigue the reader and deepen at the same time. It's not an easy one - while she may be on the side of the angels she doesn't always play by the rules, and has her own secrets, which are straining things here - but a sense does come through of two people who are at bottom devoted to one another and that each will do anything for the other. (Given the kinds of threats which arise in Sigurðóttir's Idecalnd, the latter is perhaps more a matter of when, than if, some great sacrifice will be needed).

Lorenza Garcia's translation is excellent in what must have been a challenging task given the nature of some of the content, and I would love to ask a few questions about how certain things were tackled!

For more information about Dark as Night, see the publisher's website here.

#review - Lights Out by Louise Swanson

Lights Out

Louise Swanson
Hodder, 5 September 2024 
Available as: HB, 400pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529396140

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

In Lights Out, Louise Swanson strikes the perfect balance between a 'high concept" thriller and a study of relationships and psychology.

Taking place, like many of Swanson's stories written both under this name and as Louise Beech, in Hull, the story is rooted in the everyday but transcends that ordinariness by having external forces impose something weird on the local population - in this case, a power outage every night, intended to save energy. Reminding me somewhat of the power cuts of the 70s, which I lived through, it also evokes the dislocation of the Covid lockdown and some of the social strains and tensions that emerged than and since (while I think not intended, I also saw some resonance with this summer's riots). So, while the main device is invented, it also feels close to recent experience.

At the centre of things is Grace, for whom the loss of light on these dark winter evenings is a huge deal because she has a terror of the dark following some murky events in her childhood (which will gradually be revealed). It doesn't help that a prowler is abroad, assaulting women when the lights are off - and that someone (whether or not the same intruder) begins to enter her house at night leave odd presents and messages. Creepy or what?

So things get very menacing very early on. In other hands, this could go very wrong - where, exactly, do you go next with the story? - but Swanson knows how to wind up the tension still further, and then stiller further, if that makes sense. There's an almost palpable strain - a kind of mental keening - as Grace attempts to balance her day job (and sometimes night - she works shifts at a hospice) with her fear of the dark, to maintain her relationship with an (obviously no-good) husband, a domineering mother and that abiding mystery (an element of which is that her dad went missing when she was a kid). Honestly, at times I had to put the book down and just BREATHE, so tense does it get. But I never left it sitting there for long.

A book with a strong sense of how hurts from the past can fester - a major theme is the need to remember and confront, and to resist the easy solution of forgetting - and of how parents can mess up their kids' lives (they may not mean to but they do) this is also a taut, nailbitting thriller yet has many tender moments. You'll be rooting for Grace, I guarantee. This is Louise Swanson at the top of her game.

For more information about Lights Out, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans

Small Bomb at Dimperley
Lissa Evans
Doubleday, 5 September 2024
Available as: HB, 309pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857528292

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of Small Bomb at Dimperley to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Small Bomb at Dimperley sees Lissa Evans returning to 1940s England with a new novel set just after the end of the Second World War. It’s a standalone, not part of the same sequence as Old Baggage, Crooked Heart and V For Victory although many of the same themes are here. We see the improvisational quality of life, especially for those on the margins (here, a woman who has to make her way through a world that doesn't want to admit she exists - or wouldn't if it knew that she was a single mother). We see people making do, adapting, living the hands they've been dealt. 

And we see them triumphing in odd, unexpected ways - even remaking themselves, admidst the societal dislocation and change of the war years and the immediate and postwar. 

Also evident is Evans’s ease with the setting and atmosphere as she unfolds her story in a decade that now seems so remote and different. It's only twenty years before I was born, but so much seems strange. It's not just distance in time, but a particular moment. The war is over, the future has not yet begun. A tide of change is poised, an Empire about to be dismantled - but it hasn't begun yet. The country is balanced, many wishing for a return to older ways, others already taking advantage of the new. I say Evans does this with ease, that isn't really fair, it must of course have  have taken fearsome amounts of research, of empathy, but to me the story feels very real (as did her earlier novels).

 

Small Bomb at Dimperley is set in rural Buckinghamshire. It's imbued with the rhythms and incidents of  a vanished world: ploughing competitions, knackers’ vans, market days that fill country towns with animals and farmers in damp tweed, a decaying country house, a decaying, cash-strapped gentry. The story follows the minorly aristocratic family which lives in that house and which has, due to an accumulation of deaths, ill-advised investments, and social change, come to the end of its financial road. They now face having to sell up. As a reader I had mixed feelings about that. These country houses and estates were often built on cleared villages, using wealth earned from exploitation abroad. Irene, ("My Lady") the dowager of the family (one of the dowagers - it's complicated) almost invites the thought: serves her right, as she looks down on the lower orders and plots an entitled future by marrying Valentine off to an heiress. 

Almost invites it. The redeeming quality of Irene is her tender care for her son, a young man who has a learning disability. The matter of fact moments between the two as they live their days are very touching. And Ceddy - Cecil - isn't a token figure here, he is a vital part of things.

Also appearing are Valentine, the reluctant heir to Dimperley, invalided out of the Army to manage the ruin that has been made of the family's finances and Zena, a no-nonsense young woman employed as secretary to eccentric Alaric. (He's writing a history of the family, which nobody will read). Zena has in effect found refuge at Dimperley, as will Priss and Kitty, Valentine's nieces, back from evacuation in the USA and full of modern ideas about showers and deodorant. Their mother, Barbara, occupies an uneasy space between Irene's disapproval and the adolescent scorn of her daughters. 

This is a gallery of smart, opinionated characters though they probably need an entire country house at their disposal or they'd all murder each other by page 2, and it isn't that sort of book at all. As it is, they have some space and Evans honours them all, pulling off what I always feel much be the most difficult trick a novelist can, persuading the reader to be interested in, and even sympathetic to, people who in real life one would avoid on principle. This is how we enter minds and hearts and begin to understand and appreciate others. This is the wonder of a great storyteller.

Small Bomb at Dimperley is a vivid, active book whose pages simply fly by. It has a subtle perspective combining as it does the outsider's critique of a society and a family - Kitty, Zena - the staunch traditionalist's defence of both - Alaric, Irene - and the pragmatism that just wants to keep the show on the road (Valentine, Barbara). It's not a social history, but at the same time, does tell us something about that pivotal time, about the choices that were made then, and about how they have cascaded down the years to influence the county we live in (well, that I live in) today.

There's also romance, a certain degree of growing-up, and a few shocks and surprises.

It is a wonderful read, great fun, and, in an undemonstrative way, rather moving.

For more information about Small Bomb at Dimplerley, 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 Small Bomb at Dimperley from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones. Other online retailers are available.

#Blogtour #Review - Living is a Problem by Doug Johnstone

Living is a Problem (Skelfs, #6)
Doug Johnstone
Orenda Books, 12 September 2024
Available as: PB, 276pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788268

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for sending me a copy of Living is a Problem to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Living is a Problem sees the Skelf women - grandmother Dorothy, mother and daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah - perhaps face their toughest trial yet in this series. And if you've been following the brilliant #SkelfSummer recap of the previous 5 books, you'll know that's saying something.

The challenges that confront the three here don't arise, at least not directly, from perplexing mysteries. If you've read any of the earlier Skelf books you'll know that the family are undertakers in Edinburgh, but also private investigators. Naturally, the latter role can create complex scenarios to unravel, and there are some of those here. The funeral of an Edinburgh gangster, disrupted by parties unknown. The grave of a child disturbed. A missing woman, a refugee from Ukraine.

For once though, these cases are "solved" fairly straightforwardly. There isn't a lot of subtle detecting. But in these books, and never more so that in Living is a Problem, just establishing the facts is only the beginning. The harder part of the Skelfs' work only begins after that. The cases aren't really "solved" till parties are reconciled; difficult decisions made; compromises reached. Because it's not really about the crime, it's about the opposite of crime, to paraphrase the title of the last book, The Opposite of Lonely. Peace is not the same as the absence of war. How will the networks of people affected by all these events learn to live with themselves - and with each other - after what's come out?

That question hangs heavy over Living is a Problem from the start. The Skelfs, and their associates - Archie, Brodie, Thomas - still have to reckon with the events of the earlier books. Dorothy's and Thomas's relationship has been particularly strained after the dangers and violence in The Opposite of Lonely. Thomas has taken things hard. The antagonists in that book, corrupt police Webster and Low, have been taken down, but continue to exert a malign influence. Hannah, knowing that her father was a wrong'un, still mourns him and the life that she and Jenny might have had if he had been a decent man. It's complicated. Living is a problem, as Scottish band Biffy Clyro sang, Because Everything Dies. To which I might oppose Bruce Springsteen singing Everything dies, baby, that's a fact, But maybe everything that dies some day comes back. (Sorry, I am going to work The Boss into any review I can, of course I am). 

To be less oblique, the funeral side of the Skelf business might seem like the last word in finality - what is more final than death - but this book teases the idea that due to our interrelatedness, death is not the end. A dead child affects the living, and how we deal with the death may be important. Or how we fail to deal with it. Death has a way of fossilising, of sanctifying, from Old Dead White Guy statues in Edinburgh which belie the deeds of those men (they are always men) to the trouble of living with the legacy of a war hero in the family to dealing with unacknowledged grief.

And that is really the essence of the Skelf books. It may be convenient to see them as crime fiction, because I'm not sure there's a label for what they really are - moral fiction? human fiction? Something like that? Whatever it is has at its heart the wonderfulness and the sadness of being human and the need to be on the side of those in need. That's what the Skelfs are about and long may they continue it.

For more information about Living is a Problem, 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 Living is a Problem from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith or Waterstones. Other online retailers are available.

#Review - The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Seventh Veil of Salome

Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Arcadia, 6 August 2024 
Available as: HB, 312pp, audio, e   
Source: Purchased
ISBN(HB): 9781529431001

The Seventh Veil of Salome is a clever juxtaposition of the story of Salome, daughter of Herodias who is the wife of the tetrarch Herod Antipas in first century Palestine, and Vera Larios, a Mexican actress in 1950s Hollywood who has been chosen to portray Salome in a sword-and-sandals epic.

The background of the historical Salome is one of power politics involving Ancient Rome and its client states. Rome is expanding its influence but not yet ruling absolutely. Its allies and collaborators therefore need to tread carefully, and Herod is concerned about a fiery preacher who been denouncing his rule (and morals). Salome, however, by Jokanaan...

Larios also inhabits a complex world. She has come into an increasingly paranoid Hollywood, a place  stalked by the House Un-American activities Committee and still subject to the Puritan moral hypocrisy of various self-appointed censors but also one, haunted by racism (Larios, as a Mexican, is firmly an outsider and looked down on). Things are starting to change as the studio system declines, but this uncertainty only makes everyone even more insecure. Gossip sheets exploit this, trading in innuendo and stereotypes.

Beyond this dichotomy, the book is structurally fascinating since the film Larios is involved in is clearly the same "story" as that which the Salome sections tell (for example, some of the dialogue echoes). But the story is being rewritten as the book progresses (in a late episode, we hear the screenwriter describing the closing scene as he would have had it, the studio bosses having insisted on somethings else). The historical Salome's life is not, therefore, fixed, but mutable, a matter of contention and at the mercy of those same prejudices, Puritan constraints and political and commercial imperatives that rule Hollywood itself. That's appropriate for a character being portrayed by another woman, Vera, who is in turn manipulated and (mis)represented by family, publicists, witnesses, and the Press.

Witnesses? I use that word because while there are lengthy narrative sections where the camera follows Vera (if I can use that analogy) of Samole, there are also interventions in the voice of the many characters who play a part in this story - other actresses and studio figures, for example, and people who were lucky or unlucky enough to witness the events - and they all have their own spin, often informed (again) by prejudice and jealousy. 

Vera has - as soon become evident - stepped into a nest of vipers, with others convinced that she doesn't merit the part - or that she doesn't, morally, deserve it. A Mexican? Surely not! The outworking of jealously and resent meant in an industry that embodies whim and fashion is both fascinating to see unfold and awful to anticipate, giving a real edge of noir as scenes unfold in seedy hotel rooms and down-at-heel diners, all leading up to... well I don't want to be spoilery... all leading up to the inevitable conclusion in the final reel. As a nasty chain of events unfold, innocents will be caught up, reputations ruined and the truth left to wither.

All in all and exciting, complex and atmospheric novel with a steely core of accusation.

For more information about The Seventh Veil of Salome, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - The Witches of World War II by Paul Cornell et al

The Witches of World War II

Paul Cornell (words), Valeria Burzo (pencils), Jordie Bellaire (colours)
TKO Studios, 25 July 2023
Available as: PB, 160pp, e
Source: Purchased
ISBN(PB): 9781952203183

The Witches of World War II tugs at one of the many loose threads of that conflict - persistent rumours that alongside the familiar heroism, sacrifice and application of industry and science to winning the war, alongside the more shadowy departments of unorthodox warfare and military deception, the Allies used even stranger means - notably witchcraft.

You don't have to accept the supernatural or the power of magic to see that this is something that could really happen. Deep in the layers of psyops, it would surely have registered that at least some high-ranking Nazis fervently believed this stuff, and that very belief could be used against them. 

That paradox is at the heart of The Witches of World War II. Cornell has assembled here a crack team of practitioners and theorists from the occult world of the first half of the 20th century, and posed a "what if...?" about their potential use in warfare, and beyond that, about the nature of their own beliefs and the power of belief itself. Cornell acknowledges, as does the Afterword by Prof Ronald Hutton, that this group never actually met (unless the records of that meeting have been even more than carefully weeded) but we might imagine similar characters carrying out the actions described here, some of which are based on those persistent rumours...

So the premise is intriguing. That wouldn't though be enough, without Cornell's excellent story and its interpretation by the brilliant comic artists here, to produce the immersive and fun narrative that The Witches of World War II is. I felt it captured the spirit of that dangerous time, all done in muted khaki, green, brown and grey, as it introduces us not just to the would-be witches themselves but also to their world. That world includes the would-be upper class Quislings and fellow-travellers who would have sold their country out at the drop of a hat, if they could. Against these fifth-columnists, our hero, Doreen Valiente, shows steely nerve as she negotiates a maze of mirrors, never sure who is going to back her and who will betray her. 

A sceptic herself, Doreen encounters dangers including a curse that can only affect those who don't believe, and slippery customers like Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed Wickedest Man in the World. (Who, exactly, believes that they are themselves wicked? I was reminded of the "are we the baddies" sketch...) The double crosses, hints of things below the surface build tension, with the poignancy of Doreen's lost sweetheart giving the story real bite by reminding us that this isn't all some fantasy, that regardless of the occult and its reality or otherwise, real people suffered and died in those years.

With a complex plot, many twists and turns and layers of deception, it all makes for a rewarding read, with just that hint of mystery as to what really went on...

For more information about The Witches of World War II, see the author's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Reunion by M. J. Arlidge and Steph Broadribb

The Reunion

M. J. Arlidge and Steph Broadribb

Orion, 5 September 2024

Available as: PB, 304pp audio, e   

Source: Advance e-copy

ISBN(PB): 9781398716575

I'm grateful to the publisher for sgiving me access to an advance e-copy of The Reunion to consider for review, and to Tracy and Compulsive Readers for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

Oh this one is very good. 

It's set in the town of Whitecross, somewhere in the English Chiltern Hills. I think I know where the real Whitecross is - that isn't of course its actual name - and the authors bring to life the character of this district, protected for its natural beauty and riddled with twee little villages, but also full of new housing estates and also surpsingly deprived town centres where depressed youth find an escape in the time honoured ways: drink, drugs and sex. 

This is Jennie Whitmore's world. Jennie never left Whitecross: her dreams of doing so shattered when her beloved friend Hannah vanished as they were on the cusp of escape. Instead, Jennie has hung around, and decades later she is a DI in the same town. Interesting - did she simply lose heart and never leave? Or, unconsciously, did she hang around, choosing a career that might one day give her an opportunity to find out what happened to Hannah? If so, she is still shocked when that possibility crystallises. This occurs suspiciously soon after her unwise experiment of joining in a school reunion. (Personally, I stay away from such things). Has the reunion jolted something among the little group of "friends"? Or was the clock already ticking?

The resulting investigation will see Jeannie throwing away beliefs she's held for three decades, taking uncharacteristic risks, and running into danger. I found it absolutely gripping how she justified, and undertook, an investigation she absolutely shouldn't be part of (her closest friend!) and the effect that doing so has on her relationships with her colleagues (she hardly has any friends). The impact of what is discovered, and Hannah's way of opening it up, will shatter the little group who see themselves as Hannah's mates from all those years ago, bring secrets into the open, and change Whitecross for ever.

It will also change Hannah's life. This is not a story - at least I don't think it is - that can kick off a series of small-town mysteries. I can't see Hannah returning to this dark Midsommer any time soon. Too mush will have changed. I did though find myself desperately hoping that things would turn out well for her in the end, I don't recall a recent main character I've so wished would come through unscathed - though this seems increasingly unlikely as the story proceeds...

Arlidge and Broadribb are at the top of their game (their games?) in this collaboration, a book that demands to be read in a single sitting if you can possibly manage that.

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

#Review - The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Banner

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank

Megan Bannen
Orbit, 4 July 2024
Available as: PB, 380pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356521923

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me an advance copy of The Undermining of Twyla and Frank to consider for review.

The Undermining of Twyla and Frank is set in the same world as The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, which wowed me last year, and is a fantasy romance in the same vein.  

And, yes, we do bump into Mercy Birdsall and Hart Ralston and their circle again here, although they're not the main characters in this book. That would be Twyla Banneker and Frank Ellis. They are partners, Tanrian Marshals employed to police that strange space, once a prison for gods, that opens from the island of Bushong, part of the Federated Islands of Cadmus. Now, after the events of The Undertaking of Hope and Mercy, the drudges (zombies) that threatened Bushong from Tanria are gone, and some are even questioning the need for the Marshals. But there are other threats in Tanria, and assets there to be guarded, as Twyla and Frank are about to find out.

I loved this book. The comfortable relationship between middle-aged Twyla and Frank - work, but not life, partners - is realistic and well portrayed, their lives to this point sensitively sketched with all their pluses and minuses. A failed marriage. A dead spouse. New lives rebuilt, the best made of things. Children to nurture and see over the threshold of adulthood. The backgrounding of hopes and dreams in the face of practical concerns - money, health, family. As a result we have two beautifully drawn and largely content characters...

...who are about to have their cosy world turned upside down in a blaze of conspiracy, murder - and dragons.

It was both moving, and hilarious, to see how Twyla and Frank cope with the various eruptions into their lives that follow from what's brewing in Tanria. These are both large and small. There's the fact of a totally unexpected and previously mythological species of creature. There's crime. There are new colleagues - in this case a dangerously sexy scientist who upsets what turns out to have been a carefully balanced relationship that only survived by not asking certain questions, not thinking certain things. But, it seems that relationship rested on certain assumptions, and once these are challenged it's clear that for Twyla and Frank, nothing will ever be the same again.

Oh, and just who's trying to blow the pair up?

In some ways, Twyla and Frank have very ordinary lives. In some ways, they are very extraordinary people. But once the balance of the ordinary is upset, will they ever find it again? Will they even want to?

STRONGLY recommended. More like this, please.

For more information about The Undermining of Twyla and Frank, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze by Tom Mandrake, DJ Ben Ha Meen and Mellow Brown

Purple Haze

DJ Ben Ha Meen and Mellow Brown (writers), Tom Mandrake (artist)
Titan Comics, 27 August 2024
Available as: HB, 128pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787731899

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the graphic novel's blogtour.

From the publisher

This is a pure rock and roll space opera featuring the legendary Jimi Hendrix as you’ve never seen him before. 

Fully sanctioned by Experience Hendrix L.L.C.; Authentic Hendrix, LLC - this is the first ever full-length graphic novel inspired by the music of the legendary Jimi Hendrix – arguably the world’s greatest guitarist. 

This 21st Century psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll odyssey sees Jimi Hendrix embark on a quest to the very centre of the universe in search of a magical talisman powerful enough to unlock the incredible latent power of his music so that he can share it with a universe starved of the rock ‘n’ roll by a tyrannical intergalactic force hellbent on silencing all music from the universe and enslaving all life. 

What I thought

Space opera. Rock opera. Seemingly unrelated genres which the collaborators behind this graphic novel nevertheless pull together with aplomb. The result is great as an example of each, but put together, something much more.

Yes, we get zoomy spaceships, vivid alien worlds, combat and awesome vistas, that genuine sense of wonder that space opera must deliver. But we also get what is actually - so far as such a thing is possible - a pretty vivid visualisation of a musical high (is that a thing? I think it's a thing) as the central character here, Hendrix, takes to the stage on a galaxy-crossing tour. Lyrics stream by in a kind of diagetic cloud. The music ignites in the intense shades of a fiery sun, blazing across the page. At once, deeply SFnal, deeply musical.

But, as I said, there is more here too. The story finds Hendrix, mysteriously, playing on an endless tour in this far-future dystopia. The how and why of that's never explained, but that doesn't actually loom large in the story and it doesn't really matter. Rather we have this guitar hero pushing his message of peace and brotherhood in a galaxy embroiled in brutal war. He's doing all he can, he thinks.

But of course he's not (I had vibes here of Springsteen's No Surrender "There's a war outside still raging/ You say it ain't ours anymore to win" and there's a moment of realisation with attempts to coop the tour  for sinister purposes, a moment of truth and decision which leads to a fascinating quest. The ultimate test here is then very much one of those "surely there must be another way?" setups where, behind the spaceships and the zooming, the point is that the hero must, will, reject the constraints imposed on them and do the different thing. The Kobayashi Maru moment, in Star Trek language.

And who better, in such a moment, to use their humanity, their sympathy, their courage, than Jimi Hendrix?

A fine graphic novel with a powerful, beating heart. Recommended.

For more information about Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze, 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 Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

#Review - Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Death at the Sign of the Rook
Kate Atkinson
Doubleday, 22 August 2024
Available as: HB, 336pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9780857526571

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Death at the Sign of the Rook  to consider for review.

The appearance of a new Jackson Brodie novel is always an event to celebrate and Death at the Sign of the Rook truly lives up to expectations, culminating in a classic country house murder with all the expected ingredients - a retired Major, a vicar, a dowager and, of course, in Brodie himself, the renowned amateur sleuth.

At the same time, it's none of those things. While the murder itself evolves as a kind of play within a play (literally - Burton Makepeace House, cut off by the blizzard, is hosting a murder mystery weekend and we're treated to scenes in which the band of itinerant performers, the literal murderer(s), and all the guests who have assembled for the event, get hilariously confused) it is also commenting on, and being shaped by, events of the early 21st century. 

An aristocratic family on its uppers. 

A soldier injured in Afghanistan and facing a bleak future. 

A vicar who thinks he's gone down the wrong path. 

A middle aged couple anxious to wring every last penny form their mum's estate.

And Brodie himself, surveying it all with a jaundiced eye.

As the husband of a priest, I was particularly taken with the Vicar, Simon, a man whose backstory included the same theological college my son is currently studying at. I was struck by his dilemma, his sense of futility, of a moment of revelation that maybe wasn't - but also by his history which blends an awkward suburban past, a career in the TV industry and that moment of revelation in a York church. I recently read Atkinson's Normal Rules Don't Apply, a book of loosely linked short stories, and recognised Simon as totally belonging in the collection of rackety, slightly loner-y figures encountered there. (I would point out, though, that true vicarly mastery isn't the ability to surreptitiously glance at a watch, as Atkinson suggests. That is too obvious. The thing is to place oneself in a room so that one can easily spot the clock face, a much less obvious action. At least, so my wife tells me, and I never doubt the word of the clergy).

The book struck other chords with me too. Like Ben, the ex-Major, I have a great-uncle who died at Monte Cassino. That probably goes to show more the scale of that battle than anything about Atkinson aiming her writing at me, but I found it a telling detail. I loved Ben, the kind of diffident character who suffers fools gracefully and downplays his problems. He's currently living with his sister and her wife, the former a vet who takes in waifs and strays and has "an abundance of Labradors" (how can you have too many?) Ben might be one of the strays himself, perhaps, but when he steps onto the stage as The major in the denouement he's far from a waif, and equally far from the doddering Major of the Golden Age detective mystery that Atkinson's subverting.

This kind of telling characterisation - knowing, subversive, but still affectionate - is a highlight of Atkinson's books. With Brodie at the centre of the story, it might be tempting to focus on him and have everyone else a supporting character but Atkinson gives plenty of time and space to the others, drawing out their stories and creating fully rounded figures who then behave in fanstastically complex ways. Any could easily carry a book of their own, and I rather hope some will. Which isn't to say that Bodie himself is neglected, quite the opposite. Entering the story via those avaricious siblings who report that their mum's priceless Renaissance painting ("Woman With Weasel") has gone missing, Brodie soon spots that a similar theft has taken place at Burton Makepeace, allowing him to involve a reluctant DC Reggie Chase (hooray!) and to explore the history of an aristocratic family fallen on hard times.

There is simply so much going on in this book, often not directly concerning crimes - while there is a blend of murder and art theft here, in many respects they're almost incidental - but rather, people. And yes, people do sometimes commit crimes, but there are much more interesting things to say about people, and in particular about this bunch of peculiar people who assemble one snowy night to enact a murder...

I'd strongly recommend Death at the Sign of the Rook. I knew I would!

For more information about Death at the Sign of the Rook, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Houses of the Unholy by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

Houses of the Unholy

Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips 
Image Comics, 27 August 2024
Available as: HB   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781534327429

I'm grateful to Image Comics for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Houses of the Unholy to consider for review.

I recently went to see Arthur Miller's play The Crucible at the Gielgud theatre in London. This story of mass delusion leading to a literal witch-hunt is a deep part of modern culture but it was the first time I had actually watched it. The parallels with the McCarthy political purges are well known, but I didn't know until I read this graphic novel that it also prefigured a more literal form of witch-hunt that actually took place in the USA in the 1980s, a couple of decades after Miller's play appeared. (My lack of knowledge of this perhaps reflects a deep gulf between the pre Internet age and now - something like this would, of course, be all over social media and impossible to miss. But in the 80s I, and most people, were not online).

The parallels are, as depicted in Houses of the Unholy, close. Young kids, pushed by peer pressure and fundamentalist-minded parents and authority figures such as therapists and clergy, denounce teachers, youth workers and others. The whole thing snowballs. Reason sleeps. Those falsely labelled are ostracised, lose their jobs and sometimes take their own lives. In the backwash, when a degree of common sense is reasserted, there is guilt and retribution. Lives are damaged or lost.

In Houses of the Unholy we first meet Natalie Burns checking in at a remote motel. She pays in cash and asks for a cabin isolated from the others. Is she up to something, or does she just want a bit of peace and quiet? Of course it's the former, and the story soon takes a dark turn, resulting in attention form the local police and a driven, maverick, FBI agent.

Learning more about Natalie's background, we gradually understand how she got caught caught up in the 80s panic, and what she feels she has to atone for. The stigma of those events wrecked Natalie's family and her brother spiralled off into online conspiracy fandom. She herself cannot forget what she did - but nor can she properly distinguish the false memories from the true ones. At first seeming a rather unpleasant character, Brubaker and Philips do build sympathy for Natalie as the story continues, showing how she, too, was a victim in all this and what she has done to rebuild her life.

Agent Paul West, who begins by arresting Natalie but then offers her a deal if she'll cooperate, is a bit of a classic loner, apparently working an angle that he shouldn't be. We learn little about him until later in the book, partly because his attempts at bonding with Natalie are pretty much rebuffed. Endlesss car journeys in frozen silence are more suitable for a graphic novel depiction than they are to prose. and Houses of the Unholy makes excellent use of panels without speech as well as using background colour to animate the mood - a cool blue for the frequent noir-ish, nighttime scenes, red when we scent evil, particularly for flashbacks to the 80s. It's a compelling and addictive story, weaving together both the aftermaths of the 80s panic and a modern strand of apocalyptic, End-Of-Times fear that's pointed up later in the story by a distant warning siren (we never learn what it's warning of) as well as our heroes encountering unnatural disasters such as floods and wildfires.

All in all an excellent horror-tinged tale that ends on a note of real uncertainty, blurring the boundary between human evil and the supernatural. Great fun.

For more information about Houses of the Unholy, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Ninth Life by Stark Holborn

Ninth Life (Factus Sequence, 3)

Stark Holborn
Titan Books, 23 July 
Available as: PB, 416pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781803362984

I'm grateful to the author and publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Ninth Life to consider for review.

Ninth Life is a return to the universe of Ten Low and of Hel's Eight - a future dominated by the militaristic Accord, which ruthlessly exploits its colony planets for raw materials, assisted by various warlords, gangster capitalist federations and oligarchs. Opposition has arisen on the mysterious but especially harsh world of Factus with its spirits, the probability-bending Ifs, who are able - sometimes - to turn likelihood on its head. Also featuring are the Seekers, with their semi-religious trade in organs and blood.

Ninth Life follows the career of ex General Gabriella Ortiz, originally a child soldier and a former hero of the Accord. Gabi featured in the earlier books, and her arrival, dragged from the wreck of a crashed spacecraft, nods to that. Here, though, her story is given in full - although it's contradictory to say that because as the narrator of Ninth Life makes clear, he has limited, uncertain sources and somebody is trying to erase his work.

Military Proctor Idrisi Blake himself is as much a character here as Gabi. We see his understanding of, and sympathy with, the former general turned pirate and rebel develop as his researches proceed. The framing is complex, with at least two different timelines for Gabi and numerous witnesses and accounts used to substantiate her career, but it's made more so by a fourth wall breaking effect where she seems at times to be directly addressing Blake. Failing to heed the often repeated instruction not to listen to her, Blake falls more and more under Gabi's spell, as do most of those she encounters and as, I am sure, will most readers.

Yet Gabi remains something of a mystery. Through a series of battles, fights, escapes, downfalls, injuries and betrayals we learn a lot about her origins, motivation and fears - but less about her intentions. Hers has been a life with loss (you'll know that if you've read the previous books) and she's suffered both betrayal and failure, but even so, everywhere she goes, everything she does, seems to align with some unstated purpose. It's less than clear how far she knows and understands this herself (the asides to Blake suggest that she does) and how far she is is actively cooperating with it or how much she is being drawn along. The best I can put it is, the Ifs, who are an important part of this story, will offer their help but only on their own terms, and there is a cost. Gabi is clearly paying that price, but we don't know - and I don't think she does - how far she is being given fair weight in exchange for her coin.

All in all a heart-pounding and exciting story with a core of steel. As ever Stark Holborn is superlative in bringing alive these actively hostile, dead-end-of-the-galaxy locations, places which make each day's survival a heroic act and every character, therefore, a hero. They're like the desert environs of the typical Western raised to the power 100.  That will be familiar from the earlier books, but the story has now expanded beyond that Western-in-Space metaphor to a whole new level of weird, anarchic, punkiness that is just a glory to read.

I'm not sure if there will be more in this series - the ending is I think deliberately unclear - but if there are I will be delighted. Holborn's books provide something - a spice, a feistiness - which, while impossible to pin down, is I think unique in current SF and which I just can't get enough of.

For more information about Ninth Life, see the publisher's website here.

#Blogtour #Review - Prey by Vanda Symon

Prey (Sam Shephard, 6)

Vanda Symon
Orenda Books, 15 August 2024
Available as: PB, 278pp audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 97819116788220

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

There is a particular comfort in returning a well-loved and long running series - none more so than with Symon's books featuring New Zealand detective Sam Shephard. Over the course of five stories so far, and now a sixth, we've seen Sam progress from a reckless, not so say rash young woman working in a remote town as the only outpost of law and order to a detective in Dunedin. In the last book, Expectant, she was heavily pregnant. In Prey, Sam is the new mother of Amelia, just returned to work, and Symon usefully explores the ups and downs of this - the tiredness, the child who won't be put down when one wishes to eat or take a bath, the nappy changing... there's a particular incident of a "poonami" that I think all new parents will relate to (we have curtains that never recovered). 

All this as Sam is tasked with reopening an especially tricky cold case. DI Johns, also know as The Boss and by a host of less repeatable epithets, has asked her to pick up an investigation form 25 years ago, the murder of a priest on the cathedral steps, no less. It's a case which requires particular tact as Johns is connected to it himself. And it's one which awakens dark memories for Sam from her own early life.

If you're a regular reader of this series you'll know already that Sam is at her best when up against it: every problem here - the lack of forensic evidence, pressure from her superiors, vanished witnesses, that creeping miasma of unease that she feels as she climbs the cathedral steps - just spurs her on to try harder, find new angles, try different things. So as the story unfolds, Sam's re-examination of witnesses, her unpicking of evidence and her posting of awkward questions are just wonderful to see. Symon has a rare skill, the ability to make a situation visible. Without dropping any clunky hints or telling you the answer, she creates, in the reader's head, a kind of hologram, a grasp of all the angles and possibilities. Here, mediated by Sam, we begin to see the strains and tensions that, decades before, led to murder - and their imprint on the witnesses being re-interviewed in the present day.

It is though a nasty, unedifying picture that unfolds, with an apparently loving and supportive community riven by jealousy, judgementalism and old-fashioned patriarchy. As Sam gets deeper into things, she increasingly wonders why she was asked to reopen this case, whether she was ever meant to solve it, and if she does, what the cost may be for all concerned?

All in all this is a taut, compulsive and involving read, a book I more inhaled than read. Weaving together two serious themes, relating to parenting an infant and caring for a teenage daughter, it challenges us as to what is really important in putting a child's needs first - rather than just paying lip service to that - and shows how secrets can undermine the most loving of relationships. (The family of the Revd Mark Freeman in particular seems to have raised the keeping of these to an artform, one matched only by Sam's ability or prise out the truth from reluctant witnesses.)

Prey is another great instalment in this series from Vanda Symon. As I said above, it was marvellous to meet Sam again and to see how her life is changing. But above all this is a scorching and immersive detective story.

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