#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.