#Review - The Red Hollow by Natalie Marlow

The Red Hollow

Natalie Marlow
Baskerville, 28 March 2024 
Available as: HB, 307pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781399801843

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Red Hollow  to consider for review.

William (Billy) Garrett and Phyll (Hall) are back, six months after the events of Needless Alley, for another investigation in the 1930s Midlands. In this story, though, Marlow moves away from the noir-ish atmosphere of the earlier books, with its dark, smoky cityscape and its themes of political and economic corruption, and gives us something more like a classic 30s murder mystery in which a group of people are stranded in a remote country house. The sense of place is equally strong. But so is the sense of cloying evil - reminding me of Sherlock Holmes's comment that the vilest crimes take place in the countryside.

The story opens with a call for help. Phyll's brother, Freddy, is being cared for in a private asylum in the village of Red Hollow "out in the county" (though within a short driving distance). The fees for this have swallowed up the family money, explaining why she's been so desperate for cash and now its proprietor, Dr Moon, asks her and William to investigate strange disturbances and a death that have taken place. The unspoken deal is this will cover some of the fees.

So Phyll and William venture out into the woods, and soon find themselves out of their depth, The surviving patients - including Freddy - put the strange events down to the legendary man-hating "mermaid" which is said to haunt the local lake. This creature recurs, in folkloric allusions, a carving in the local church, and as part of the family backstory of Lady Pike, who owns the Hall but has been forced to let it out. her family has, it seems, many eminently hateable men in its lineage.

A phantom mermaid can't, however, have been killing and mutilating patients, even if the weather has taken a preternatural turn for the torrential, stranding Phyll overnight. Fretting alone in Birmingham, he calls on his old gangster friend Queenie for help. Then the fun really begins...

This is an exceptionally creepy, tense novel, mainly focussed on the events of a single night during which William, Phyll, Queen and Moon, joined by a ragtag collection of patients and the fearsome dowager Lady Pike, sustain themselves variously by copious amounts of drugs, drink and tobacco. There are gruesome deaths (the local vicar is bludgeoned in the first few moments). There are disturbing visions. And there is a tangled plot bringing together the unspoken secret of Red Hollow Hall, modern gang violence and of course the shadow of the War. 

As to the latter, this book is soaked in the backwash of the Trenches - most of the male characters played some part and it shapes their hopes and fears, their responses to, especially, the kind of stress they find themselves under here. This is very much an asylum where the patients are in charge - indeed Moon himself struck me as a man who could easily be on either side of the padded door, as it were. So, be assured, the switch to something that at first sight looks like a cosy Golden Age mystery doesn't mean that Marlow is going soft on us, indeed the opposite is true. Nor, in the end, are we free of political or at least social commentary with two very different historical trends - the stifling hand of the aristocracy, and the dark stirrings of organised crime - surfacing. (Or perhaps, not so very different trends, isn't aristocracy just gangsterism which has forgotten its roots?)

Plot strands wrap together - the delusions of the patients, that relentless fear of something evil in the dark, the decline of the Pike family in the face of coal mines and clay pits eating up their land and dissolute fathers and sons eating up the estate, Queenie's uneasy sway over the Birmingham underworld, and more.

It makes for a messy, compromising, affair, one that nobody comes away from with clean hands, but which is a fascinating, nail biting read and one I'd strongly recommend.

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

#Review - Hokey Pokey by Kate Mascarenhas

Hokey Pokey
Kate Mascarenhas
Head of Zeus (Apollo), 8 June 2023
Available as: HB, 322pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 1789543851

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of Hokey Pokey via Neutrally to consider for review.

It's February 1929 and a snowstorm descends on Birmingham. All the railway lines are blocked and a disparate group of guests is stranded in the city centre Regent Hotel. Among them are psychoanalysts Nora Dickinson and renowned operatic diva Berenice "The Icon" Oxbow. Is their presence wholly random, or do the two women have some connection...?

I love novels with a strong location and well depicted setting - as here (the book even comes with plans of the hotel). They allow one to sink into the routines and conventions of the location, and watch the characters run, as it were, though the mazes of the author's invention. Having the protagonists isolated from their normal lives, caught briefly out of time, as it were, adds to the pleasure which here is enhanced by the jousting between Nora and Berenice, and by Nora's startling ability at mimicry - basically if she hears something once, she can repeat it exactly forever. That ability, and the idea of mimicry and of truth, are at the centre of this thought-provoking and satisfyingly complex story - as much as the series of gruesome killings that begins to occur...

An icon is, of course, a depiction of a saint or of God, but one that is held to be more than just an image. Beronice is named for Veronica, who mopped Jesus' tears, obtaining a true icon of the deity. Nora can reproduce life to a startling degree, and, as we find out when we learn the two women's stories, both have history that is entangled with deception, imitation and untruth (the cataclysmic event of Nora's childhood encapsulating this). And it's all taking place in the glittering, mirrored splendour of a hotel, an unreal place with its own contradictions: between the guests' accommodation and the back stairs (the map shows both the guest and staff sides), between the lives of the guests and those of the staff, between the guests' everyday life and their hotel existence.  There are of course many secrets to come out, but before they do, they shape events here like invisible plumbing behind ornate walls.

The sense of a charade taking place, of everything being one step away from tumbling down to reveal what is really going on, is intensified by the two womens' positions seeming so shaky. Berenice is accepted and acclaimed because of her voice, which may however fail at any time (it has before). Nora is a woman in a profession dominated by powerful, manipulative men and - as Mascarenhas makes clear - even her presence in the hotel, as a woman alone, is on sufferance (she isn't allowed in the cocktail lounge unaccompanied, for example).

It is a bewildering, intoxicating novel, just as much so, I'd guess, as one of those Hokey Pokey cocktails (recipe helpfully provided) which Nora so much enjoys. With a real taste for time and place and more than a twist of the gothic, this is a book to savour.

I normally direct readers to the publisher's website for further information about a book, I'm afraid I haven't found an up to date entry on the Head of Zeus site here so would suggest looking at online retailers or indeed Netgalley itself here.

#Review - Needless Alley by Natalie Marlow

Needless Alley
Natalie Marlow
Baskerville, 19 January 2023
Source: Advance copy
Available as: HB, 322pp, e, audio
ISBN(HB): 9781399801799

I'm grateful to Baskerville for sending me an advance copy of Needless Alley to consider for review.

'This was Savile Row smut, nicely tailored and nothing vulgar. Smut for gentlemen rather than players. Smut for the officer class, no doubt of that...'

Set in the early 30s Birmingham, Needless Alley explores the contradictions of that city - the powerful and wealthy with their country houses and vast incomes from manufacturing, and the demimonde. The bridge between the two is William Garrett - Billy -  a private detective whose trade is to facilitate divorces for husbands who wish to be shot of their wives.

William is a complex character, a man who's reinvented himself. Marlow (what a name for a writer of noir!) explicitly pitches him as that man who is not himself mean, but who walks those mean streets. William though has his flaws. He confesses to being drawn by money. he is in a dirty trade, operating honeytraps to obtain compromising photos of those inconvenient wives so they can be divorced. Most of all, to the modern eye perhaps, he's distanced from his origins. Not physically, because the canals where he grew up are only a few hundred yards from his office on Needless Alley, but emotionally and socially. William has smoothed away his Brummie accent and there's some bad blood (never explained) between him and the barge people, bad blood that gets him a kicking at one point in the novel. It feels as though he's shut the door to where he came from

Still, it's his old friend Queenie that William turns to when he gets into trouble, his accent slipping - I loved the way that Marlow played with the characters' speech, you can hear them all clearly in your mind as you read the book - and we then learn a bit of what binds him to her and to his other friend Ronnie. Ronnie plays the honey in William's traps, and he's also another who has a foot in different worlds, more so than even William realises.

This book takes us to those worlds - to clandestine Queer bars, to haunts of artists and sex workers, to the tenements of the poor and to the locations of seamy photoshoots, where powerful men pay to watch the models pose, to closed factories and far-right politics, to the struggles of desperate people to stay one step away from destitution. A perfect noir setting, Marlow's Birmingham is a city whose residents are still struggling with the legacy of war - William clearly suffering form what now we'd call PSTD - and, as I said, struggling to get by, but one where every new opportunity (and every willing victim) is being exploited.

William finds himself a refuge from all this for a while, an unexpected refuge, but in doing so he brings more trouble on himself than he could have imagined. When reputations are threatened, his hard-won status will count for little except to identify him as someone who doesn't know their place and who can therefore take the blame for whatever is really going on.

Needless Alley is a beautifully written novel, a very material book. Natalie Marlow dwells on the physicality of her city - the heat of the Summer, the stink of the canals, the Birmingham brass of a bullet  casing, the new steel handcuffs on the model in that photography session. And always the cigarette smoke, the drink, the noise, a cacophony that lets up only briefly when William finds... well, that would be a spoiler.

I loved this book. I loved William. I loved Phyll, his unlikely ally in the spiral of blood and deception he enters and his guide in some of the hidden places he needs to walk. I loved spotting familiar locations transformed. I loved its engagement with the toxic mess that is British class. Most of all I loved its exploration of a vibrant, jostling city - and of the darkness just beneath the surface. A glorious read.

(CW that the book does deal with themes of rape and abuse and there is one fairly gruesome description of a murder scene).

For more information about Needless Alley, see the publisher's website here. 

#Blogtour #Review - Neon by G S Locke

Neon
G S Locke
Orion, 9 July 2020
Available as: PB, 416pp, e

Read as: Advance e-copy via NetGalley

ISBN: 9781409190462

I'm grateful to Orion for an advance e-copy of Neon via NetGalley and for inviting me to take part in the Blogtour. 

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night...

This is a unique, deeply atmospheric and unsettling exploration of the dark side of an English city, with a great sense of place. It also hangs very precisely on the relationships of its protagonists which remained with me long after I'd finished the book.

The Neon killer craves attention and recognition. His victims are found posed, arranged, surrounded by handmade, unique neon signs taunting victims, police, the public. How this was done - amidst the hubbub of a busy city - is just as much a mystery as why and as by whom. Fear at the killer, and anger at the police who can't catch him, simmer as the killings progress...

Neon has as its principle characters Jackson, the washed up detective who's failed so far and whose failure culminated in the murder of his wife, Iris, a young woman moving in Birmingham's underworld - and the killer himself. We see the killer's life and motivations, the book slowly and steadily unpeeling him, but much of the mystery is retained as it isn't clear till the very end how he fits with Iris and Jackson - although he's clearly fixated on the latter.

All three are delineated well, Locke choosing to come into the story midway. There have already been several murders, Jackson is already off the case, morosely haunting coffee shops and nursing thoughts of self-destruction. This means, despite the sequence of violent and grisly killings, we don't experience the successive discovery of each. That gives the book a sense of pace and avoids repetition as well as distancing the story from glorifying violence against women, a danger I think with the serial-killer genre. This last was something I thought about quite a lot when reading Neon. Do we really need more such stories? In this case, I think Locke brings something new and distinct.

Yes, there are killings of women. Yes, Jackson is, by the time we meet him, motivated by revenge (though also by guilt). But this is balanced by the portrayal of the killer and his motivations as rooted - ultimately - in misogyny. That's a creepy and gradual portrait, done with great skill and all the better for the restraint used. We never actually see any of the murders take place, only the aftermath - unlike Iris who we do see kill several times. She is an efficient and sought-after contract killer, a complicating factor when she and Jackson come into each others' orbit and find they have no choice but to work together.

The relationship that then develops is rich and complex, both Jackson and Iris being wounded, both putting up fronts and playing parts. They depend upon each for reasons that we only partly understand - not because the book is imperfect but because there are so many depths here and it is so painful for both of them to be exploring those depths that it can only happen bit by bit. I'll just say that Iris is much more than just a hitwoman and Jackson has much more driving him than revenge.

In fact that relationship is what I'll take away from this book, even more than its portrayal of a moody and threatening Birmingham, just outside the blazing lights of the busy shopping streets,  stations and public buildings.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made...

You can buy neon from your local bookshop, or online from Hive Books (who support local shops), Blackwell's, Foyles, Waterstones, WH Smith or Amazon. 

For more about this book, see the publisher's website here. And there are more stops on the tour - see the poster below for details!

Review - The Hollow Tree by James Brogden

Cover design by Julia Lloyd

The Hollow Tree
James Brogden
Titan Books, 13 March 2018
PB, 478pp

I'm grateful to Lydia at Titan Books for an advance copy of The Hollow Tree.

Mary in the oak tree
Cold as cold can be
Waiting for the sky to fall
Who will dance with me?

Shortly before the end of the Second World War, a young woman's body is found hidden in a tree in the Lickey Hills, south of Birmingham. Who is she and how did she get there? Who did dance with Mary?

Theories grow up to fill the vacuum.

She was a witch, killed in some sinister ritual.

She was a foreign spy.

She was a sex worker, murdered by a client one dark night.

Theories, but no answers.

Until Rachel Cooper suffers a horrific accident, losing her left hand. As she makes her recovery, she begins to feel things with that missing hand. Is this just normal phantom pain following an amputation? Or more? As she rebuilds her life, Rachel, and her husband Tom, are drawn into the mystery of Mary - of all the Marys. Some sort of boundary has been crossed, and the uncanny is loose. Can it be contained? Can Rachel find out what happened to Mary, and save her from the in-between world that she senses with her missing hand?

This book shares the modern Birmingham setting of Brogden's Hekla's Children, published last year, which similarly brought supernatural weirdness and paradox to trouble and perplex - and menace - the present. It's eerily effective. Rachel, the main protagonist, is capable, and coping well with her loss. Brogden grounds her and Tom in a believable relationship, furnished with slightly controlling in-laws and family secrets. The effect on Rachel of her injury is explored, as well as the difference it makes to Tom and both drive the story in ways that only become clear as it unfolds.

At the heart of that story are three women, and three acts of male violence. The unfortunate Mary is, effectively, challenged to be one of those victims - take your pick. She is, though, more than a victim. She is just as resolute and self-sufficient as Rachel and together the two women defy death (several deaths) and whatever rules in that shadowy Otherworld - even when this puts others in peril. It is a fantasy, but a fantasy with the drive and menace of a thriller, as the combatants duel across the city and across time for high stakes.

I was intrigued by the way that Brogden handles possibilities in the book. It is a very quantum horror story! What really happened? Well, that depends on how you look and what you want to see. What happened in the past doesn't stay in the past, and the present, though built on that past, filters through the layers of time to affect the past. It's never completely sure how fixed this is - what would Rachel find if she went back to visit a certain gravestone in a Birmingham churchyard at the end of the book? - and that's part of the mystery and appeal. Hekla's Children played a particular game with time and causality which wasn't apparent almost till the end: in this book it's much clearer what is going on, with parallel narratives for the three Marys, but even so Brogden does bowl a couple of googlies that I didn't see coming at all. And the pace of the action means that you don't stop to think too deeply about the central plot device (which might otherwise make your head hurt at least a little bit...)

An immersive, compelling fantasy thriller that kept me up till the early hours. Recommended.

For more information on the book, see the publisher's website here. You can buy The Hollow Tree from your friend local bookshop, or here, here or here (and no doubt other places besides).