#Blogtour #Review - Deep Dark Night by Steph Broadribb

Cover design by kid-ethic

Deep Dark Night (Lori Anderson, 4)
Steph Broadribb
Orenda Books, 5 March 2020
PB, e, 290pp

I'm grateful to Orenda and to Anne for letting me have an advance copy of Deep Dark Night and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

I have to confess, there is a soft spot in my cynical blogger heart for Broadribb's books and especially for her hero Lori Anderson and it was an especial please to meet Broadribb a couple of weeks ago when Orenda brought her - and also Simone Buchholz and Vanda Symon - to a launch at the new Victoria Street Waterstones in London. That already seems another era, and looks like being my last bookish evening for sometime.

But while launches and parties may (temporarily, I hope) be no more the books remain, and in this latest instalment - the fourth featuring Lori - Broadribb has shaken things up to give us quite a different sort of mystery-thriller.

If you haven't met Lori yet, she's just about the toughest bounty hunter that you don't want on your trail, fearless, resourceful and determined. Now she's - finally - managed to get the Miami Mob off her back, brokering a peace of sorts (even if she's got sleepless nights from the slaughter she witnessed in so doing). So its natural that she jumps straight out of the frying pan into another high-stakes, high-octane confrontation, this time with Chicago gang boss Cabressa who has a particularly exclusive poker game to which she's been invited.

This is all at the bidding of shifty FBI agent Alex Monroe, who's got Lori into trouble before and now seems to be doubling down. The result is a sweaty, airless confrontation in a locked down penthouse while the city itself is plunged into darkness. Ten players - each with a secret - go into that penthouse. Somebody wants only one to emerge.

While Lori's previous outings have been road trips - if deadly road trips - as she races across the country, chasing the clock to save somebody or rescue herself from betrayal or double-cross, Deep Dark Night is constructed differently. I see DNA here from crime fiction of the Golden Age, with echoes of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None or of classic locked-room mysteries.  A bunch of strangers, all with reasons to distrust each other, forced together and under pressure.

So. Much. Pressure.

Lori's driven to her limits as she must protect herself (and partner JT), deliver the deal with Monroe that'll free her from his control, and work out just what is going on. Early in the book we see her learning to play poker, and while I know nothing about that game it's obvious that her skills in bluff, assessing the odds, and defeating her opponents by sheer will and cheek, will be key.

They's better be - she's had to hand over her weapons at the door...

This is a claustrophobic, race-against-the-clock thrill ride taking place during the course of one single deep, dark, night when there is no backup, no rules - and no mercy.

It is unlike the previous Lori books - but very like, in that central, dauntless hero who just won't lie down.

As I said, if you haven't met Ms Anderson yet, well here she is. Get to know her through this night, and then find out what she's already done in Deep Down Dead, Deep Blue Trouble and Deep Dirty Truth.

For more information about Deep Dark Night, see the Orenda website here.

You can order the book from your local highstreet bookshop - in these challenging times it's especially important to support local bookshops and as Karen form Orenda sets out in a blog here, the company is supporting bookshops with deliveries at a time when some of the big sellers - including A Big Internet Site - are drawing back. Hive books supports local shops. Alternatively you can visit Waterstones, Blackwell's, Foyles or WH Smith.

The tour continues with more delights to come - see the poster for the next stops!

Blogtour review - Deep Dirty Truth by Steph Broadribb

Deep Dirty Truth
Steph Broadribb
Orenda Books, 10 January 2019
PB, e 277pp

Today I'm joining my first blogtour of 2019, for Steph Broadribb's third Lori Anderson thriller, Deep Dirty Truth. I'm grateful to Orenda and to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the tour and especially to Steph herself for sending me a PERSONALLY DEDICATED copy of the proof (see picture, left).

This might be a good place to confess that I'm a fully signed up member of #TeamLori so this might not be the most objective review on the world. On the other hand I wouldn't be reviewing this if I didn't think it was amazing.

Right, what do we have here? First, some backstory. Lori Anderson, single mum to daughter Dakota, works as a bounty hunter in Florida. It's a dangerous living, but she needs to earn as Dakota is in remission from leukaemia and needs ongoing treatment. Recently things have been particularly difficult because her work, and her history, have brought the attentions of the Miami Mob, ruthless killers who want revenge for Lori's killing ten years before of her abusive husband, a Mob lynchpin. But she's also got together again with Dakota's father, legendary bounty hunter JT, also wanted by the Mob - so there's that.

All of this unfolded in the first two books, Deep Down Dead and Deep Blue Trouble,  and I won't say any more about the detail of what happened because spoilers - if you haven't read these books you should, so go and do that, right?  If you have, you can carry on.

So where were we? Back to Deep Dirty Truth, I think.

Broadribb doesn't mess around with her opening. Going about her normal business in the opening chapter, wishing a couple of pages, Lori's been abducted, bound and hooded and slung in the back of a van. The head of the Mob, Old Man Bonchese, wants to make her an offer (that she can't refuse, naturally). She's to "rescue" one of his men, Carlton North, who's in FBI witness protection. Succeed, and her debt is written off. Fail and she's dead.

As are Dakota and JT.

It's a daunting task, taking Lori into immense danger while stoking up her fears for her recently united, oh-so-fragile family.

And Lori, being Lori, swallows the danger, lays her plans, and sets to work.

One of the things I adore about these books by Broadribb is her portrayal of this capable, determined woman, Lori. The closest character I can think of as a comparison if you haven't read the books (in which case you shouldn't be reading this, should you?) is Villanelle in the BBC's Killing Eve series. Not in the sense that Villanelle is a deranged killer - Lori is the very opposite - but in the practical, dauntless competence she shows. (And yes, she is breaking inside, not least at the danger to her family, but the job's got to be done, OK?)

Steph Broadribb

The story is basically a chase, from danger into danger, Mob on one side, FBI on the other, and accompanying Lori, the equivocal figure of North himself who is playing his own game, with his own allies and assets. It's soon clear, if we ever doubted, that simply fulfilling Bonchese's terms won't be enough (for Lori OR her family). Somehow, she has to square all the factions involved here and do it while the subject of a giant manhunt with her picture on TV and in the Press and every hand against her. On the way she'll have to face her deepest fears (there are ALLIGATORS in this book! Again!)

Sorting this means she needs to discover that deep, dirty truth of the title - a truth that'll put all her troubles of the past ten years in a new light...

In a sense this is a classic template for a thriller - there are echoes of The Thirty Nine Steps, for example - a protagonist who's cut off suddenly from her own life, forced to live by her wits and with only limited time to put things right. Not by any means a new idea. Yet just as in music, so here the constraints of a classic form show Broadribb at the top her game, keeping this pacy, relentless novel rattling along at almost breathtaking speed and building tension on tension as the bodycount increases.

It's very much a Lori focussed story - while we do see what's happening with JT and Dakota, and there is some action for them, that's quite subsidiary (though I think the consequences may matter in future books - there is some definite Feelings stuff going on for Lori and JT...) making for a very linear plot, which also stokes the atmosphere considerably.

In all, a superb addition to the Lori canon.

You can get Deep Dirty Truth from Hive Books, Waterstones, Blackwells or Amazon as well as lots of other places. And the blogtour continues until the end of January - see the poster below for the list of brilliant bloggers taking part!

Blogtour review - Deep Blue Trouble by Steph Broadribb

Deep Blue Trouble (Lori Anderson, 2)
Steph Broadribb
Orenda Books, 5 January 2018
PB, 320pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book and for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

Broadribb's hero, single mother bounty hunter Lori Anderson, burst on the scene in 2017 in Deep Down Dead and her new adventure follows straight on from the frenetic chase across Florida described there.

I think I've fallen a little bit for Lori (but don't tell anyone) and couldn't wait to meet her again. Deep Blue Trouble offers that opportunity and, oh, WOW!

Lori has accepted a dubious deal offered by even more dubious FBI Agent Alex Monroe, in order to get JT, the father of her child, Dakota our of prison (and potentially, off Death Row). All she has to do is bring in escaped multiple murderer Gibson 'The Fish' Fletcher and dodge the footsoldiers of the Miami Mob who now suspect her of having killed her abusive husband, Mob enforcer Tommy.

Easy.

Except... she must leave Dakota behind to do the job, she can't trust Monroe, someone's trying to kill JT in jail - and Lori begins to suspect that she's been fed a pack of lies about Gibson.

As I said, easy.

The story rapidly takes off, with Lori following Gibson to California, where she discovers further Mob entanglements and is ordered by Monroe to work with a team of local bounty hunters led by the hostile Dez McGregor. Between trying to work with the resentful and distrustful Dez, chasing down her own leads on Gibson, worrying about JT and Dakota and being shadowed by goodness knows who, Lori is often at her wits' end. But that's where Broadribb's awesome hero really shifts things up and fights back - one of the qualities that stood out about her in Deep Down Dead. Relying only on the precepts that JT gave her and on her own instinct, she never gives up, refuses to knuckle down to either Dez or to Monroe, and sticks a finger up at the Mob.

It's a tense, powerful ride from then on. The antagonists here will show no mercy and there's no saying how deep their reach goes. JT is assaulted in jail and at their mercy. They know that Lori has a child. Can she keep one step ahead and save those she loves?

One of the strengths of Broadribb's writing is that she doesn't pull some implausible stunt from up her sleeve and make everything come out right. There is a mass of plot and counter-plot here and a great deal will only be resolved in (I hope) another book. For now, Lori holds some cards, but so do others and we just have to wait to see how they fall.

All in all, an excellent, breathtaking crime thriller with a compelling central character (oh Lori!) and plenty of action. I didn't feel by the time I'd reached the end of the book that every twist had been explained, but that's fine because this story is still very much in motion.

I look forward to Book 3!