Blogtour Review - The Transcendent Tide by Doug Johnstone

The Transcendent Tide (Enceladons, 3)
Doug Johnstone
Orenda Books, 14 August 
Available as: PB, 283pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788626

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

In the third and final part of The Enceladons Trilogy, we follow the mysterious jellyfish hive mind to the Arctic Ocean where the refugees from Enceladus have sought shelter. While the story could continue - and perhaps one day it? - this book draws a line, of sorts, for now, indicating what the presence of this peaceful, aquatic species may mean for Earth and its natives. Sandy reappears of course, as do Lennox, Vonnie, Ava, Chloe and Heather. 

Heather, ever restless, burdened by her life, chose to join with the Enceladons, to become, not one of them but more like them. Even this has not though wholly healed her mental wounds and she has also become concerned that Enceladons themselves may have changed, at last reacting to human aggression not by withdrawing but by retaliating. Boats have been sunk, hunters found dead. Heather wants to know more.

Lennox and Vonnie have been hiding out evading the authorities while missing their connection with the Enceladons. Ava has been caring for baby Chloe, but meets a crisis that she believes on Sanday can help her with. At the same time Lennox and Vonnie are tracked down by a mysterious billionaire, Karl Jensen, who clearly knows more than he should about the Enceladons.

I have been impressed by the way that Doug Johnstone has made each of the books in this series a different story, not just a recap of the same story. In Book 1, The Space Between Us Heather and Ava in particular had difficult personal circumstances which intertwined with an almost Buchan-esque flight across Scotland, pursued by both the authorities and a vengeful husband. Sandy's true nature, and that of his fellow Enceladons, were revealed in the course of this, showing the peaceful Enceladons in contrast to the patriarchal human authorities and attitudes. In Book 2, The Collapsing Wave, a secretive US military operation imprisoned our heroes and sought to control - and perhaps destroy - the Enceladons. Again, human militarism and desire for control were shown, but on a wider stage than in Book 1 and perhaps with wider consequences

Now, in The Transcendendent Tide, just as they seemed to have achieved safety, new threats arise for the Enceladons - and for the little band of friends. Also threatened is Niviaq, an Indigenous Greenland woman who is well aware of the realities of colonialism and might therefore be expected to be wary of the mysterious space aliens as well as the  wealthy private organisation now operating helicopters, ships and private jets from a sophisticated base in her homeland.

I enjoyed The Transcendendent Tide as much for its moral dimension as I did meeting dearly loved, familiar characters. There is action and mystery here - what is Jensen really up to? What's been happening to the sinking ships? - but also a crunchy ethical debate. What steps is one entitled to take - perhaps obliged to take - in the face of threats to life and to a way of life? What might though be lost of a peace loving species take such steps? Heather perhaps acts here as something of a conscience, I liked the way she doesn't judge but wants to know. Her conversations with Sandy are frustrating, limited as ever by the different conceptions the two have of individuality (even after Heather's transformation) and she's forced to investigate herself. But she doubts her judgement and even more, her right to judge.

All in all an exciting and satisfying end (or, I hope, pause?) in this evolving story, with tough choices for all.

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

#Blogtour #Review - The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen (trans David Hackston)

The Burning Stones
Antti Tuomainen (trans David Hackston)
Orenda Books, 24 October 2024
Available as: PB, 300pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(pB): 9781916788435

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, let's 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 - The Good Liar by Denise Mina

The Good Liar

Denise Mina
Penguin, 31 July 2025
Available as: HB, 272pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787304284

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

Professor Claudia O’Sheil is about to walk into an auditorium and give a speech that will blow up her life.

or she may not...

The creator of a world-beating algorithm for analysing crime scenes - an algorithm that has convicted countless suspects - Claudia has made her reputation and her fortune based on her work. In line for an MBE, she's head of the company set up to exploit the technique, and is frequently called to give evidence, as an expert witness, about its results. In a world where the crime scene "streamlined report" is the key evidence, her method is fundamental to modern justice. The comfort and safety of her two sons, and her own reputation and living, depend on this - but now she knows that the test is flawed.

And despite her apparently comfortable life, over the past year, Claudia has been through hell. She is estranged from her drug addict sister, Gina.  Her husband is dead, and now others too. Her two sons are growing away from her. And a young man who she considers innocent has gone to prison. 

Claudia's spent that year discovering the truth - many truths - and she hasn't liked what she found.

This book is split between two timelines. At the swish reception where Claudia's supposed to cement her position in moneyed society, we get minute slices of action as she inches towards that final betrayal - and debates with herself whether this is really something she can do. Between these are more substantial portions of narrative, setting out what happened over that awful year and sketching the gilded life that beckons Claudia if only she will shut up and lie with the guilt.

Mina's technique is exquisite, playing on our sympathies from moment to moment. I began, knowing little about the story or the character, thinking, yes, go on, burn it all down - because won't that be fun to see?

Then, as I learned more about Claudia and what she's been through - and the stakes at play - I began to dread that moment and wish she'd just play nice. The harm it would cause. The fall from grace. Those slices of story, working towards the end, stave off the final crisis (and the revelation of what Claudia actually does) but they also give us more story and that story is just so absorbing, a window into a fascinating world - several fascinating worlds - and a network of well-realised, relatable charctars. No, I was now thinking as I read, let's not wreck all this, not yet, but give me more about Gina. About Charlie. About Bernie and Sam. Don't tear it all down yet (or at all?)

Claudia's decision is central here. She's not from money, but has scrabbled her way, by talent and luck (and yes, by charm) into a set of the rich and influential - Cayman Islands lawyers, knights of the realm, the academic elite. It's a two-faced set, where scandal can be overlooked if you are the right sort, went to the right school, have the right money, or the right friends. But Claudia O’Sheil, an orphan from Glasgow who has flattened her accent but still has it tucked away, ready to code-switch out, has none of these things. She's on her own.

At the centre of this book isn't so much a murder mystery - though rest assured there is one here and it's a good one - but an ethical mystery. In a year-long exploration of that wealthy London elite, we see up close - as only an outsider like Claudia can - the profound ugliness of money and social sway. It's a scene she partakes of enthusiastically, Claudia's never had much and so the fear of losing it all now is really sharp for her, even before the spiralling situation reveals threats to those she loves. 

A compelling, heart-in-the-mouth story which left me racing to see what finally happened while dreading what the answer might be.

Strongly recommended.

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

Blogtour review - Home Before Dark by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Home Before Dark 
Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (trans Victoria Cribb)
Orenda Books, 17 July 2025
Available as: HB, 300pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781916788602

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

In this new standalone psychological crime novel, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir introduces us to troubled Marsí. In 1977, Marsí dreads the tenth anniversary of her older sister, Stína, disappearing into the Icelandic night. 

Marsí has always blamed herself for Stína's loss, because 14 year old Marsí, was conducting an illicit correspondence with a penpal - using Stína's name.

And on the night Stína vanished, Marsí had arranged to meet him...

The first thing to say about this novel is that - as the title hints - it is dark, dark, dark. The setting is almost gothic, the isolated town, and the even more isolated farmstead where Marsí's family still live, breathing suppressed secrets and decades old grief. Marsí's dad makes his living by farming hens, the miserable lives of the poor creatures in their close confinement adding suffering from which she shrinks, and her mum sits in the house drinking alone, mourning her lost career as an actress.

Marsí has her own problems - not all related to the trauma and guilt of losing her sister - and Ægisdóttir cleverly cuts between events of 1966/ 67 (seen from the perspective of each sister), and Marsí's life in 1977. She clearly has an eating disorder, something that goes unremarked in the 70s. Sometimes the two girls' accounts support each other, sometimes they contradict each other significantly. Add in that 70s Marsí is either misremembering, is imagining things, or is a very unreliable narrator indeed, and it's clear that Home Before Dark is a real puzzle box of a book, a story where nothing can be taken for granted and events need to be reconstructed, almost forensically.

All this, and Marsí begins receiving letters again from her former penpal, who now threatens to become her stalker.

I really enjoyed Home Before Dark. It's miles from the typical Icelandic crime mystery (not that I've anything against those!) in that here the investigation of the crime isn't the central thread of the story. Yes, Marsí does make a new attempt here to discover what happened in 1967. (Of course, everyone tells her to leave well alone). And - spoiler! - she does eventually succeed. And that has... consequences. But really, it's her journey to this knowledge - and the re animation of a whole series of relationships (friendships and enmities) from her teenage years, as well as the stirring of long buried family skeletons, that drive the story. Marsí herself emerges as a brilliantly portrayed character, at once very dislikable but also, ion her affliction and desperation, very vulnerable. I changed my mind more times about whether I found her sympathetic than in any book I've read for a long time. 

In best gothic fashion, Home Before Dark shows us one family tragedy, but hints at more. As we will eventually learn, behind the apparent catastrophe there are complex family dynamics and unhealed wounds. While the atmosphere of darkness grows, the detail is only revealed slowly, with plenty of time to get to know Marsí, Stína and their (rather strange) parents and circle of teenage friends (seen both in the 60s and, more grown up, later). Ægisdóttir also shows us bits of Icelandic history that are not normally explored in a contemporary crime novel. Some are just intriguing - like that fact that even in the 70s TV shut down on Thursday. Others are darker and look back to a more patriarchal, decidedly unmodern Iceland.

Though it all, Victoria Cribb's excellent translation captures mood and nuance, matching the gathering tension and keeping all the distinct voices clear and recognisable, with their idiosyncrasies and different identities.

 An excellent book, and a great escape from the current UK heatwave!

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

Review - Behind Frenemy Lines by Zen Cho

Behind Frenemy Lines

Zen Cho
Pam Macmillan, 3 July 2025 
Available as: PB, 320pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(PB): 9781035046102

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

Taking place in the same setting - the world of London business and law and its Asian diaspora community - Behind Frenemy Lines references some of the same characters and events as Cho's previous book, The Friend Zone Experiment, although it is somewhat less focussed on the gathering corruption scandal which that book introduced and feels more personal in tone. 

Behind Frenemy Lines introduces Kriya, a young lawyer, first seen when she wakes late and rushes to a car crash of an interview for a training place, literally falling at the feet of a man, Charles, who she keeps meeting over the next few years, always - in her mind - embarrassingly. (But why would she care about embarrassing herself in front of a man she's decided to write off as an enemy?)

Told in alternate, and often amusing, chapters alternating between Kriya's and Charles' perspectives, Behind Frenemy Lines gives us two distinct voices and styles, illuminating the personalities of two very different protagonists. Charles' sections are synoptic, missing out words and detail and commenting drily on events, as though for a diary. Kriya's are warmer, filled at times with horror at events as she finds herself unexpectedly sharing an office with her "Nemesis". At times they're rawer, though, as she encounters difficulties with a colleague and faces the fragility of her position at the firm. 

Both narrators describe their challenges and conflicts at work, with their extended families (Charles's wastrel of a father tapping him for money) and in their personal lives (Kriya's smarting after being dumped by her ex) - which seem somewhat blighted by the long hours of a London law firm (the canteen stays open till 10pm, though you'll be working longer than that if you're really under pressure to meet a deadline). Families and friends enter the stage, social events throwing the hapless two together like a much more grounded version of Four Weddings. Gradually Cho fills in detail for the pair, such as Charles's circle and their fandoms or Kriya's close dependency, even as part of a large form, on a particular partner who seems to have a very old fashioned and almost patriarchal view of things.

It's a warm, funny, generous book with pages that just fly by, the attraction between Kriya and Charles threaded through every enthralling page. There are, naturally, crises and difficulties to be overcome and, equally naturally, the reader is generally a step or two ahead of the pair, it's fun to see them catch up. All  in all, I greatly enjoyed Behind Frenemy Lines and will be eager for whatever Zen Cho writes next.

For more information about Behind Frenemy Lines, see the publisher's website here.

Blogtour Review - Murder Tide by Stella Blómkvist

Muder Tide (Stella Blómkvist, 3)
Stella Blómkvist (trans Quentin Bates)
Corylus Books, 4 July 2025
Available as: PB, 220pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781917586016

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me advance access to an e-copy of Murder Tide to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

More Stella! One of the highlights of my summer, this new outing for the refreshingly unconventional Icelandic lawyer, and for her pseudonymous author, lived up to expectations. Stella - the lawyer - is thrown into a slew of cases which have her questioning her life choices and thinking of the future (and not just of the health of the Stella Fund). Stella - the author - has great fun putting her alter ego through the wringer, and misdirecting the readers.

Case 1. A prominent financier and politician is found drowned (the especially grisly drowning predicted by a psychic, who insists on sharing her visions with an annoyed Stella). The accused is a fisherman who lost his quota and trawler in the financial crisis and blames the dead "quota baron" for doing him down.

Case 2. A figure from Stella's past, a man she helped to put away for drug smuggling, now seeks her help to get him off serious charges.

Case 3. A young woman whose mother lodged sensitive family papers with Stella, turns up to claim them. Úlfhildur wants to know who her father is. This gets Stella ruminating about her own daughter and whether she ought to be able to track down her dad...

Behind these cases, a complex web of family relationships and wrongs - imagined and actual - to be unpicked.

Peppered throughout with the aphorisms and hard-earned wisdom of Stella's mum, Murder Tide is a fast moving and, at times, shocking, slice of Icelandic noir. One of Stella's cases will touch on organised crime and set formidable enemies on her trail. Another will expose a charlatan preacher who's in no hurry have his past laid bare. Politics, corruption and racketeering lurk in every shady corner - and danger too.

I thought this book brought us a much more reflective and sober (well, kind of sober!) Stella than in the previous two books in this series. She now has much to lose - not only her kid, Sóley Árdís, but her lover Rannveig. I sensed Stella regrets that now there are people she loves, her enemies have new ways to pressure her. Accustomed to sailing close to the line in her legal practice, and to bearing danger as she does so, Stella now faces new vulnerabilities. She may, even, whisper it, be growing up.

That doesn't, though, dampen her fighting spirit. Murder Tide is a book in which Stella has to use every trick, call in every favour, work every contact and be ever on her guard against the mysterious - yet also, hidden in plain sight - opponents with whom she's engaged.

Not all of them are where you'd expect.

And some are not above switching sides.

It makes for a switchback of a novel, a book where the battle lines are blurred and all is shades of grey. That's always been true of these novels of course but I think the evolution of Stella's personal life has raised the stakes here, as well as the dangers she faces. It's a short book, but one that is packed with incident and where the outcome is on a knife edge to the very end. Entertaining, mysterious and great, great fun to read.

As ever Quentin Bates' translation captures every nuance and tone in this twisty book, giving the different characters their due and sketching their place in Icelandic society without it sounding as though that's peopled by English types! It's unobtrusive but lucid, conveying the plot perfectly.

With a major plot thread left fizzing away, I am CERTAIN there will be a book 4 to follow soon and I can't wait for it.

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

Blogtour review - Kill Them With Kindness by Will Carver

Kill Them with Kindness
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 19 June 2025
Available as: PB, 292pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788381

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

A worldwide coronavirus pandemic. 

Shady but well-connected figures eager to profit from the misery. Lockdowns. 

A foppish, populist UK PM who can't keep his trousers zipped up for more than half an hour.

All signalling, then, that Kill them with Kindness has no bearing AT ALL on actual recent world history. So the speculation here that the virus, and the vaccine, was scheduled; that a third party intervened to change it from what it might have been; and that a secret cabal of world leaders knew rather more about matters that they let on - can all be safely indulged in the interests of a fascinating and knotty plot that nevertheless dramatises some of the real dilemmas that we faced a few years back. Carver's writing is excellently adapted to the. He has the rare ability - no, scratch that, unique, at least so far as I'm aware - to dramatise not only the events of a story but also the actual ethics of it.

Here, that is done mainly though two characters - the blustering, blond Harris Jackson, Prime Minister of the UK, who can't encounter a woman without seeking to impregnate her, and brilliant but modest Dr Haruko Ikeda, a Japanese scientist who works at a Chinese research centre backed by American money. Jackson doesn't care if a few million people die, so long as it serves his purposes. Ikeda wants to save lives, but he has a wider vision than that: to make life, people, kinder. While the two never meet, they are in effect the players in the chess game, well matched since one has immense political power but - seemingly - little empathy, while the other brims over with empathy but is being forced to act by circumstances.

Carver's portrayal of both men is superb, but it's only part of the storytelling here. Events, literally taking part on a world scale, are given life by vignettes of individuals, too many to list, across the nations and of all ages and social positions. This author is a master of the telling phrase, the perfect description or action, showing what people are doing or thinking. These go beyond simply the reaction - people are panicked, people are scared, people are greedy, selfish or heroes, or whatever - to engage with the rights and wrongs, the awkward unexpected reactions, the unintended consequences, of the story. 

Carver widens his canvas, I think, here, compared to previous books where events were often focussed on a small locality - a building, a village - but despite this larger stage he still makes the story connect very directly with a reader's own experience and convictions. It helps here of course that we have all recently gone through a pandemic so many of the experiences described and the trains of thought are closely rooted in observed experience. That connectedness means that Kill Them with Kindness is at the same time a deeply serious and thoughtful book - the author's argument about the value of simple kindness deserves respect - as well as an absorbing and often funny read. 

Carver never disappoints, and Kill them with Kindness is a stunner of a read.

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