The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid - Review

As you may remember, my mother and I are making our way through the Karen Pirie series of books. I've been buying them on eBay for not a lot of money and reading them when I fancy them and passing them on to my mum. This is the third one in the series; we've now read the first, second, and fourth. There's a massive thing that has happened in the fourth book so I knew it was coming in this book and it was really sad and shocking, but it's not a main focus of the book, which I was glad about. I do wish I had read them in order but..... it doesn't really matter. 

Karen is called to a skeleton found in a remote part on a building in Edinburgh that is about to be demolished. Tests show that the man was killed by a bullet, and that he died approximately eight years ago. Tests on his teeth show that he had work done in Eastern Europe, so Karen starts looking in that direction for someone missing for eight years. Maggie is a professor in Oxford who spent time in Dubrovnik when there was a war going on there in the early 90s; she started to see a man called Dimitrar who was a general in the Croatian army. After the war the two moved back to Oxford, where she lectures in geopolitics. He went missing eight years ago (in the early noughties). Maggie always thought that he went back to an unknown first family in Croatia. Her friend Tessa, though, thinks that he has gone on a vigilante killing spree across Europe. 

Because, there is a tribunal occurring in The Hague for people who committed war crimes in the Balkans, but for a few people, before they could be brought to justice, they were killed by an unknown assailant. The tribunal is winding up, but there's a new boss who wants to make his presence felt and go out in a blaze of glory. So he puts the wind up two men, Macanespie and Proctor, and urges them to find the leak from within their own office or he will fire them both and they'll both have terrible ends to their careers. The two men are lawyers, and they are both kind of sailing along in life, but they get galvanised by this challenge and they end up on the same path as Karen. 

Maggie is also starting to write her memoirs from the time. As I was only young when this war was happening, I don't know too much about it so I was really having to think back and research what had happened there then. I found it really interesting though, and it informed me a lot about this period in history. I liked the book, although I found Maggie's memoir parts absolutely dreary and could cheerfully have lived without them. I liked that Karen had to go all over the place - much to the chagrin of her boss - and I liked what she discovered. I'm giving this four out of five. 

All the Little Bird Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow - Review

I bought this earlier in the year (is it obvious I'm trying to make my way through a stack of books that have been sitting in my bedroom for months) and picked it up at the end of November. I felt like it was a bit of a slog through, but I'm not sure I can articulate why exactly. Almost nothing actually happens in the book, which I usually like, but I didn't feel like it worked brilliantly. 

The heroine of the book is Sunday. She is around forty years old and she's definitely autistic. She lives a very ordered life in the house left to her by her parents, with her sixteen year old daughter Dolly. She works in a nursery tending plants for her ex in laws. She has a colleague, David, who is Deaf, and who she is close to (although I wish it had been explained how she learnt sign language). Her ex, who she calls King, is somewhat around; he and Dolly are close but the family seem to think they can buy Dolly's affections. They do keep Sunday in a job, but they're not close. The in laws are very seen to be seen kind of people. Sunday's autism comes out in things like what she eats - mostly white, bland food, especially when she is feeling stressed - and drinks (only fizzy things like tonic water and champagne). The word autism is never mentioned though, which I found kind of annoying. 

Sunday's sister died when the girls were teenagers, and her parents died not long afterwards, having blamed Sunday for her sister Dolores' death. This is how come she owns what is clearly an expensive house somewhere in the Lake District, because her job doesn't pay her much. 

The house next door to Sunday's belongs to someone called Tom, who is rich and for whom it is a holiday home. Vita and Rollo have had to move out of their London home and are renting the house from Tom. Vita comes over to meet Sunday and soon wangles her way in to Sunday's and Dolly's lives. She is outgoing and vivacious, and rich as fuck. Rollo works in 'town' - in London - but comes home every Friday. Dolly and Sunday go over for dinner one Friday night and then do that for the next few. Vita doesn't have children and has had some difficulties in the past, and she quickly becomes fond of Dolly. In a very sinister way. 

It's stated from the beginning that Sunday no longer speaks to Vita and Rollo, but it's not obvious what happened. Oh and the book is set in the very late eighties, which I also found a little bit of a strange choice and am not sure why it was made. 

I did like the story but I'm not sure it was done brilliantly. Living in Sunday's mind was good - especially with how she masked her autism and how she didn't - but I'm not sure it entirely paid off. I wouldn't rush to read something by the same author, but I am giving this four out of five. 

I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel - Review

I kept seeing this book earlier in the year when I had vouchers to spend, and I so nearly picked it up more than once, but for some reason I didn't. Then it was 99p on Kindle so I bought it, and I finally read it a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it, but I did like it. I think basically this book isn't for me, in my life stage - and that's okay. 

It is a novella, it isn't told linearly, and it's more little vignettes of life than actually a narrative. The heroine is never named, but she is a woman of colour and seems to be youngish, maybe thirty at most. She has been in an on off thing with the man she calls 'the man I want to be with'. She never names him. He's older than her, he seems to be in a position of some power over her, and he is married. He has been married for more than two decades and proclaims to not be in love with her, but says he can't leave her. Our heroine knows her name and has even bumped into her on occasion, but she is obsessed with another woman that the man she wants to be with has been seeing.

She even calls her 'the woman I am obsessed with'. She spends hours refreshing her instagram, and seems to think that she isn't sufficiently happy with the man (who is quite a terrible man). There are also parts where she rails against racism, sexism, colonialism, and so on. I liked these bits but I thought they were a bit jarring in the whole. 

I do think this is a very literary book and I'm glad I read it, even if I didn't love it. I am still giving it four out of five because I'm glad it exists. 

A Mansion for Murder by Frances Brody - Review

 

I picked up this book when I went to a crime writing conference in Leeds in June 2023. I hadn't read anything else by Frances Brody before but I was intrigued by the blurb so I bought the book. It's taken me until now to pick it up, but I'm glad I did! It's the thirteenth book in the Kate Shackleton series and clearly I've read none of them, but I didn't find that that was a hindrance to reading the book. I feel like I learnt enough about Kate to understand her and understand the book. 

This book is set in 1930 and I understand the rest are set in the 1920s, which is a really lovely time setting, I like this for detective books. Kate lives in Leeds and I liked the descriptions of parts of Leeds that I know but which were so different a hundred years ago. This book is mostly set in Saltaire, though, which is a place I don't know well but have been a few times. I love reading books set in places I know! It just makes me feel happy. This is a proper cosy mystery and it was perfect to read in the November dark, I think. If you don't know Saltaire, it's a model village built by Sir Titus Salt around the mill, which still exists and which is huge. It's near Bradford. 

So Kate receives a letter from a young man called Ronnie Creswell. He says he has information for her about Salts Mill in Saltaire. She makes plans to go and meet him there. But when she gets there, he's dead. His colleague David has found his body in the reservoir below the mill (who knew mills had reservoirs... not me, apparently) and at first thinks he has been drowned. But his body shows that he had been killed - but who would kill him? 

There are a few different strands to the book. Firstly, there's the mill itself, and the owners and workers there. The owner is having some difficulties with competitors, and needs Kate's colleague, Jim Sykes, to go a bit undercover to see what he can uncover there. The owner's daughter, Pamela, was in a secret relationship with Ronnie and although there were class differences between them, it seems like the owner (whose name I've forgotten, clearly) wanted to bring Ronnie on to the board and train him up, and wasn't completely against the match. His wife, though, was. Pamela is devastated by his death. 

Then there's the mansion. Nick Creswell, aka Old Nick, remembers the building of the mansion. At the time, he was living with his grandma and there were stories about a young shepherdess who was pushed down the well. He finds a bone that they think belongs to her, and he buries it near where they're building the new mansion. Not too long later, his is walking one day when his teacher, Miss Mason, suffers a stillbirth on the path. She asks him to bury the baby, which he does. He keeps this secret for years and years. In the book, he is an old man and losing his marbles a bit, so people aren't sure what to believe of what he says.

There is believed to be a curse on the mansion. Many owners have lived there and moved out. Kate and Mrs Sugden, her assistant, end up living in the Tower while investigating Ronnie's murder, but everyone in the village is suspicious of the place. 

I liked the book generally and would read more in the series. My one criticism really is that there were a few places where the book hadn't been proof read properly - Ronnie was alive again at one point! But I'm giving this four out of five and I did like it. 

The Cloisters by Katy Hays - Review

I bought this book earlier in the year I think, with a Waterstones voucher I had. It was on buy one get one half price and I liked the premise of it, so I picked it up. I really DID like the blurb, but I didn't really gel with the story and it took me ages to read. I think the execution just wasn't great. 

So, Ann Stilwell is from the Walla Walla in Washington state. She has been a student at Whitman university and is trying to get into grad school, but she has had a ton of rejections. Her dad was a professor at the college but was killed when Ann was still in high school. Through him through she learnt about translating and became interested in the early Renaissance, which is now her area of study. She is desperate to get out of Walla Walla even though her mother doesn't want her to go. She has a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, so she rents a small studio flat and moves the entire way across the country to New York City.

However, when she arrives she is told that the man who was supposed to be her mentor has gone to Germany or something to study, so there is no job for her. But then she is saved by Patrick. He is the curator of a museum linked to the Met called The Cloisters. He is desperate for a helper and takes Ann with him. He introduces her to his underling, Rachel, who Ann sort of already knows. At the museum there is also Leo, who is a gardener. The whole place is very cloistered and very claustrophobic. Patrick brings Ann into his confidence eventually about his work. He thinks that tarot cards were used in Italy in the Renaissance which would prove that they were used earlier than has been previously thought. 

At the beginning of the book you get told there is a body, but it's not obvious who the body belongs to until the middle of the book. Ann and Rachel become close, but Rachel is really only into herself and what she wants. She's an ambitious young woman but she also has a lot of past history and Ann doesn't know whether to trust her or not. Ann discovers something that she and Rachel decide to keep from Patrick, thinking that he will steal their research and be known as the main author of anything they publish, just because he is a lot older, more established, and a man. I did agree with them on this, to be fair. 

I felt like there was just a lot of flim flam in the book. It needed cutting a lot I think. The setting is really creepy - the New York summer is incredibly hot and that claustrophobia really carries through the whole book. I liked Ann but thought she was naive. I was hoping that there would be some kind of twist at the end which made the run up to it worth it. There is a twist, but it didn't quite make it worth it for me. I'm giving this three out of five.