The Secret Room by Jane Casey - Review

I can't remember where or when I heard of this book but I obviously had, as I requested it at the library and it arrived so I read it. I didn't love it, though, I don't think it really stood up to what I thought it was going to be. Oh well, I live and learn! 

This is the twelfth book in a series about a detective called Maeve Kerrigan and her boss, Josh Derwent. I didn't realise that but as with most series you mostly can start here and catch up on some of the back story. In this case, it is obvious that Maeve and Josh have had a bit of a dalliance, and later there's more on their relationship. I did mostly like this aspect but Josh is a bit of a dickhead so it was hard to care as much about him as Maeve clearly does. They were nearly together but then Josh's girlfriend Melissa's son got unwell, and Josh felt guilty and stayed. From further reading I see that this book is set six months after Maeve and Josh didn't get together, which makes sense. 

The main murder in the book is of a wealthy woman called Ilaria Cavendish. She has a long standing meeting on a Wednesday afternoon with her lover, who I think is called Sam? They meet in a hotel every week for sex. She arrives one week, makes her way up to the room which is the room she always has, and waits for Sam. A hotel employee arrives with a bottle of champagne; on the CCTV later the police can see that he was in and out of the room in only a few minutes. When Sam arrives he says he finds her submerged in a scalding hot bath - he tries to pull her out but she is already dead. He is the prime suspect, of course, but he didn't really have enough time to kill her. 

It's a classic locked room mystery and Maeve and Josh are confused. Ilaria was married to a man who had a lot of money and who seemed to trade in wives for a younger model every few years, so he is a suspect too. Sam, meanwhile, has a pregnant girlfriend who he's trying to keep all this from. 

Maeve's parents are Irish immigrants to London and she seems like she avoids them a lot, but they were close with Josh's stepson and still miss him; they end up looking after him at times. Then Melissa is found attacked at home, badly beaten at the bottom of the stairs, and Josh is of course prime suspect. Maeve is sure that he couldn't have done it so she ends trying to investigate it herself, which brings her up against some fellow cops, of course, but she obviously has to meddle which did actually annoy me. Some unsavoury things about Josh come out which I feel was meant to put the reader off him, but he had already come across as a dick anyway so. 

I did like the outcome of both mysteries but something in the way this was written just didn't work for me. It meandered a lot in the middle and I didn't care about Maeve's dating life - she's trying to see this other fella - enough to put up with it. In all I'm giving this three and a half out of five. 

The Chemist by A A Dhand - Review

I bought this book at the crime book festival that I went to at the end of January. A A Dhand was there, and I didn't realise he was the author of the TV series Virdee, which is set in Bradford and which I watched a few episodes of. He was talking about this, his new book, and I liked the sound of it so I bought it and got him to sign it for me. He is a really lovely person, but I didn't enjoy the book that much.

It's about a pharmacist, Idris, who has a pharmacy in Headingley in Leeds. He is married to Maryam, a GP, but he has an ex wife, Rebecca, who he is still in touch with and who he's still fond of. He deals a lot with methadone users - who come to the pharmacy daily to take their methadone under supervision - and he has a lot to do with the local sex workers of Beeston. Rebecca does too as part of her job, so when a sex worker called Amy calls on her, Rebecca goes to help. 

Amy's punter was a man called Patrick, who is part of a big crime family, and he's just got out of prison. He tries to pull a fast one on Amy, she calls Rebecca, and Rebecca kills him. Then she phones Idris for help. He does indeed try to cover it up, with the help of a local called Al, a Syrian refugee, who is a drug runner inside a notorious load of high rise flats called The Moorings. Idris has been blackmailed into providing drugs for the estate, because his money is in short supply and he is scared of the kingpins there. 

It's a very complicated and convoluted plot and it was just so confusing for me. Then there's a few people whose names are really similar - for example two men called Daniel and Damon - which made it hard to keep them straight in my head. Every time I thought the plot surely had to be over now, something else would pop up and someone else would come along and threaten Idris and he would have to make even stupider decisions. 

I did like Idris and I liked Rebecca as well. I couldn't tell you if I liked Maryam (I'm not even certain on the spelling of her name) because she's in it for like two scenes. I understand that this book is the first part of a series and I would like to read more for Idris, but I am just not putting myself through it again. It's way too complicated for me. 

Two out of five. 

A Spot of Folly by Ruth Rendell - Review

After I enjoyed the Ruth Rendell book Shake Hands For Ever back in October, I thought I would like to read something else by her so I reserved three books by her from the library. I then renewed those loans a bunch of times, but never mind, that's what libraries are for! I did however pick this book up eventually at the end of February. 

I really enjoyed it. It's a book of short stories and they all kept my interest and were amusing. They all seemed typical of the type of people that she would write novels about - posh middle Englanders in somewhat boring marriages in a lot of cases. A lot of the stories had a twist in the tale with unexpected endings, or endings that make the reader go Ohhhh. I love short stories like that. 

There's also a ghost story which I really liked. There's a long story about a woman who steals things from people who have annoyed her. That comes back to bite her in the bum in a really unusual way; I thought it was well done. One of the stories was written under Rendell's pen name, Barbara Vine, which was interesting to read too. 

In general this was a good read, just the kind of thing I needed. I'm giving it four out of five. 

A Murder in York by J R Ellis - Review

 

Another J R Ellis book! My mum likes these which keeps me reading them, but I feel like Ellis is just churning them out and they're just not as good as they used to be. I feel also like he is trying to write about some 'issues' re austerity Britain and he's just not doing it very well. It comes across like he's trying too hard which annoys me. I may give up at the next one, but I probably said that about the last one, too.

So, Oldroyd is at a conference in York and one evening he decides to go on one of the famous ghost walks around the city. I really liked the description here because I know York well (I went to York St John University) and the ghost walks are famous. (I should go on one one of these days!). Oldroyd is enjoying himself when up one of the snickleways there is a body. He obviously gets involved in the case because he can't resist. The dead man turns out to be a local slum landlord who has no end of enemies - an ex wife, plenty of angry tennants, and even the people involved in running the ghost walk. Oldroyd keeps investigating which no other officers ever seems to mind because of course he is just so brilliant.  

Part of the book is told from the point of view of a family who lives in one of his terrible properties, and it was this that I felt was a bit heavy handed. I get it, but in the context of a novel it just didn't feel right. I also felt like being angry at your landlord was a pretty rubbish motive for murder. In fact, although it's a month since I read this, I'm not sure anyone had that strong of a motive. 

Oh god, and the sub plot with Andy and Stephanie annoyed me too, but the least said about that the better. I wish one of them would just leave, the other would be way better without them. 

I'm only giving this three out of five. 

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett - Review

You know I love a Janice Hallett book so when I knew there was another one I picked it up straight away. It's very similar to her other books - written in a non linear fashion, without prose. This time it's about a pub, a bit off the beaten track, which is being run by Sue and Mal Eastwood. They have a WhatsApp group with several other publicans in the same chain. Each pub runs a quiz - except one, I think - and each of them is really proud of their quiz for bringing in business etc. Mal prides himself on writing his quizzes himself, unlike lots of the other landlords in the group who rely on quiz books. 

There are several teams who always come to Mal's quiz, who are known by their team names and who have friendly rivalries between them. A new team turns up one night and puts the cat among the pigeons by coming first. They make their way round a few of the pubs and keep coming first. Mal becomes certain that they are cheating, and sets out to find out how. 

A body is found near Mal and Sue's pub which brings lots of intrigue and police into their pub. The body belongs to someone who knew a bunch of the quizzers who keep winning, so it all gets really confusing. I was expecting a twist at the end but when it happened I was incredibly shocked as I hadn't seen it coming at all. I liked the book as a whole and thought it read more quickly than some of her others. I can't wait until her next book as I will of course read it.

I'm giving this four out of five. 

I Bet You'd Look Good in a Coffin by Katy Brent - Review

I read the first Kitty Collins book in 2023 and reviewed it here. I liked it, so when I saw the second one in The Works or something I bought it for a few quid. It's been in my to be read basket for a while, and I finally picked it up right at the end of May. 

I'll say what I said before - some of this book is just plain satire, and it's very much a revenge story and maybe is supposed to empower women, and it's also not really a book of substance but it is very compelling reading. I compared her other book to a jam doughnut - not very good for you but it tastes nice occasionally. Do I think it's amazing literature? No. Will I read the next one? Absolutely. 

Kitty is turning thirty and she's celebrating with her boyfriend Charlie. She gets a beautiful diamond necklace from her mum, from whom she's estranged. Her mum lives in the South of France and sends Kitty a decent allowance each month, but they don't speak. Alongside the present is an invitation to her mum, Carmella's, wedding. To a man called Gabriel, who Kitty has never met and doesn't know. She isn't sure whether she will go or not. 

She has given up murdering but has found it hard to quit. She goes to a support group for angry women and gets incredibly angry about the ways in which women have been hurt and abused by men. She also can't stop herself from checking the social media of this incel/red pill bloke called Blaze Bundy. She literally can't stand him and she realises that he is threatening her. She is determined to find out who he is. 

Meanwhile Maisie is pregnant and Tor is seeing her therapist. Kitty is not happy about this so she goes off to meet him and threaten him a bit. She also hears at her support group that a famous TV presenter has groped the teenaged daughter of one of the attendees, so she goes off to meet him and ends up killing him. Because of course she does. She is in the middle of cleaning up when she gets an SOS from Charlie so has to rush home. 

Where there is no emergency, just a surprise party for Kitty's thirtieth! And her mother is there! And there's still a dead body that needs attending to! But then Kitty and Charlie have to head off to France for her mum's wedding and the presenter is merely 'missing'. Kitty has no chance to think about anything. 

A lot happens in this book and it was a bit hard to keep up at times. But I really did want Kitty to succeed and get some power over some terrible men too. I'm giving this four out of five. 

Beautiful Animals by Lawrence Osborne - Review

This was the book club choice for April and when I saw it I was intrigued because I had never heard of Lawrence Osborne. This was billed as a thriller and while it's not exactly, I really get it. It was an interesting choice for our book club and not really like something we've read before. I'm really intrigued to see what everyone thinks of it and I want to know what everyone thinks of the characters' motivations. 

It's set in high summer on the island of Hydra in Greece, so it had that beautiful ethereal feel of summer gothic. Everything is threatening and everyone's hot and bothered and not really thinking fully. Hydra also is apparently an island where nothing with wheels is allowed - no cars, no motorbikes, not even bikes. So that adds an extra dimension to the threat. 

The main characters are Naomi and Samantha. Sam is around twenty and she's on holiday for the summer with her family. They're American. Her younger brother Chris and her parents are also there. She's quite naive and I didn't feel like we really got to know her that well. Events happen to her and she doesn't really stand up for herself. She's almost in love with Naomi, even when she tries to extract herself at the end.

Naomi is 24 ish and belongs to a very rich family who have a house on Hydra and spend each summer there. They are part of the elite there. Naomi's dad Jimmie is a patriarchal type, he wants everything his own way. He is married to Phaine, who is Greek, and who is Naomi's stepmother. Her mother died when she was much younger. There isn't a lot of love lost between her and Phaine. Naomi is English, as is Jimmie, but she's got some Greek heritage and speaks the language. Their maid Carissa is not much older than Naomi I don't think, and she is a big character in the book too. 

Naomi has been working as a lawyer in London but has lost her job. I wasn't entirely clear on what had happened here but I feel like this motivated her quite a lot. She is spending the summer swimming, sunbathing, eating in nice restaurants, etc, which is a point of contention between her and her dad and stepmother. She meets Sam and quickly takes her under her wing. They go on boats around the island, buy a lot of weed, and swim in the gorgeous sea. 

One day on one of their trips on the less developed side of the island, they come across a migrant, who has swum from a boat that has come from Turkey. At first they ignore him, but then a day or so later Naomi has an attack of morals or something, and says they should go back and help him. They go back and here's a really interesting bit because I think this time they find a totally different migrant. Sam seems to think it's a different person, anyway. His name is Faoud. He is Syrian. Naomi organises for him to sleep in a shepherd's hut on a nearby hillside. But then she decides to help more, and that's where everything goes wrong. 

I liked how everything unravelled. I liked how we saw the points of view of so many people which really helped to understand the characters and what exactly had happened. This isn't a straight thriller but it is really good. I loved the feel of it so much. I'm giving it five out of five. 

The Truth About the Devlins by Lise Scottoline - Review

This was one of the books I bought before Christmas in a sale, the haul of which I am trying to get through as I've said previously. I was intrigued by the premise of this, but I'm not sure if I thought it really stood up to it entirely. I can see that the author has written a bunch of books previously but I'm not sure I would rush to read anything else by her. I did feel like this got a bit ridiculous in parts and stretched credibility a bit, but I did like it for the most part. 

The main character is TJ Devlin and he is the fuck up in his family. Both his parents and his older brother and sister are lawyers and work in the same firm - not surprisingly called Devlin & Devlin & Devlin & Devlin. TJ is an investigator for the firm which honestly he is pretty good at even though his brother John calls it a sinecure position. TJ is an alcoholic and due to some stupid decisions he made while drunk, he served a year in prison. He's therefore not full on job offers, so working for the family firm suits him. He is in Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober for nearly two years and is pretty proud of himself. He deserves to be - he battles daily against the urge to drink and is trying to put his life back together. He still has a thing for his ex and hopes they can get back together. 

But family life isn't great. TJ feels like the whole family looks down on him because he's not a lawyer, really. His dad, especially, holds older brother John on a pedestal, and is a pretty harsh patriarch. The whole family thinks that TJ will go and drink at any given moment. His mum is very proud of him, and older sister Gabby likes to use him on her pro bono cases, but older brother John and he don't get on. John is the golden child, the alpha son, etc. 

But right at the beginning of the book he comes to TJ and says that he thinks he has killed a man. This man was the accountant at a firm that the law firm represents, who are about to undergo a buy out. John says he uncovered some irregularities in the accounts, and says that he accused Noah of embezzling funds. Noah went after him and John hit him and he fell on to a rock. John was pretty sure that he was dead, and he ran and asked for help from TJ straight away. The two of them leave a family dinner and go back to where John left him. 

Only Noah isn't there. The two look for him, but can't find him. But then the next day his body is found in his car. The police are quick to call it suicide, but TJ isn't convinced. He starts to look into the company and it becomes clear that someone is following him. Meanwhile, he is also working on stuff for Gabby to do with a medical neglience case that she is undertaking. 

A lot happens in this book and it was sometimes a bit difficult to keep things straight, but I did like it. I liked TJ and wanted him to succeed. I liked the outcome of the book but I think the ending was dragged on a bit when it could have ended a couple of chapters earlier. But I'm still giving this four out of five as I enjoyed it. 

Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie - Review

At the end of December this book was just 99p on Kindle so I bought it because I thought it would be good reading for the very end of the year, as all the short stories in it are set in the winter. Plus we were away for New Year and you know me, I like to be reading something on my Kindle when I'm away because it just makes it easier. So I started this just before the New Year and finished it on the 2nd of January. 

Some of the stories are Poirot and a couple are Miss Marple, so that was nice too, to be back in familiar ground. The first story, The Chocolate Box, is one that I recently saw the TV adaptation of, so it was nice to read the story too. I liked all the mysteries and worked a couple of them out, which made me happy. It's Agatha at her best, and I really liked the collection. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Examiner by Janice Hallett - Review

You know me, I love Janice Hallett and find her a really interesting author because she never writes books just in straightforward prose and I am so intrigued to read what she will do next because she always surprises me! This book is told through forum messages, text messages, and emails. I love how as a reader you kind of have to fill in the gaps because there's so much you aren't told. 

The protagonists of the book are many. There are six students, who are all starting an MA course in Multimedia Arts or something like that. It's a new degree course and their tutor, Gela, is keen to get funding for future years, so she needs this year to go perfectly. There are three examiners, too. One of them, Ben, sends all the included info to the others. He thinks that one of the students has gone missing, and is possibly in danger, and he wants their opinion on what has happened. This is stated clearly at the beginning of the book, so the reader knows what they need to look out for. 

The six students are a bit of a motley crew. The youngest is Jem, who is only about twenty two and is freshly out of her BA art degree. She has a lot of enthusiasm but is also quite nosy and often private messages others on the course. Her closest friend is Patrick, who is about sixty, and who owns an art supply shop and has been persuaded into doing the course. There is Alison, who was an emerging artist about ten years ago and is seriously the 'face' of the course - it seems like Gela is using her to get brownie points and lets her get away with a lot. There's another woman and two other men; all with different levels of artistic talent and experience. 

Jem soons starts picking faults in her fellow students, but the reader sort of understands why. Everyone tries to placate her and sort of babies her, but they also seem to want her to just stop, too. As the months go on all the students do their assignments - the reader gets to read the tutor's review of them - and then are told that their final project will be to work together on a huge installation for a client. 

I liked the book but I'm not entirely convinced about the pay off at the end. For that I'm giving this four out of five instead of five. 

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid - Review

As you may have seen previously, I started reading the Karen Pirie series of books by Val McDermid. I bought the first one and really enjoyed it, and then I passed it on to my mum who really enjoyed it too. So I made a list of all the Karen Pirie novels and picked up a couple of them on eBay. My mum and I both read the fourth one in the series, Out of Bounds back in September, but she got annoyed at reading them out of order. But I had already bought this one on Kindle for only about 99p, so I told my mother to either do the same or go to the library. Or buy it herself, I guess! Don't complain at me about it! 

Anyway I had this on Kindle so I went to it and I liked it. There are two strands to the story and it isn't clear to begin with how the two will match up, but I knew they would. 

In the first strand, a man is reported missing, only he went missing in late 1984 and by this time it's over twenty years later (the book was published in 2008, and set I think in 2007). He was a striking miner called Mick, living in a small pit village. He had a wife and child. It was believed that he went to Nottingham to work, to become a scab and betray the strike. Five men from the area also did this on the same night, so his wife and child believed he had gone there. They became pariahs in the village and haven't really had an easy time of it. Now, Michelle's child is seriously ill and his only hope of survival is to find a donor. Hence why Michelle is looking for her dad. But she can't find him and so reports him missing. Karen takes the report and although she's supposed to be looking at a different case, she is intrigued by this one and starts to look into what might have happened to Mick that night in December 1984. 

Meanwhile, a journalist called Bel is on holiday in Tuscany with some friends. She goes for a run one morning and goes into an abandoned and delapidated villa. There is a large blood stain on the floor in the kitchen. And then she finds a silk screen print of a poster with marionettes on it. She recognises it as a poster that was used in a ransom note in 1985. The daughter of local millionaire Brodie was kidnapped, alongside her baby son. Brodie and his wife arranged to meet her and the kidnappers and hand over the ransom, but it went wrong and Catriona ended up dead and her child Adam was never seen again. The poster being in the villa would link the people who had been squatting there to the kidnapping, but who were they? Bel approaches Brodie, hoping to be able to make a lot of money off the story. They try to keep the police out of it but Karen gets called anyway. But Brodie is used to being able to bend the police to his will, and he isn't forthcoming with what happened in 1985. 

I did really like the story and I felt like it came together really well. But I did think there were a few too many characters - many of whom were also known by aliases, which ended up confusing. I wish a few people could have been cut out and then it would have flowed better for me. It was hard to keep everyone straight in my head. 

But I thought this was a good second book in the series and I'm giving it four out of five. 

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid - Review

After I read the first Karen Pirie book recently I realised I actually really liked her - I don't like some of Val's other series - so when I came across three more of the Karen Pirie books while on an afternoon out in Holmfirth I bought them. They were only a couple of quid each so I did well! This is the fourth one in the series and there's a massive spoiler for something that must have happened in book two or three, but I don't really care about that and I'll get around to them eventually. I made my mum read the first one and she really enjoyed it, but she says she needs to read them in order! So I will lend this to her at some point. 

Karen is DCI of the Historic Crimes Unit, which looks at cold cases, and in this book the unit has been moved to Edinburgh. She is going through something - which I won't spoil - and she's taken to walking around late at night, where she meets some Syrian asylum seekers. This is one small strand of the book which I actually really liked. 

But the main case she is looking at is the rape and murder of Tina Macdonald twenty years ago. No one was ever caught for her murder. But then some lads get into a joyride and the driver ends up in a coma. When his DNA is matched against the database, it turns out that Tina's murderer must have been a close male relative of his. Problem is: Ross Garvie was adopted and he doesn't know about it, and his records are sealed. Karen has to go to court for the right to access the records. I found that really interesting actually. 

She also meets a friend of hers who is a social worker, and while she's there, a detective is looking into the death of a man called Gabriel. At first it was considered suicide, and then a murder, but then Karen's colleague has decided it is a suicide after all and is basically ready to shut the case. But Karen's interest is piqued. It turns out that Gabriel's mother, Caroline, was killed in a place explosion over Scotland twenty five years ago. Flying the plane was an MP who had been outspoken about the IRA, so the death was thought to be terrorist activity. But no one was ever caught and no one ever took responsibility. Karen doesn't like coincidences so she starts looking into the old case as well as Gabriel's death too. 

Her colleague in the unit, Jamie Murray, is nice enough but a bit dim. Karen needs to train him. She also struggles with her superiors because she is just such a maverick which yes is a huge cliche in crime novels but I like her so I just can't be cross about it. 

In all I really liked this and I found it really compelling so I will probably pick the others up soon. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Suspect by Rob Rinder - Review

After I previously read The Trial by Rob Rinder, I was intrigued when I heard about his next book, which stars the same barrister, Adam Green. I requested this at the library and although I had to wait a few weeks for it to arrive, it did, and I picked it up soon afterwards. I knew I wasn't able to renew it because it had other holds on it - clearly other people were keen to get to it too!

So yes, we're back in chambers with Adam Green. He's been off his probation period for a year now and he's doing well. He's doing a lot of boring, repeat offender cases. Georgina, who he did his probationary year with, is on the up and up thanks to her mentor. She will be on the side of the prosecution for what is a sensational case. The murder of Jessica, a presenter on a huge morning show. Think This Morning and you'll be close.

She died on national TV. She had an allergy to soy, and everyone on set was aware of it, including celebrity chef Sebastian. He served up a beef ragu to her which turned out to have a soy dressing on it, and she died live on air. It seems like an open and shut case, especially when it is revealed that Sebastian and Jessica had, until recently, been having an affair. 

Adam is put on the defence side. Sebastian won't say anything in defence of himself, so Adam sort of tries to investigate. It turns out Sebastian's wife Rachel was also on set that day, and there are a number of other intriguing lines to follow. Adam does, of course, because he's just like that. 

He is also on the case of a young lad whose brother is involved in gangs, and who takes the rap for his brother when guns are found in their flat. I think this case will come back in further books and may bite Adam on the bum, but he is very principled and I like that about him. 

I liked the main mystery too, it's a good one and seemed all too real. I liked the way it unravelled and I think that the pacing in this book was much better. Rob is a good writer and it's obvious he knows the setting intimately. I liked Adam's friendship with Lydia, who is the probationer this year under the same mentor that Adam had. I would like this friendship to continue. 

I can't wait for the next one! I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Grass Widow by Vanessa Edwards - Review

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for The Grass Widow by Vanessa Edwards! It is a pleasure to welcome you here to my blog. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews. Thank you for having me, The Write Reads! 

I like thrillers like this so was intrigued by the premise of the book. I think it's obvious that Vanessa Edwards used to work in law; it's meticulously written. I could barely put the book down because it just kept me engrossed! There are so many different strands and so many different people who are all out for themselves. But most of the characters are really likeable even though they are out for themselves! 

The book revolves around a man called Hugh, but he isn't a main character at all really and it's hard to get to know him. He is married to Amanda and they live in a big house in Winchester which has taken a lot of refurbishment which has taken up all of Amanda's time. He is also having an affair with a woman called Leonie, who works for his law firm in London. Before the beginning of the book, he has broken up with her on the same day that she is made redundant. She wants to get revenge on Hugh so she gets a job at the cleaning firm that Amanda employs, wanting to eventually get to clean Amanda's house. She plans to plant things like receipts and stuff in Hugh's posessions to get Amanda to suspect his affairs, and hopes to bring his life down around him. 

However, there are other things going on too. First of all there's Simon. He is a bit of a loner who lives in a camper van. He does garden work, which he uses as a cover to size up people's houses to burgle. He manages to get a job at Amanda's house and begins to win her over by taking her food, cooking for her, etc. He's charming and so different to Hugh and eventually the two begin an affair. 

But Amanda's current cleaner, Tina, is being blackmailed by her brother in law to steal people's information from the houses she cleans. She makes some money off this which she needs for her son as she's a single mum, but she feels terrible about it. She ends up meeting Simon, who realises what she's doing and realises he needs to contain her. Then there's a woman called Brenda, also a cleaner, who knows about Simon and Amanda's affair and who sends a bribery letter. Leonie knows both these women but doesn't know everything, of course. 

The bodies don't appear in this book until really late on, because so much happens and there's just so many threads. As the reader you know everything, but no one else does. All of the women are pretty sympathetic, even those who are breaking the law, because you understand their desperation. Amanda really has a lot of growth throughout the book and I wanted her and Leonie to succeed. 

In all I'm giving this five out of five because I was just enthralled. I will definitely read something else by Vanessa when she publishes something else! 

The Dark Wives by Ann Cleeves - Review

Thank you so much to Pan Macmillan for granting me access to this, the new Ann Cleeves book, on Netgalley. I love Ann Cleeves and am slowly making my way through her back catalogue, so I was really happy to read this new book just as it came out. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

This is a Vera Stanhope book and it was really good to be back with her. At the beginning of the book a young girl goes missing from a care home, and the body of one of the workers from the home is found nearby. The girl, Chloe, has left a diary behind and it seems like she may have had a crush on Josh, the worker. He is a student and his parents live in a big house quite nearby - but they didn't know he was working in the care home. It seems very much like Chloe could have killed him and taken off, but Vera doesn't want to believe that of a damaged young woman. The team starts to investigate. Vera is blaming herself for the death of one of their team in a previous book, and there's a replacement, Rosie, to get to know too. 

Josh took the job to try to impress his ex girlfriend, Stella, who is a save the world type and who lives on a commune with her dad. It's somewhere that Chloe has visited, too, so there's a link there. Josh and his dad used to go climbing on a hill where the titular Dark Wives - three stones - stand. Another body turns up there, the body of one of Chloe's housemates, another vulnerable young man in care. It looks like an overdose, but is it? 

There's a lot of layers in the book and many different strands of story. I'm honestly not sure how Cleeves keeps them all straight! I really enjoyed this and am giving it five out of five because I really enjoyed reading it. 

The Man in Black and Other Stories by Elly Griffiths - Review

I am really sorry to have been absent from my blog for a bit. I was feeling a bit uncreative after I came back from a few days away, and then one of my beloved cats died very unexpectedly. She probably had a heart attack or something; it was very sudden. We're just very sad and shocked. I was about to start writing this post when she died, and I know it published as an empty post before. I'm sorry about that if you saw it. 

I also read this book weeks ago - I finished it on the 26th of July - and I feel like I've forgotten loads of what is in it. As with all Elly's books, I enjoyed it, though. It's a book of short stories; I've read a couple of Elly's short stories before but it was nice to read a whole book of them. I also read this just before I went to Norfolk on holiday and as a few of the stories are set in Norfolk it was nice to do this. 

Some of the usual suspects are here - Ruth and Nelson and Kate, Max Mephisto, and Harbinder Kaur. I liked all their stories, of course, and the one about Ruth's first Christmas tree. I've read that before but it was lovely to read it again as Kate is a baby in it and of course in the books she's quite grown up now. I loved seeing Max in the theatre and in the lodging houses again, and learning a bit more about his past. I liked the stories with new characters too. I think the best one was a twist in the tale about a woman who discovered something in her husband's garden... 

In all I'm giving this four out of five and I really liked it!

The Murder After The Night Before by Katy Brent - Review

I read How To Kill Men and Get Away With It last summer and liked it, so when I saw that Katy Brent had a new book out I was intrigued to read it. I bought this on Kindle for a couple of quid and picked it up in the middle of July. I had a quiet weekend with a lot of reading and made my way through this book. I found it compulsive reading, but... I think it's like a jam doughnut - it tastes really good at the time but it's not that good for you and you shouldn't eat nothing but jam doughnuts. I found it compelling but for odd reasons, I think. 

So, Molly Monroe is a journalist on a magazine called Girl Chat where she basically writes fluff pieces for pre teens about unicorns and stuff. She lives with her best friend, Posey Porter, (ridiculous names) in London. Posey is a serious journalist, working for The Post. Molly wakes up one morning, the day after her work Christmas party, and finds a strange man in her bed. He introduces himself as Jack. He says they didn't have sex but she has no recollection of what happened the night before or how she met him. She heads off to work. She's late and she's only there like twenty minutes when she realises that she has gone viral on social media. She was filmed the night before giving a blow job to a random man on a street and now everyone is slut shaming her and so on. Her boss isn't impressed and sends her home. Ordinarily she would talk to Posey, but Posey isn't home. She did email Molly the night before detailing that they had rowed and that they needed to talk it over, but Molly doesn't remember what the row was about. 

And then Molly finds Posey's body in the bath of her en suite. The police quickly shrug off the death as accidental - despite bruises on Posey's body, which is one of the plot holes that really bothered me - but Molly starts to dig around. It turns out that Posey was working on a story about the disappearance of a teenager called Lulu Lawrence (another ridiculous name). She was sixteen and reported missing a year before, but then her parents said she had gone to stay with a relative and the story died down. Posey was certain that there was more to it, and she has left a trail of breadcrumbs for Molly to follow to uncover the truth. 

I did find the mystery compelling, but I thought some of the reasons Molly had for either doing something or not doing something were stupid at times and just for plot reasons. I thought things worked out maybe a bit too pat at times, some things were just a little bit convenient for me. I am also not really sure how Posey and Molly were affording to live in this part of London, but there we are. Molly is mostly likeable but a bit insufferable at times. I also found her ability to remember things she had had conversations about months ago really annoying and unrealistic. 

There are some plot holes which I did find annoying. And there's a couple of glaring mistakes - for instance once around the timing of Lulu's disappearance, which I really felt someone should have picked up on - which frustrated me. For that reason I'm having to rate this lower than Katy's previous book. So it's a three out of five from me. I will probably read her next book too, though... everyone likes jam doughnuts once in a while!

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid - Review

 

I picked this book up in The Bookish Type in Leeds at their sale which I went to in the summer of 2023 I think. I got tons of books there and I'm trying to get through them! I think this was in the sale section for just a pound, which is a bargain! I always enjoy Val McDermid and I'm glad that the queer bookshop sells her stuff! 

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book, and I also read that it's the first book concerning the detective Karen Pirie (as you can see on the cover). I thought it would have more Karen in it but she's barely there - which I actually quite liked and I think it really worked for the narrative. 

It's a book in two parts. The first part takes place in 1978. Four friends - the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy - are are university in St Andrews and they've been to a house party and are walking back to their shared house when one of them, Alex Gilbey, trips over the body of a woman they kind of know. She's a barmaid in one of the pubs they like to visit, and Alex has had a bit of a crush on her. She's alive, but barely. One of the boys tries to save her while Alex goes off to find the police. When he gets back with a local patrol officer, James Lawson, the girl, Rosie, has died. 

The four boys do have something to hide, as they nicked the car belonging to one of their housemates, but they didn't kill Rosie. But suspicions fall upon them and it's hard to shake these accusations off. The four lads have been friends since high school and have a strong bond. 

There's Sigmund, aka Ziggy. He's gay, but only Alex knows it. There's Alex, who asked Rosie to the house party that evening. There's Weird, who likes taking mind altering drugs. And there's Mondo, who did take the car out for a while at the party. Alex isn't sure whether to suspect any of his friends or not. He doesn't want to, but the police investigation peters out. All the boys go through some big stuff. They are threatened by Rosie's brothers, Brian and Colin, until the police warn them off. 

Then it's 2003, twenty five years later. Alex and his wife are expecting their first baby. Ziggy is living in America with his husband, Paul. I won't spoil what Weird is up to. Mondo has kind of drifted up from the others. Rosie's case is reopened by a cold case team, and Karen Pirie is heading up the investigation. But most of the evidence has gone missing, meaning that new forensic methods can't be used to try to finally get the killer. Then Ziggy dies in odd circumstances, and it's all back open for Alex and the others.

I really liked the book. The first half in 1978 felt very modern. I did think there were a couple of anachronisms, but I could mostly forgive them because the writing is just so good. The second half, weirdly, feels further away from now. Things like the fact that not everyone was carrying their mobile phone at all times and they still used landlines. It just seemed so weird when realy 2003 doesn't feel that long ago. That's when the book was written, by the way, it's not a more modern one that Val has placed completely in the past. 

I would read more in the Karen Pirie series, especially if they're not 'typical' detective novels like this one isn't. I'm giving it five out of five. 

Watching You by Lisa Jewell - Review

I picked this up in The Works a few weeks ago because I've really enjoyed the Lisa Jewell books I've read recently and liked the sound of this one, too. It was only £4 and I picked it up only a month after buying it. I really liked it. It's not exactly high brow literature but I think I got a lot of enjoyment out of it, and at this point in my life that's what I want and need. 

So at the beginning of the book a body is found in a house in Bristol. The house belongs to Tom and Nicola Fitzwilliam and their son, Freddie. A woman is then being interviewed by the police. Her name is Joey and she lives just a couple of doors down. She is a suspect in the murder and it becomes clear that she would have a motive for murder. 

However, in this book, really nothing is at it seems. No one is as they seem. There are a lot of characters and a lot of people have motive for murder. 

So. Tom is a 'super head' headmaster, the type of one who goes to problem schools for a year or two, solves the problems, and then moves on. His wife Nicola is a lot younger than him. Their son Freddie is fourteen and honestly, he's a bit of a creep. He spends his time logging the movements of neighbours and he is obsessed with two of the girls at Tom's school, Jenna and Bess. He takes photos of them from his attic bedroom window and he becomes obsessed with a girl called Romola who goes to private school, as he does too. He feels like he is the only person in the world who doesn't 'get' just how amazing Tom Fitzwilliam is. Nicola is obsessed with Tom, pandering to his every wish. She is a bit of a bland person, she doesn't have a lot of personality of her own. 

Tom's house is up in Melville Heights, above the rest of the village, and the row of houses are brightly painted and quite posh. Two doors down belong to Jack and Rebecca. They are married and expecting a baby. Jack is a surgeon and utterly go getting and brilliant. Rebecca is a systems analyst and spends most of her time in her office in the house, dilligently working. Jack's sister Joey and her husband Alfie are living in the attic. Joey is ten years younger than Jack and has just been a flightly type of person her whole life. She was working as a rep in Ibiza when she met Alfie, and they quickly got married and have moved home. Joey thinks she needs to be grown up and settled down now, but she's working at a children's play centre and she's living with her brother, so her life isn't exactly going how she thought it might be. 

Joey meets Tom and is infatuated with him. He likes her, too, and there's definitely something between them. But what exactly? 

Then there's Jenna. She's fifteen and about to do her GCSEs. She is one of the popular girls at school; her best friend is Bess. Jenna's mum, Frances, is mentally unwell and think that Tom is stalking her. She is obsessed with 'gang stalkers' and she thinks that Tom watches her from his house. She also thinks that he is a man that was involved in an incident on holiday in the Lake District several years prior, where a man, his wife and child were on a coach trip, and a woman came up to the man and started hitting him, shouting angrily at him. Jenna knows her mother is ill but lives in fear of anyone finding out. Her dad and brother live several towns away, and she doesn't want to have to leave her school. Her mum does a lot of things that are verging on illegal if not actually illegal. 

She doesn't really care about Tom Fitzwilliam, but Bess is obsessed with him. On a school trip to Spain, Tom and Bess stay up talking late one night and Jenna thinks something is going on between them. I loved the depiction of these two teenage girls, it felt really true in how they acted. I liked that my feelings towards Freddie changed throughout the book. And I liked how people really weren't as they seemed. 

I will say that there felt to be maybe just one too many coincidences for this to be real, but that didn't bother me too much. I liked the setting of this claustrophobic row of houses looking down upon this village. I was entertained by the book and am giving it four out of five. 

The Canal Murders by J R Ellis - Review

As you know, I love this series of books by J R Ellis, and have read all of them. I was eagerly awaiting this one and have had it on preorder since like last November or something. It arrived on my Kindle at the very end of April and I started reading it just a few days later. My mum was excited about it too, so when she's read it I will have to see what she thought. I didn't love it, though. I liked the story but I thought the writing was just a bit terrible. It felt very much like J R Ellis is just churning them out. I've always thought that his writing a slightly terrible - he relies too much on adverbs, and he uses other words when he can just say 'said', and if I had to read about Oldroyd and Andy 'munching' on biscuits one more time I was going to scream. But this time it really felt like the dialogue especially was just rubbish. There were people pontificating all over the place, and a lot of 'telling' involved in the speeches people made, too. 

All of this is a real shame, because I love these books. I probably will read the next one, yeah, but it feels a bit like cheesy chips from a takeaway - you know it tastes good at the time but you also know you couldn't read nothing but this type of stuff because it wouldn't be good for you in the long run. 

So, the story. Steph and Andy are on a canal boat holiday from near Leeds somewhere, and they're in Saltaire near Bradford, staying overnight. They go into a pub nearby and witness a woman having a go at a woman in a group of people at the folk night there. The next morning, Steph is up early when she sees a boat coming downstream, and then she realises the woman at the tiller is slumped over, dead. Steph and Andy secure the boat and call the police. Javed Iqbal, who used to work with them in Harrogate, is the detective on scene. He soon realises it's a strange case - there is no sign of anyone being on the boat with Annie Shipton, the victim. He asks Steph and Andy to help (of course), and then asks if they can get Oldroyd to come along and help (also of course). 

Annie Shipton was one of a group of friends who lived on the canal. The others are Bridget, Bob, and Liz. Her ex, Ben (there were way too many people with names starting with B in this book), now lives near Haworth, and Liz's husband Roger is dead. But all six of them used to be in a folk band together, called Rowan. They split up and fell out a bit over copyright issues and money, but then Annie had persuaded them all to buy canalboats near each other. They all, middle class hippy types, seemed to think of themselves as a bit above everyone else. Annie had written a blog about people she didn't think belonged on the canal, and one of these people, Laura, was the woman who had a go at her in the pub the night before her death. Then there's mysterious loner Len, who speaks of the spirits who live on the canal. 

No shortage of suspects already, for sure, but then we add in people from Salts Mill nearby. The CEO there has grand plans to expand the mill, but Annie has been at the forefront of a petition against it. Then there's Sam, a young lad who got into an altercation with Annie over his cycling down the towpath. He's not a bad lad really but he's a worry to his mum, and he's also a suspect. 

There are far too many suspects I think in this book, which ended up a little bit confusing. I liked the setting, as always, for sure, but I just felt the story left me a bit cold. In all I'm given this three out of five. It's really a 7 out of ten, haha.