The Last Woman in the World by Inge Simpson

 Rachel lives an almost hermit-like life far from others deep in the Australian bush. So when a young woman arrives asking for help for her sick baby, Rachel is at first tempted to turn them away. But listening to the woman, Hannah, she begins to realise that the civilisation she's fled from has started to crumble under a pandemic, and that Rachel herself may be the only person left who can help.

At first they head for the nearest town ('nearest' being a bit of a relative term as the story is set in the Australian outback) to find Rachel's sister who's the doctor there. Then, finding she's already left, they follow her presumed trail to Canberra. It's road trip with a difference as besides the natural difficulties they have to face survivors as desperate as themselves, and a new plague of 'demons' or 'spirits' which kill through fear.  

There's a lot here that readers of apocalyptic fiction will find familiar - a person living safely outside of society during a time of upheaval is forced to take a journey out of their secure bubble, to confront the chaos and dangers of the outside world. And if Rachel thought the outside was dangerous before, it's now doubly, triply, so, with bush fires, survivor groups and the demons to be evaded, plus she has Hannah and the baby to look after. 

It's a gripping enough read but too similar to other apocalyptic stories to really stand out from the crowd. Its main difference comes in that, for once, the world is going to be saved by women rather than men. 

Painkiller by NJ Fountain

review by Maryom

Since an accident five years ago, Monica has been in almost constant, unbearable pain. Each day she wakes up not knowing what to expect - will this be a rare 'good' day when her pain is manageable enough for her to get up, go out, live a semblance of normal life, or one of the far more frequent days when, despite the cocktail of painkillers, she ends up lying flat on her back all day, her mind made hazy by the drugs, afraid that any movement will cause agony?   One night, kept awake by pain, and looking for something to distract her, Monica finds a letter hidden away - a suicide note she'd written years before when her pain was too bad to cope with. But something doesn't ring true about it; despite her unceasing pain, despite the tricks high doses of painkillers have played with her memory, despite the handwriting appearing to be hers, despite everything her husband Dominic says, Monica finds it impossible to believe she would ever really have contemplated taking her own life. Is someone trying to mess with her mind? or maybe her seemingly loving husband, Dominic, isn't quite as caring and patient as he appears, and has been planning to kill her?

You've probably guessed, from the ambiguous title alone, that Painkiller is a tense psychological thriller with a woman fearing that someone close to her is threatening her life. It starts well, told mainly from Monica's point of view, capturing her constant pain and her equally strong determination to fight it, however she can, and of course the reader is expecting the first step of a psychological thriller - the revelation that not everything is quite as Monica believes.  Perhaps because of that, I found the middle third moved a little slowly for a thriller - it explores Monica's condition more though, and makes both it and the affects of the drugs things the reader can begin to understand. The end speeds up again, with revelations and twists coming thick and fast as the story reaches its climax.

There are definitely echoes of SJ Watson's Before I Go To Sleep, with the plot depending on huge gaps in the narrator's memory, but it's in no way a copy-cat retelling. If Watson had written this as his second book, I'd have been disappointed; as it is, in a different author's hands there's no feeling of re-visiting the same material. It's gripping, well-plotted, and that ideal thriller - a book you won't want to put down.




Maryom's Review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Sphere 
Genre - adult psychological thriller

The Loving Husband by Christobel Kent

review by Maryom

Fran Hall half-wakes one night as her husband, Nathan, comes home from the pub and climbs into bed beside her ... then, an hour or so later, she wakes fully to a scream. Finding the bed beside her empty, she goes downstairs and out into the dark farmhouse yard, where a shocking discovery awaits ... Nathan's dead body slumped in a ditch!

This psychological thriller starts on a high note, grabbing the reader's attention and curiosity, and pretty much stays that way.
As their secrets come tumbling out, Fran and Nathan soon prove to not be the ideal happy couple they seem, their move from London to the countryside something forced by Nathan rather than a joint decision and even the whole basis for their marriage suddenly seems to be in question. 
The story is told from Fran's point of view, so, while the police seem to only be investigating her as a possible suspect, we don't really know what information they have or what other lines of enquiry they might be following. She believes the police are just wasting time, not following up on all possible leads, and so decides to investigate things herself, to track down the shadowy figure she spotted across the fields on the night of the murder. .. but, to be honest, Fran seems so confused and uncertain about events of that night that it's possible to believe she could be hiding something crucial to the investigation from both police and reader, or suffering from amnesia.  
The atmosphere of flat, empty wintry fen-land is wonderfully captured, there are plenty of red herrings and dead ends, and a surprise ending, all of which add up to an excellent domestic noir style thriller.

Maryom's Review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Sphere 
Genre - adult psychological thriller

The Corpse Bridge by Stephen Booth

review by Maryom

On Halloween night a dead body is found at the aptly named Corpse Bridge over the river Dove; once part of a route from remote villages to the consecrated burial ground, now it's merely forms part of a pleasant walk by the river. Investigating the ground around the bridge DS Ben Cooper and his team stumble upon signs of witchcraft - an effigy laid out on a slab and witches balls hanging in trees. Could the murder be a ghastly addition to the strange rituals, so far only involving animals, going on in the area?

As Stephen Booth is a 'local' author and his "Cooper and Fry" crime series is set in the Peak District not that far from where I live, I've frequently seen his novels at the library and in bookstores but till now I hadn't  picked one up and read it. Spurred on by his event at Derby Book Festival I decided it was time I did!
Jumping in at book 14 of a series is never a brilliant idea but actually I found it easy enough to slip into Ben Cooper's world - especially as the relationship between him and colleague Diane Fry had been discussed at the Derby event. For other new-comers, Cooper and Fry started out together as detective constables, have now grown older, been promoted, and so on. They're a bit like chalk and cheese as Cooper is a local lad, happiest in the countryside, while Fry is only at home in the city and can't wait to be transferred back there. I won't say any more because at the Derby event a member of the audience mentioned something that happened in, I think, book 12 and it's only on reading The Corpse Bridge that I realised just how HUGE that spoiler was, and I don't want to fall into the same trap!
Despite the chilling title, the presence of dead bodies and suspicions of witchcraft, Booth's writing has a cosier sort of feel to it than many crime novels I've read recently - more Miss Marple or Midsomer Murders than The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or The Killing. That said, grubby city back-streets or twisted psychopaths don't automatically make for a better read, and Sherlock Holmes always feared empty country spaces where no one can hear you scream. I rather enjoyed this first encounter with Cooper and Fry - the plot has twists and turns enough to keep anyone guessing, and the added appeal of a location I know. I now have a lot of back-story to catch up on and I'm looking forward to getting to know the main characters better.

 
Maryom's Review - 4 stars
Publisher - Sphere 
Genre - adult crime,

The Crooked House by Christobel Kent

review by Maryom

Thirteen years ago Esme was the only member of her family to emerge unscathed after a night of horrific violence in which her mother, brother, and twin sisters were killed before her father presumably turned his gun on himself. Now, calling herself Alison, she's created a new anonymous life in London and thought the past was well behind her - until her boyfriend asks her to join him at a wedding in the very village the tragedy occurred. Alison's hopes of slipping in and out of the place unnoticed soon fade - even if they don't say anything, the locals have recognised her - and, despite her initial terror at returning, she finds herself drawn to the lonely crooked house where she once lived - compelled to confront the past she's tried so hard to suppress. As her memories flood back, she soon starts to question the 'official' version of what happened on that horrific night...but if her father wasn't responsible for the shootings, who was?
The Crooked House is a novel with a great sense of place and stalking evil. Saltleigh is a remote community situated between estuary and marshes; one that no one visits accidentally, that takes generations to belong in, one that closes ranks against outsiders and refuses to reveal its secrets. Alison's childhood home was isolated even further - a lonely dilapidated house surrounded by windswept marshes, reached by it's own access track. Coming back after so many years, it feels to Alison like a place where evil taints the air and that her personal tragedy was just one of a long list; a toddler killed in a house fire, a child dying of cancer, a hit and run teenage death.
After the initial shock opening, the story starts a little slowly, building Alison's current situation in London, her relationships with work colleagues and  much older boyfriend. When the setting moves to Saltleigh, the pace and menace pick up, and Alison's carefully constructed peace of mind rapidly unravels.

It's a page-turning tale of buried secrets that had me guessing to the end - I was just left wondering about the motivation of some of the characters, and at how lazy the original police investigation had been.

Maryom's Review - 4 stars
Publisher - Sphere 
Genre - adult psychological thriller

Daughters of The Grail by Elizabeth Chadwick

Review by Maryom

"Thirteenth century France. Bridget has grown up mastering the mystical gifts of her ancestor, Mary Magdalene, whose unbroken female lineage has kept a legacy of wisdom alive for a thousand years. But the all-powerful Catholic Church has sworn to destroy Bridget for using her healing talents and supernatural abilities.
Bridget's duty to continue the bloodline leads her into the arms of Raoul de Montvallant - a Catholic. But when the Church's savage religious intolerance causes Raoul to turn rebel, a terrible vengeance is exacted by Simon de Montfort, the unstoppable Catholic leader ..."

That's the back-of-the-book blurb but I feel the story of Raoul and his young wife Claire deserves more of a mention. Looking forward to a pleasant, peaceful life their expectations are shattered when the south of France is effectively invaded by northerners who've signed up for the Pope's crusade against the Cathars. Their differing responses to the invasion of their lands pushes their marriage to breaking point. He takes up arms and fiercely opposes the French, she turns her back on all violence from whatever source and finds consolation and strength in the peaceful non-resistance of the Cathar beliefs.
I discovered this book through someone's recommendation while I was reading Labyrinth by Kate Mosse  and Troubadour by Mary Hoffman both set in the same time-frame of The Albigensian crusade. While Daughters of the Grail definitely falls into the 'romantic fiction' category - with quite a few 'bodice-ripping' moments - it's also a moving look at the devastation that war brings - at personal and wider levels.
While not within my normal reading genres, Daughters of the Grail was an enjoyable novel that captured the happenings and atmosphere of the time really well without over-crowding the story-line with dry facts. Definitely one for the historical romance fans out there!

Maryom's Review - 4 stars
Publisher - Sphere 
Genre - Adult Historical Romance