The Butcher Bird by SD Sykes

review by Maryom

Oswald de Lacy is still trying to find his feet as new Lord of the Manor. Somershill has been as badly affected by the Black Death as anywhere else; fields lie fallow for want of men to plough them, houses sit empty where the inhabitants have died, and the villeins and tenants who once followed their lord's bidding without question are starting to understand the power they now have, particularly demanding that Oswald pays higher wages. As if these troubles weren't enough, a baby is found dead and thrown into a thorn bush. The villagers immediately suspect this is the work of the Butcher Bird - a huge bird seen above Somershill's fields, and rumoured to have been loosed by grieving villager John Burrows from the grave of his wife. Oswald is quick to discount such superstitious thinking, but if the Butcher Bird isn't to blame, then who is? Soon though Oswald is side-tracked by other problems, as his widowed sister's step-daughters run away to London, and he finds himself entangled by the charms of their aunt Eloise....

The Butcher Bird is the second of the Snowshill Manor mysteries, following on from Plague Land, set in the fourteenth century in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death, and with Oswald still trying to come to grips with his new position, while solving another murder.

As third son in the family, he'd been destined for the Church, raised in a monastery, and has no inkling of how to run his estate - he could do with a quick course in both farming and 'human resources'. His villagers and servants seem to hold him in little regard, and, if possible, the women in his family value him even less! Whatever Oswald wants to do, they set out to find a way to outwit him.
I'd feel sorry for Oswald, constantly exasperated by them, if he wasn't the one with all the (theoretical) power. The peasants of his manor aren't free to stay or leave as they please, and, by law, wages are set at a low, pre-plague figure. Many are sneaking away, leaving the countryside and heading for town, hoping for a better life there.
Oswald's women-folk are stuck with him though! They're restricted by laws and custom from so many things, and have so very little choice about what will happen to them in life. They each have a way to try to get round these restrictions - Eloise relies on physical attraction, sister Clemence bullies and nags, and his mother deflects all arguments through silliness. It's funny at times to read, but the reality of women's lives wouldn't have been so humorous.

Like Plague Land, this works well as both crime and historical novel; it's as twisty-turny a whodunnit as any contemporary crime novel while capturing the flavour of the period without over-loading the reader with historical facts and figure.


Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Hodder & Stoughton
Genre - adult fiction, historical crime

Christopher Fowler: London's Glory Blog Tour - Author contribution

To celebrate the launch of "London's Glory", a collection of short stories about the detectives Bryant and May, we are delighted to welcome Christopher Fowler's blog tour and take the opprtunity to put some questions and learn the true future of this great pairing of characters.

 Before Bryant and May you had success with a few other books including "Roofworld".  These books were either short story collections or stand-alone novels but then you come up with a series of 15 books about an unlikely pairing of detectives.  Where did you get the idea of such an odd couple as Bryant and May from?


I wanted to create two Golden Age detectives in a modern setting. I made Bryant & May old to

dispense with the ageism that suggests only the young can do their jobs well. Older characters bring a lifetime of experience. I started with a matchbox label that read "Bryant & May - England's Glory". That gave me their names, their nationality, and something vague and appealing, the sense of an institution with roots in London's sooty past. You have to remember that London has only just been lit up. Before the mid-1980s it was a city steeped in shadows which bred criminality. We lost something when the lights were turned up and the CCTV was turned on, and I try to recapture that lost sense of the sinister.

 There is a psychic element in many of  the cases - did you develop these psychic themes as deeply as you would like or did editors hold you back? Or, perhaps, the opposite?


Amazingly I’m still working with the same editor and he never holds me back! I sew threads of ideas throughout the novels that I like to return to, and one of them is that DS Janice Longbright and her mother are psychic, which I’m able to explore in a non-supernatural, realistic way, in ‘The Burning Man’. I think there should always be a hint of the unknown in the stories…


Did you plan on them becoming such a long series?

I hadn’t expected the series to last so long at all. In fact, the first book was written as a one-off. The idea of a couple of elderly, grumpy detectives clearly didn’t sound very appealing to my former publisher, so I took the book to someone who understood what I was getting at, and have been there ever since. It seems to have worked and the detectives have a growing number of fans, which delights me.

I particularly enjoy making them behave like experienced adults and immature children. I think heroes are often boring simply because they have to be appealingly young – well, Bryant & May don’t have to be; they’re as esoteric, eccentric, bad-tempered and weird as the villains, who in most books are more interesting than heroes.


In "The Burning Man" we are presented with a scenario of the end of the series and I, for one, was gutted. What made you decide to bring the series to an end?



I haven’t! There is, as with all the mystery novels I most admire, a sleight of hand going on with clues hidden in several earlier volumes. I love showing that something is utterly impossible, and then revealing how it can be done. Just one reader has worked out what I’m up to, and I may have to kill him. I don’t write the books to be read in sequence, by the way; in fact I think they’re more fun if you mix them up. Perhaps ‘On The Loose’ and ‘Off The Rails’ should be read together, and ’77 Clocks’ is the odd one out, being set in a different period.

London's Glory treats us to a chance to follow their antics once again in a group of short stories - will there be more stories from before "The Burning Man" to follow?

I think if it turns out there’s a market for them, then yes. Publishers always tell you not to write short stories as readers don’t like them, but that’s a red rag to a bull to me, and just makes me want to write more. Conan Doyle’s consulting detective inspired many other authors to tackle stories beyond the accepted canon. Adrian Conan Doyle picked up his father’s mantle, accompanied by John Dickson Carr, for ‘The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes’, based on twelve unexplained cases mentioned by Holmes, and did two more volumes…

You have returned to stand-alone and short story books - do you a plan for a replacement of Bryant and May? 
 

See above – they’re not leaving yet! In fact the next full-length novel, ‘Strange Tide’, is out in March.

If you had to be judged on just one of your books and could choose which it was to be - which would you put forward?

Without question it would be Paperboy, because it’s my life. Well, that and the sequel Film Freak. But if they’re about who I am, then Bryant & May are about how I’d like to be.

Crime Author Event - 6th November

 by The Mole

A regular feature in the Waterstones Nottingham calendar are "crime panels" where 2 or 3 crime authors talk about their work. The latest panel brought together three local authors - Steven Dunne, Stephen Booth, and Glenis Wilson.

Steven Dunne has written five thrillers starring DI Damen Brook and they are set mainly in Derby. His latest book is A Killing Moon. Stephen Booth's long-running Cooper and Fry series takes place in the idyllic setting of the Peak district and runs to 15 books - the latest being The Murder Road. Glenis Wilson, as well as literary and romantic novels, has turned to crime in the world of horse-racing; her latest, Dead On Course is out in December.

Due to traffic we arrived a little late but were still welcomed with a smile and we settled in quietly at the back. The event was under way and we had missed the formal introductions but a cross author Q&A was in full swing with Steven Dunne leading the session.

We have seen Steven Dunne a few times at events in Nottingham and Derby, and Steven Booth was a guest at the Derby Book Festival but we hadn't encountered Glenis Wilson before although she is part of Nottingham Writer's Studio

Each author then read a short passage from one of their books and surprisingly Steven Dunne chose to read from Deity and not his latest book. Stephen Booth read from The Murder Road. All three authors read about the discovery of a body and The Mole found Deity to be chilling to the point where it's one book he probably wouldn't pick up - although he would be happy to read Dunne's other books.

Steven Booth explained how in Corpse Road Cooper and Fry visit Hartington and Booth takes the opportunity to mention that Dunne's Damen Brook lives there but they choose not to visit. Product placement or what?

The floor was opened up to questions and a very open audience took the opportunity to pose questions without any reservations - normally the audience can be rather shy.

A book signing followed with coffee and wine available as we chatted about the books and the event with the authors and the organiser - Dan. Dan does have a last name but we were shown and discussed a precedent where it wasn't used. Another great event Mr Donson - thank you.

A really excellent evening's entertainment with fascinating people.

Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths

review by Maryom

It's November 1951 and Brighton is getting ready for Christmas with lights along the prom and panto in the pier theatre - even the weather is getting in the mood with snow blanketing the town. For DI Edgar Stephens and his team, the snow isn't welcome at all - it's merely hampering the police's efforts to trace two missing children. Thirteen year old Annie and best friend twelve year old Mark had been playing on the street with other children, rehearsing one of the rather gruesome fairy-tale inspired plays that Annie used to write, but in the few minutes it took to walk to the sweet shop they had disappeared. When their bodies are discovered, with a trail of sweets seemingly pointing to them, the immediate suspect is the shop-owner, but to Edgar the whole scene seems reminiscent of the tale of Hansel and Gretel. He seems surrounded by too may leads, and too many suspects - the young teacher who encouraged Annie's writing? the neighbour who allowed the children to perform in his converted garage? or maybe there's a link to a previous murder, many years before, in which a child star appearing in the panto Babes in the Wood was killed?
Edgar's friend, and war-time colleague, Max Mephisto, in Brighton playing evil villain Abanazar in Aladdin, comes to his help with behind the scenes theatre gossip but, as a stage magician, feels that somehow the investigation is being distracted in the classic "smoke and mirrors" way...

Oddly, I've been to a couple of  Elly Griffiths 's events, really enjoyed them and left feeling I really must read her books - but not got round to it! I'd intended to pick up this new series at the beginning - but again I've failed, and jumped in at Book2. Although I'll go back and read the first, The Zig-zag Girl, this second stands well alone. The back story is explained enough for a new-comer to understand, though I'd guess there are spoilers for book one in there, but really this story stands on its own. It unfolded in a way to keep me hooked - first the desperate search for the children, then the sad discovery of their bodies, with insights into possible motives and suspects revealed gradually, as and when discovered by the police, but not deliberately with-held by the author (I hate that!). Set in the 1950s there are obviously a lot of modern methods unavailable to DI Stephens and his colleagues - but in some ways this can lead to a more engrossing story; the answer isn't found by an anonymous scientist in a lab but by old-fashioned observation and deduction.
There's also an intriguing personal story going on for Edgar Stephens, which I won't divulge but which has me wanting to know what will happen next in his life. In this respect, I think readers ARE going to be teased - with Edgar being led in a direction they won't want him to go!
I'm now a confirmed Elly Griffiths fan and my only regret is not having made the effort to read her work before - but on the plus side, there's lots waiting for me to discover and I don't have to wait for a new book to be published.


Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Quercus
Genre - adult historical crime

The Stars Seem So Far Away by Margret Helgadottir

review by Maryom


A girl sailing alone over the Northern seas outwits pirates, another guards the seed bunkers established by her father, a boy stumbles across a former astronaut now living in a wrecked plane ..... through the eyes of five different survivors, Margret Helgadottir shares a bleak vision of a dying Earth, devastated by global warming, where only the polar regions are still habitable.

 In this dystopian future, people have fled North and built new cities on Svalbard and Greenland, but even here life is difficult. Plague and famine attack the remaining population, families become separated and, for most, life is just about surviving from day to day. Only in The Green Land, as it's now known, does a ray of hope remain - there are seed banks, artificial animals and enough remaining civilisation to put together a space flight...


At first this seems like a collection of short stories, but gradually they begin to merge into one bigger tale. The picture painted is of a devastated Earth, where all other life has died, and only Man survives - and even Mankind is hanging on by its collective fingertips! Seeing the effects of global warming brought to life in this way, gives them an immediacy that scientists statements often lack. The characters and their stories will hook you but the underlying message about environmental change can't be ignored.
I'm not sure whether this is aimed at teens, adults or both. I really enjoyed it, loved the writing style and world-building, without felling it was aimed at anyone younger - but, with the major characters all being in or around their teens, I still feel younger ages groups would enjoy it.


 
 Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher -  Fox Spirit
Genre - sci-fi, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, adult/teen crossover

The Shoeshine Killer by Marianne Wheelaghan

review by Maryom

This second in the Scottish Lady Detective series, sees Louisa Townsend in Fiji for a police conference - but getting mixed up with murder. When a new acquaintance is killed, Louisa isn't convinced the local police are asking the right questions so wants to help out - but not only do the Fijian police not want her help - they also think she could be a suspect!
With Louisa sidelined from the official investigation, this is more like an amateur detective story than a police procedural. She's forced to do things on the sly, without any of the resources available to the official investigation, although she does have the assistance of one of the local Fijian police, Constable Makareta, who's actually supposed to be keeping an eye on Louisa's movements.

In her first 'outing', Food of Ghosts, Louisa was trying to get to grips with the customs of the Pacific Island  Kiribati; this time she's equally adrift by being away from home on Fiji. It certainly doesn't come over as the idyllic paradise I've always assumed it to be - it has as many drug-dealers and prostitution rackets as any gritty European crime setting, and the weather seems just as wet (though undoubtedly hotter). This is though a lighter sort of crime novel - more Midsomer than The Bridge - with some decidedly comic moments in between the deaths; over all it's a fun, enjoyable read rather than a grim psychological study.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Pilrig Press
Genre - crime

Oy Yew by Ana Salote

Review by The Mole

Oy Yew is a young waif who cannot remember where he came from or what his name is. He wanders the streets living off the smell of a bakery while not being noticed. One day, however, he is noticed, by children who catch him and sell him to Jeopardine, a factory owner. Oy now finds out what it's like to be noticed, to be spoken to and to have people who are concerned for his welfare, albeit only other waifs. It's not long before he is sent, along with a couple of other waifs, to work in the factory owners house.

When waifs reach a certain height they are released from service and sent "home". But in this household because food is scarce and accidents are rife it takes a long time for the waifs to reach the required height - if they live that long.

Jeopardine soon notices that Oy is different to other waifs and takes a special interest in him. Then accidents start to threaten Oy but somehow Oy seems to live a charmed life. 

Oy Yew is a story described as crossover aimed at 9 to 90 and it certainly works (although I'm not 90 yet!). A story of slavery, abuse, treachery, kindness and friendship also steeped in adventure, suspense and danger. It encapsulates much that is bad in the world and contrasts that with so much that is good.

The main characters are the waifs who are all aged in the 7-12 age bracket (although age is not something they discuss - it's height that matters) and they are a mixed set of girls and boys, some likeable some positively not so. For the younger capable reader this has everything they could want in a book, for the older reader it works equally well.

As book 1 of a trilogy called The Waifs of Duldred (Duldred is Jeopardine's estate) we can reasonably safely assume that all will not go as the waifs have planned at Duldred.

Longlisted for the Times/Chicken House prize for children's fiction - I thoroughly enjoyed this well crafted story.

When I come to write these reviews I always wonder have I said enough? Is there more I should add? With this in mind let me finish with these words.... read this book!

Publisher - Mother's Milk Books
Genre - Children's/Adult crossover,  dystopian