The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont

 In December 1926 Agatha Christie disappeared. Her car was found abandoned quite close to her home, but of Agatha there was no trace. A nationwide search followed with hundreds of police and civilians involved but still there were no signs, till eleven days later she was recognised in a Harrogate hotel. Agatha claimed to not remember anything of the intervening time, and the mystery of  her disappearance has intrigued her readers ever since.

Nina de Gramont takes these basic known facts, mixes in some imaginative fiction, and weaves a compelling story around them. Events unfold mainly from the point of view of Archie Christie's mistress, Nan O'Dea, with her fictional backstory of first love and loss taking centre stage, and Agatha's disappearance merely forming the backdrop. It wouldn't be a Christie homage without a murder or two - and a hotel in Harrogate forms the backdrop for a couple of suspicious deaths, treated in typical Christie 'cosy crime' manner. 

Overall it's an enjoyable read, but just a little disappointing in not holding to the few known facts about Agatha Christie's time in Harrogate. Approach it as pure fiction, and it's a much more satisfying story.

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

Whether it's from multiple readings of the book or casual watching of TV and film adaptations, most of us know Jane Austen's story of the Bennet family of Longbourn; of Mrs Bennet's desperate ploys to marry off her five daughters, of the happy-ever-after romances of elder sisters Jane and Elizabeth, and the wild, impetuous, embarrassing (totally teenage) behaviour of youngest sisters, Lydia.and Kitty. But what about the middle sister, Mary?

In any other family Mary Bennet would have been considered, if not pretty, at least attractive, but with four sisters - beautiful, witty, vivacious, or just younger -  she's overlooked by family, friends and, most importantly, any young men she meets as the dull, plain one. Snubbed, she turns to books for solace and improvement - not the fiction loved by her mother, but serious moral, philosophical  works - and in a vicious circle finds herself to be more of an oddity than ever

In The Other Bennet Sister, Janice Hadlow revisits the familiar events in Longbourn from a new perspective - that of 'middle' sister Mary. She's dismissed by her family as dull, boring, prim, She looks set for life as a spinster. But with her sisters married Mary gradually starts to come into her own. Mary is now 'allowed' a romance of her own - and even a choice of suitors; a young eligible gentleman who seems a perfect match and a tempting alternative who might just prove to be incredibly wrong for her.


There are a lot of Pride and Prejudice spin-off novels and films (and I'm a sucker for them) - some work, some don't. This definitely does. The setting remains Austen's Regency England, and for the most part Hadlow captures the style and feel of Austen's original work. Where it differs is in following marriages past the wedding ceremony, and in exploring the restricted options open to the un-married gentlewoman of limited means. In Austen's world it's taken as read that a young lady should marry, but not much thought is given to the alternative. As Charlotte Lucas outlines to Mary Bennet what the future of an 'old maid' looks like, we can see why she herself was so eager to grasp her chance of marrying, even when the prospective groom was Mr Collins.


I suspect few Austen fans would agree wholeheartedly in their interpretation of, say, Mr Bennet's attitude to his family, Mrs Bennet's obsession with marrying her daughters to the richest men available, or the hasty marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins, but an author taking these characters and giving them life beyond the original text has to pick an interpretation and stick to it - and it may not coincide with yours. Personally I felt Mr Bennet, and even Lizzie, were dealt with a little harshly - though, of course, I've previously only seen them from Lizzie's biased viewpoint - and a few words from Caroline Bingley throw the whole view of the Elizabeth/Darcy romance on its head, when she says that in feigning disinterest, Lizzie couldn't have played him better.

All in all this is an excellent addition to the works inspired by Pride and Prejudice. I loved it, and would definitely recommend unless you're an Austen purist.

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult fiction, Jane Austen 

The Queen of Bloody Everything by Joanna Nadin

review by Maryom

Edie is artistic, bohemian, slapdash. She doesn't care about her daughter's bedtimes, or homework being done, or about eating up your greens. You'd think she'd be the mother that children dreamed of having, but children always want what they don't have, and her daughter Dido longs for a 'normal' family - the perfect mum, dad, 2.4 children set up of glossy lifestyle magazines, but above all a mother who understands the importance of rules and routine in a child's life. Investigating the gate in the back fence of their new garden, Dido thinks she's stumbled into this paradise  - a ready-made family, the Trevelyans; Tom, his sister Harry, and their parents, Angela and David. It's love at first sight for a six year old. As the years pass, Dido's infatuation with the Trevelyans grows stronger, but even Eden had its problems, and Dido's little paradise has its share too.


The Queen of Bloody Everything is Joanna Nadin's first for a adult readership, beautifully written in a first person style which entices the reader in, and a moving look at a tumultuous mother/daughter relationship. With no father figure on the scene to share her love or anger, Dido's relationship with her mother is perhaps closer and more all-consuming than another child's might be, but at the same time she longs for what she sees as 'normal', imagining it to be better than what she has. Fundamentally though, Edie and Dido approach life and family in opposing ways; Edie has spent her life trying to escape the shackles of respectability and parental guidance; Dido craves them.

It's a story filled with nostalgia, particularly for the 70s and 80s, which seen through Dido's child-eyes are simpler, filled with love and the promise of a bright future. Dido's perfect world is based on wishful thinking and the Trevelyans aren't the perfect people she imagines, yet as she grows up and their flaws become apparent, Edie is the person who bears the brunt of Dido's disappointment, anger, and teenage tantrums.

I absolutely loved this book - its intimate, perceptive look at mother/daughter relationships, from the intensity of childhood to a more equal adult friendship, and its believable, attractive yet flawed characters. I'm hoping Joanna Nadin will be writing more adult novels!

Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult fiction, mother/daughter relationships, 

The Constant Soldier by William Ryan

review by Maryom

Paul Brandt has returned home from Germany's Russian Front a broken man, but his obvious physical wounds - the lost of an arm and disfiguring facial burns - hide deeper emotional ones. He's ashamed of the conduct of the German army, of the senseless atrocities and mindless killing he's seen, and participated in, and is looking for a way to make amends. In some respects his valley home on the German/Polish border is unchanged but war has still found it's way here - there are no able bodied men to work the land, down the valley lies a concentration camp and closer to hand is a SS Rest Hut, a retreat for those who run the camp, somewhere for them to forgot the horrors of their day to day life. Among the prisoners working at the Hut, Brandt believes he recognises a woman he knew, and loved, before the war, a woman who was part of an anti-Nazi group to which he belonged, and for whose arrest he has always felt responsible. Accepting a position as steward at the Hut, Brandt vows that from now on he will do his utmost to protect her, but meanwhile Russian troops are massing ready to move on Germany, and a time is approaching in which no one will be safe.

The Constant Soldier is a blend of thriller, historical fiction and love story; the sort of book that grabs you on the first page, and which can't be put down. The story of Brandt and his attempts to redeem himself play out like a spy or undercover cop thriller, with him in constant danger of being exposed as someone who no longer has any sympathy for the Nazi regime - something which would surely end swiftly in his death - but it's set against the wider backdrop of Germany in 1944 as the Russians advance and everyone begins to panic. Without labouring the point, Ryan tries to understand the mind-set of the 'average' German, particularly soldiers, who've drifted along with the tide of events and either through apathy or self-advancement found themselves part of an horrific war and an authoritarian regime they never really approved of - and for which now they're going to have to pay.

Reading it today with the recent rise in religious and racial hate crime, and a seeming shift to right-wing policies in many countries, there are disturbing parallels to be seen. Ryan isn't trying to lecture his readership though; The Constant Soldier is primarily a gripping, compelling story. The luxury and 'normality' of the Rest Hut contrasts starkly with the largely unseen life of the concentration camp. Brandt is a character with whom one can easily sympathise. The German's are not seen as stereo-type heel-clicking soldiers but as individuals - disillusioned army officers, disenfranchised Polish farmers, and resistance members on one side, with more-typical uniformed bullies and a power-hungry mayor on the other, and the young schoolboys, soon to become defenders of their piece of Germany, caught in the middle.
It's a book I'd highly recommend whether you read it at face value of historical thriller or as something thought-provoking and perhaps disturbing.


Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult historical thriller, war story, WW2

The Trap by Melanie Raabe

Review by Libby Mayfield

Over the past few years psychological thrillers have become more popular ever, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and S. J. Watson's Before I Go To Sleep being notable successes in the genre. Unlike the fads of paranormal romances or "sick lit", this is a style that can be difficult to pull off well, but I'm relieved to say that Melanie Raabe's The Trap did it.

The general premise is straightforward - a recluse author, Linda Conrads, sees her sister's murderer on television. She writes a book about the murder to lure the suspect into her home under the pretence of a rarely granted interview, and so the plot unfolds. It may seem simple, but, of course, it isn't.

I'm not usually one to be much affected by a novel, I have some trouble with horror movies but when it comes to literature I can usually shut the cover and put the plot out of my mind, no matter how deep under my skin it gets. Raabe's thriller proved to be an exception. Despite wanting to rush through the chapters, I paced myself over several days, and for the majority of the nights between I found the book creeping into my dreams, making them just as gripping and unsettling at the plot, where much like Linda, I found my reality questioned.

Every chapter is a mind game, from the two simultaneous stories to Raabe's ability to make you question just how much is real - as the plot proves how far the mind's perception of the world can be bent, it almost leaves you questioning just how much you know to be true. With convincing characters and a first person narrative so strong you find yourself thinking like Linda, the plot is almost totally absorbing. Add in impressive attention to detail and enough research to make every aspect believe, and it's safe to say you've got a novel that's consumed me like none has in months.

Raabe has an eerily beautiful talent for descending the novel into chaos and neatly piecing it back together again, resulting in a thriller that both leaves you wanting to rush to the end, and withhold yourself somewhat for fear of getting too sucked into the plot. But I might warn you; this is not a novel for the faint of heart. It might just creep into your dreams.

Libby's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult crime fiction, psychological thriller,  

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin

review by Maryom

 Noah is  a troubled four year old who knows things other kids his age don't - all about Harry Potter or guns or how to score baseball for example. At night he's plagued by dreams of drowning, and cries for his mama to rescue him, but when his mother, Janie, tries to comfort him, he insists she isn't his real mama - that he lives somewhere else, with another family. Growing increasingly worried, Janie consults various doctors but the best they can suggest is that Noah must be schizophrenic, so in desperation she approaches Dr Anderson, a scientist who believes he's encountered such cases before and that they are attributable to reincarnation, and the remembering of a previous life. Janie is clutching at straws, and Anderson's interest is solely in writing up Noah as a case-study, but together they decide to track down this other family that Noah talks about in the hope that meeting them will end his nightmares.

A young child remembers a previous life, details of his 'other' family, his pets, his old house and the way in which he died. To settle his nightmares, somehow this past life must be confronted and someone presumably brought to justice for his murder. It's the sort of plot-line that you could imagine Mulder and Scully working on in the X-files, one willing to believe in any supernatural happening, the other looking for scientific evidence to support the theory - and in that sort of setting, this whole story would have sat more comfortably for me. Here though, there were such a lot of personal side-issues that I found distracting from the main story-line, so while some parts had me intrigued and wanting to know what would happen, others left me cold.

I'm not sure whether this should be classified as a 'crime' novel or not - there is a certain element of murder mystery about it, but it doesn't really pan out into anything complex or gritty and is quickly and easily solved.
There's a little of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones about it all, and if you liked that book (I didn't) this may appeal to you - just as you don't need to believe in ghosts for one, you don't need to believe in reincarnation for the other.

Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult fiction, supernatural, crime 

The Living and The Dead in Winsford by Hakan Nesser

review by Maryom

A few weeks ago Maria and Martin Holinek left Stockholm heading for Morocco, hoping to put a scandal behind them and allow Martin time to write his latest novel, one which threatens to reveal scandalous events that took place in a writers' commune several years ago.
 But now, Maria is arriving in the village of Winsford on Exmoor, alone apart from her dog Castor, intending to spend the next six months in a cottage just outside the village, but having no real plans beyond taking stock of her life and hopefully outliving her dog. Her life is mainly solitary, taking long walks on the moor accompanied by Castor, but gradually she finds herself pulled in to village life - dinner at the pub, visits to the community computer centre, even the beginnings of a romance. As winter starts to grip the moor though, strange things begin to happen and Maria becomes convinced that someone is stalking her - who could it be? and why?

The Living and The Dead in Winsford is a stand-alone psychological thriller from the author of the long-running Van Veeteren series. This time the setting is Exmoor, but a British winter of fogs and rain proves as 'noir' as any Scandinavian setting; the main character a Swedish woman, Maria, hiding under a false name, running from something dreadful and fearing pursuit.
 The story cleverly mixes three threads - why is Maria on her own, no longer with husband Martin? what dark events will Martin's novel reveal? and who is Maria's mysterious stalker? So the reader follows Maria thinking back over the events that have brought her to this cottage on the edge of the moor, discovering along with her, through notebooks and computer files, the secrets that Martin has kept about what happened at a writers' commune back in the 1970s, and fearfully watching for evidence of someone trying to track her down.
The length of the novel gives plenty of space for the author to explore the characters and their backstory in more detail than is often the case with quick-read thrillers, but I still felt a certain ambivalence towards them. Maria didn't ought to be a character for whom I'd feel any sympathy - she has after all committed a serious crime - but I did. On the other hand, as I discovered more about Martin, his secrets and indiscretions, I began to feel he maybe deserved his fate!
Exmoor itself makes an excellent backdrop - one day clear and bright with views out to the distant sea, the next hemmed in by darkness and fog. Come rain or shine, Maria is out on the moor walking her dog, maybe trying to walk away from her past, and the reader gets to experience it in all its moods. Some of the places I'm vaguely familiar with but I was definitely left wanting to visit the area again.
At more or less 470 pages long I'd expected this would prove to be a bit of a lengthy read, so had been rather putting it off, but then I picked it up last Thursday and was so hooked I barely put it down - finishing it the next day!

translated by Laurie Thompson
 
Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult psychological thriller, translated fiction

Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum

review by Maryom


Anna is an American ex-pat living in Zurich with her Swiss husband and three young children - their life should be as picture-postcard perfect as the scenery around her, but to Anna everything seems empty and meaningless. Her relationship with husband Bruno has deteriorated to passing each other at meal-times, she has no friends and after nine years in the country still feels like an outsider. While Bruno suggests that a therapist may help, Anna mainly plays word games during her sessions and tries to avoid what lies at the root of her problems. In her newly-joined Swiss-German language class, Anna finds a better source of distraction, meeting Scotsman Archie and rapidly embarking on an affair. Archie, though, is not her first lover but just a step in a series of increasingly meaningless sexual encounters, and gradually Anna's life spirals out of control....

 
 In the age of equal-opportunities, Anna's somewhat of a rarity - a stay-at-home mother and housewife, neither of which roles seem to particularly appeal to her. She seems to deliberately isolate herself still further by her dependence on her husband and mother-in-law - she's never learned to drive, in nine years hasn't bothered to learn the language of her adopted home so can't make friends easily with the school-gate mums, and she doesn't even have a bank account! Her attitude contrasts sharply with that of new arrival in the country, Mary, who quickly signs up for a language course, busies herself around the house with domestic projects - baking and sewing -  and volunteers at her children's school.

The story is an intimate portrayal of a woman whose life is unravelling but it's hard to sympathise with Anna because she not only doesn't appreciate the good things of her life - caring husband, comfortable home, happy, healthy children -  but seems to actively be putting them at risk. There's a little bit of Anna Karenina and a lot of Emma Bovary about Anna but whereas both of these women were trapped by the attitudes of their time, this Anna seems to deliberately go out of her way to create a cage. She seems to judge her worth solely by how much she's loved - and if love fails, then by how much she's desired sexually.

Did I enjoy the book? well, up to a certain point the reader's learning about Anna, her back story and current circumstances, with the story unfolding through several threads - her home life, her meetings with therapist Doktor Messerli, her liaison with Archie - all of this I enjoyed; it's well written, a bit of a page-turner as I wanted to find out the secret Anna was hiding from everyone and at this stage Anna had my sympathy. But part way through, perhaps due to the similarities with Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, the ending becomes inevitable and obvious, and the story's grip on me slackened.



Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult fiction, sexually explicit, 

Other reviews; PamReader

When Nights Were Cold by Susanna Jones

review by Maryom

Fired by the exploits of Scott and Shackleton, young Grace Farringdon dreamed of being a polar explorer, but she soon discovers that, although a child may be inspired by them, such dreams are not at all suitable for a young woman in the early twentieth century. Grace is not going to give up quite that easily though. Unlike her sister who mildly accepts the restrictions imposed by society and her parents, Grace plots an escape to university, with or without her parents' blessing. There she forms the Antarctic Exploration Society - a small, mismatched group of young women, it makes up for what it lacks in size - 4 members - by enthusiasm and internal squabbles. Defying convention, dressing in practical bloomers, they head off to Snowdonia for a mountain climbing holiday, and plan an expedition to the Alps. At first all is exciting and fun but under stress the differences between them in outlook and stamina become increasingly marked, and the ever-present tensions between the four build to dangerous levels.....
 For fifteen years, Grace has shunned all contacts, hiding in her childhood Dulwich home, guarding a secret but now, at last, maybe she's ready to speak of that fateful day on the mountain ......

 When Nights Were Cold is an absorbing tale of friendship, mountaineering and pushing oneself to extremes that crackles with tension throughout. The reader knows from the very outset that something dreadful has occurred, something for which Grace feels guilty but which she's desperately trying to deny. As the story is told by Grace, the reader only has her word for the actual turn of events and I wondered at times how much 'she' was trying to mislead the reader - but the ultimate revelation is short and shocking when it comes, and well worth the build up.
You don't have to know anything about Polar expeditions of mountaineering to enjoy this book  - it's as much about friendships and rivalries, and women's dreams of living a life as engaging and challenging as that of men. Grace and her three fellow society members may disagree about a woman's place in society, whether she should be merely a home-maker and child-rearer or take a place in the wider world of academia or business - they're even divided on the burning question of the day, women's suffrage - but they all want to live life to the fullest. Unfortunately fate has other plans...


Maryom's review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult historical fiction, 

The Liar's Chair by Rebecca Whitney

review by Maryom

Speeding through country lanes on her way home from a night with her lover, Rachel Teller hits and kills a man. Hastily hiding the body in nearby woods, she carries on home to her husband David - who seems remarkably unfazed by his wife admitting to a hit and run incident, in fact quite comfortable with it providing no one can trace it to them. With the evidence destroyed, he settles back to normal as if nothing has occurred. Rachel, though, becomes increasingly tormented by guilt, and her behaviour turns erratic and self-destructive, putting their business and the luxurious life they've built at risk.

I'm really in two minds about this book. It's well told, gripping, and fulfils all the criteria for an excellent psychological thriller BUT I found it difficult to relate to the characters, and especially to find any sympathy for Rachel. Her marriage was obviously one of convenience rather than love but when David turns vindictive and abusive, trying his utmost to humiliate and degrade Rachel, I couldn't understand why she accepted this and stayed. Maybe her back story emerged too late - as when it does, it becomes clear what a damaged person she is, how worthless she has always felt and how ready to be dominated by a forceful man; maybe I just like my heroines to have more gumption.

This is Rebecca Whitney's first novel and I'm hoping there'll be more - and just hope another time I feel more connection with the characters.

Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult psychological thriller

The G File by Hakan Nesser

review by Maryom

At first there doesn't seem to be anything odd about the latest job for ex-policeman turned private eye Maarten Verlangen; there's nothing at all unusual about a woman wanting her husband's movements tracked. But the husband in question, Jaan G Hennan, turns out to be someone that, back in his police force days, Verlangen helped put in jail..... and then the wife, Barbara, is found dead at the bottom of an empty swimming pool. The obvious suspect is her husband - but Verlangen can give him a water-tight alibi.
Chief Inspector Van Veeteren has encountered 'G' Hennan before and believes he must be behind the death, but despite his best efforts, Van Veeteren can't find any evidence that will hold up in court.
Fifteen years later and Van Veeteren is now retired - well, theoretically - and the G File, as Barbara Hennan's murder has become known, is the only case he's never solved. The case has continued to bug Verlangen too, but then he disappears, leaving behind a message saying he's at last found proof of G's guilt....and Van Veeteren finds himself pulled back out of retirement...

I'm come to this series the absolute wrong way round - starting with the last book. Needless to say there was a lot about the characters that I didn't understand, but the author managed to fill in enough back story to not leave me totally in the dark, without, hopefully, taking away all enjoyment from previous books.
To me, this seemed to be a story as much about the character development of Van Veeteren as about murder-mystery solving - and as such a good, though lengthy read. The 'detection' though sadly let it down. Van Veeteren and Verlangen ignored something really obvious that occurred to me, and which held the clue to how the murder had been pulled off.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult, murder mystery

The Bone Seeker by MJ McGrath

review by Maryom

In an attempt to get away from the disturbing events of the past, Edie Kiglatuk has taken a job as a summer school teacher in Kuujuaq, another Inuit community on Ellesmere Island 70 kilometres further along the coast. She's hoping for peace and quiet but when one of her teenage pupils goes missing, Edie finds herself dragged into a murder investigation. The community are convinced that Martha's killer must have come from the nearby military base but Edie feels this is just too simple a solution, especially when the military step in and take control of the case, and persuades her friend police sergeant Derek Palliser to continue the investigation secretly. Also puzzled by events is lawyer Sonia Gutierrez, in Kuujuaq pursuing a case against the military relating to the clean-up and decontamination of a decommissioned early warning base. Could there be a link between activities at the old base and Martha's death?

The Bone Seeker is a thriller with an unusual backdrop - the Canadian High Arctic. It's set in the brief summertime when the sun never sets, temperatures 'soar' to 10 degrees and the tundra bursts into flower. Against this bleak but beautiful landscape long-buried secrets are being revealed. Edie's hunting instincts tell her that there's more to discover than the murderer's identity. The trail is as confusing and complex as any reader could wish for as it leads Edie off in one direction, sidetracks her in another, then doubles round into a third or fourth.

This is the first Edie Kiglatuk story I've read so there was a fair bit of back-plot to catch up on, which made the early chapters a little hard going, but once Edie was a the trail of the killer the pace picked up. I was just left at the end wondering if all the ends had been tied off neatly - maybe I missed something...

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult, murder mystery

The Human Flies by Hans Olav Lahlum

 review by Maryom

Oslo 1968 - Inspector Kolbjørn Kristiansen, aka K2, is called to a murder scene in a block of flats. The victim, Harald Olesen, was hero of the Resistance during World War 2 and an unremarkable MP after, so it's difficult to see who would have wished him dead and why. K2 thinks such a high-profile case could be the making of his career, but he soon discovers this isn't going to be a quick easy, open and shut case - and actually begins to wonder if it could be the breaking of his career instead. Fortunately he has help in the shape of Patricia, a young woman confined to a wheelchair following an accident, who, despite hardly ever venturing from home, has more insight into human nature and possible motives for murder than K2. Together they unravel the relationships between the flats' residents, turning up secrets from Olesen's past and a surplus of suspects to pick from.  

This is a classic murder mystery with a limited numbers of suspects, all of them appearing to have no reason to want the victim killed .... until the investigation turns up the skeletons lurking in their pasts - and then there's seemingly no one who wouldn't have wanted him dead!
There are a lot of nods to Agatha Christie classic murder mysteries - the seemingly 'closed' room, the surplus of witnesses who rapidly turn into suspects, a long list of incidents from the victim's past that could be reason for murder and Patricia even quotes Christie as a source of inspiration in untangling the evidence. 
It's told in the first person by K2 in a rather formal, bare style but one which sets the evidence plainly in front of the reader - so pulling me in with my own theories and guesswork which is part of the delight of this style of mystery. 

translated by Kari Dickson

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult, murder mystery 

The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin

Review by The Mole

1919 and New Orleans is being plagued by a serial killer - an axe murderer who is becoming more and more gruesome in the killing of his victims. The victims have nothing in common to help the police to trace their killers and then a letter is received by the local newspaper saying when the next murder will take place but no-one will die who is listening to jazz music. In the meantime Detective Talbot is under threat of losing his job if he fails to find the killer soon. Luca, a corrupt detective who Talbot put in prison, has been released and is set the task of finding the killer by the Mafia. And at the same time Ida, an employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, sets out to find the killer after finding an old, abandoned witness statement suggesting someone knew something about the killer.

I found this book intriguing for many reasons but firstly the obvious one... Most detective novels have a whole heap of fumbling police and either one brilliant one or a private citizen who is a fantastic detective. In this we have three detectives, working independently to find a killer from different starting points and mainly oblivious to each other's efforts. And almost no suspects! Another very nice deviation from the norm was the fact that the other police officers were not fumbling incompetents but every bit as capable as 'our' man - and his boss was not some fiend out to get him either!

I managed to totally lose track of the body count as the murders piled up although, while many are gruesome they are not described in a gruesome manner to make the readers stomach turn. I did however, struggle to remember where we had met characters and how they finally fitted in to the picture - simply because of the body count!

The end game is something kind of special too. Three detectives, three endings and all of them the same result reflecting a different truth.

I really enjoyed this book but really wonder what the author can do for a second book. Can he surprise the reader a second time? There are lots of questions I would like to ask this author... now, where's my email?

Publisher - Mantle
Genre - Adult crime, historical fiction

Buy The Axeman's Jazz from Amazon

The Lying-down Room by Anna Jaquiery

review by Maryom

In the sweltering heat of a Parisian summer, Commandant Serge Morel is called to an unusual murder scene - to the casual eye, the elderly victim, Isabelle Dufour, could almost seem to have died peacefully in her sleep - if it weren't for the too-carefully arranged body, and the heavy grotesque makeup and bright red wig worn by the deceased.
It's a crime scene short on clues - the only possible lead is a pile of religious pamphlets found on the victim's bedside table and attention is soon focussed on the distributors - a middle-aged man accompanied by a mute teenage boy - who seem to have been targeting elderly women.Why would anyone have anything to fear from such a pair? Looking for the answer leads Morel and his team to the remote countryside of Brittany and back in time to the days of Soviet Russia.

The Lying-down Room is an interesting and enjoyable start to a new crime series - set in Paris and 'starring' Commandant Serge Morel, a quiet 'thinking' detective who creates origami sculptures to relax and focus his thoughts. He of course has problems of his own (what fictional cop doesn't have?) - his elderly father, slipping rapidly into senility; a long-term relationship with a married woman; and the return of a woman from his past - in addition to under-funding, under-staffing and a boss more interested in statistics and looking good on TV than diligent police work.
Both characters and plot-line hooked me almost from the first page. The story is unusual without descending into depths of blood-letting and gore; the characters well-rounded although I suspect they, particularly the minor ones, will develop more over the coming books. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more in this series.
Mixing police procedural with insights into the perpetrator's head lets the reader get a step or two ahead of the police, while an increasing body-count ups the tension. Only one quibble - the title somewhat points the reader in the direction of the guilty party.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult, crime, police procedural, 

Buy The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) from Amazon