Dark Suits and Sad Songs by Denzil Meyrick

Review by The Mole

A civil servant decides to take his own life in a spectacular fashion by setting fire to himself. There is no question of murder but still DCI Daley tries to find out why. Then two bodies come to his attention, both have been murdered in a spectacularly gruesome way, but two completely different ways - ways that relate to drug gangs. Can three violent deaths occur in Kinloch so close together and not be related?

Daley's wife makes a big play to win him back while DS Scott tries to return to duty although the pressure is too much and he needs the support of a bottle.

But these come to be the least of his worries as Meyrick takes us on another roller coaster of death and mayhem.

Many of the threads left hanging from The Last Witness are followed through but only some come to a conclusion. We are fed enough clues about some things to place us ahead of Daley which leads to "it's behind you" moments while, at the same time, understanding how Daley got suckered in.

Extremely cleverly plotted and well written but it left me wondering if I understand how everything went together - including the UFOs.

Another most excellent read from this author with enough left to commence the fourth book. There is to be a fourth book isn't there??

Critics have said that Daley is "set to join the ranks of Scottish crime fiction" - and being Scottish critics I can understand that, but let's be honest and fair and omit the 'Scottish'. The world should get to know Kinloch, Daley and Scott.

Publisher - Polygon
Genre - Crime thriller

Lie of the Land by Michael F Russell

review by Maryom

Journalist Carl Shewan arrives in the remote Scottish Highland village of Inverlair on the trail of a story about a new government device aimed at tracking and controlling people, but while he's there the system, SCOPE, goes live - with horrendous side-effects. Inverlair is one of the few safe 'not spots' outside the new system, but everyone outside is presumed dead, and there's no way of leaving Inverlair or communicating with any other possible survivors. Almost everyone within the village has lost friends and relatives on the outside, but all they can do

Set in a not-too-distant future, Lie of the Land explores what happens when you survive the apocalypse. There are no aliens or epidemics to bring it about - just careless implementation of a mind-control system (imagine an advanced version of the noises broadcast around shopping arcades to deter teenagers).
The story's a little difficult to get into as it starts several months after the activation of SCOPE, months in which the inhabitants of Inverlair have been struggling to come to terms with events, their personal losses and the greater destruction of civilisation as they know it, then it darts backwards to the events that brought Carl to Inverlair - but bear with it, as it takes a while for everything to be explained.

There are a lot of ways a post-apocalyptic novel can evolve and this isn't an action-style adventure like say 28 Days Later or Julianna Baggott's Pure trilogy, neither is there that sense of re-building civilisation as in Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven . Life for the inhabitants of Inverlair really carries on much as it always did - there are shortages, not the least of which is of tea, but there are plenty of fish to be caught, venison and sheep on the hillsides, chickens, eggs and vegetables from local crofts, solar panels for electricity, wood for heating. There are certain power struggles within the village but nothing on a major scale. The main problems to be faced are of overwhelming grief, and maintaining the instinct to survive.

The focus of the book is Carl and his struggles to cope with guilt, responsibility and inclusiveness of village life. He's used to the anonymity of a city (and even then there's an inference that people tend to meet up more in cyber space than real life) so a small village, where everyone knows everyone else and what they've been doing, comes as a shock. He feels that the villagers hold him in some way responsible for events, and he's certainly escaped the effects of SCOPE, though more by luck than design. Trying to fit in hasn't got off to a good start as a one night stand with the hotel-owner's daughter left her pregnant ...a problem that Carl seems to hope will go away if he buries his head in the sand and ignores it!

An interesting debut, a little slow to get going maybe and definitely more about people having to cope with the unexpected events of life than the actual wiping out of civilisation, but intriguing and readable.

Maryom's review - 4 stars  
Publisher - Polygon 
Genre -post-apocalyptic, adult

Whisky From Small Glasses by Denzil Meyrick

Review by The Mole

A body is washed up on the shore by Kinloch - a woman's naked body. The doctor attending points out the ligature around her neck and suggests it's murder.

DI Jim Daley is sent from Glasgow to investigate and soon his DS, Brian Scott joins him with a support unit.

Soon two more bodies are found murdered in different ways but similarly enough to be linked and the hunt is on for a serial killer.

This is the first book in the series featuring DI Daley - in which he does get promoted to DCI - and it's very much a starter. I read "The Last Witness" first and missed out on the character introductions. In this book we get to really understand the main characters and grow to know and like Daley and Scott in particular. Meyrick is not averse to throwing another body or two in to hold the readers attention and build the tension a little higher while at the same time spinning out the clues and giving wrong interpretations of them just to confuse you. The author also spends time introducing the town of Kinloch and the fickle weather of the area as well as getting you drawn into the beautiful countryside that the town is set in. Daley is prime for a TV series and one day there will be tour buses...

Ok, I had the killer tagged quite early but this is not so much a whodunnit as a thriller and an excellent one at that.

My advice is though:- Read these books in order. There is a big spoiler in book two that makes the ending of this one more of a "uh?" than a thrilling one. Also I didn't get as strong a feel for the characters in the second book as I did in this one. Read this book first and you'll enjoy the later books even more and be hooked into the series until the end - whenever that may be.

Publisher - Polygon
Genre - Crime thriller

The Art of Waiting by Christopher Jory

review by Maryom

In 1943 through the wire of a prison camp, Katerina, a girl from Leningrad meets Aldo, a soldier from Venice. She passes him a crust of bread - but more importantly, she gives him hope - that someone still cares what happens to him, that there will one day be an end to the war. Throughout his imprisonment Aldo holds on to his memory of the snatched moments with Katerina and the promise that one day they'll meet again, but when he eventually finds himself free and heading home to Italy an older desire resurfaces - for revenge on the man he believes was responsible for his father's death.

From 1943, the story moves back to Katerina's childhood in late 20s Leningrad and to Venice during the months before Aldo is conscripted into the Italian army, then through his time in a Russian prison of war camp and onward to his eventual return to Italy in 1950.

This is an unusual war story told from the perspective of an Italian soldier sent to fight on the German's Eastern front, and imprisoned as the Russians take the offensive and begin their sweep towards Berlin. But although the war forms the backdrop, at the heart of the story lies a different battle between good and evil impulses within Aldo's heart. Unfortunately, I didn't really engage with the characters; although I'd been told about Aldo's burning desire for revenge, and the calming influence of his love for Katerina, I always felt removed from his emotions and didn't feel either.

Maryom's review - 3 stars  
Publisher - Polygon 
Genre - historical fiction

Wasp or a very sweet power by Ian Garbutt

review by Maryom


Disgraced governess Bethany Harris has been hidden away in The Comfort House - a madhouse in all but name - by her employer to avoid scandal. Expecting to never leave its hellish cells, she's surprised to be 'rescued' and taken to The House of Masques, an elite escort agency that specialises in sophisticated girls, trained in the social graces, for company at dinner, afternoon tea or even a walk in the park. Here Bethany finds a community of lost and fallen women governed strictly by the Abbess, and her two male assistants, former doctor The Fixer and escaped slave Kingfisher. The Abbess's hold is starting to slip though with age and others are trying to turn the affairs of the House, with its unique access to politicians and businessmen, to their own advantage....

Set in an anonymous mid eighteenth century city, Wasp is a tale of the demi-monde world of courtesans and prostitutes, exploring the contradiction of their lives - that while the women are highly desirable accessories, conferring a certain social status on their 'employers', they would never be allowed to share their lives.

I hadn't quite known what to expect when I started reading but soon found myself rather enjoying it. It's not a quick-paced read but rather a slow mulling over of things which drops in and out of the present to uncover the past lives of these girls and the men that supervise them; the plot really seems subordinate to an exploration of personalities and motives. All of the characters have been damaged by life and circumstances, and the House of Masques in part offers a refuge and a place to heal, even as it 'trades' in the girls as a business commodity.

The ending led me to wonder if the stage was being set for a sequel - I'd certainly be interested in reading a further chapter of Bethany's life.



Maryom's review - 4 stars  
Publisher - Polygon 
Genre - historical fiction

The Last Witness by Denzil Meyrick

Review by The Mole

A DCI Daley Thriller

Gerry Dowie is living under the witness protection system tucked away in Australia when he is brazenly murdered, in broad daylight in front of CCTV and so is his wife. The images show clearly that his murderer is James Machie, JayMac, a man who was murdered in an ambulance 5 years earlier while in police custody. Clearly he's back from the grave and out for vengeance against all who betrayed him or who were involved in his capture.

DCI James Daly and DS Brian Scott in Kinloch, Scotland, were instrumental in his downfall as were others in the witness protection programme. When the Macdougall family start dying one by one and a bomb destroys Daley's car then things start to get worrying.

Fast paced, bloody and violent this book moves fast and the reader is always one step ahead - but I found myself one step ahead on the wrong path! There is no massive plot twist, more lots of little ones that send you back thinking and rethinking before moving forward again. These twistlets continue right to the end and the reader knows that there is a much bigger case to be solved - if that's possible - and it's not going to be in this book!

I am not a fan of every fictional detective going but have a small list of favourites and Daley certainly deserves a place on my list. What's not to like about him? His sidekick is not some lackey who does exactly what he's told and Daley doesn't know if he can trust him or not, although he a close friend. His boss is someone they don't get on with - but read on, say no more. Of course though, like so many modern fictional detectives, his private life doesn't run smoothly.

I found that every character in the book came alive and I had an opinion on them even if I didn't understand their relationship to the others until the end - if this is the end.

Every cliché of rivetting, unputdownable etc. is well deserved in this excellent thriller and I will certainly be watching out for more Daley.

Publisher - Polygon
Genre - Crime thriller

Greenvoe by George Mackay Brown

review by Maryom

Greenvoe is the only village on the small Orcadian island Hellya - and this is the story of its people.
It's a place where time seems almost to have stood still - a place of farms and fisherman, one shop, one hotel, a school, a manse, a 'big house' and a pier to link them to the outer world. It's inhabitants for the most part have lived there all their lives, some never leaving the island at all - the notable exceptions being the 'traditional' incomers of minister and school teacher. A place where a once-a-year visit from a travelling salesman laden with exotic silken goods is an event. But times are changing and the outside world has discovered the usefulness of such a remote place.

 Greenvoe is not just one single tale but an interlinked series within a greater one; the Skarf, fisherman turned writer, reads his history of the island to his neighbours in the bar of an evening; the minister's elderly mother faces an imaginary court each day, that calls her to account for her supposed sins; the island's womenfolk gossip in the shop like a Greek chorus; ancient initiation rites are held in the dead of night; and always in the background is the sea, the light reflecting off it, its tides governing the flow of life on land and sea. So the writing changes - sometimes hard and factual, sometimes lyrical and poetic.

I first discovered George Mackay Brown's work long ago when I was a teenager, drawn by a somewhat romanticised vision of these windswept islands off the north of Scotland "where the endless ocean opens". I think back in the 1970s when this novel was written, his work was more widely known, with dramatisations on  TV and such, and I think it's rather a shame that its somehow been forgotten. It was great to go back and re-discover it through this new-to-me book.


Maryom's review - 5 stars  
Publisher - Polygon 
Genre - literary, adult fiction

Buy Greenvoe from Amazon

Brighton Belle by Sara Sheridan

review by Maryom

1951. Brighton. With the war over and the Nazis brought to justice at Nuremberg, Mirabelle Bevan (Secret Service, retired) thinks her skills are no longer required. After her lover's death she retires to the seaside to put the past behind her and takes a job at a debt collection agency run by the charismatic Big Ben McGuigan. But when the case of Romana Laszlo - a pregnant Hungarian refugee - comes in, Mirabelle soon discovers that her specialist knowledge is vital. With enthusiastic assistance from insurance clerk Vesta Churchill, they follow a mysterious trail of gold sovereigns and corpses that only they can unravel.

Mirabelle won't quite admit it but she's finding post-war life a little dull, so a little mystery to solve comes as quite a diversion. She's an independent, sophisticated young woman in the habit of thinking and acting for herself but she soon discovers that there's a huge difference between sitting in an office, writing the manual on covert ops, and putting them into practice. Vesta is more cautious and baulks at some of things Mirabelle asks her to do but never chickens out. Together they make an interesting and unusual team.

Brighton Belle is what I like to consider a good old-fashioned 'cosy' crime book - there are no psycho serial killers loosing their grudges on the world just good old bad guys prepared to murder their way to a profit - and Mirabelle herself is a 'traditional' amateur sleuth - think Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence series or a Brighton based Mma Ramotswe. Brighton itself is a murky sort of place with underworld gangs operating almost in the open and a corrupt police force that turns a blind eye. It hadn't really occurred to me till I started to add the 'tags' to this post but I suppose fiction written now and set in the 1950s counts as 'historical'

This is my first Mirabelle Bevan mystery - a lucky find at the library which, after reading Sheridan's Secret of the Sands, I'd expected to enjoy - and most definitely did! I'm now hoping they stock more!

Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Polygon

Genre - crime, adult, historical
 
Buy Brighton Belle (A Mirabelle Bevan Mystery) from Amazon

Boyracers by Alan Bissett

review by Maryom

Meet Alvin a sixteen year old from Falkirk. He's staying on at school to take his Highers* with a special interest in English Lit and horror stories but lives for the nights when he meets up with his older mates to go racing round the streets of Falkirk in their car Belinda. On the way they discuss everything from football to physics, sex to Clive Barker, all liberally sprinkled with film quotes and song lyrics. Gradually though a darker side of this carefree life starts to emerge - violence, accidents and above all the sheer monotony of 'grown up' life in Falkirk. Alvin realises that he, at least, has a chance to escape - that university offers the prospect of a more exciting, more fulfilling life beyond Falkirk - but will that be betraying his mates?

I've been meaning to track down Boyracers ever since I was astounded by its sequel Pack Men.  To be honest I'd been expecting something less enthralling - an everyday tale of teenage angst and growing up - and yet again Alan Bissett has managed to surprise me! 

Boyracers is a high energy, petrol and Irn Bru fuelled race through teenage life told as it happens, in almost one long stream of consciousness with quirky page lay-outs and grammar. The reader is dropped slam bang, mid-sentence into the back seat of the Lads car tearing round Falkirk and kept pinned there. This was one of those books that once started, I didn't want to put down - and it left me so 'wired' that despite reading till late at night I couldn't sleep! A book I'd highly recommend to teens and to those of us oldies who haven't quite forgotten what it is to be young!

What I read was the 10th anniversary edition, re-edited and 'resprayed' by the author but presumably not substantially different to its original text. Having read Bissett's first novel and his latest I'm now off to find the in-between ones - and to see if he can surprise me some more!

*Scottish A-level equivalent 

Maryom's review - 5 stars

Publisher - Polygon

Genre - teen/adult crossover, literary fiction

Buy Boyracers from Amazon