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Book Reviews

One good turn by Kate Atkinson

It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident, an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander until he becomes a suspect.

With Case Histories, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In One Good Turn she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls, each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson, what each one actually discovers is their true self.

Unputdownable and triumphant, One Good Turn is a sharply intelligent read that is also perceptive, funny and totally satisfying.

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Midwife's Confession by Diane Chamberlain

From the bestselling author of ‘The lost daughter’ and ‘The lies’ comes a new book called ‘Midwife’s confession’.

'I don't know how to tell you what I did'… is a line from an unfinished letter and the only clue Tara and Emerson have to the reason behind Noelle's suicide.   Everything they knew about Noelle - her calling as a midwife, her passion for causes, her love for her family - describes a woman who embraced life. But they didn't know everything. The unaddressed letter reveals a terrible secret and a legacy of guilt that changes everything they thought they knew about the woman who delivered their children, a legacy that will irrevocably change their own lives, and the life of a desperate stranger, forever.

This was a book that I found hard to put down and I found myself wanting to read 'just a little more' before going to sleep. The story is full of twists and turns - some more predictable than others.

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The Small Hand by Susan Hill

Late one summer evening, antiquarian bookseller, Adam Snow, is returning from a client visit when he takes a wrong turn. He stumbles across a derelict Edwardian house and, compelled by curiosity, approaches the door. Standing before the entrance, he feels the unmistakable sensation of a small cold hand creeping into his own, 'as if a child had taken hold of it'.

At first, he is merely puzzled by the odd incident but then begins to suffer attacks of fear and panic and is visited by nightmares. He is determined to learn more about the house and its once-magnificent, now overgrown, garden but when he does so, he receives further, increasingly sinister, visits from the small hand.

This is not a book that scares you like a sudden 'BOO' would, it's one that initially chills and then builds and builds on that.

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The House by the Sea by Santa Montefiore

Ten-year-old Floriana is captivated by the beauty of the magnificent Tuscan villa that overlooks the sea just outside her small village. She likes to spy from the crumbling wall into the gardens and imagine that, one day, she'll escape her meagre existence and live there.

One day, Dante, the son of the villa's powerful industrialist owner, invites her inside. From that moment on, Floriana knows that her destiny is there, with him, but as they grow up, they cross an unseen line, jeopardising the very thing they hold most dear.

Decades later and hundreds of miles away, a beautiful old country house hotel on England's Devon coast has fallen on hard times. Its owner, Marina, advertises for an artist-in-residence to stay the summer and teach the guests how to paint. Rafael Santoro is charismatic and wise, and soon begins to pacify the discord in her family. However, Rafa is not who he seems. He has his own agenda. Whether to destroy, to seduce, or to heal, it is certain to affect them all.

Spanning four decades and sweeping from the Italian countryside to the English coast, this new story by Santa Montefiore is a moving and mysterious tale of love, forgiveness and the past revealed.

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Water for elephants by Sara Gruen

When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters and misfits - the Benzini Brothers’ Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a second-rate travelling circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression.  Jacob, a veterinary student who almost earned his degree, is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.

"Water for Elephants" is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.

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Two cows and a van full of smoke by Peter Benson

When young Elliot gets a labourer's job at Mr Evans's after being sacked from a pig farm for liberating six of its sows, he thinks he'll have even more opportunities to lean on gates or stare at fields. But his best mate, Spike, keeps getting him into trouble, firstly by showing him what is being grown in a tucked-away polytunnel, and then turning up at his caravan's door with a van full of weed. As Elliot tries to help his friend get rid of the hot merchandise, they find themselves at the receiving end of a cruel cat-and-mouse game.

What follows is a manic flight across the parched countryside from the owners of the stash, a tender love affair with a hippy girl, and a general coming-to-terms for Elliott with his own dreams and failings.

This is a novel that evokes all that is wonderful in a quintessential English setting, with a contemporary twist on country life.

Trespass by Rose Tremaine

House hunting in France is a popular British hobby. In Trespass, a man’s attempts to reconstruct his life in the beautiful yet solitary Cevennes Mountains lead him towards a potentially perilous fate.  The man is Anthony Verey, a formerly successful London antiques dealer, now in late middle age and on the verge of bankruptcy.  The house he hopes to buy is the dilapidated family home of French siblings, Audrun and Aramon Lunel, but Anthony, who knows nothing about the violent past of the Lunels, finds himself caught up in a terrifying drama of murder and revenge.

This compelling novel plays out a tragic story among the vivid colourful backdrop of Southern France and Rose Tremaine has captured a real sense of suspense and emotion.

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Twilight Hour by Carol Smith

Alone on Dartmoor without a car, Erin O'Leary has gone to ground, hiding from Russian assassins. Her new neighbours are a disparate bunch: Gerald and Sylvia, whose social pretensions exceed their altered means; Ned and Lisa, newlyweds who only know each other from work; and embittered Auriol, abandoned along with the dog.

Crazy Betty, who lives in the woods, guards the land she considers her own and a ghost is seen in the windswept churchyard tending her own grave. Winter approaches; the nights draw in. Each has a secret they want to hide. And when the killing starts, each has a motive.

The last chapter is well worth savouring and keeping for reading in one sitting, just turn the phone off and hide away from the windows, then you can carry on and have a really good read.

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Those in Peril by Wilbur Smith

Hazel Bannock is the owner of the Bannock Oil Corporation, one of the major global oil producers. While cruising in the Indian Ocean, her yacht is hijacked by Somalian pirates and her nineteen-year-old daughter, Cayla, is kidnapped.

Major Hector Cross is an ex-SAS operative and the man behind Cross Bow Security, the company contracted to Bannock Oil to provide all their security. His loyalty to the Bannock family goes beyond the call of duty.

The pirates demand a crippling ransom for Cayla’s release, and complicated political and diplomatic sensitivities render the major powers incapable of intervening.

With growing evidence of the horrific torture to which Cayla is being subjected, Hazel calls on Hector to help her rescue her daughter. Between them, Hazel and Hector are determined to take the law into their own hands.

Action packed and full of suspense this novel is a compelling and gripping read.

NR

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Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

This novel follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the struggle for votes for women.

It is 1911 and the Williams’, a Welsh coal-mining family, are linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London where their destiny becomes entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution.

In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine in the Welsh valleys to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. Don’t let the size of this novel put you off - the story is worth its weight.

DS

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Midnight by Josephine Cox

Molly and Jack are deeply in love but their relationship is being torn apart by Jack’s nightmares. Trapped in a place where he is haunted by cold, staring eyes it is becoming harder for Molly to pull him free, and when daylight comes, the haunting visions remain. He can make no sense of them, though; when he is deep in the dreams, he knows exactly what is demanded of him.

Realising that Jack is being driven close to the edge, Molly urges him to seek help, and with their relationship faltering, Jack decides to hunt for answers.

His search takes him back to the place where he grew up, and it soon becomes clear that he must trace people from his past, particularly the one person he could turn to during his troubled childhood. But Jack could never have imagined the true horrors of what he is about to uncover.

The latest emotionally charged story from the best-selling author won’t disappoint her many fans.

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The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel

The Land of Painted Caves concludes the story of Ayla, her mate, Jondalar, and their little daughter, Jonayla, taking readers on a journey of discovery and adventure as Ayla struggles to find a balance between her duties as a new mother and her training to become a Zelandoni - one of the Ninth Cave community's spiritual leaders and healers.

Once again, Jean Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived thousands of years ago, rendering the terrain, dwelling places, longings, beliefs, creativity and daily lives of Ice Age Europeans as real to the reader as today's news.

This is a fascinating compelling historical drama with every modern trait of the human being, but set in the days when the world was young.

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The Leopard by Jo Nesbo

In the depths of winter, a killer stalks the city streets. His victims are two young women. The crime scenes offer no clues, the media is reaching fever pitch, and the police are running out of options. There is only one man who can help them, and he doesn’t want to be found.

Deeply traumatised by The Snowman investigation, which threatened the lives of those he holds most dear, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong’s opium dens, but with his father seriously ill in hospital, Harry reluctantly agrees to return to Oslo.

The victims appear completely unconnected to one another, but it’s not long before Harry makes a discovery: the women all spent the night in an isolated mountain hostel and someone is picking off the guests one by one.

The Leopard is the eighth book by Jo Nesbo about Harry Hole, and the longest, most complex, most personal, most violent and darkest of the series. The names of people are a bit confusing at first but the translation from Norwegian to English is terrific.

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Breaking the Silence by Diane Chamberlain

Laura Brandon’s husband shot himself in their bedroom and since that awful day, their young daughter, Emma, hasn’t uttered a word. When a psychiatrist suggests that Emma won’t talk because she’s terrified of men, Laura is guilt-ridden. To help Emma, she needs to know what unspeakable secret lies behind her husband’s suicide.

Laura thought her family was perfect, but her quest leads her to a shocking truth. For her child’s sake, should her father’s sins be kept silent?

For fans of Jodi Picoult this is a must-read. “Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.” Literary Times.

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The Lion by Nelson DeMille

Detective John Corey is floating to earth, his skydiver's parachute billowing above him. His wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, is metres away, beneath a chute of her own, and, clinging to Kate in midair, aiming a knife at her throat and a gun at Corey, is the most dangerous man alive: Asad Khalil, code name The Lion.

It's been three years since Corey last traded words and bullets with The Lion, who vanished after a devastating attack on American soil. But with Khalil's spectacular return, the threat of a terrorist apocalypse now darkens the globe. The Lion wants revenge, and with Kate's life in the balance, so does Corey.

John Corey is an enjoyable character – ruthless and thoughtless but with a good sense of humour – who helps turn this latest instalment by one of America’s most popular and bestselling authors into a good, fast and compelling read.

DS

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