The Daughter – Liz Webb

I lean in and whisper the question I have never let myself utter in twenty-three years. “Dad, did you murder Mum?”

Hannah Davidson has a dementia-stricken father, an estranged TV star brother, and a mother whose death opened up hidden fault lines beneath the surface of their ordinary family life. Now the same age that Jen Davidson was when she was killed, Hannah realises she bears an uncanny resemblance to her glamorous mother, and when her father begins to confuse them she is seriously unnerved.

Determined to uncover exactly what happened to her mum, Hannah begins to exploit her arresting likeness, but soon the boundaries between Hannah and her mother become fatally blurred.

My thanks to the publishers for a review copy of The Daughter which I received through Netgalley

Hannah has returned to her family home to care for her ailing father. He has taken a fall and been hospitalised so Hannah is dividing her time between the challenging hospital visits and staying in her childhood home surrounded by all the memories which this brings back. Her dad’s dementia means he is not always aware of what is happening around him and he often seems to believe he is living in the past if his reference points and stimulus bring his memories to periods long gone.

This is how Hannah finds herself on a dangerous and traumatic spiral in The Daughter. Hannah had been going through a very difficult time in her personal life and the combination of stopping her medication and not taking proper care of herself means she has lost a lot of weight. Hannah’s father had not seen her for a while before his fall and hospitalisation and when he looks at his daughter from his hospital bed it appears his dementia leads him to believe that Hannah is actually her mother Jen. Jen died when she was the age which Hannah is now and Hannah’s father was the primary suspect in her murder.

From his hospital bed Hannah’s father sees his “wife” and with a flash of apparent lucid thought he tells Hannah he is “sorry”. Sorry for what? What has her father felt he needs to apologise to her dead mother for? Could it be that he is *finally* confessing to her murder and showing remorse as his life draws to a close?

Hannah decides she must discover the truth about her mother’s death. The incident which effectively destroyed her family and set their lives on an unforseen path. To do this Hannah needs to connect with her estranged brother (now a successful TV star), engage with her creepy and over-familiar neighbours, chase down old friends of her mother (who do not want to be known as such) and even speak with the policeman that was convinced her father was a murderer.

The Daughter is a web of lies, scandal, tragedy and secrets. Hannah herself has skeletons in her closet and as she digs deeper into the life of a mother she barely knew someone may turn her own mistakes against her.

Liz Webb has done a great job keeping this domestic drama a tense and engaging read throughout. I knew with certainly at least three times where the story was heading and I was wrong each time. I got there in the end but I definitely enjoyed being wrong and revisiting my suspicions.

Scandals, secrets and lies all make for great stories – this is one such story.

The Daughter is published by Allison & Busby and is available in hardback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-daughter/liz-webb/9780749028756

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May 19

Six Wounds – Morgan Cry

To make the perfect Spanish whodunnit cocktail, take one dead gangster, mix in six shifty expats, add one ruthless baddie and garnish with a suspicious police officer . . .

Daniella Coulstoun has recently moved to the Costa Blanca. When the dead body of a prominent London gangster is discovered in the cellar of her bar she quickly becomes the number one suspect.

With the police closing in, the local expats turning on her and a psychotic rival to the dead gangster in the background, Daniella knows she needs to nail the real killer, and fast.

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Six Wounds tour and to Gordon Brown for an early review copy.

Six Wounds is the follow-up to last year’s Thirty-One Bones which saw Daniella Coulstoun ripped from her life in Glasgow (where she worked in a call centre for an insurance firm) to the Costa Blanca. Daniella had recently lost her mother and, as a consequence, inherited a murky pub frequented by an odd collection of ex-pats who were a thoroughly disreputable crowd. You do not need to have read Thirty-One Bones to enjoy Six Wounds (and I am sure you will enjoy Six Wounds) but knowing the background of the main characters is always nice and Thirty-One Bones is a thumping good read too. Either way, there are good books here to be enjoyed so you can decide where you want to jump in.

In Six Wounds Daniella has a whole new series of problems to contend with. She already knew her mother was involved in numerous dubious schemes and she was someone that had her fingers in many pies. But now Daniella is running Se Busca and it seems some of her mum’s former contacts expect Daniella to continue facilitating the same activities and enterprises – whether she wants to or not.

But before the reader catches up with Daniella’s latest dilemmas and predicaments there is a more dramatic incident to propel the reader back into her world. The book literally begins with an explosion of energy, chaos and destruction as Se Busca comes under attack for reasons as yet unknown. When the commotion has settled there is one unwelcome object left behind and it will bring the police to Daniella’s door.

Unfortunately for Daniella the police are going to be playing a large part in her life while this story plays out. She is not in control of events which are going on around her and her home and her bar are both being used by persons unknown who will try to gain leverage against her.

In Thirty-One Bones I felt Daniella was sharp and keeping well on top of her new surroundings. She was a savvy operator and I loved how she was able to handle what was being thrown at her. But now she seems less assured, the full implications of her sudden relocation to Spain is hitting in. Her mother has left her more problems than she can comfortably cope with. The pub is failing and needs major investment. Her co-owners are a dubious and duplicitous bunch and Daniella knows she can’t trust them but more importantly will they side with her when the chips are down? It all does seem to be getting too much for one person to contend with.

What did strike me as I read Six Wounds was how quickly Morgan Cry managed to grab my attention and nothing else I was reading at the time came close to matching that level of focus. I read Six Wounds over a weekend, everything else was ignored as I was totally engrossed in the events on the Costa Blanca. The story zips along at a slick pace and mixes tension and humour with some devious plotting. I was hooked.

Six Wounds is published by Polygon and is available in paperback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/six-wounds/morgan-cry/9781846975707

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May 16

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Caron McKinlay

It isn’t Friday but it IS time for a return to the Decades Library. It has been a while since we last visited the Library and I apologise for the brief hiatus which just so happened to coincide with a change of role in the day job (same job, new work), exam season in Scotland (teenager Grab has been working hard and we have been supporting where we can) plus lots of other fun reading things which I simply cannot talk about just yet.

But it’s time the Library welcomed a new curator and as it is Publication Day for The Storytellers I wanted to share Caron McKinlay’s selections today – rather than wait for Friday to roll around.

As it has been a couple of weeks I will recap what the Decades Library is all about. I am assembling a Library of the very best books. I started this project back in January 2021 and I had no books on my Library shelves. I did not know which books would represent the “very best” and I knew that I would not be able to fill a Library with just my personal selections so I invite guests to join me and ask them to nominate their selections for inclusion within the Decades Library. I ask them to pick their favourite or memorable reads or the books which they believe the best libraries should offer to readers.

Each guest must follow just two simple rules when nominating books to the Decades Library:

1 – Select ANY Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

So with a huge congratulations on publication day I pass to Caron McKinlay for five new selections.

Caron grew up in a mining town on the east coast of Scotland where her dad would return from the pit and fill her life with his tall tales. She never thought about making a career in writing – that was what posh people did, not someone from a working-class council estate.

However, her father’s death was the cause of deep introspection and her emotions gave birth to a short story, Cash, which was published in the Scottish Book Trust’s anthology, Blether. This gave her the confidence to try and believe in herself.

When not blogging, reading, and writing, Caron spends her time with her daughters. She doesn’t enjoy exercise – but loves running around after her grandsons, Lyle and Noah, to whom she is devoted.

Caron had three childhood dreams in life: to become a published author, to become a teacher, and for David Essex to fall in love with her. Two out of three ain’t bad, and she’s delighted with that.

You can buy The Storytellers here: https://geni.us/theStorytellers

And Find Caron here:

www.twitter.com/caronmckinlay

www.instagram.com/caronmckinlay

www.facebook.com/mckinlaycaron

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZML8bGo9h/

Good Reads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60844999-the-storytellers

Website

http://www.caronmckinlay.com

Decades

The 1980s

‘The Silence of the Lambs’ by Thomas Harris

Contemporary takes on the novel focus on Hannibal Lecter, the fearsome imprisoned serial murderer antagonist. But as the title suggests, the book is as much about the FBI agent Clarice Starling, her childhood as an orphan, and the screaming of slaughtered lambs on her cousin’s farm she experienced as a child. An eerie relationship grows between Starling and Lecter, as, perhaps for the first time in his life, he experiences empathy for another. Not exactly a love story, but a fascinating depiction of the way that relationships can grow, like weeds, in the unlikeliest of places as, at the end, he writes to her that he hopes, for her, the lambs have stopped screaming. I will never forget a section of the narrative where I thought “Huh what just happened” and had to turn back to read the pages again. I loved that!

The 1990s

‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks

I have always been swept away by grand romances. One of my favourite books is Wuthering Heights. In its own way, ‘The Notebook’ evokes the same sense, for me, of two people whose love transcends the passage of time and events. “I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough”. How romantic? Of course, like all the best books, the story is unfolded in ways that you would never expect, beginning with an old man reading a ’story’ to an old woman in a nursing home. But who are they, and who are the characters in the story he tells her? It’s such a beautiful story that makes me cry every time I read it.

The 2000s

‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’ by Audrey Niffenegger

Write a book that involves time travel, and you already have me halfway there. But this is so much more. The poignant story of how Clare waits, as the years roll by, to be reunited with her one true love as he is flung across history and back again is both heart-breaking and uplifting. The love story is what captures you. But it only works because of the superb manner in which Niffenegger deals with the time travel element, allowing you to suspend disbelief long enough to become enthralled with Clare and Henry’s relationship. Another one that had me sobbing at the end.

The 2010s

‘11/22/63’ by Stephen King

This mix of time travel and one of the world’s great storytellers is just hard to beat. As ever, with King, the characters leap off the page, and their stories are never as straightforward as you would have imagined. The central character, Jake, has set himself the task of using a time portal to travel back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But life, for a character in one of King’s novels, is never easy and, in the end, he is forced to confront a moral dilemma. This was brilliantly plotted.

The 2020s

‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ by V.E. Schwab

Yet more twisty time travels. There might be a theme developing here. In the eighteenth century, a young woman barters her soul to avoid an enforced marriage. Consigned by the Devil, to live forever but be remembered by no one. We follow her life and struggles as she learns to live a lonely life. But in the twenty-first century, she finally finds love with someone, Henry, who does remember her. What will the Devil do now? Such gorgeous prose and the book I wish I had the talent to write. It was always remain one of my favourite books.

I am reading The Storytellers at the moment and enjoying it immensely. Unfortunatley the secret reading I am doing is keeping me away from finishing it for the present but a review will be forthcoming as soon as I can catch up!

As for these magnificent Decades selections – I am delighted that another Stephen King book has made its way onto the Library shelves (particularly as it is one of my favourites). And The Notebook! That’s a real crowd pleaser too.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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May 13

Requiem in La Rossa – Tom Benjamin

In the sweltering heat of a Bologna summer, a murderer plans their piece de resistance…

Only in Bologna reads the headline in the Carlino after a professor of music is apparently murdered leaving the opera. But what looks like an open-and-shut case begins to fall apart when English detective Daniel Leicester is tasked with getting the accused man off, and a trail that begins among Bologna’s close-knit classical music community leads him to suspect there may be a serial killer at large in the oldest university in the world. And as Bologna trembles with aftershocks following a recent earthquake, the city begins to give up her secrets…

My thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Requiem blog tour

Housekeeping first – Requiem in La Rossa is the third book in The English Detective series by Tom Benjamin. Daniel Leicester is a private investigator working in Bologna and he prevoiusly featured in A Quiet Death in Italy and The Hunting Season. Requiem in La Rossa is my first encounter with Daniel Leicester but I didn’t feel I was struggling to keep up with characters or background events having missed the first two novels. Purists may wish to read the series in order – based on the quality of the third novel I think that would be a very enjoyable experience – but you can absolutely jump straight in with Requiem too.

So to the book. Bologna in the summer. Temperatures are high and the city is being rocked by a series of earth tremors which initially had residents diving for cover but now seem to be more of an irritation than a cause for panic. But for one professor the heat and fears of earthquakes are no longer a concern, he has been killed during an altrication with a young drug user.

The police consider the issue closed. The killer is in custody and there seems no reason to believe there is anything further to investigate, they have their man. But Daniel Leicester is asked to look into the issue. The killer is a former student, a very talented classical musician who spectacularly and unexpectedly failed in his exams and was let go from his studies. Leicester gets the opportunity to speak with the boy and finds his explanation of events is inconclusive but does not indicate the actions of a murderous individual.

Adding some complexity to Leicester’s investigation is the fact there is more than one individual connected to the professor and the classical music scene who has met an unexpected death. Leicester finds the body of a young musician who has hanged herself leaving no message or explanation around why she took her own life. Unfortunately his discovery will get him on the wrong side of the vindictive Commisario Miranda. Their verbal sparring was very much a fun element to the story.

This is a cleverly written, slow-burn thriller. The pacing of the story lends itself well to the opressive summer heat and the time we spend with the characters lets them develop very nicely to ensure I am invested in their lives. Too many books zip along from incident to incident and the cast suffer as a consequence, it’s hard to be upset about the death of a character who we know very little about.

One slightly surprising consequence of reading Requiem in La Rossa was the realisation I know very little about Italy, the Italian language and their police and political structures. I loved discovering more about Bologna through the story (it is wonderfully presented by the author) and I almost felt I was learning as I was reading.

All in this was a very enjoyable read. I welcomed the slower pacing which accompanied this well told tale and the characters shone through.

Requiem in La Rossa is available in paperback, audio and digital format and you can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/requiem-in-la-rossa/tom-benjamin/9781472131645

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May 12

May God Forgive – Alan Parks

Glasgow is a city in mourning. An arson attack on a hairdresser’s has left five dead. Tempers are frayed and sentiments running high.

When three youths are charged the city goes wild. A crowd gathers outside the courthouse but as the police drive the young men to prison, the van is rammed by a truck, and the men are grabbed and bundled into a car. The next day, the body of one of them is dumped in the city centre. A note has been sent to the newspaper: one down, two to go.

Detective Harry McCoy has twenty-four hours to find the kidnapped boys before they all turn up dead, and it is going to mean taking down some of Glasgow’s most powerful people to do it…

My thanks to Canongate for my review copy and to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the May God Forgive blog tour.

It’s hard to know where to start with May God Forgive as the Harry McCoy books by Alan Parks are among my most anticipated releases each year. I had been looking forward to reading this book almost from the moment I finished last year’s The April Dead. The good news is that the wait was absolutely worth it. May God Forgive swept me up and folded me back into McCoy’s Glasgow of 1974 – it’s dark, brutal, unflinching and lots of other adjectives which you want from a story in the Glasgow of old.

If you are not familiar with Harry McCoy then the most important advice I can offer at this stage is go and grab a copy of Bloody January and start reading. If you want to jump straight in with May God Forgive then you can do this too as key characters, relationships and important events are all smoothly introduced by the author which should ensure no new readers are disadvantaged. For returning readers you can easily slip back into McCoy’s life, share the pain of Wattie’s sleepless nights with a teething toddler and tense when Stevie Cooper is in the scene as you never quite know when he may kick off!

Events in May God Forgive take place just a few weeks before I was born so I can’t claim any prior knowledge of how Glasgow was at this time. What I can confirm is that Alan Parks makes the old city and its hard reputation feel incredibly vivid and realistic. It’s the time of gangsters controlling their turf, of backroom pornographers snapping racy pictures of hard-up housewives, of violent attacks, cheap booze and a growing market in dodgy pills. And Glasgow’s finest are not a slick operation that can keep the city a safe place for its residents.

As we join the story the city is in outrage and mouring. An arson attack on a commercial property in the city resulted in the deaths of several women and children. Killing kids is never tolerated so the police recieved a tip-off as to where the perpretrators could be found. Three teenage boys are being brought to the court for sentencing and the crowds are out braying for blood. They want the death penalty brought back, they want the culprits released into their “care” so justice can be swiftly delivered. It’s chaos and it’s McCoy’s first day back at work after a period of enforced absence. Our main man has been convalesing as a stomach ulcer kept him in crippling pain but that’s nothing compared to the problems which are about to land in his lap.

McCoy’s ulcer is possibly one of the few lighthearted elements to the story, his slugging of pepto bismal when juggling his smoking, drinking and fried breakfasts sees a man caught in the horns of dilemma. There are few laughs elsewhere. Gangsters are flexing and posturing. An old acquintance of Harry’s has met a nasty end but leaves more questions than anyone could have expected. Wattie has been tasked with identifying the body of a young girl who was found dead in a city graveyard and those arsonists are in more trouble than they could ever have anticipated. Who will protect the murderers when a whole city wants them dead?

I am faced with a problem. How can I keep finding new ways to describe the absolute reading pleasure I get from this series? Each book delights and delivers thrills, tension and tramatic drama. I give each book a five star review and I wonder how Alan Parks can match it the next time out. Only he doesn’t just match the quality of the previous titles – he improves on them. Each book seems better than the last – how is this possible if there isn’t some sort of witchcraft involved? Magical. That’s what I am going with this time…”magical”.

May God Forgive is published by Canongate and is available in Hardback, Digital and Audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/may-god-forgive/alan-parks/9781838856748

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May 2

The Junction – Norm Konyu

When a missing child, Lucas Jones, reappears on his Uncle’s doorstep in his hometown of Medford after an absence of 12 years, the brief moment of joy is clouded by mystery. Where has he been? Where is his father who disappeared at the same time? And how is it possible that Lucas is still 11 years old?

As Lucas is uncommunicative, it is left to Detective Sergeant David King and child psychologist Jean Symonds to attempt to find some answers from the few belongings Lucas returned with; little more than four Polaroids and a personal journal which speaks of his time in a place called ‘The Junction’.

The story unravels through interviews, medical and police reports, and ultimately, through visits to The Junction via the pages of Lucas’ diary, jumping back and forth in time, revealing pieces of the puzzle in a mystery that keeps the reader guessing right up until the end.

My thanks to Ricky Claydon at Titan Comics for my review copy of The Junction

This book is beautiful – in every sense. The physical copy had sensory overload for me: clean smooth pages which only a top quality graphic novel presents. The “swish” of a turning page was delightful and I was running my fingers over some of the pages as I read (practically caressing the book at times). Then there was that unmistakable new book smell which I wish we could bottle.

But the most pleasing aspect of The Junction was the visual stimulus. The colours chosen by Norm Konyu to tell Lucas’s story, blues, purples and autumnal oranges and reds make this utterly gorgeous on the eyes. Honestly I want to show you more of the internal artwork so you can appreciate it too. A bit of Google time and a timely tweet chat with the author himself and I have found the promotional trailer from Titan Comics and some (non-spoiler) pictures which have previously been shared online.

Oh, for the record – I did not taste my copy of The Junction which means only four of the five senses were deployed during the writing of this review.

In The Junction we meet Lucas, he is 11 years old and as we join the story he is being interviewed by the police. It’s late in the day and Lucas has his aunt and uncle with him he needs family supervision to chat with Detective Sergeant King. Det. Sgt. King is very keen to chat with Lucas because Lucas has been missing and people have been looking for him. Lucas has been missing for a long time – Det. Sgt. King has two photographs of Lucas, taken 12 years apart but in both pictures Lucas looks identical – he looks like the 11 year old child he is.

How can a child be missing for 12 years and return home still a child? There are mysteries to be solved in the town of Kirby Junction and the journey it took me on was enchanting, perplexing and packed a real emotional gut punch too. It’s no understatement to say this is one of the most beautiful stories I have reviewed in over eight years of Grab This Book.

Lucas has kept a journal which is a key resource in the telling of his story. He has recorded some of the events which led up to his disappearance but some of what he has recorded appears rather nonsensical to the police. A prime example being October 10th when he returned home from school to hear a garden gnome talking to him. Or did it? Because the gnome is swiftly removed as was the well he stood beside.

As we go through the story we see Lucas has many constants in his life – the comfort of childhood. The small town he lives in doesn’t change often but he always sees Mr Singh waiting for his train, he knows he must avoid the West woods and his new friends are fun but they have cartoons on their tv which Lucas doesn’t have on his yet. He is reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and has a recurring dream of falling through water, sometimes with a squid, sometimes a car is there and other times Lucas drifts downwards alone. He will always wake before he reaches the bottom.

When we aren’t with Lucas the reader will see the police discussing who this mystery child may be. Their investigations don’t seem to be making any progress on how an 11 year old can vanish for 12 years but not have aged a day when he returns. A therapist is brought in to meet with Lucas and this gives him an opportunity to explain to her in more detail what the events he has recorded in his journal actually relate to. I am not sure it answered many of those questions though!

Finally we do start to see some changes in Kirby Junction . While out on his bike, Lucan meets a stranger. The stranger asks about a town called Medway. It’s a a place which Lucas feels he knows but when he asks his parents about Medway they are not able to offer any clarification. So why does Lucas know the name? Then there are the new houses in town. Sudden new houses – with lovely new families within. Some of Lucas’s friends live in the new houses but finding out any information about Lucas’s friends is a real challenge for Detective Sergeant King.

Normally my graphic novel reads are packed with superheroes facing off against the worst villains. This gentle telling of a young child looking for answers to his unusual predicament could not be further from those high octane thrillers. Yet The Junction has the story which will undoubtably linger with me for a long time to come. The sympathetic narrative and the emotional landmines which are waiting to catch the reader unawares are exceptionally handled. Damn this is fine writing.

The pure talent of Norm Konyu’s art and his storytelling makes me want to shout about this book from the rooftops. I want everyone to read it – Lucas’s story should be heard. The Junction is a certainty to be included in my Top Ten Reads of 2022 – I want to read stories like this every single day.

The Junction is published by Titan Comics and is available in Hardback or can be read digitally through Kindle or Comixology. You can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-junction/nom-konyu/9781787738300

Category: 5* Reviews, From The Bookshelf, Graphic Novels | Comments Off