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

April 29

Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Jane Isaac

Decades. Every Friday I invite a new guest to join me here at Grab This Book and I ask them to tell me which five unmissable, memorable, remarkable or favourite books I should add to my Decades Library.

The reason we are highlighting five books is to allow me to assemble the Ultimate Library of wonderful books. I started this challenge back in January 2021 and I had no books on the library shelves. I only wanted the very best books to be represented and I knew one person could never possibly hope to remember all the greatest books from down the years so I ask each of my guests to pick their five favourites.

But why Decades? Well just picking five books is far too easy so I ask that each guest only pick one book per decade from five consecutive decades – a fifty year publication span to choose from. This brings double joy – seeing which five books my guests choose and spotting the clever ways they flex the rules.

This week it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Jane Isaac to Grab This Book. Jane has been wonderfully supportive of my blogging down the years and I was utterly thrilled when she agreed to make her Decades choices. I’ve been looking forward to this week so I shall pass over to Jane and stop waffling on…

Jane Isaac is the author of standalone crime novels and three critically acclaimed detective series. Her books have topped the Amazon best-seller charts, been nominated as best mystery in the ‘eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook awards’, selected as ‘Thriller of the Month’ by E-thriller.com, and have been translated into several languages including Italian, German, Swedish and Chinese.

One Fatal Secret, her next domestic thriller and twelfth novel, is scheduled for publication in June 2022.

Jane lives in rural Northamptonshire, UK with her husband, a real-life working detective, and her two Labradors, Bollo and Digity. When she is not writing she can be found reading, trudging over the fields with her dogs, travelling, or spending time with her family.

www.janeisaac.co.uk

DECADES

It’s such an honour to be asked to contribute to Decades on the brilliant Grab This Book blog, not least because I’ve been following it for some time! The utter joy in building a library from scratch feels a bit like being a child in a sweet shop. In reality, the process of narrowing down my favourite reads was quite a daunting prospect because there were so many to choose from! So, I haven’t necessarily picked my absolute favourite reads, but all the books I selected have left a lasting impression on me.

Papillon by Henri Charriere – First published in English in 1970

This auto-biographical tale from bank robber, Henri Charriere, nicknamed Papillon, is prison-escape thriller, and an emotional rollercoaster of a ride. Sent to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, he reflects on the decisions he made that shaped his life, and the penal colony where he is kept is a marked reminder of the best and the worst of humanity.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill – 1983

This gothic ghost story gave me all the creeps when I first read it in the 1990s, so much so that I couldn’t have it in the bedroom when I slept! When young solicitor, Arthur Kipps, is sent to settle the estate of the late Mrs. Alice Drablow, a reclusive widow who lived alone in the desolate Eel Marsh House, he faces the horror of nightmares. Tense, atmospheric and dark, I wouldn’t recommend reading it last thing at night.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang – 1991

I’ve always been fascinated by the Far East and this incredible book is a window into Chinese twentieth century history told through the eyes of three generations of women from the same family. Powerful, moving, and at times harrowing, ultimately the bravery of the women and their endurance shines through.

Tokyo by Mo Hayder (later re-titled The Devil of Nanking) – 2004

The late Mo Hayder possessed the most amazing ability to create evocative characters that pulled you in from the first page, and her stories tackled sometimes difficult issues that stayed with you long after you closed the book. For me, Tokyo was one of her best examples of this. Alone in Tokyo, Grey Hutchins finds herself searching for a piece of film taken during the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. What follows is a tense, high-octane story where Hutchins faces resistance in her search and struggles to come to terms with the horrors of past events.

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens – 2018

This story of Kya, abandoned at a young age and forced to raise herself in the Carolina Marshes, took me through all the emotions! Her ability to focus, connect with nature and keep faith in herself, despite what was thrown at her, showed real strength of character; particularly when the police charged her with murder and she was placed on trial, fighting for her life. A beautiful, and ultimately uplifting book in so many ways.

I have fond memories of Wild Swans releasing back in 1991 when I was working in a bookshop. It’s a real doorstep of a book, absolutely huge, and I remember lugging dozens and dozens of copies of it filling the gaps in the shelves as it flew out the door. Good times! It brings back so many happy memories seeing it again and I am delighted to add it to the Decades Library. The Woman in Black creeped the hell out of me but I’ll make room for that too!!!

Huge thanks to Jane for finding time to make these terrific selections and take on the Decades Challenge.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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April 25

Dark Objects – Simon Toyne

‘Count to three,’ her mother told her, the last words she would ever speak.

An Impossible Crime Scene
A wealthy woman is found brutally murdered in the locked fortress of her London mansion. Surrounding her are four mysterious objects, including a book on forensics by Dr Laughton Rees.

An Inescapable Past
As a teenager, Laughton’s life was destroyed after witnessing her mother’s brutal murder. Now a mother herself and forensic analyst, she is an expert on how to read crime scenes – but never works live cases.

An Uncatchable Killer
Pressured by the lead detective to help with the investigation, Laughton begins to realise that the objects left by the body are not just about the victim, they’re also about her. Her childhood was destroyed by one killer. Now she must catch another before her daughter’s is destroyed too.

I recieved a review copy from the publishers through Netgalley

If a book is really good, a nailed-on five star score and a title I know I am going to be recommending for months to come then I tend to change my normal review style and open with an announcement along the lines of “This is a book you do not want to miss”.

Well folks – Dark Objects by Simon Toyne is all of the above. From the opening chapter to the wholly unexpected conclusion I was gripped, engrossed, entertained and all the other positive adjectives a reader experiences when a thriller is ticking all the right boxes. I bloody loved it and I did not want it to end.

Now I have to try to explain why Dark Objects was so damn gripping. I’m not sure I can do it justice.

Events begin in a large, secluded home in London. The cleaner, Celia Barnes, is arriving at work and as she opens the door to the house of Mr and Mrs Miller she has no idea it will be for the last time. Watching her is a killer who knows Celia will never again deactivate the security system to the Miller house and knows what will happen to her once she gets inside.

It’s a grim opening but it perfectly sets the pace and tone for the rest of the book. A murder has to be investigated, the principle suspect is nowhere to be found and police will be confounded in their attempts to investigate the crime scene. Why will they be confounded? It is thanks to one key piece of evidence which was left at the scene for them to find – a book written by Dr Laughton Rees. And more than that I cannot say here.

Laughton is approached by the police to assist with the investigation. But due to events in her past (which are covered in the blurb) she is reluctant to become involved. Laughton does not work live cases and restricts her forensic analysis to old investigations. But whether she likes it or not, Laughton is going to become a key figure in this particular murder.

The reader is guided through the story by following events where Laughton is involved but we get more than just her POV. We see the investigation with Tannahill Khan, the reporting of the story from less than pleasant journalist Brian Slade (who gets regular scoops on the murder investigation which will keep the police on their toes) and we even drop in on a neighbourhood WhatsApp group who will have their own take on events. There’s plenty to take on and the switching between the key characters keeps everything bubbling along very nicely.

Laughton is juggling the involvement in the murder investigation with a pressing need to find a new school for her daughter. As a single mother Laughton is determined to give her daughter Grace the best opportunities. However, Grace appears to be isolated in class and the school do not seem to be addressing Laughton’s concerns about bullying. This worry is further compounded by the rising knife crime in the capital – a theme which is revisited more than once through the story. Laughton wants Grace in a private school where she feels she will be safer and, hopefully, less isolated. Having Laughton, Tannahill and Brian Slade’s personal lifes opened up and explored as part of the story helped make all the characters more relatable, realistic and it gives readers that insight as to why the key players act as they do.

I am skirting around lots of the bits of Dark Objects which I would really like to discuss in a review; but to dwell on the bits of this book which sang to me would mean disclosing too many spoilers and we don’t do spoilers here. Suffice to say Simon Toyne has woven the clues into his story and I missed them all. I gaped at certain reveals and could not turn those pages fast enough as I reached the end of the story when all the clever story layers started to come together.

In short, Dark Objects is a fantastic murder thriller. We get the police investigation, the analyitical investigation of the crime scenes and the media spinning the story to meet their own agenda. I was hooked from the first pages and all other books were set aside until I reached the last pages – it commanded my full attention. Do not miss Dark Objects!

Dark Objects is published by Harper Collins on 7 July and you can order a copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/dark-objects/simon-toyne/9780007551675

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

April 22

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with David F. Ross

Welcome back to Decades. I am on a mission to compile the Ultimate Library, my Decades Library, which only offers readers a choice of the very best books.

I started this mission back in January 2021 when I asked myself the question: If you were to open a new library and had zero books available, which books should be added to the shelves? I knew I would not be able to answer the question alone so each week I am joined by a guest and I ask them to nominate five new books which I should add to the library shelves.

There are only two rules governing the choices my guests make:

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

This week it is my pleasure to welcome David F Ross back to Grab This Book. One of the first book-launch events I attended after I started blogging was for David’s debut The Last Days of Disco. I love that David writes characters that sound like the people I am surrounded by each day and his books always hit the mark.

David kindly agreed to take on my Decades challenge after I put him on the spot when I bumped into him one morning as I was out walking my dog. His selections are tremendous so I may need to start using the pooch and a lack of coffee more often when I invite people to take part in Decades! Over to David…

David F. Ross was born in Glasgow in 1964. His debut novel, The Last Days of Disco, was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and received exceptional critical acclaim, as did the other two books in the Ayrshire-based Disco Days Trilogy – The Rise & Fall of the Miraculous Vespas and The Man Who Loved Islands. He is a regular contributor to Nutmeg Magazine, and in 2020 he wrote the screenplay for the film Miraculous, based on his own novel.

There’s Only One Danny Garvey is his fifth book. It was shortlisted for Scottish Fiction Book of the Year, 2021. His sixth novel will be published by Orenda Books in December 2022.

Decades

It’s an intriguing idea to select five books from consecutive decades to ‘represent’ me in the ultimate library. If this is a type of literary mixtape, should there be a natural flow to the selection? Should they reflect my ever-changing moods? Will they infer that I’m too narrow-minded? Will my stereotypical choices rule me out of future hypothetical dinner party invitations? Will anyone else ultimately give a fuck?

I may be over-thinking this task.

I didn’t read a lot as a child. Mine wasn’t a family background that encouraged reading. I do not recall there being books in our house and perhaps as a result, I was always occupied by other things: music and football, mainly. These selections are from a period of life where my latent interest in literature developed. From when I forced myself to make time to read because I understood my appreciation of the world around me could be enhanced by more than LPs by The Jam and Morrissey’s lyrics.

These choices are stereotypical. All male writers. All white. I am making up for the narrowness of focus they might imply now that I am a writer myself, but I chose these books because they are the ones that inspired me to write. The ones that persuaded me that I could have something to say that was worth writing about. The capacity to inspire others to create is a very powerful motivation for any artistic endeavour. And despite their flaws and blemishes, you can never forget your first love(s), right?

The 1950s – Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse (1959)

Billy Liar paints a monochromatic picture of a country still struggling to come to terms with the end of Empirical power in the wake of two devastating wars. (The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?) Everyone in Billy Fisher’s world is trapped by these circumstances, apart from Liz, the beatnik girl played by Julie Christie in the film adaptation. She represents freedom; an escape from a life of pram-pushing drudgery or factory conditioning. The writing is ahead of it’s time in tackling mental health issues in young men. This book’s influence on The Last Days of Disco is perhaps inevitable given how much of an impact it had on me.

The 1960s – The Blinder, by Barry Hines (1966)

Another typically northern story of a young footballer, Lennie Hawk, whom many supporters considered him to be the reincarnation of a flawed genius from his club’s past. The Blinder was the first book I can remember loving. It’s less well known than A Kestral For A Knave and I’m perhaps the only person in the world who thinks it’s better. I’m still slightly ashamed to admit that I stole this book from a small, local library during an ill-thought out mid-70s break-in. Although, since I still have the stolen copy, and it continues to inspire me now, hopefully the local Council can forgive me.

There’s Only One Danny Garvey owes a massive debt to this brilliant book.

The 1970s – The World According To Garp, by John Irving (1978)

I stumbled on this book almost by accident. A fellow passenger left it on a London train and told me I could have it when I alerted her. Garp is a comic novel full of idiosyncratic characters; the successful writer Garp, his accidental feminist icon mother, a former football player turned transgender activist, and a supporting cast of assassins and suburban seductresses and cult members and unicycling bears and fortune tellers. The book’s scope is vast, and it directly influenced the chaotic, diverse world I imagined in The Rise & Fall of the Miraculous Vespas. It’s an angry novel although that underlying rage is brilliantly obscured by the wit and humour of the writing. That’s a difficult balance to strike. The World According to Garp is still hugely relevant. Sexual intolerance is still all around us.

The 1980s – The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster (1987)

“The story is not in the words; it’s in the struggle.”

I have this as an epigram for my next book which is due to be published later this year. The New York Trilogy is like the city itself; complex, multi-layered, and full of contradictions. For me, it represents a way of telling a story that doesn’t offer easy answers but simply asks more questions. I like the idea of the reader having to make sense of a book, and ultimately of what its intertextuality means to them alone. I found out late last year that Paul Auster and I share a close mutual friendship. His writing – particularly around serendipitous meetings and coincidental occurrences – has influenced all of my books, so it was a real thrill for me that he read Welcome To The Heady Heights.

The 1990s – Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh (1993)

I think Irvine Welsh – and Trainspotting especially – has changed the way the Scottish literary voice is appreciated around the world. Trainspotting is something of a Year Zero for Scottish authors from a working-class background. It has blazed a trail for so many brilliant books. In recent years, Shuggie Bain and The Young Team share its DNA. There is so much energy and life and – paradoxically – hope bursting out from the pages that it’s impossible not to get caught up in the exuberance of the writing, and the authenticity of the characters, despite the misery (for the most part) of their situations.

Trainspotting isn’t a period piece, or a point-in-time consequence of the social chaos visited on Scotland by the Thatcher Government. It’s the story of the world we all live in today.

Huge thanks once again to David. I have already ordered a copy of The New York Trilogy and this feature continues to take over my TBR!

DECADES WILL RETURN

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April 10

Hide – Kiersten White

The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.

The prize: enough money to change everything.

Even though everyone is desperate to win – to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts – Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.

It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.

But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.

Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

I recieved a review copy through Netgalley

Hide was a great wee read which appealed to the horror fan within me. It centres on Mack, survivor of an extremely traumatic incident has a young child and now firmly of no fixed abode. She survives day to day in a shelter where she has a bed, gets fed and then will be turned out into the streets to fend for herself each day until the shelter opens again and she returns for another night’s sleep. By day Mack hides away in a secret spot where she will be off the streets and out of danger.

At the shelter on the day we join the story Mack is presented with an opportunity to turn her ability to vanish into a money making opportunity. A reality game show – spend a week hiding in a 7 day game of hide and seek against 13 other competitors with a $50k prize to the winner. She really can’t refuse and finds herself pulled along by events and on a long journey heading towards the park where the competition will take place.

The action takes place within an abandoned amusement park. It’s a wild and long-forgotten site where the paths inside twist and turn. The foliage within has taken over and the rides are sprinkled within the mazelike paths which no planner was able to carefully map out for the guests who once attended to enjoy the attractions. The quirk of the amusement park back in the day was that guests would stumble upon the rides, there was no direct lines of sight from one area to the next and only one day per year were the gates flung open for all the local to enjoy the thrills within. Now it will host a competitive game of hide and seek.

Kiersten White introduces the contestants and any viewer of reality TV shows will recognise the quirky characters, the wise heads, the glamour ones and we will pick our favourites. Amusingly the contestants know how these games work too and we see them judging and assessing the competition and even picking out possible romantic partners.

Into the tournament and things start to take a dark turn. Who are the seekers? Are they using animals to assist their hunt? Why is this park so difficult to navigate? Is that blood?

As their numbers start to dwindle (two players eliminated each day) it becomes clear to Mack and her fellow contestants that something is very wrong with the game they are playing but will it be too late for them to raise alarm? You cannot help but be drawn into the thrill and tension of this story and there is much more going on with this game of hide and seek than you will anticpate.

I had a lot of fun with Hide. Some small frustrations, not least the author’s decision to get a bit poetic with language when something unpleasant is happening on the page. I had to re-read one or two passages to try to work out exactly what had happened. But the niggles were far outweighed by the enjoyment at an unexpected series of twists and turns. After a run of so-so reads this shook things up nicely.

Hide is published on 24 May and will be available in Hardback, Digital and Audiobook format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09FDYPNK9/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

Category: From The Bookshelf | Comments Off