September 9

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Tim Glister

Sometimes my new Decades guest arrives in the week they are celebrating a publication date, it’s almost like I can boast successful planning every now and then.  Let me jump in ahead of Tim and drop a sneaky cover share of his new paperback, Red Corona, before he has a chance to tell you a bit more about it himself.

LUSH!

Before I hand you over to this week’s guest I had better explain what I mean by a “Decades guest”. Every week I am joined by a booklover who is asked to take on my Decades challenge.  I am putting together a collection of unmissable books which should grace the shelves of the very best library collection.

I began this quest back in January and each week a new guest (authors, publishers, bloggers and journalists) select five books they want me to add to the Library. You can see all the previous selections here: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library

Choosing five books isn’t quite the whole story though.  My guests may only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. So their choices will come from a fifty year publication span. This can cause some gnashing of teeth but the range of books being added to the Library makes my jaw drop each week.

So it’s enough from me, Tim is waiting in the wings to introduce himself and to share his five selections with you.

DECADES

I’m Tim Glister, the author of the Richard Knox Spy Thriller series. My first novel, RED CORONA, is about the secret battle between Britain, America and Russia to control the birth of the global surveillance age. The second novel in the series, A LOYAL TRAITOR, poses the question: duty or honour, which would you betray?

Over the years I’ve been a library assistant, a bookseller, and a literary agent. Now I’m a novelist. I write espionage fiction, and I read as widely as I can for both fun and inspiration.

For my Decades challenge, I wanted to pick five novels that have blown my mind, and changed the way I look at both reading and writing. These are stories I still think about years after reading them, and recommend to anyone who will listen.

 

 

1957 – ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute

Few novels have given me nightmares. This one has. The 50s and 60s were awash with excellent speculative (and mainly) dystopian fiction, but ON THE BEACH stands out for how devastatingly it explores a world that ends without a bang. It’s all so mannered, so polite, so plausible – it’s utterly terrifying, and extremely, deeply affecting.

 

 

 

 

1962 – LABYRINTHS by Jorge Luis Borges

As Heather Martin has already said, if you could only pick one book for this challenge it would have to be LABYRINTHS. It has no equal. These razor-sharp, mind-bending tales fizz with imagination and vitality, and conjure up entire worlds in just a few pages. Read them and learn the true, awesome power of literature.

 

 

 

 

 

1971 – THE DAY OF THE JACKAL by Frederick Forsyth

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL shouldn’t work. We know Charles de Gaulle isn’t going to die, and his would-be assassin is little more than a hollow puppet somehow pulling its own strings. And yet Forsyth is such a master of the thriller and so skilled at creating tension that you end up glued to the pages and rooting for murder.

 

 

 

 

1984 – HOTEL DU LAC by Anita Brookner

This novel is not what you think it is. It’s shrewd, cunning, deceptive. It takes the best of Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier and distills it all down into a biting social commentary driven by a mystery that compels you to keep reading and a heroine that critics have been keen to dismiss but who commands your respect.

 

 

 

 

1995 – BLINDNESS by José Saramago

Another nightmare-inducer to end on. What would happen if a plague of blindness swept through your city? Blending Camus-esque philosophical plotting with a disarming parable-style narrative voice, BLINDNESS grabs hold of you and beats you up until the very last page. Like ON THE BEACH, technically it’s science fiction, but it feels all too real.

 

 

 

 

Five stories which blew Tim’s mind and changed the way he looks at reading and at writing! That’s quite the testimony and exactly what I hope the Decades Library will do for other readers. Just last week I picked up one of the recommendations made by Steven Keddie and my next Decades purchase is guaranteed to be Blindness.

A reminder that Tim’s novel, Red Corona, released this week in paperback. If you want to spot how any of these five books helped shape a new story then here is the link you need to grab your own copy of Red Corona: https://www.waterstones.com/book/red-corona/tim-glister/9781786079435

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

 

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September 9

Black Reed Bay – Rod Reynolds

Don’t trust ANYONE…

When a young woman makes a distressing middle-of-the-night call to 911, apparently running for her life in a quiet, exclusive beachside neighbourhood, miles from her home, everything suggests a domestic incident.

Except no one has seen her since, and something doesn’t sit right with the officers at Hampstead County PD. With multiple suspects and witnesses throwing up startling inconsistencies, and interference from the top threatening the integrity of the investigation, lead detective Casey Wray is thrust into an increasingly puzzling case that looks like it’s going to have only one ending…

And then the first body appears…

 

I received a review copy from Karen at Orenda Books and I would like to thank Anne Cater at Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Black Reed Bay blog tour.

 

Hi, can we have our ball back please? Everything was fine until Rod Renolds came along with Black Reed Bay and utterly smashed it out of the park.

I should just stop there. Read it, loved it and basically I didn’t want it to end. The lead character, Casey Wray, is one of the strongest and most interesting new headliners I have encountered for a long time and I want to read more about her. Rod Reynold’s writes beautifully and builds a world around his reader which keeps you hooked on the story he is telling.

Everything starts with a panic call to the police. A young woman is running down a street in a nice residential area but is clearly terrified of something, what is she is trying to escape from? She manages to give the police details of her location but not what the threat is. Then the call ends abruptly and the woman disappears before the police can respond.

Casey Wray and her partner Cullen are investigating but it seems everyone they speak with has a different version of events. Many residents saw the missing woman run down the street and the man she had been visiting (and Casey’s chief suspect) agrees she had been at his home before panicing and running out. But nobody knows where she went and (crucially) nobody wanted to open their door to help her.

Staying well clear of spoilers makes it tricky to outline why I enjoyed this book as much as I did. Casey’s missing person enquiries see her stumble into a much bigger concern. This puts Casey and her colleagues into closer contact with other departments within the police and this isn’t the best of time to put her boss under pressure as he is feeling the pinch too. An internal investigation focusing on how a violent and intoxicated suspect was brought under control with “excessive force” means the whole team feel they are being picked on by the top brass.

Casey’s investigation is detailed, compassionate and thorough, the author has given real life and energy to his characters and I was utterly absorbed by what I was reading. This, in turn, made some of the shocking twists more dramatic and gave them bigger impact. The missing woman’s family are anxious, worried, angry and desperate, this rubs off on Casey and on the reader and your investment in this story grows.

Late night phone calls, screaming women and then a body is found, everything is escalating and Casey and Cullen are in the thick of it. This is page-turner central, the kind of book I love to read with the drama and tension you always hope your next read will offer.

Consider me a very happy, satisfied reader. Black Reed Bay – read it!

 

Black Reed Bay is published by Orenda Books and is available in paperback and digital format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08T65D9XX/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

 

 

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September 6

Five Minds – Guy Morpuss

SHARING A BODY CAN BE MURDER

The Earth’s spiralling population has finally been controlled. Lifespans are limited to eighty years, except for those who make an extreme choice: to become a commune. Five minds sharing one body, each living for four hours at a time. But with a combined lifespan of nearly 150 years.

Alex, Kate, Mike, Sierra and Ben have already spent twenty-five years together in what was once Mike’s body, their frequent personality clashes leading to endless bickering, countless arguments, and getting themselves stranded on a Russian Artic freighter. Wanting to buy upgrades for their next host body, they decide to travel to a Death Park where time can be gambled like money. But things go very wrong when Kate accepts a dangerous offer, and one of them disappears.

Someone is trying to kill off members of the commune. But why? Is one of them responsible? Or is an outsider playing a deadly game? It’s hard enough to catch a murderer. It’s almost impossible when you might be sharing a body with them…

 

I received a review copy from Viper and I thank Anne Cater at Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to host this leg of the Five Minds blog tour.

 

Where to start with Five Minds? How to explain Five Minds? This is an absolute belter of a crime story. It’s high concept, cleverly constructed and has all the tension and thrills I want from my murder stories.

But it’s a bit “different” with Five Minds sharing a body, all taking an alloted time to live while the other Minds are dormant and waiting for their allocated time to roll around again. So readers have five main characters to get to know and we learn they can only communicate with each other by leaving messages for the other people inhabiting their body. Guy Morpuss explains it so much more effectively in the book and being able to see what Kate, Mike, Sienna, Alex and Ben are telling each other allows the reader to understand the dynamics of each character.

Although big decisions need to be made by unanimous vote (thus taking 24 hours) sometimes snap decisions are needed and the Mind which makes that choice has to hope the others agree. This takes conflicted main character to a whole new level!

In Five Minds our commune of Minds are in danger, a synthetic lifeform has challenged Kate to a game. The prize is more time (time is lifetime and everyone can trade some of their hours to prolong their lifespan). Kate has no time to consult the others so agrees to the android’s challenge and from here our Five are in danger. Someone, for reasons they don’t know, is trying to kill each of the Minds within the body.

Within the world where Five Minds is set are game zones. The desperate souls who are reaching the end of their lives can play in the games to try to win more time. Fail and it’s an early death. Our Five must play these games and Guy Morpuss has devised some absorbing challenges for them. The games are physical challenges, there are moral and reasoning dilemma scenarios to navigate or problem solving challenges to overcome. Failure isn’t an option but what happens if a third party is trying to rig the odds against you?

Five Minds is quite unlike anything else. A murder tale in a fantasy reality and obviously this may not appeal to everybody. But if you pass on this excellent book then it will be your loss – how refreshing to have something so wonderfully different to enjoy. Embrace the unusual and go with it.

 

Five Minds is published by Viper and is available in hardback, digital and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08QB1L1JW/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

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September 4

A Slow Fire Burning – Paula Hawkins

‘What is wrong with you?’

Laura has spent most of her life being judged. She’s seen as hot-tempered, troubled, a loner. Some even call her dangerous.

Miriam knows that just because Laura is witnessed leaving the scene of a horrific murder with blood on her clothes, that doesn’t mean she’s a killer. Bitter experience has taught her how easy it is to get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Carla is reeling from the brutal murder of her nephew. She trusts no one: good people are capable of terrible deeds. But how far will she go to find peace?

Innocent or guilty, everyone is damaged. Some are damaged enough to kill.

Look what you started.

 

I received a review copy from the publishers. My thanks also go to Anne Cater at Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the tour for A Slow Fire Burning.

 

A Slow Fire Burning: a book which took a little while to draw me in – the classic slow burn thriller. And that’s exactly what this story was; even though the prologue tells of a young girl fleeing from a man who seems to have harmed her friend and the first chapter introduces us to Laura as she tries to wash blood from her t-shirt. Indeed the first five pages tell of danger, violence and two vulnerable women so you can’t say Paula Hawkins isn’t grabbing your attention from the get-go.

And once the reader gets past those first five pages there is soon a brutal murder to read about local busybody, Miriam, finds a dead man sprawled on the floor of his houseboat. Miriam tries to keep track of all the activity on the houseboats beside her own so she knows the man in question had entertained young Laura a few days earlier and even finds something belonging to Laura by his body but she isn’t going to leave that for the police to find…why not? I wondered.

Once the murder has been discovered, and Miriam has the chance to chat with the police about what she may have seen, Paula Hawkins takes us through the players in this clever drama. This is when the perception of a slow burn may kick in as we learn about the lives and background of those involved.

The murdered man’s aunt is Carla who recently lost her sister too. Carla experienced the ultimate tragedy many years earlier when her son, as a toddler, died while under the care of Carla’s sister. Her son’s death placed too much strain on Carla’s marriage to Theo and the marriage ended but the couple stay just a few streets apart and Carla still spends time with Theo. Theo is a successful novelist with a smash hit in his past, however, there is a suggestion he took inspiration from events in Miriam’s life and there is a history of bad feeling between the pair. Switch back to Laura, a troubled girl who was injured as a child by a hit and run driver leaving her with a damaged leg, a trigger temper and the inability to always think clearly and rationally. Laura earns a few extra quid by collecting shopping for Irene who is now in her 80s and not as mobile as she was. Irene was Angela’s next-door neighbour.  Who is Angela?  Well that would be Carla’s sister, Theo’s sister-in-law and the woman responsible for looking after Carla’s son the night he died. Angela died just a couple of weeks before events in the story commenced.

Phew, there are a fair few connections in that ensemble and Paula Hawkins establishes each character and covers their background with great care. She is seeding plot threads and throwing out red herrings and it is skillfully done. Okay it does mean the murder is slightly pushed to the background and this may give the impression we are not getting anywhere but we are, everything is leading somewhere and your reward as a reader is to getting to know these people and understanding their lives because nothing is quite what it seems.

You finish reading A Slow Fire Burning and you know you have finished reading a great story. That’s what we want, a book to set up a cast, push them and stretch their emotions to limits they didn’t know they had and stepping back to see how they react. Unpredictably!

 

 

A Slow Fire Burning is published by Doubleday and is available in Hardback, digital and audiobook format.  You can order your copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-slow-fire-burning/paula-hawkins/2928377051112

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September 3

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Elizabeth Haynes

Another week has flown by and today I have the pleasure of introducing a new guest who is tasked with the challenge of nominating five new books to be added to my Decades Library. If you haven’t encountered my Decades Library yet then a quick recap will help.

Each week I ask my guests to select five unmissable books which they would want to see added to the Ultimate Library. I began this challenge with zero books and week by week the shelves are filling with some truly amazing titles. If you want to see all the books which have been recommended you can see (and buy) them here: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/grab-this-book-the-decades-library

 

Picking five books just seemed a bit too easy though so I added a second rule: each guest must only select one book per decade from five consecutive decades. So their final five choices will come from any 50 year publication span.  Flexing of the rules is quite commonplace as you will see in the very near future.

This week I am delighted to pass the Decades curator’s hat to Elizabeth Haynes. Elizabeth was one of the first authors I met after I began blogging. Thanks to the brilliant Encounters festival which North Lanarkshire ran I got to head to Motherwell Library to hear her talking about her books. A fabulous evening was had and if, in future, you get a chance to see Elizabeth at any events make booking your ticket a priority.

Enough from me, let me hand you over to Elizabeth so she can share her five selections:

Elizabeth Haynes is a former police intelligence analyst who lives in Norfolk with her husband and son. Her first novel, Into the Darkest Corner, was Amazon’s Best Book of the Year 2011 and a New York Times bestseller. Now published in 37 countries, it was originally written as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an online challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November.

She has written a further three psychological thrillers—Revenge of the Tide, Human Remains and Never Alone—and two novels in the DCI Louisa Smith series, Under a Silent Moon and Behind Closed Doors.

Next came her highly praised historical novel The Murder of Harriet Monckton (a Sunday Times Summer Read) which is based on the 1843 unsolved murder of a young school teacher in Bromley, Kent.

Elizabeth’s latest novel, You, Me and the Sea is a contemporary story of love and redemption set on a remote, windswept Scottish island.

 

DECADES

At the time of writing, I’m four days away from my 50th birthday. I suspect most of Gordon’s guests have also gone through the internal battle wondering where to begin; I suppose the impending half-century made this decision easier for me! So I’ve decided to use the first five decades I was here and use this as a wee self-indulgent trip down memory lane…

1970s: Z for Zachariah, by Robert C. O’Brien (1974)

I was born in 1971 so I’ll admit I didn’t read this book until the early 1980s, but it has stayed with me ever since. It’s a post-apocalyptic story of a girl surviving in a remote, sheltered valley, managing quite well on her own and assuming everyone is dead, until a stranger in a haz-mat suit turns up and suddenly everything becomes a lot scarier.

I read a lot of science fiction as a teenager. In particular I loved Ray Bradbury’s short stories, which made me want to write, not for anyone else, just for myself: the joy of creating worlds, inventing people and giving them problems to solve, kept me busy. I think as an only child, and at times quite lonely, inventing people and putting words in their mouths was a form of social interaction. And yes, before I discovered fiction, I did have imaginary friends.

I remember reading Z for Zachariah in a cupboard. Our spare room had a giant, built-in cupboard in the void  above the staircase (I say giant, I guess it was about a metre square in terms of floor space) and I built a ‘den’ in there out of stored blankets and old pillows. This was my reading haven in which I could imagine any possibility, including a nuclear holocaust.

 

1980s: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾, by Sue Townsend (1982)

 

Like Adrian, I was an avid secret diary keeper – I still am – and I saw a lot of myself in him. The desperate desire to be liked, to belong, to understand what adults really meant and how the world worked. My parents also divorced and the effect on me is something I’m only really understanding now – at the time it was just something profoundly life-changing that happened, over which I had no control. Aside from that – finding my identity through a fictional diarist – the book was just tremendously funny, which was very helpful.

 

 

 

 

1990s: Feel the Fear and Beyond: Dynamic Techniques for Doing it Anyway, by Susan Jeffers (1998)

 

Cheating a little, because Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway was originally published in 1987, but I only got to read it in the 1990s. This was the decade in which I finished university and started on the career ladder, mainly in temp admin jobs, but notably also selling cars (my first ever job). It’s fair to say I had very little self-confidence, and Susan Jeffers proved to be quite an eye-opener when I read it. It became the book that I gifted to everyone for many years. I still re-read it regularly now. The message behind it is so simple and true: life is so very much better if you can be a little bit brave.

 

 

2000s: The Bride Stripped Bare, by Nikki Gemmell (2003)

 

In the wake of the ‘Fifty Shades’ fever that gave us all permission to enjoy erotic fiction and talk about it afterwards, The Bride Stripped Bare was presented as being ‘perfect for fans of Fifty Shades’ and used a similar styling (along with countless others) – which is a bit of a shame. Originally it was published anonymously, which added to the intrigue, but what sets it apart is that this book is beautifully written. It’s the story of a misfit couple on honeymoon in Marrakech, and the way the relationship unravels afterwards. Told almost directly from the consciousness of the woman, it’s deep and lyrical and searingly beautiful. I’ve never found a writer who is able to speak that truth in quite such a powerful way. This is the sort of writing that I absolutely aspire to.

 

 

2010s: All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr (2014)

 

This is the decade in which I was published, and it’s so tempting to choose any one of the brilliant books I’ve read by authors that I now think of as friends, but to do so would be to leave out so many others. It’s a hard choice to make! So I’m going with a book I only read recently, late to the party as always – the tale of Marie-Laure and Werner, teenagers on opposite sides of global conflict, but with so much in common. When they eventually meet – all too briefly – it feels like a pivotal moment for the whole world.

 

 

 

Thank you to Gordon for letting me join in the Decades challenge! And thank YOU for reading. I hope I’ve given you some inspiration for choosing your next book….

 

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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September 1

The Divinities – Parker Bilal

When two bodies are found brutally murdered at a building site in Battersea, DS Cal Drake is first to the scene. He sees an opportunity: to solve a high-profile case and to repair his reputation after a botched undercover operation almost ended his promising career in the Violent Crimes Unit.

Assigned to work with the forensic psychologist Dr Rayhana Crane, and on the hunt for an elusive killer, Drake’s investigations lead down the dark corridors of the past – to the Iraq war and the destruction both he and Crane witnessed there. With a community poised on the brink of violence, Crane and Drake must put their lives on the line to stop the killer before vengeance is unleashed.

 

Thanks to Jamie Norman at Canongate for sending me a copy for review

 

I took this book on holiday to read and after an unfortunate “pool” incident it didn’t make it home. Which is a real shame as I really enjoyed The Divinities as it took my crime reading to the dark gritty corners of London and introduced me to two interesting lead characters that I look forward to seeing again.

Cal Drake is the first police officer on the scene at a building site where the night guard has found two very dead bodies. Drake has put himself at the scene of a brutal double murder but his position in the force is not strong following past incidents; which readers will learn more about as the story unfolds. After pleading with his boss for the opportunity to investigate the two deaths he finds himself with a very short period of time to show significant progress in identifying a killer.

As pressure to deliver a result intensifies, Drake also finds himself gaining assistance from Dr Rayhana Crane.  Dr Crane is a forensic psychologist keeping her practice running after the death of her former business partner and struggling to get the proper work balance in place now she is running solo. The opportunity to work with the police is definitely arriving at an opportune moment but she will need to convice Drake she can be an asset and she also needs to convince him to let her help.

Though working the same investigation the pair don’t spend too much of their time together, this allows Drake to investigate and chase down leads and Crane to pursue an alternative line of enquiry (which leans into spoiler territory so I can’t elaborate). Suffice to say each has a fascinating story thread to explore and I enjoyed learning more about how each half of the duo operated.

Drake has a chequered past, he changed faith and explored new teachings then through his policework seems to know several of the city gangsters and can gain assistance when needed. Crane has worked in some fascinating areas too and her patients, trauma sufferers, can be more than a handful in more than one sense but Crane is more than capable of looking after herself.

The two threads of the story will start to pull together and the endgame in The Divinities is pure tension.

 

 

The Divinities is available in paperback, digital and audiobook format.  You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08SR7JK4F/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

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August 30

Camp Death – Jim Ody

The place had a gruesome past that nobody wanted to talk about…

Camp Deathe is now a great place to spend the summer. Ritchie soon finds a group of outsiders like himself. Teenagers who ignore the organised activities, and bunk off in the old abandoned cabins deep in the woods. The cabins that have a history.

The campfire monster stories were meant to just scare them. Nobody expected them to come true. Then one of the teenagers disappears in the middle of the night.

Something is watching them. It hides in the woods and hunts at night.

Ritchie will have to uncover the secrets of the camp, and understand his own problems in order to survive.

 

I recieved a copy from the publishers, Question Mark Horror, in order to participate in the blog tour

 

The first Question Mark Horror title (though I did review Ouija at the start of the two books one tour campaign). Both Camp Death and Ouija are YA horror titles which fit nicely into the Point Horror space in the reading lists. I have long been a fan of horror fiction but I was just a bit too old to have enjoyed Point Horror as I was growing up; jumping straight into King, Herbert, Laymon and Hutson and catching Peter James in his pre-crime days.

If I had grown up reading the YA fiction then I know I would have inhaled the Point Horror titles and would absolutely be all over the Question Mark Horror books too, they are nicely pitched creepy titles which don’t take the scare too far but still leave readers unsettled – particularly if their imagination fills in the extra details.

Camp Death, actually Camp Deathe, is a summer resort deep in the woods where families can spend some quality time away from the hustle and the bustle and where parents can fill their children’s days with activities so they get a break from parenting. Sounds ideal. However, the camp which Ritchie and his family arrive at has a dark history and the kids in the know will try to terrify the new arrivals with tales of death and a strange beast which is said to roam the woods around the cabins.

As is the case when any group of kids are thrown together there are dominant characters and they have their hangers-on. The other children scrabble for attention and try to raise their position in the pecking order and rivalries and jealousy are such good triggers for incidents. The other inevitable when you have a group of boys and girls is that attractions will form and for young teenagers this is an awkward period of self awareness and the early discoveries of future freedoms. In short – Ritchie meets a girl he likes but there is a bigger boy also trying to catch her eye.

Realising Ritchie is a potential rival sees a concerted effort to undermine Ritchie in the eyes of the group. This begins as snide asides but soon escalates to a dangerous attempt to leave him alone, bound and at the mercy of the mysterious “beast”. Though for readers the existence of the beast isn’t rumour and campfire stories, we have been witness to the damage it can do.

This is classic horror fare and Jim Ody does a great job of keeping the tension and suspicion going through the story and I confess I did not see that ending coming! The story deals with bullying, self awareness, family stress and one other two (spoilerish) themes – all areas which I felt my younger self would have benefitted from reading more of when I was in my formative years.

Both Camp Death and Ouija herald strong starts for the Question Mark Horror series and I look forward to seeing what they may bring for us next. If you enjoy a chilling tale then this has death, monsters and rivalry where the good guy getting the girl is not guaranteed.

 

Camp Death is available in paperback and digital format and you can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0999JVT1F/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

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August 29

A Numbers Game – RJ Dark

One dead man and a missing lottery ticket.
Two family members who need that money to get away from the rundown Blades Edge estate.
Three local gangsters who want that money for themselves.

Meet Malachite Jones – the foremost (and only) psychic medium on the gritty Blades Edge estate. All he wants are two things: a name that isn’t ‘Malachite’, and a quiet life. And maybe some real psychic powers, but he’s making a living without them.

Janine Stanbeck wants to find her dead husband Larry’s winning ticket and escape Blades Edge with her son. And she thinks Mal can help her.

But Larry’s dad is the crime lord of the estate, and he wants that ticket for himself, and worse for Mal, he’s not the only criminal with his eyes on it. Add in two coppers desperate to nick Mal’s best, only, and admittedly quite dangerous, friend, Jackie Singh Kattar, and Blades Edge is getting pretty crowded.

Malachite Jones might not really be able to talk to the dead, but if he and his friend Jackie Singh Kattar can’t find that money and a solution that pleases everyone they’re likely to be in need of a psychic medium themselves.

The first Mal Jones and Jackie Singh Kattar adventure: a chaotic rollercoaster ride through a Yorkshire landscape full of double crossing friends, dogged police, psychotic gangster and voices from the other side.

 

I received a review copy from the publishers through Netgalley.

 

There is a real skill to delivering a thriller which has lashings of tension, violence and murder but also keeps fun in its soul and gives the readers laughs and empathy and two lead characters you will want to see return as soon as possible.  Kudos, therefore, to RJ Dark for the hugely enjoyable A Numbers Game; first in a new series to feature “psychic medium” Mal Jones and his extremely deadly best friend Jackie Singh Katter.

Jackie sends Mal a new client: Janine Stanbeck. Her husband recently died in a motorcycle accident and Janine wants to know if Mal can communicate with her late husband as she needs to know where he hid his winning lottery ticket. Janine is very cynical and does not believe Mal can help her but desperate times call for desperate measures and Mal may well be her last chance to get her hands on the unclaimed millions.

Unfortunately for Mal, Janine is the daughter of the local crime kingpin and the Stanbeck family is to be feared and (if possible) avoided. And Janine is not the only person looking for the missing ticket – her father would quite like to get his hands on it too…as would the Russian gangsters who would also like to see the Stanbeck family taken out of the picture so they can extend their own influence. All these interested parties would like Mal to find the missing ticket. Actually they all expect him to find the ticket and they all expect Mal to ignore any other people who may want the ticket and pass control of the money to them. Mal, caught up in the middle of the mix,would really like everyone to leave him alone but that does not seem likely.

Mal will need to rely upon Jackie to keep him safe and help him out when the going gets heavy, which it does. Jackie is the violent part of the duo and when the pair are backed into a corner the fists will fly and Jackie frequently surprises the larger and more intimidating thugs who will cross their path.

I had a blast reading A Numbers Game. Mal needs to understand the man at the heart of the problem and to know the secrets of a dead biker who seemed to be forging a path away from the criminal background the rest of his family. Jackie has to keep Mal alive. Together the pair are fantastic fun to read about and it’s one of those books you zip through as the action comes thick and fast.

Characters are brilliantly developed, nobody likes Mal and the police are determined to lock up Jackie; just how the pair keep it together is something of a minor miracle. More books in this series would be very welcome, no better feeling for a reader than getting characters you instantly like and want to read again.

 

A Numbers Game is available in paperback and digital format and you can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08Z85446C/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

 

Category: 5* Reviews, From The Bookshelf | Comments Off on A Numbers Game – RJ Dark
August 28

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Jay Stringer

My guest this week once offered a Star Wars book to anyone at Noir at the Bar that would wail like a Wookie. To this day I still have that book.  He is also the first guest to tell me they wanted to select five comic books for their Decades choices – I may need to invite him back just so I can see which books he would have selected.

Don’t mourn the loss of Jay’s comic book picks as he has selected five quality novels which I am delighted to add to my Decades Library.

For those not familiar with #Decades a quick recap. Each week I invite a guest to join me and select five unmissable or essential reads which they would want to see included in my Ultimate Library. When this project started back in January I had no books and a mountain to climb, week on week my guests have selected five books and my library is filling up. You can see all the previous selections (and buy any which catch your eye) here at Bookshop.org: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/GrabThisBookDecades

Choosing five books may be challenging but I add a second rule which my guests need to follow.  They can only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades – so they have any fifty year publication span to select from.

This week I am delighted to welcome Jay Stringer to Grab This Book.  As Jay is Glasgow based he is one of the few guests I have actually met and I was thrilled he was able to make time to take on the Decades challenge. Jay’s latest book Don’t Tell a Soul is my current read and it’s flipping brilliant, putting it down to prep this post was a wrench.

So I pass you over to Jay but before I do – here is how you get Don’t Tell a Soul: https://www.waterstones.com/book/dont-tell-a-soul/jay-stringer/9781916892309

 

Jay Stringer was born in 1980, and he’s not dead yet. His crime fiction has been nominated for both Anthony and Derringer awards, and shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize. His stand-up comedy has been laughed at by at least three people. He was born and raised in the Black Country, but has since adopted Glasgow as his hometown.

Jay’s newest book Don’t Tell a Soul was released on July 26th.

Also, Jay’s birthday was July 26th. You know what to do.

DECADES

One book from each decade? That’s a crazy rule. I hate rules. So the only way I’m going to get through this is imposing a few more on myself.

  1. I can’t just pick an Elmore Leonard book for each decade (because, seriously, I could.)
  2. No comic books. (Because once I open that door, I pick nothing but comic books.)

 

Okay. On with the list.

 

1970’s. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

 

This decade was hard. So many great books. So many great Elmore Leonard books. But Douglas Adams was one of my gateway drugs to reading novels, as a struggling dyslexic teen, and it still holds up today. Funny. Satirical. Basically accurate and mostly harmless. One of the funniest books ever written.

 

 

 

 

 

1980’s. The Demon Headmaster – Gillian Cross

 

I was a child during the 80’s, and I can’t remove myself from that. This pick is all about memories. Again, as a dyslexic I didn’t read much prose early on. Choose Your Own Adventure books were pretty much my speed, and the rest was comic books. (The 80’s was a great decade for comics.) But I read the hell out of The Demon Headmaster. And had it read to me just as much.

 

 

 

 

1990’s. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge

 

Now then. We. Are. Talking. I love this book. I’d get an all-over body tattoo of this book if I could. What’s it about? No idea. There’s magic, gambling, revenge, and a big diamond. It’s sort of like what Harry Potter would be if he was a cool kid who drank a lot and wanted to be in a punk band. And it’s funny, moving, and occasionally deep. Jim Dodge’s writing is all about the journey, not so much about the destination. But it’s a great journey.

 

 

 

2000’s. Pagan Babies – Elmore Leonard

 

This isn’t Elmore’s best book. But it might be the one that stayed with me the longest after I read it. The key to understanding Leonard is that he was always writing about self-awareness. About characters becoming better or worse at being who they really are. And he often also explored the huge grey area between right/wrong and legal/illegal. Pagan Babies feels like the ultimate distillation of these themes into something simple and primal. And, placed where it is in his career, it feels like the summation of his themes, before he became a little more self-indulgent in his last few books.

 

 

2010’s. Recursion – Blake Crouch

 

It’s not often a book blows me away. I don’t just mean I enjoyed it. I enjoy a lot of books. But this one simply blew me away. It might be one of the best books I’ve ever read. Though to talk too much about it is to ruin the fun. It’s a sci-fi story at heart. But it also feels like it’s about fake news, and the way we’re all living in different realities right now. It’s about the way I can remember using the King Kong statue in Birmingham as a meeting point with friends, even though it left Birmingham four years before I was born. It’s a brilliant book. Go buy it.

 

 

 

 

Thanks again to Jay for these brilliant selections.  If you want to know his comic book selections then tweet him @JayStringer and ask him to tell you what he would have picked! If you do happen to follow him over on Twitter it also helps to know Jay is a Wolverhampton Wanderers fan and this can result in some cryptic sounding tweets landing on your timeline most weekends.

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

Category: Decades, Guests | Comments Off on Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Jay Stringer
August 20

Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Steven Kedie

My favourite part of the week is when I get to put together the new Decades post. It is my hope that someone will read the selections my guest has made and will discover a new book which they too will fall in love with.

If you have not encountered Decades before today then let me quickly bring you up to speed.  Each week I invite a guest to join me and I ask them which five books they want to see added to my Decades Library.  I started with zero books back in January and now we have had 150 recommendations – each of which can be seen here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/GrabThisBookDecades

Choosing any five books just seemed a bit too easy so I added an extra rule which all my guests need to give a little more thought to – you can only select one book per decade over five consecutive decades.  This week we have the 1970s to 2010’s and a great mix of titles too.

My guest this week is no stranger to the fun which accompanies reaching out to new guests and assembling a weekly blog post. However, Steven Kedie is very much a fan of music and the Eight Albums website sees his guests chatting through their eight favourite albums. It is one of my favourite weekly reads and I have discovered some great music through following recommendations I found there.

Time to hand over to Steven to introduce his selections:

 

Steven Kedie is a writer and co-founder of music website www.eightalbums.co.uk, who lives in Manchester with his wife and two children. He spends far too much time running, writing, talking about albums and trying to complete television. All of which get in the way of his football watching habit.

His debut novel, Suburb, due to be re-released this year, tells the story of Tom Fray, a young man at a crossroads in his life – not a kid anymore, not quite an adult yet – who returns home from university to find no-one has changed but him. When he starts an affair with a neighbour, his simple plan to leave home and travel becomes a lot more complicated.

Steven will release a second novel this autumn. Running and Jumping tells the story of British Olympian Adam Lowe and his rivalry with American athlete Chris Madison. The novel deals with the question: What if you had your greatest ever day and still didn’t win?
Details of his writing can be found at www.stevenkedie.com

 

DECADES

I’m a man of simple pleasures. I like books, music, films and sport. So, when I started thinking about my Decades library choices, I thought I should try and incorporate those things into my selections.
I’ve come up with the below.

All The Presidents Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — 1974

 

The story of Watergate, told by the men who wrote the stories of Watergate in the Washington Post. The book is more than the source material of the fantastic film that followed. Watergate defined America. And this book – inside account of what it was like to break the biggest political scandal in American history – captures that moment brilliantly.

 

 

 

 

Knots and Crosses, Ian Rankin— 1987

Ian Rankin’s Rebus series has been part of almost my entire reading life. I can remember the first time I picked up a copy of a Rebus novel, Strip Jack (fourth in the series), at a friend’s house. His mum was reading it. I read the first chapter and was hooked. I had to force myself not to read on because I’m someone who has to start a series at the beginning.

My girlfriend (now wife) was working at the Trafford Centre, so that night, I went early to pick her up so I could go to the bookshop and buy the first Rebus book. I bought the first three. I clearly remember being sat in the car reading Knots and Crosses and instantly knowing I was a fan. As I type these words, eighteen or so years later, the book I’m currently reading is A Song for the Dark Times, the latest in the series.

I run a music website called eightalbums.co.uk (along with a friend, Matt) where we ask people to write about eight albums that are important to them and why. Early on in the site’s life, I approached Ian Rankin, thinking, given his well-documented love of music (a thread that runs through the Rebus novels), he would enjoy the site as a reader. He actually offered to take part and submitted his own Eight Albums entry. The day his entry went out was absolutely fantastic for me personally, with one of my heroes taking part in something I’d created. It also opened up the site to a whole new audience of people. I’ll forever be grateful to Ian for that.

Anyway, back to the book. I’ve chosen Knots and Crosses because it’s the first in the series. And you should always start with the first one.

 

Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger — 1990

I love books by people who are embedded within a team. There are some fantastic examples over the years: John Feinstein’s A Season on the Brink and the wonderful The Miracle of St Anthony’s by Adrian Wojnarowski, about basketball coach Bob Hurley and his life-transforming high school team.

Sport can often be a vehicle to tell us about the people involved or the society in which they exist. Friday Night Lights is the best example of this concept. Bissinger, a journalist from Philadelphia, wanted to explore the idea of a high school sports team keeping a town together. When he decided to move to a town and experience life through a team, (to quote the opening page): “… all roads led to West Texas, to a town called Odessa.” The town’s high school American Football team, the Permian Panthers, played in front of 20,000 fans on a Friday night.

Through this lens, Bissinger tells the story of a town whose best years seem behind it, of race and class, of what happens when society makes heroes and celebrities of kids (most players are 17), and what the fall out of that is when they stop playing.

 

The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, John Harris — 2003

A book from the noughties that is very much the story of the nineties.

I turned 8 thirteen days into 1990 and 18 thirteen days after the decade ended. The ‘90s defines who I am as a person. When it comes to the music I love, no era has influenced me more. Britpop has soundtracked much of my life.

Harris’ book covers a period from ‘94 to ‘98 and looks at Britpop and the rise of Tony Blair and the Labour Party as they went on to win the 1997 General Election. Although the book talks about what a great period it was, it isn’t always a love-in of the era. It doesn’t always look back on it as fondly as my hazy memory does. But it’s a book that documents the merging of music and politics, the change in the country, the excitement and feelings of hope at that time. Definitely (Maybe) one that should be in the Decades library.

 

 

The Force, Don Winslow — 2017

This decade’s choice took a lot of consideration. Eight Albums and my own writing has allowed me into a world of creative people I didn’t ever think possible at the start of the 2010. I’ve got friends who have written fantastic books and I probably should’ve done them solid and picked one and talked about how great they are. But the truth is when I think about my last ten years of reading, there’s only one name I kept coming back to: Don Winslow.

I once joked when I grow up, I want to be Don Winslow. I wasn’t really joking. The man writes powerful, thought provoking, entertaining crime books. His Cartel trilogy is an important work that tells the story of the US’s failed War on Drugs. His Boone Daniels series is one of the most entertaining private detective series I’ve read. I could go on. But don’t worry, I won’t.

I’ve chosen 2017’s The Force because it’s a standalone novel. It tells the story of Denny Malone, a star New York detective, and his crew of men who police the streets of New York with their own rules and style. Denny’s story is one of corruption: his own and that of the city he works. It’s a superb piece of crime fiction. Don Winslow is a unique and interesting voice and if someone came to the Decades library looking for a new crime writer to read, The Force would be a fantastic introduction to Winslow and what he’s all about.

 

I think this week Steven has captured exactly what I love about Decades. There is a “how was this one not mentioned before now?” an “I’ve never heard of that one (but it sounds like something I would love)” and even an “ah yes – that’s a belter, I am glad it was picked.”  Terrific choices.

Eight Albums is one of my favourite reads each week. Just looking at the recent guests I spot Tony Kent, Morgan Cry and Simon Bewick – it is my hope I can also persuade all three to take on Decades one day too!

 

DECADES WILL RETURN

 

 

Category: Decades, From The Bookshelf, Guests | Comments Off on Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Steven Kedie