Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Fiona Erskine

Yesterday I reviewed Phosphate Rocks by Fiona Erskine. It is mid June 2021 and Phosphate Rocks is easily the best book I have read so far this year. If you haven’t heard me raving about how much I enjoyed it then I would urge you to read this post then read my review (I shall pop a link at the bottom of the page).

Today Fiona is back and taking on my Decades challenge. Each week I invite a guest to join me and I ask them to help me assemble a Library of the very best books. Each guest has just two rules to follow:

1- Choose ANY five books
2 – You may only choose one book per decade over five consecutive decades.

My aim is, with the assistance of my guests, to get the very best selection of books into a Library which began with zero titles on the shelves. The literary quest began six months ago and on a weekly basis I get feedback from guests (past, present and future) who curse me for imposing those two rules on their selections and the flexing of the rules has been varied and impressive. You are in for a treat today as the most impressive flexing of the rules is about to be revealed…it’s a good job I loved Phosphate Rocks or there may have been a need for a VAR ruling – you will see what I mean 😉

DECADES

I’m Fiona Erskine and I started writing after a skiing accident gave me some unexpected time off from my day job as a professional engineer.

My first novel, The Chemical Detective, introduces explosives expert Dr Jaq Silver, blowing things up to keep people safe as she tracks a criminal gang from the ski-slopes of the Slovenian Alps to the ruins of Chernobyl. My second novel. The Chemical Reaction, opens with Jaq in trouble on a yacht in the Black Sea. When she blows it up to rescue her crewmate, she has to find a way to pay the owner back. Taking a risky job in China, she finds herself fighting for her life the shadow of the infamous Banqiao Dam. My thrillers have been shortlisted for The Specsavers Debut Crime Novel Award and The Staunch Prize and I’ve signed a deal with Point Blank to produce at least 2 more in the Jaq Silver series.

My latest book Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects is a fictionalised account of my very first graduate job. A body is discovered in the ruins of a defunct fertiliser factory, encased in phosphate rock. The police work with retired shift foreman, John Gibson, to try and identify the deceased from the ten objects found with the mummified corpse.

I’m thrilled to have been invited to contribute to Decades. It’s a totally engaging idea, and one I have had some fun with. As well as some pain.

1950 – 1990

1958 Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene – Cuba

1966 The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott – India

1975 The Periodic Table by Primo Levi – Italy and a German concentration camp

1981 Moonraker by F. Tennyson Jesse – Haiti and the Carribean

1994 Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson – Canada to Japan to Russia

1950

I’ve always loved reading, especially on trains, and my first choice has to be Graham Greene. His books were the perfect length for a journey between Edinburgh (where I was born and went to school) and Cambridge (where I went to university) with a chapter left over for bedtime. Greene was the first author I trusted enough to buy a book based on the writer rather than on the subject matter. I loved the distinctive covers, white with big black letters plus an orange penguin. The books were deceptively slim, but always packed a punch. Aged 17 (and described by a great-aunt as an illiterate alcoholic), I wouldn’t normally have chosen stories about vacuum cleaner salesmen, defrocked priests or lepers but over the next four years I devoured every novel Graham Greene had written. And grew up.

For this (fiendish…shakes first and curses) challenge, Graham Greene also brings the huge advantage that I could have chosen almost any one of his novels written between 1929 and 1990.

Our Man in Havana (1958) by Graham Greene.

Our Man in Havana is the story of a salesman in Cuba who tries to make a bit of money on the side as a spy. There’s a gulf of understanding between those in headquarters and those in the field which James Wormold exploits to his advantage, fabricating information, sketching his own vacuum cleaner nozzles at giant scale as proof of a military installation in the mountains. Credulous M16 take it all at face value and send reinforcements. But lies have a habit of coming back to bite their creator. I must just add that the hapless spy genre is alive and kicking as demonstrated by my favourite book of 2021 so far – Starlings of Bucharest by Sarah Armstrong.

1960

The Jewel in the Crown (1966) by Paul Scott

I recently listened to an audio version of the Raq Quartet series, and it reminded me how much I adored these books first time round. One of my Edinburgh primary school teachers, Mrs Harris, had lived in India in Raj times and told us extraordinary stories, which flooded back as I read these books. I have chosen the first in the series, The Jewel in the Crown. Set in the 1940’s it tells the story of Hari Kumar, returning to northern India after an education at an English public school. He is rejected by both the English rulers and his fellow Indians. When Daphne, an awkward English girl, tries to help Hari, things do not end well. It’s wonderfully perceptive exploration of racism, of control of the many by the few, a theme that recurs in Abir Mukerjee’s recent (and wonderfully nuanced) Wyndham & Banerjee novels which I wholeheartedly recommend.

1970

The Periodic Table (1975) by Primo Levi

If I had to choose a single book that changed my life, then it would be The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. While I was still a student, I spent a summer in Sri Lanka with a group of volunteers. The stated mission was to build a road to connect two villages in the mountains near Kandy. It soon became clear that our real job was to provide entertainment for a group of young people who had been persuaded onto a work experience program to keep villagers away from the big bad cities. The socio-technical project was impossible: the terrain impenetrable, the tools (pickaxes and udeles – a sort of crude right angled shovel) blunt and heavy and the cities exciting. We did a lot of singing and dancing instead, teaching each other our languages with stories and jokes – although everyone found the big white people hilarious even without a punchline. We also shared books which led to my discovery of Primo Levi.

The Periodic Table is a series of interconnected stories, each based on a chemical element. Primo Levi was an Italian industrial chemist who was sent to a German concentration camp during the second world war. His memoir If This Is a Man is a ferociously powerful book about what it means to be human. Levi narrowly survived Auschwitz by working in IG Farben’s synthetic rubber chemistry lab and the stories in The Periodic Table cover his work as an industrial chemist, before during and after the war. In the story Vanadium, Levi identifies one of his German supervisors from Auchwitz after the war by the mistakes he makes in correspondence about some faulty chemicals. Levi writes beautifully about the practical realities of science in a way that is accessible to all. This book is the inspiration for all my writing.

1980

Virago modern classics were a complete revelation for me during my university days. I devoured the green spined books as fast as they arrived.

Moonraker (1981) by F. Tennyson Jesse

I particularly loved Moonraker, a swashbuckling pirate adventure story with a great twist (no spoilers here) and the sideswipe that illuminates the tragic fate of ex-slave and Haitian freedom fighter Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse was a fascinating character, a war-correspondent, criminologist, and playwright. Born in 1888, she suffered from rickets as a child and became briefly addicted to morphine after an accident led to the amputation of part of her hand.

I could have chosen The Lacquer Lady or A Pin to see the Peepshow by the same author, or any number of other wonderful Virago published books by other writers, but Moonraker is my stand-out thrilling favourite.

(I confess to cheating slightly here, as Moonraker was first launched in 1927, but it only came to wide attention when Virago republished it in 1981. If you disqualify this one, I’ll be forced to shuffle the others around and name Ian Fleming’s inferior Moonraker (1955) first, as a way to sneak this neglected story into the spotlight.)

1990

Last but not least, the ultimate thriller.

Kolmysky Heights (1994) by Lionel Davidson

I love the long slow build-up of Kolmysky Heights. Linguist Johnny Porter initially rejects the coded challenge and then takes most of the book to reach the Siberian wastes in order to penetrate the mysterious research centre. No sooner in, than he has to get out. Nobody has ever escaped before, but Johnny is an engineer – right up my street!

I could have chosen one of Davidson’s other novels, The Rose of Tibet and Smiths Gazelle are particularly good, but Kolmysky Heights is the stand-out tecno-thriller with the perfect hero.

Looking back at my five choices, I realise two things.

The first is that I have always been a traveller. When I can’t get on a train myself, I travel though books.

The second thing is that I have inadvertently chosen 4 out of 5 books by white men whereas my current reading is much more diverse. I did a check step to see what female authors I had missed. I could have included beloved authors of exquisite prose (Alice Munro, Arundhati Roy), children’s adventure writers (Jan Mark, Joan Aiken), regency romance (Georgette Heyer), science fiction supremo (Ursula Le Guin) or any number of accomplished writers of crime and police procedurals.

But the books that influenced me, that spurred my own writing on, were the science mysteries and adventure thrillers that I read as a young adult. And at that time, most of the books published were written by white men.

Publishing has changed and is much the better for it.

The Chemical Detective and The Chemical Reaction are published by Point Blank, paperback £8.99

Phosphate Rocks is published by Sandstone Press, paperback 8.99.

My thanks again to Fiona for these terrific selections. When I first saw Moonraker I did automatically assume the travelling adventures were heading to space but it wasn’t to be (this time). I promised a link to my Phosphate Rocks review: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5371

You can visit The Decades Library here: https://grabthisbook.net/?p=5113

Every book my guests have nominated are shown in The Library and you can see all the curators at the end of the list.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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June 17

Phosphate Rocks – Fiona Erskine

As the old chemical works in Leith are demolished a long deceased body encrusted in phosphate rock is discovered. Seated at a card table he has ten objects laid out in front of him. Whose body is it? How did he die and what is the significance of the objects?

I received a review copy from the publisher through Netgalley.

It doesn’t matter what you may think this book is about. If you read the brief, teasing blurb above that’s only going to scratch the surface of the story in Phosphate Rocks.

As I read the book I tweeted a few times that I had no idea how I was going to review it. That hasn’t changed, I am not sure how to succinctly articulate the utter pleasure I experienced reading Phosphate Rocks. Or the anguish, the horror, the fascination or the fun. This book had it all and, when it was done, I wasn’t. I wanted more. I wanted to keep reading about these remarkable overlooked heroes of their craft.

So what’s it about?

Well there’s a dead body in an old chemical plant in Leith (Edinburgh). The site is no longer active but before everything closed down it seems, somehow, a huge shroud of phosphate rock encased a work hut. Inside that hut was a dead body sat at a table. Laid out on the table in front of the corpse were ten objects which the police hope John Gibson, former shift manager at the site, can use to identify the deceased.

Sitting in a police station, years after his plant had closed down, John identifies each of the ten objects and tells Detective Inspector Rose Irvine the story behind each item. With each passing object the reader gets to know more about the men that worked the site, the work they undertook and how chemicals and materials from around the world would pass under the nose of these Edinburgh workers.

Also filling in the reader with background information is author, Fiona Erskine, who gives each object a quirky and fascinating science lesson. You learn about chemicals, reactions, inventions and discoveries. Reading this book taught me how chemicals move around the world, how they need carefully stored and cared for and how it’s the plant workers that know best how to keep a busy chemical site ticking over – not the managers, chemists or owners. It may not sound like slipping chemistry learning into a crime story could be fun or engaging but it is utterly absorbing (though Fiona will likely correct me on what absorption actually is).

The stories behind each of the objects are wonderful. Although this book is a work of fiction I am 100% convinced that many (if not all) of the stories are entirely anecdotal and based on actual events from the site. Why tie a long string around the neck of a whisky bottle? Who had the best dressed Barbie Doll in Scotland? Why should you not hit a pipe with a hammer and…is that an author cameo we see before us? If many events in the book are indeed based on actual events it may go a long way towards explaining why the book is so engaging. Nothing feels forced, overdone or over-exaggerated. The guys (and in the main it is guys) working on the site all feel utterly real and entirely plausible. I defy you not to warm to them.

The true hero of the piece is John Gibson. He is taken on a journey back through his working life and the stories he tells DI Irvine bring back memories of old colleagues – some more fondly remembered than others. John and DI Irvine are a charming pairing through the story too their conversations, some of which take place away from the police station when Irvine tracks him down to his favourite restaurant, are a cautious but intricate dance. Neither party is willing to overshare but both appear to crave more knowledge about the other.

Phosphate Rocks is a crime story. There is a dead body, there are clues to help the investigators determine his identity and there is a man helping police with their enquries at the police station. But Phosphate Rocks is so much more. It is a story of a life (John Gibson), of many lives, of a plant that no longer dominates its corner of Leith and of the men who for years kept that plant ticking over. Clever men, inventive men, hard men and men with secrets. But I felt Phosphate Rocks is also a love story. I read of a time now gone which is much missed, a love of science and method and process and of low paid staff performing dangerous and skilled work. An affection of the cameraderie, the respect for John Gibson and the responsibility he held for the staff on his shift. It’s funny then it’s tragic and I want you all to read this story too.

Phosphate Rocks, currently my book of the year. It will take something incredible to top this one.

Phosphate Rocks is published by Sandstone Press and is available from today in paperback and digital format. You can get your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08TR21QGZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

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October 22

Bad Debt – William McIntyre

Defence Lawyer Robbie Munro’s wife has been stalked by a witness in a trial she is prosecuting. When the stalker is killed and Robbie is charged with murder his friends are only too willing to come up with schemes to prove his innocence. In the end though, will it be his enemies who make the difference?

My thanks to Sandstone Press for my review copy, received through Netgalley, and for the opportunity to host the publication day leg of the Bad Debt Blog Tour.

It is publication day for the latest in the Robbie Munro series: Bad Debt. That means you can use the purchase links at the bottom of this review and get reading this fun thriller without too much delay. It’s definitely a book I am recommending – I really enjoyed this one.

Proceedings begin with an ending, Robbie is at a funeral. The deceased was also a defense lawyer who appears to have written the book on sneaky plays in court to use every available twist to get his clients off the hook. His former partner asks Robbie a favour; a political candidate in the Scottish Parliament is accused of using excessive force to attack a housebreaker who entered his home late one night. Could Robbie take his case and ensure the accused isn’t found guilty?

Robbie is also no stranger to sneaky tactics and effective use of legal loopholes, so he takes on the case and promptly finds himself caught up in a venture which puts his family and his freedom at risk. The first shock for Robbie comes when he finds the prosecuting Fiscal is his own wife – drafted in as cover at the last minute. Still confident he can win there are further surprises in store when the attack victim gets into court and appears to have total amnesia over the alleged attack. Something is very strange about this case.

An attack on a family member leaves Robbie rattled so he enlists the help of one of his own dubious contacts to find the attacker. Things don’t go quite to plan and Robbie’s attempts to speak with the attacker find Robbie placed under arrest and sent to prison pending a hearing.

With his reputation and freedom at stake Robbie will need to be at his sharpest to uncover the truth and clear his name. Luckily for him he has expert legal support in the form of his wife and he can call on the vast array of his dubious contacts to provide help when needed. With a Buckfast swilling pugilist and a wannabe porn producer in your corner how can you not succeed?

Bad Debt is a hugely enjoyable read. A clever thriller with some wholly unexpected twists. Robbie Munro is a wickedly engaging lead character – the humour and quips come thick and fast but don’t undermine the tension or Robbie’s predicament.

Bad Debt is published by Sandstone Press and is available in paperback and digital format from today. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B086Y8RS96/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

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August 19

Stitch Up – William McIntyre

Everything is coming up roses for Robbie Munro, newly married and living in the country with wife and child. That is until his wife takes up employment abroad just as old flame, Jill Green, asks him to investigate the unexplained death of her partner.

Suspecting foul play, Jill insists Robbie turns poacher to gamekeeper and does whatever it takes to find the killer – with no expense spared. Another killer on the loose is child-murderer Ricky Hertz, whose twenty-year-old conviction is under scrutiny.

Was the evidence at his trial fabricated? Suspicion falls on Robbie’s father who now faces a criminal prosecution. The only way to prove ex-Police Sergeant Alex Munro’s innocence is for Robbie to show there was no miscarriage of justice.

My thanks to Ceris at Sandstone Press for my review copy and the chance to join the blog tour

Any time spent reading the Robbie Munro (Best Defence) books by William McIntyre is time very well spent.

Robbie is a criminal lawyer who will usually find himself in opposition to the police as he defends the people they are trying to have convicted for crimes committed. This doesn’t make Robbie a bad guy but he is good at his job and we know he has past form of highlighting the police may have made an error when his clients are concerned.

Away from work Robbie is newly married and his family ties remain strong. His young daughter, Tina, is highly entertaining and she features quite frequently in Stitch Up as Robbie is technically on a short holiday and looking after his 6yo. “From the mouths of babes” is an old saying which Robbie would do well to remember as Tina shares her opinion and makes indiscreet observations with amusing frequency.

Stitch Up concentrates on an old crime which rocked Robbie’s hometown of Linlithgow some 17 years ago. A child killer has been released early from his custodial sentence when a doubt was cast upon the original conviction. The arresting policeman was Robbie’s father and he is now in the spotlight as questions are being asked about the legality of the arrest and evidence obtained. Robbie needs to stand by his father to ensure justice prevails and ensure his dad does not become a scapegoat.

Stitch Up is a cracking read, cleverly plotted, engaging characters, humorous and it is clear William McIntyre knows his subject matter well. The authenticity makes the book much easier to get into and enjoyable.

The Best Defence books are a fabulous series and are fast becoming one of my favourites. Stitch Up can easily be read as a jumping-on point – you will want to go back and read the others though!

Stitch Up is published by Sandstone Press and is available in paperback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stitch-Best-Defence-William-McIntyre-ebook/dp/B07D7K4Q92/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1534637409&sr=8-1&keywords=stitch+up

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April 27

Songs By Dead Girls – Lesley Kelly

When Scotland’s leading virologist goes missing, Mona and Paterson from the Health Enforcement Team are dispatched to London to find him. In a hot and unwelcoming city, Mona has to deal with a boss who isn’t speaking to her, placate the Professor’s over-bearing assistant, and outwit the people who will stop at nothing to make sure the academic stays lost.

Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Bernard is searching for a missing prostitute, while Maitland is trying to keep the Chair of the Parliamentary Virus Committee from finding out quite how untidy the HET office is.

My thanks to Ruth Killick for my review copy and the chance to join the blog tour.

Songs By Dead Girls takes the reader back to Lesley Kelly’s virus riddled depiction of Edinburgh first encountered in the fabulous The Health of Strangers. I was a huge fan of THoS when I read it last year (my review is here) so I was delighted to hear Lesley was re-visiting the dystopian world she had created.

Life in Edinburgh is not too dissimilar to our reality, but a terrible virus has had devastating impact upon the population and regular health screenings are required to ensure everyone remains virus-free. The HET guys are tasked with ensuring people attend their screenings and chasing down potential defaulters. Songs By Dead Girls they face a significant challenge as the primary expert on the virus has vanished just ahead of his scheduled check-up. He is due to make a presentation to the Scottish Parliament so his absence will soon be noticed – can the HET track down their missing expert without the media finding out what they are up to?

The constant threat of the virus hangs over all characters but it is fascinating to see people adapting quickly and viewing the danger as a frustration – totally believable. The story balances the HET duties and responsibilities with their family/personal lives too. These “away from work” scenes make the characters come to life for me, they are more than the day job and they have loved ones, problems and loneliness to contend with too – that engagement and buy in will keep me returning for more pages, another chapter.

Songs By Dead Girls was a brilliant read. It was fun, suitably puzzling, had several engaging plot threads which kept my attention and I love the dysfunctional HET family – they range from competent to bonkers and are so entertaining. Following their growth and development over the two books has been a treat and now that I know there is scope for more HET stories I really hope that this will happen (please).

If you enjoy a twisty thriller with engaging characters then Songs By Dead Girls is an absolute must read. I love this twisted world that Lesley Kelly has created and she delivers the fun along while also keeping an undercurrent of danger for her wonderful cast.

Songs By Dead Girls is published by Sandstone Press and is available in digital and paperback format. You can get your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songs-Girls-Health-Strangers-Thriller-ebook/dp/B076WDH824/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524854543&sr=8-1&keywords=lesley+kelly

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June 17

The Health of Strangers – Lesley Kelly

Nobody likes the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team, least of all the people who work for it. An uneasy mix of seconded Police and health service staff, Mona, Bernard and their colleagues stem the spread of the Virus, a mutant strain of influenza, by tracking down people who have missed their monthly health check. Now two young female students are missing, raising question after question for the HET. Why were they drinking in a biker’s bar? Who are the mysterious Children of Camus cult? And why is the German government interfering in the investigation? Mona and Bernard need to fight their way through lies and intrigue, and find the missing girls – before anyone else does.

My thanks to Keara at Sandstone for my review copy

Meet the North Edinburgh HET.

The HET?

Well that would be the Health Enforcement Team, an agency set up in the aftermath of a viral outbreak which has caused the loss of millions of lives around the world. More on that in a second…

The Health Enforcement Team are our focus in The Health of Strangers and they are an endearing dysfunctional lot. Mona was a cop who was offered the opportunity to move to HET to make a name for herself but was she perhaps shunted off to keep her out the road? Her colleagues Bernard and Maitland also have secrets in their background or their home life so collectively they may not come across as a well-oiled unit. The conflicts and insecurities in the team does give Lesley Kelly plenty of opportunity to get some great dialogue going between her characters – love a bit of bickering between colleagues to lighten the mood!

So the virus – a flu strain which mutated. The first wave contaminated many of the population but lots of people recovered (albeit after much discomfort). But the virus mutated and the next wave claimed many lives – those that had contracted flu in the first viral wave developed an immunity but it also meant they saw friends and loved ones die when the virus returned in its mutated form.

Society changed, some people turned to religion (new Chapters within the churches were formed), pregnancy increased the risk of dying from the virus, different countries adapted better to controlling and containing the spread of the disease. But everyone is now required to attend regular health screenings to ensure they are not unknowingly carrying the virus – miss a screening and you are reported to the HET who are expected to find you and take appropriate action to minimize any potential contamination risks.

I really enjoyed The Health of Strangers. The dystopian setting is nicely balanced not too bleak but Edinburgh is clearly a changed city. There has been an horrific event but life still continues – but it continues differently for the survivors. People are adaptable and the human resilience shines through but they will be suffering and their grief will channel rage and distrust – characterization will make or break a story like this and Lesley Kelly has absolutely nailed it.

I realise that I haven’t even mentioned the missing girls – the ones that have missed their Health Check, the girls that the HET are tasked with finding. The missing girls will the team busy (and frustrated) and this is the crime story at the core of the book, the investigation is well constructed and there are all the distractions and unreliable witnesses to challenge the team.

So The Health of Strangers is a crime thriller in a dystopian and ravaged Edinburgh with a great cast and the pages which virtually turned themselves. I bloody loved it.

The Health of Strangers is published by Sandstone Press and is available in paperback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Health-Strangers-Plague-Lesley-Kelly/191098566X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497565274&sr=8-1&keywords=lesley+kelly

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April 22

A Fine House in Trinity – Lesley Kelly

‘I enjoyed my first day at primary school. Of course, I didn’t know then that this was the first day of a suffocating friendship with a psychopath, a friendship I’d still be trapped in thirty years later.’

Joseph Staines left town with a stolen tallybook, but two suspicious deaths and a surprise inheritance have lured him back home to Edinburgh. No-one is pleased to see him. The debtors want him gone. The Police have some questions for him. And a mysterious stranger has been asking about him in the pub.

To survive, Staines has to sober up, solve the murders, and stay one step ahead of the man who wants him dead.

My thanks to Keara at Sandstone Press for my review copy and the chance to join the blog tour.

Joseph Staines is one of the most realistic lead characters I have encountered for ages. He is flawed, cowardly in the face of danger and generally not as well liked as he may like to believe. He is also strangely endearing, frequently amusing and has a really well developed back story which makes A Fine House in Trinity a really fun read.

‘Stainsie’ had left Edinburgh was a pocketful of money and the ‘tallybook’ of debtors names who owed money to one of Edinburgh’s more notorious debt collectors, Isa Stoddart. But now he has returned after just a short time away and finds himself bequeathed something rather unexpected. Unfortunately for Stainsie there are not many people pleased to see him return and those that are looking for him are people he would rather avoid.

A Fine House is a story which pans out over the course of a week (with frequent flashbacks to give us the wonderful backstory which allows us to see how Staines finds himself in his current predicament). The narrative is really well paced, I liked Staines, then I didn’t like him and then liked him again – flawed but a great ‘loveable rogue.’ There is loads of great dialogue to enjoy – Lesley Kelly does a fine job of allowing Edinburgh’s finest to shine through.

One of the strengths of A Fine House in Trinity is the supporting cast. Staines has a few allies to help him along the way and, through the flashbacks, we can get a glimpse of past acquaintances and how they shaped his life.

A Fine House in Trinity is a cracking debut from Lesley Kelly, it is definitely a book which merits your attention.

A Fine House in Trinity is published by Sandstone Press and was released on 21st April. It is available in paperback and digital format. You can order a copy of the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fine-House-Trinity-Lesley-Kelly/dp/1910124958/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461282636&sr=1-1&keywords=a+fine+house+in+trinity

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March 16

Ordeal – Jorn Lier Horst

Frank Mandt died after a fall down his basement steps, the same basement that holds a locked safe bolted to the floor. His granddaughter, Sofie Lund, inherits the house but wants nothing to do with his money. She believes the old man let her mother die in jail and is bitterly resentful.

Line Wisting’s journalist instinct leads her into friendship with Sofie, and is with her when the safe is opened. What they discover unlocks another case and leads Chief Inspector William Wisting on a trail of murder and narcotics to an ordeal that will eventually separate the innocent from the damned.

Thanks to Keara at Sandstone Press for my review copy

My introduction to the books of Jorn Lier Horst and his protagonist, Chief Inspector William Wisting, was made so much easier by the GENIUS inclusion of a 2 page summary of the character and the key players in his life. Can we start a campaign to have this approach adopted in all books where we have recurring characters? So handy for new readers and likely to be something of a Godsend for forgetful readers (and I include myself in this category).

On reading Jorn Lier Horst’s author biography I learned that he was a former policeman who rose to a head of Investigations role – this explains why Ordeal is one of the best police procedurals I have ever read. Horst has spun an absorbing story around a very methodical and thorough police investigation. William Wisting is one of the most believable characters I have encountered and Horst pulls us through the story with what appears to be effortless ease. Page after page was turned long into the night as I found I just wanted to keep reading.

Wistling has been investigating the disappearance of Jens Hummel but progress has been slow and after 6 months there have been no sightings of the missing man and no tangible clues as to where he may have gone. Pressure is being applied by the police hierarchy who are unhappy with the lack of progress. Yet at the start of Ordeal a random comment overheard in a bar may just provide Wisting with his first real lead.

Meanwhile Wisting’s daughter (Line Wisting) is into the last few weeks of her pregnancy and has moved back into her hometown, leaving her promising journalistic career behind, and is preparing for the arrival of her baby. She has moved into a new home, the former resident having passed away, and is redecorating and renovating – with a little help from her father. Line encounters an old school friend who has also moved home – a single mum who has also moved into a home where the former occupant passed away. However, Line’s friend (Sophie) has moved into her grandfather’s house, her inheritance following the old man’s death.

Sophie knows her grandfather died after falling down the stairs into the cellar – she is not comfortable spending any time in this part of the house. However, in the cellar is a large safe which has been securely bolted to the floor. The safe forms part of Sophie’s inheritance but nobody can find the key. As the safe was too large to remove it has remained in the house (untouched) for Sophie to deal with…should she choose to do so. With some encouragement from Line, Sophie decides to have a locksmith open the safe – the contents come as something of a shock to the two women and will soon have Wisting becoming involved as there is ‘overlap’ with his missing person investigation.

I am reluctant to share too much more detail about Ordeal as it really is a book that I would encourage you to read for yourself. Beautifully told, engaging and a damn fine crime story which does not need to resort to extreme over-the-top action sequences to keep the reader’s attention.

Before I had even finished Ordeal I had already nipped online to find out if there were any other books available in the series – there were (and purchases took place). Anticipation is already running high for my next journey into the world of Chief Inspector Wisting.

Ordeal was translated into English by Anne Bruce – she has done a phenomenal job, this story just flows with beautiful imagery and is one of the most readable novels I have read for some time. Horst’s ability to paint a world into my imagination made reading Ordeal an absolute joy.

Ordeal is published on 17 March by Standstone Press and can be ordered here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ordeal-William-Wisting-Book/dp/1910124745/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458084389&sr=8-1&keywords=ordeal+jorn+lier+horst

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