Murcheson County by Rodney Page, reviewed by Jan Needle

I only like historical novels when the history has the absolute tang of authenticity,

and also startles me.When I read Murcheson County I had little detailed knowledge of the American Civil War, and quite possibly wasn't too bothered about finding out much more. This novel hit me in the stomach. Rodney Page is an expert, and in certain emotional aspects of the conflict, I now feel that I am too.

Murcheson County tells the stories of four families who arrive at the centre of a Georgia hauling itself out of the primeval. They would like to make their fortunes, obviously – or eke a living if that is all they can – in lands being newly opened up to settlement. Ezekial Salter wins his holding in the 1807 Georgia Land Lottery, while the long established Underwoods see soaring opportunities for planting cotton and consolidating their wealth.

There are slaves in this newly-opened land as well, of course, and Murcheson County lies not far south of the great economic and social divide that is leading America into war. As Abraham Lincoln and his government press ever harder to end or modify what they see as their country’s shame, the people of the South prepare to fight to the death to maintain the way of life they see as wholly reasonable. 

For Salter, the Underwoods, a slave called Gant, and a beautiful and brilliant Irish immigrant woman, the struggle becomes personal, real, and appallingly cruel. The descent is not a hurried one, at first, but it has a crushing inevitability.

Civil wars tear communities and families apart, and engender the most bestial  forms of language and behaviour - none of which does Page gloss over. His writing of the minute by minute tragedy of the battlefield is heartrending. Overall, however, it is a novel of humanity and hope. I loved it.


It's on Amazon in Britain and the USA.

Rodney Page's website

                                             Find Rodney Page on Twitter

                                              Rodney Page on Facebook

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule - (True Crime)

 Reviewed by Susan Price

I have a friend who I first bonded with over our shared interest in

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

psychopaths.          My interest is, thank god, an academic one, a writer's curiosity about the extremes of human behaviour. My friend, poor woman, married a psychopath and has first hand experience of the dedicated selfishness that a human being can be capable of, the blind inability to appreciate that anyone except them has any right to an opinion, a life or free will.
          But when it comes to psycho-spotting, author and journalist Ann Rule can perhaps claim the prize.
          As a journalist, she often handled crime reports, spent a lot of time in police stations talking to detectives and made several friends on the force.

Ann Rule, from her Amazon page

          In her 40s, she volunteered to man phones on a suicide help-line, and shared her regular night-shift with a psychology student named Ted. She thought him a lovely young man and they became good friends, despite the age-gap of ten years. He was so caring towards the callers and at the end of her shift, he always walked her to her car, to make sure she was safe - whereas her detective friends, when she left their offices late at night, would say, "We'll watch from the window and if anyone mugs you, we'll phone 911."

     This little anecdote perhaps highlights something about psychopaths (and human nature.) Rule's detective friends were showing genuine concern and covering it with a joke. They probably knew there was little risk to her and, as ordinary human beings with many other concerns, they said goodbye and got on with their lives and jobs.
          'Ted', on the other hand, was acting a role, performing the character of 'lovely young man and caring friend.' It was convincing so long as it was never tested. One difference between someone telling the truth and a liar is that the truth-teller has 'an expectation of belief' because they know that they're telling the truth and therefore don't think they need bother to be meticulously convincing. They give a rough account, forget details - or assume that their genuine affection is apparent and needs no display.
          Liars know themselves to be lying and therefore go several extra miles in order to convince. Their stories are neatly in order, with lots of irrelevant detail to 'hide the lie among truths.' When it comes to relationships, their false affection is constantly voiced,  rehearsed and displayed. And takes many in.  Alas, research has shown that, though most of us think we can tell when someone is lying, we're actually very bad at it.

          Rule was no longer working with Ted, but was still in touch

Seattle, wikimedia

with him, when young women started disappearing from the Greater Seattle area. Rule was soon aware, from her friends in the Police, that they feared they were dealing with a serial killer. When suspicion fell on Ann Rule's friend, Ted, she thought it was obviously a routine enquiry or a mistake...          But it wasn't. Ann's friend was Ted Bundy, and she found herself in the middle of the crime story that would define her career. For ever after she would be, the woman who worked beside Ted Bundy.

          Bundy abducted, terrified, raped and murdered many women, possibly more than a hundred. Like most serial killers, he probably started much earlier than the crimes he was charged with. Rule's research turned up the fact that, when Bundy was 15, a young girl, a child, was abducted from her home and murdered. The killer was never found. Bundy lived a few doors away, and knew the child. He never admitted to that killing - but he never admitted to anything unless there was an advantage for him.
          He was eventually arrested in Seattle, but insisted on representing himself, which gave him the right to make trips to the library to look at law books. While swearing complete innocence and mistaken arrest, he used a library trip to escape.

          He ran to Florida, but couldn't give up his hobby. Or was killing his addiction, his crutch? Within a week of arriving in Florida, he attacked several women in one night, killing three and leaving other badly injured.

Florida Capitol, wikimedia

          Bundy found Florida less careless and forgiving than the North-West. They sentenced him to death and placed him in a far more secure prison. Another escape attempt was thwarted and after that he was kept in chains. Yes, he could have his trips to the law library - in chains.
          Now you would think that, to him, life was cheap. He had, after all, killed an unknown number of women for fun. Their lives and everything and everyone their lives had encompassed, had been as disposable, to him, as a condom. So what was a little matter of a death sentence, when life is so unimportant?
          But only other people's lives were unimportant to Bundy. He tried every possible delaying tactic, trick and appeal to preserve his own life. He also attempted to use the names of the women he'd murdered, and the sites where he'd dumped their bodies, as bargaining tools. Grant him another appeal, let him live a little longer, and he might give up a few more identities and a few more remains for burial.

          Bundy was an exemplary serial killer in that he demonstrates just how loathsome a nasty piece of work a human being can be - and yet he had a little fan club of female fools who were besotted with him. One even married him and had his child.
          If the psychology of serial killers is strange, the psychology of their groupies defeats me.

         If you share my interest in the minds of psychopaths, then Rule's book is of great interest. It sprawls a little, because she has updated it regularly over more than twenty years.
          Besides knowing the loathsome Bundy personally, and having access to him in jail, she has also interviewed many of the people he bereaved, which throws up some intriguing stories.
          The husband of one murdered woman was away on business on the day she was abducted. He told Rule that, in his distant hotel room, late on that day, he clearly heard his wife's voice say, "Help."
          Bundy's final killing spree took place in a university dormitory. He broke in, and lay in wait in darkened corridors. Rule interviewed a couple of survivors who survived because, as they told Rule, they became seized by what seemed, at the time, an inexplicable fear. One girl was in a bathroom and only had to step across the dark corridor to her bedroom, but found herself completely unable, for fear, to open the door. She had no idea why. She had no idea, consciously at least,  that Bundy was murdering her fellow students a little way down the corridor.
          Which is interesting in the light of another book I've reviewed on this site - Gavin de Becker's Gift of Fear.
 
         The Stranger Beside Me is often a grim read, but it's an informative one.

Susan Price has won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize.
          Her best known books are The Sterkarm Handshake (soon to be reissued) and The Ghost Drum.

Don't Buy It! by David Craig - reviewed by Susan Price

Everybody who ever spends any of their own money needs to read

this book. It's available on Kindle and as a paperback.

David Craig, according to his biography, had a career as a salesman, and a trainer of salesmen. However, after he wrote two books - Rip-off and Plundering The Public Sector - he found himself blacklisted.

So, instead, he turned to writing books, and has won the Hammond Whiteley Journalism Award.

The first two chapters of Don't Buy It! - on estate agents and cars salesmen - are alone worth the price. Craig details every plot and tactic they use to confuse, bully and pressure you into parting with far more of your cash than you needed to. Often, what you get in exchange is unnecessary or useless.

Even better, he gives you some anti-salesmen tactics that you can use to confuse, bully and pressure them.

Other chapters cover the pits of misery that are tele-sales, ventures into the shark-pool of financial dealers, takes a look at the most common on-line scams - and at time-share sellers and general marketing ploys.

Clearly and amusingly written, full of invaluable information and warnings, this is highly recommended.

The Law's Strangest Cases - reviewed by Susan Price

"This is a fine, peaceful town. Nobody's been killed here for four

The Law's Strangest Cases

hours." - Judge Roy Bean.

In this book we meet all kinds of judges - wise, inept, vicious...

We meet underground criminals - unrepentant, marauding moles, to be exact. And law-breaking pigs and chickens.

Regicidal witches, house-breakers - and Tower-breakers who nick the Crown Jewels. Charles II, we're told, was so charmed by the thief, that he pardoned him and restored his estates. I don't believe it. The Merry Monarch wasn't that merry. What I want to know is, what did the thief have on the king?

There's the grisly crime that gave rise to the expression, 'Sweet Fanny Adams.' There was nothing sweet about it.

Awkward, back-chatting jurors, escapees from the gallows, purveyors of extremely dodgy sausages... Their tales are all here, recounted in a light and amusing manner by Peter Seddon, in Law's Strangest Cases: Extraordinary But True Tales from over Five Centuries of Legal History.

A great book for dipping in and out of, often funny, often surprising, and always fascinating.

Susan Price is a hardened reader, completely addicted to ink, whether printers' or e-.

Her website is here.

Myra – Beyond Saddleworth by Jean Rafferty

Review by Bill Kirton

The words ‘Myra’ and ‘Saddleworth’ in the title will resonate with UK readers of all but the youngest generations but perhaps be neutral for those not familiar with what were known as ‘The Moors Murders’. The victims were children who were tortured and killed on Saddleworth Moor by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between 1963 and 1965 and the case’s notoriety still persists. Hindley died in 2002 but here the author creates a fiction which suggests the death is a deliberate misdirection and, in fact, she’s released into the community with a new identity.

Given the hatred that’s always been directed at Brady and Hindley, it’s perhaps not surprising that news of this novel created some negative reactions. People assumed it was part of an attempt to rehabilitate Hindley and portray her as a ‘normal’ human being and, even if they didn’t, they objected that it might cause further distress for the victims’ families. Such reactions show a form of blind censorship, i.e. objections aimed at a book that was never written. Here, in the foreword, the author makes it clear that the book is in no way sympathetic to Myra Hindley or Ian Brady and writes unequivocally that it’s ‘an honest attempt to find out what kind of person commits such atrocities’.

First, then, let’s make it clear that it’s a compelling read. Hindley, Brady and the cast of characters who surround them are vivid creations, thanks to the distinctive things they say and do. The narrative is in the present tense so everything is immediate, precarious, unpredictable. There’s no feeling that releasing her has resolved anything and, given her character, she could send the central story in any number of directions.

And yet that’s misleading, because she’s only part of the narrative. There are several stories here – at least four ‘love’ stories, two of them involving Hindley – as well as examples of betrayals, adultery, deceit, illicit sex, lies, evasions and religious hypocrisy – all variations on everyday cruelties. Hindley and Brady’s involvement in evil was indeed extreme, unthinkable, and yet they don’t have a monopoly of it here. Evil is omnipresent in nature and in people. It pervades the narrative and is made more sinister by the author’s skilful use of the vernacular when letting us hear the characters’ words and thoughts. That throws up many examples of casual, unthinking cruelty. One character ‘thinks Hindley should have hanged. Or better still, be ‘chopped up into little pieces while alive and boiling oil poured over her’. Later, in a phone call to Beth, Pat asks ‘How could you do that to a child?’ Scum. Perverted, whereupon Beth touches the photo of her son ‘for luck’. And that’s the same son who joins the military and, egged on by his lover, abuses, humiliates and debases Iraqi prisoners. So there’s no shortage of evil impulses, and morality seems to be negotiable.

There’s a chapter called ‘the same species?’. It refers to foxes and dogs but its applications to people are self-evident. Indeed, the fox is a recurrent leitmotif and, with his vixen, evokes the pairing of Brady and Hindley. Regularly through the narrative, the fox appears, protecting and feeding his vixen, symbolising power, control. Or else we hear its ‘hoarse, unsettling cry’ which sounds ‘as if it's calling from another plane of existence’. And then there’s the organised bestiality of the foxhunt, which appals Hindley. Ironically, she ‘doesn’t approve of cruelty to animals but this is a British tradition’. It’s just one of the frequent examples of ‘the careless cruelty of those who consider themselves to be the norm’ and it provokes the chilling reaction from Hindley: ‘There’s no respect for life here, no care, no soul.’ The final irony of the hunt is that it’s Hindley who’s blooded.

The fox isn’t the only example of the thematic use of animals. One narrative thread is conveyed almost exclusively via emails or texting between two lovers, Hal and Pat, whose chosen names are wolf and lynx. Pat writes that, in bed, Hal is ‘ferocious, insatiable, a BEAST!!!!!’ Themes of animal cruelty and beauty are linked as the exchanges show that love and death are close companions. Pat says of Hindley, ‘I hope she rots quickly’ and her words are followed by the reply ‘I love your fierceness’ which leads swiftly to Pat’s desire to ‘make love  … till the sweat drips from our fur and we’re exhausted. I’ll lie along the length of you and lick the salt from your pelt and we’ll fall asleep together, satiated by love.’ It’s a world of the senses: of touch (of course) but also of sights, smells and perfumes and those ear-splitting shrieks in the darkness. It taps into the traditional romantic association of voluptuousness and death, sensuality and extinction.

Hindley, then, may be a monster but she’s living amongst people who themselves are far from innocent. Crimes are perpetrated to defend the status quo. Indeed, the text says ‘If only humans could be made innocent, but they know too much, want too much.’ And one of the characters, Jude, says of Brady and Hindley, ‘we are all like them. Which of us gets to go through life without hurting other people?’ We’re defined by our actions. Brady could rationalise his horrific acts (if rationalise is the correct word) as a statement of identity, but he has no control over how they are perceived. We all form opinions of one another which are instinctive and which we assume to be ‘true’, ‘valid’. And that highlights a seemingly simple, relatively innocent question that comes near the end of the book. To avoid spoilers, I’ll summarise it by saying that there were two people who came to be very close to Hindley in the course of the narrative and yet neither of them suspects her true identity. So the question is how did neither of them know? The text asks: ‘Shouldn’t they have nosed out the stench of her, the ugly, grave-crawling putridness inside her?’ Well, precisely. They didn’t. So how can there be such a distance between the inner monster and the perceived person? What value can we put on moral judgements? And why does the loathing engendered by the monstrous acts overwhelm with such ease any compassion we might have felt?

I’m aware that this is very long and yet there are many other aspects of this novel I haven’t touched on. It’s a compulsive read, carefully and beautifully written, which, while seeking to discover the real Hindley and her motives, conjures up a broader context of a society in which civilisation is not much more than a tacitly agreed veneer.

Review of 'All That Lives: The Poetry of Sex, Death and Pathology' by Valerie Laws

Valerie Laws is a wonderful and multi-talented writer.

Valerie Laws

The first book I read by her was Lydia Bennet's Blog: The Real Story of Pride and Prejudice. I expected to be amused - and I was. It made me laugh out loud a lot. But it was much more than a light amusement - I finished the book full of admiration not only for Ms Laws' wit, but for the skill of her inventive plotting and her deep understanding, not only of the book she parodied, but the social politics of its time.

Lydia Bennet's Blog by Valerie Laws

But don't let me put you off with this serious stuff - it's very, very funny, and the narrator, Lydia, is immensely likeable.

Next, I read the crime stories, The Rotting Spot and The Operator. (Also available in paperback.) They are set in the North-East of Britain, but here thrills mix with the sharp observation and wit. The setting is vivid, the characters varied and lively, the dialogue cracking. The tightly controlled heroine, Erica - a diet-watching runner, a bit of a control-freak - is off-set to great effect by her side-kick, an over-weight, uneducated, coarse but very canny Geordie lass with an eye to the main chance.

Now I come to Valerie Laws poetry, in her book 'All That Lives: The Poetry of Sex, Death and Pathology.' And I am so impressed. I am filled with admiration all over again.

'All That Lives', of course, must die. And the book opens with a dedication:

With love to my mother Sheila, who died of Alzheimer's Disease, April 2005, and to my father Lindsay, who died suddenly of an Aortic Aneurysm, March 2006.

Witnessing their deaths drove me to discover the science of dying down to cellular level, to celebrate the terrible beauty of the process and tell the story of the body's final journey.

'All That Lives' by Valerie Laws

Throughout, the examination of death is mixed with continuing life - as death always is. When reflecting on how her mother's Alzheimer's made her convinced that another man was living with her and her husband, Laws says, 'She has gained an extra husband, While the one I had is gone...'

The next poem, The Incredible Shrinking Brain is one of the most moving. It is repeated seven times. Each repetition has words removed, imitating the holes in Laws's mother's brain and memory, until the seventh repetition is reduced to one word - 'gone.' I didn't know whether to cry at its emotional punch, or applaud its cleverness.

This is followed by The Groucho Marx Guide To Dating (I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member,) which sets a completely different mood, with its jaunty, bouncing rhythms and insistent rhymes. In it Laws is astonished and disbelieving that a younger man 'fit as a lop' apparently wants to date her.

...He's flaky,

A psycho, a stalker, he's after my daughter,

Or after my money. No, on your bike honey...

All That Lives must die - but in the midst of death we are with life, and life goes on.

This up-beat poem is soon followed by the heart-breaking Senior Last Moments, which details the progression of Alzheimer's...

Your brainstem's on auto, the dinosaur relic

That keeps your heart beating, your lungs breathing air

And where now are you, do you hear, are you in there,

Do you know they are crying and holding your hands? 

But right after this comes the erotic Flirting At The Funeral. That fit as a lop younger man is still around, life still goes on...

I said to my mother's heart, stop

Please stop.

The first line of the next poem, Telling My Mother's Heart To Stop revolves around the fact that 'death is a process, not an event.' This is a poem recording and observing some of the most painful emotions we will ever feel. It took me back to the bedsides of my dying parents: and there was some comfort in the proof this poem offers that the pain is universal.

And then, He Runs Ten Miles To My House - another erotic delight. The narrator is being well-behaved at a hot summer garden party when her lover texts her to ask if she's in, because he's going to run to her house.  'I tap out the code/ that sets him in motion/ And sit tight a spell, knowing... he is running, running/ To me, and it's me that's sweating...'

I could go on and on quoting poems from this book. I haven't even touched on the poems about Laws' father's death, or the moving poems about the pathology specimens, the malformed foetuses, suicides - grim subjects, perhaps, but wonderful poetry.

The other amazing thing about this book is its price. It's only 99p as an e-book, or £6.26 as a paperback, which must be close to the cost of production. These are give-away prices - for all that thought, observation, and work.

Highly recommended

All That Lives

Her Lines, My Lines by Joan Lennon and Kyla Tomlinson

     My friend, Joan Lennon, has many talents - as you can discover

Author Joan Lennon

here, on her website.
     Having the sense to live in Scotland is one talent. Being quick and witty is another.
     I've admired her poems for a long time. Like Joan's photos, they often focus on a vivid detail, which might go overlooked by others. They make us look again, and see.

     Her Lines, My Lines has poems by Joan, and illustrations by Kyla Tomlinson. It came out of a six-month Writer-in-Residence post, based in Blairgowrie, funded by Creative Scotland. They do better by their writers in Scotland.
     There are so many poems in this book I would like to bring to your attention, but there are only 14 in the book, and I'd end up putting the whole lot into this post - which would not be right. But I can give you a taster...

She said, "They're not your boys - they're grown men."

...When I am rich soil

And quieted by time,

I will shift and stir,

restless still in rhythm

With your sleeplessness.

      One long sequence of poems is The Week It Snowed. Joan captures the changing light and colour of snow and the north:

in the evening,

periwinkle (prussian in the shadows)

fades through glaucous

into slate.

     She sees Lichen on a Gravestone.

...in ruckled puffs

like tangible sky breath -

slow fireworks...

     I am butchering these poems because I don't want to be guilty of giving away someone else's work for free - but they deserve to be read in full. Again and again a few words, a phrase, captures and fills my head with an image or sensation.

The book can be bought here - http://www.bookmarkblair.com/shop.php

Joan's other books for children and adults are worth checking out too. You can find them here.

Reviewed by Susan Price.

website: www.susanpriceauthor.com

    

House of the Wicked by D M Mitchell

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

I read and assessed many crime fiction novels for my non-fiction book Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution, and House of the Wicked, by D M Mitchell, was one of the books I chose for my chapter on historical crime.

I chose this one after looking at D M Mitchell’s Amazon author page, where his work is compared to a selection of writers including Dean Koontz, who is a favourite of mine. However, when I started reading I had mixed feelings. It was written in a gothic style, and the writing was more literary than mainstream. As a result I was unable to get into the characters. There was also an excessive use of the pronoun ‘he’ which led to some confusion between the characters. Further confusion in the storytelling was caused by the frequent use of flashbacks with no transition between the past and present (in story terms). However, the flashbacks were needed, particularly as the book developed, but I would have appreciated knowing when it was a flashback.

The first part of the book was quite slow, concentrating on the background to the story. It was only after I passed the halfway point I started to become gripped, and it turned into a real page turner. Readers who like their historical fiction written in a historical style will probably find this book to their taste. However, if the reader finds the story slow to start, I would say persevere because the latter half of the book is an exciting read with an ending that surprised even me.

Despite the negatives for me in this book, there were also a lot of positives. Porthgarrow, the setting of the story, is a superstition ridden community. The people are suspicious of incomers and believe Baccan, a mythical creature, influences their lives. The story is atmospheric, and there is a real gothic feel to it as it fluctuates between crime and horror. I particularly liked the mystery surrounding the death of Jowan Connoch’s mother, and the aftermath that had for her son. The author uses language and imagery well which contributes to the overall feeling of doom and gloom, and there was a pervading sense of mystery throughout the whole book, although that did not always lead to suspense in the writing.

On the whole, I am glad I stuck with this book mainly because of the increasing pace in the latter half, the mystery, and the unexpected ending. And interestingly, this last book was the one that stayed with me the longest after I had moved to other categories, which I found surprising, considering my reaction to it at the time.

There is aways an unavoidable subjective element when assessing or reviewing a book, and the negatives for me rose from the fact I don’t particularly like my historical novels written with historical language, and in a historical way, nor do I like literary fiction. I like my crime fiction written in a pacy modern way, even though the story is set in the past. However, many readers like the historic writing style of historical fiction, therefore this book would have many positives for them. All I can say is, that despite my own initial reaction to the book, I would actually recommend it as a good read.

You can buy the book at:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Chris Longmuir

You can find the assessment of many more books in Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution, as well as information on publishing, the history of crime fiction, indie authors, and a description of many genres of crime and mystery fiction.

http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/

Amazon Author Page

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

Romantic Suspense Novels by Chris Longmuir

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

I thought I would do something different in terms of a review for Eclectic Electric, instead of reviewing one book I would review the genre termed Romantic Suspense and provide some examples of the genre.

Romantic suspense is a crime category I had not been aware of until I heard an author talking about it on a panel at Crimefest. This convention which is held annually at Bristol, focuses on crime books and writers, so this made me think that perhaps this type of crime fiction might be worthy of further exploration. My initial investigation into the genre confirmed that romantic suspense is not widely recognized in the UK as crime fiction, although it is a popular genre in the US. However, I did mention the genre to a friend who writes contemporary romance novels, and she not only knew what romantic suspense is, but she gave me the impression that this is a well known category of romance. So, that begs the question, as to whether romantic suspense is a subgenre of romance or of crime. And whether crime writers back away from romance in their thrillers, although I have read many crime books with a thread of romantic interest in them.

I was unable to find definitions of romantic suspense in any of the reference books on British crime fiction that I consulted, although I did find basic definitions elsewhere. Ultimately it boils down to a combination of romance and suspense using elements of crime, mystery, danger, adventure, and even espionage. It must have female and male main characters, and a villain, and is often told from the female point of view. They are fast paced with a build up of suspense, and often depict graphic sexual scenes.

The first book I read in this genre was The Gingerbread Man, by Maggie Shayne, and it erased all my preconceptions of the mixture of romance with crime, in a crime novel. This book mixed child abduction and murder with an ongoing romantic story involving a cop, and a young woman whose sister had been abducted when both of them were children. Both strands of the plot worked well, weaving together in a satisfactory way. The action was breathtaking and the suspense built steadily to reach an exciting climax. Meanwhile the romance aspect of the story developed in time-honoured fashion from initial resentment and dislike to a growing attachment which both main characters resisted until their passions overcame them, and ended up with a satisfactory conclusion. I must say I am not in the habit of reading romantic fiction, so I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. However, the blend of romance and suspense pulled me in and I enjoyed it.

My next choice was Silent Deceit, by Kallie Lane. This was a novella set in Canada, so it was a shorter read, and it was completely different to the previous book. The crime element in this one involved a female undercover cop looking for her brother who is missing. The action is set in a bikers’ bar and the boss of the bar is a real villain. I had mixed feelings about this one, and although it was well written I could not get into the characters. The villain was underdeveloped and only appeared on the scene fleetingly which I thought was a lost opportunity. Further development could have made him more menacing and intensified the suspense. The romance element seemed to be more of a sex element, and if you like your romance hot and steamy this may be the book for you. I thought it was disjointed, with the sex scenes added in between the action. It was not a book with the feel good factor, although you might feel differently. It just wasn’t for me. I am not even sure it met the criteria of a romantic suspense book.

The next book I read was Imposter, by Karen Fenech, and I was hooked from the first chapter. This author certainly knows how to write suspense, and the beginning of the novel was extremely fast paced. After such an exciting start the rest of the book flowed and was well structured. It was expertly written and the characterization was excellent. If the initial fast pace had been maintained it would have made an uncomfortable read, but there were quieter passages, sexy passages, and more suspense passages, all expertly intermingled to make a well structured and satisfying novel.

I have noticed with romantic suspense books that they are sexier than other crime novels which is in no doubt due to the romance element, and this book was no exception. It was a woman in jeopardy novel, with the two main characters distrustful of each other, and fighting the sexual attraction they both felt. The romance and the suspense were so entwined it would be difficult to separate the plot strands, and I think that truly makes this a prime example of romantic suspense fiction.

When I started reading my selection of books in this genre, I do not think I had fully grasped how graphic the sexual scenes would be. I am not a prude, and I have written sex scenes in my time, but nothing quite as graphic as I found in these novels. In comparison to mainstream crime novels and the different subgenres, sex is not a taboo subject, but again, I have not come across anything quite as explicit as the sex scenes in romantic suspense. I can only assume this is the romance influence on the books, and readers of romance fiction are looking for something more graphic than crime writers provide.

The information used for this review was taken from my non-fiction book Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution which examines many sub-genres of crime fiction as well as giving information on ebooks and crime fiction in general.

Chris Longmuir

http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/

Amazon Author Page

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

Death in Spigg’s Wood, by Linda Gruchy

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

I read a lot of crime fiction and I came to Death in Spigg’s Wood anticipating a good read, particularly as it had lots of good reviews. So what did I think of it?

It starts with a bang in Spigg’s Wood with two men who have been seriously injured, one beaten up and the other shot. The perpetrator of this violence is still on the scene and is arrested by the police, and it is several pages before it becomes obvious that the person who meted out this punishment is female, and is the main character, Meg Rusher.

Meg is an enigma. She is a housewife, but also a kick boxer, and during the course of the novel she fluctuates between being a strong person and a weaker, tearful woman. Despite the men’s injuries, she claims she is innocent and the victim of an attack. This does not prevent her arrest and subsequent prosecution. This, of course, highlights situations where victims are often prosecuted for inflicting damage on guilty parties.

I won’t tell you any more of the plot you’ll have to read it to find out what happens to Meg. Needless to say Linda Gruchy keeps the reader guessing, and I found my opinion of Meg swinging wildly between believing in her innocence, and wondering whether there was something much darker going on, and perhaps Meg was not as innocent as she appeared.

However, Spigg’s Wood is not a character led novel, in fact I found the characters somewhat lacking in depth. In particular, most of the police characters seem to blend together and I found it difficult to differentiate between them. The exception was Brooks, who is so nasty it is difficult not to remember him. However, it was a good plot driven novel with quite a lot of pace, particularly in the beginning and at the end, although there was a section in the middle which was much slower.

There were some police procedural inaccuracies in this book, however I doubt if the general reader would spot them, and Gruchy does say at the beginning of the book that the law and court aspects had been simplified and her aim was to entertain and not inform. On the other hand, I did find it difficult to accept that a professional policeman would refer to a suspect as ‘poor Meg’, he might think it but I doubt whether he would actually say it. I also found it hard to believe that the two men would be prosecuted in a court of law under the pseudonyms the police gave them because they would not divulge their names. However, these are minor issues and I’m sure will not get in the way of reader enjoyment of the book.

On balance, I found this a well plotted story, with an explosive beginning and end, and provided the reader is not looking for a character led novel, they should enjoy this book.

Chris Longmuir

You can buy Death in Spiggs Wood at

amazon.co.uk

amazon.com

The Storm Bottle by Nick Green

Reviewed by Susan Price.

I’ve heard consistently good things about Nick Green’s novels –

'The Storm Bottle' by Nick Green

and I know him to be a witty blogger – but this is the first book of his I’ve read.

It’s a beautiful, transporting fantasy, set in Bermuda. The heat, the seas, the colours and scents, the sea-breezes of the island are a constant, and wonderfully evoked. I’ve never been to Bermuda, but after reading this book, I felt I had a sense of it. There’s one phrase, describing the aftermath of a tropical storm – the ‘shaken tin-foil glitter’ of the bright sun shining on the wet island. I could see it.

The book concerns characters who are out of place. The engaging heroine, Bibi, has felt out of place for her entire life. She’s a tom-boy, and bound up with the grief she feels for her dead mother is the knowledge that she was never the girlie-girl her mother wanted.

Her relationship with her rich father is amiable rather than close. So long as they can talk about sailing and boats, they get along fine. But Bibi rather scorns her father’s big, expensive boat. She prefers the little sailing boat belonging to her Bermudan friend, Hal, because sailing it brings her closer to the winds and currents. She loves Bermuda and its seas passionately.

Her father has married again, and this marriage has provided Bibi with a step-brother, Michael. He has been ripped from his scholarship-place at choir-school, from his friends, from Britain – and is truly out of place in hot, bright Bermuda. He is sulky and resentful.

Bibi does her best to befriend him, trying to interest him in sailing and her pirate games, but he is unresponsive until, out sailing on Hal’s boat, they see a wild dolphin. Michael is so excited by the thought of swimming with it that Bibi almost likes him. Both of them dive in and, to her surprise Bibi, who has swum all her life, finds that Michael is the stronger swimmer.

This leads him into trouble, however. Despite Hal’s warnings, he ventures too far from the boat and is caught in the current.

Bibi thinks he is lost when, ‘Foam unzipped the waves and Michael’s pale body washed up into the sunshine…[Bibi] saw a crescent fin, a glass-boulder forehead. The dolphin…had returned.’ A 'glass-boulder forehead' - Nick Green has a knack for hitting on the perfect descriptive phrase.

But the dolphin has done more than return Michael to the surface. To save his life, it has exchanged souls with him.

If you can make this imaginative leap, whether young adult or older adult, you will love this book. If you can’t, you probably won’t. If you think all fantasy is daft, then you’ll think this daft too.

Fantasy is like any other genre. It can be written simplistically, as nothing but wish-fulfillment or gimmickry – and that sort of writing tends to be daft, whether it’s written in the Romance genre, or Crime, Science-Fiction or Thriller.

Or, as with any other genre, Fantasy can be written thoughtfully. It can be used as a way of alienating us from the everyday world we take for granted, so that we have to re-examine and re-evaluate it. Storm Bottle does this.

After the accident, the book follows Bibi on shore, and Michael in his new life.

On shore, in hospital, Michael is in a coma, and when he wakes, his confusion is assumed to be caused by brain-damage. His desperate mother smothers him with protective love. His new step-father withdraws, unable to cope – just as he withdrew from Bibi after her mother’s death, becoming an amiable but distant workaholic.

Only Bibi tries to understand the boy on his own terms. It is she who realises that the boy is not a brain-damaged Michael, but someone - something - else altogether.

Meanwhile, out at sea, Michael is also coming to terms with a whole new body and way of  life. He finds himself swimming with a dolphin pod – two males, Pedro and Sancho, and an injured female, Jill, who is considered, by the males, to be their ‘property.’

The story may have fantastical elements, but the account of dolphin life is based on reality. These dolphins are not the cute, winsome mascots of New Age Harmony seen on a thousand posters, mouse-mats, t-shirts, pendents etc. They are predators, hunting and killing prey, and being hunted as prey by others.

They are intelligent, and they communicate – their clicks and whistles are translated into words for our benefit. But their intelligence is mostly used for catching fish, fighting with other dolphins, escaping from sharks and killer-whales – and capturing females, because the more females a pod has, the more status it has.

The chapters about Michael’s dolphin life are fascinating and often beautiful. The dolphins call themselves ‘rainvoices’, because the sounds they make are like rain falling on the ocean’s surface. They teach Michael how to use his dolphin-body’s ‘voice-eye’, or sonar.

Jill, the injured dolphin, is the sister of the dolphin Michael has become, and looks to him for food she can no longer catch for herself. Her injury has been caused by a fishing line which has wrapped itself round her tail, drawing tighter and tighter until it has sliced off a fin. Michael, with his human understanding, is able to see how to unravel it, and saves her from further injury – and from the endurance of constant pain.

Whereas his step-sister on land, Bibi, was tough and, in many ways, braver and more knowledgable than him, he now finds himself with an adoptive sister who, though more knowledgeable about life underwater, is also more helpless. In taking over as her protector and helper, he becomes close to her. In short, the sulky boy has to dolphin-up – but doesn’t always succeed. After all, as the dolphin Jill observes, ‘You are just a child, aren’t you?’

Michael seeks a way back to his own body and life on land. The other dolphins don’t know how to help, but lead him on a journey to consult ‘The Tidings.’ Michael understands this as some sort of archive, and is puzzled as to how such a thing can exist – until he discovers it to be the long, long memories of Humpback Whales, known to the dolphins as ‘Deep Singers.’

‘The humpack whale was too far ahead to see, even with his voice eye. Yet its song built majestic architectures around him, pillars of tone and melodious arches, bearing the weight of words.’

The whales remember a similar exchange of souls in the distant past, and give Michael hope that he can return to his own body.

Meanwhile, on land, Bibi and Rodrigez, the dolphin-in-human-form, have devised a way to send a message to Michael, using ‘a message in a bottle.’ Bibi sacrifices her beloved collection of antique bottles, throwing them into the sea with a one-word clue. They hope that the sea-borne Michael will find one of the bottles, decipher the clue, and so meet them at a certain cove where, perhaps, they can swop bodies again.

But their plans are disrupted when Michael’s mother leaves Bibi’s father. She intends to take her son home to Britain.

This forces the two young people to run away, and camp out on one of Bermuda’s off-shore islands, while the police search for them.

The finale brings together dolphins, human children and a great storm. I don’t think it will be giving away too much to say that Michael succeeds in returning to his human body – but Nick Green bravely resists the neat ending. He goes beyond that, and provides a more original ending, but one that is right for the book, and the characters.

A beautiful, invigorating fantasy, full of sea and sun, and deep, cool waters.

But also a fantasy which, by distorting reality, looks at how, if you are at odds with your surroundings, and feel you don’t fit, you can grow into your situation – or, with courage, break free of it and follow your own way.

The Storm Bottle