In the Woods by Tana French reviewed by Karen Bush

I'll come clean here and confess that I didn't set out to buy this - I was browsing in a charity shop and the cover caught my eye. I read a bit and thought I might enjoy it, although a bit outside of my usual genres ... I went home and started reading a bit here and a bit there ...  it's a bit of a slow-burner and took a while to start drawing me in, but once it had, there was no putting it down: I spent a whole afternoon and then the rest of the evening with my nose glued to the pages.
It's a crime novel, a murder mystery, but the real mystery is the background story about events which took place twenty years before, when three children went missing in some woodland. Only one child returned, shoes filled with blood and in such a state of shock that he could remember absolutely nothing of his life before ... now an adult, Rob Ryan is a detective with the Irish Murder squad, and when a child's murder takes place in the same woodland, he and his partner Cassie, are given the case. Only Cassie is aware of his past and his previous links with the area though, and gradually little by little, as they work on the current case, flashes from the past come back to haunt Rob: could the two crimes be related?
The book teases and tantalises all the way through, and all the messy and inconvenient realities of life are very much a part of it: I'm in two minds about the ending however - whilst I'm satisfied with the one concerning the latter-day murder, I'm frustrated and irked by the conclusion of the story thread dealing with the vanished children of two decades earlier: yet if it was cleanly wrapped up, I suspect that I might have been equally irritated. Sometimes you just have to let the readers decide for themselves, even though they might whine and complain about not having everything neatly tidied up. Personally, I reckon it was an escaped crocodile which lives in the river ...
It's what I call a Broadchurch-y sort of novel. If you liked that, you'll probably love this.  

Someone Else’s Skin by Sarah Hilary

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

After a slow start I became engrossed with this book which turned out to be a page turner.

The main theme is domestic abuse, but it’s abuse with a twist. Detective Inspector Marnie Rome, investigates a potential murder where the victim barely survives. He was knifed in the chest by his wife in the women’s shelter where she has sought refuge. DI Rome is also investigating the abduction of another woman from the same shelter, an Asian girl abused by her mother and brothers. The investigations do not run smoothly, and Marnie’s own troubled past affects her decision making, putting Detective Sergeant Noah Jake at serious risk from a deranged killer.

The women’s shelter had an authentic feel, as did the assortment of abused women, and I liked the characterisation of most of the characters. Among these characters, DI Marnie Rome, is obsessed with her foster brother who murdered her parents five years previously, and the need to know why he killed them. Hope, a downtrodden frail woman who uses a knife on her husband, Simone who befriends Hope, and Ayana, who is partially blind following a bleach attack by her brothers because she was not complying with her Asian culture.

But nothing is what it appears to be on the surface, and the twists are fast and furious. If you like suspense and thrills, this is a fascinating read.

Chris Longmuir

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

You can buy the book at Amazon.co.uk  or  Amazon.com

The Abomination By Jonathan Holt

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

I received The Abomination in my Crimefest goodybag, and casting my eyes over my book shelves this week for something new to read I thought I would give this novel a try despite never having heard of the author before. And I was glad I did, because this is one of the best crime fiction books I have read this year.

The book is partly murder, mystery, and partly conspiracy thriller, and it races along to make it the perfect page turner.

It is set in Venice, and starts with the body of a woman, dressed as a priest, who is washed up from the lagoon onto the steps of Santa Maria Della Salute. Apparently women priests, who are not accepted by the Catholic church, are known as ‘The Abomination’, hence the title of the book. The main character, Captain Kat Tapo of the Carabinieri, is teamed up with Detective-Colonel Aldo Piola to investigate the crime. Kat who has a modern attitude in respect of romantic relationships, soon embarks on an affair with the attractive Colonnello Piola.

The investigation throws up references to cults and black magic, but Kat is not convinced and believes the woman was a genuine priest and that the church is involved. Further complications occur when Second Lieutenant Holly Boland arrives at Camp Ederle, a US army base. She becomes involved in a freedom of information request from a journalist who is later murdered.

The third main character, Daniele Barbo is a reclusive computer nerd who designed and runs the Carnivia website, a virtual world where people can visit with complete anonymity. His website is being targeted, and various charges have been logged against him in respect of the usage of the website, and he is currently on bail from the court awaiting his sentence.

The three main characters, Kat, Holly and Daniele, combine forces when their investigative paths cross. The murders are only part of a wider conspiracy involving the military, the Italian Mafia, a dodgy security company, and the historic conflict in the former Yugoslavia, focusing on Croatia.

There are many twists and turns in this book, plus an exciting chase section in Croatia, and I simply could not stop reading until I reached the end. The Abomination is the first book in the Carnivia Trilogy, and I’ll definitely be reading the other two.

NB: There was only one thing I would criticise. I recommended the book to a friend who had difficulty finding it, so I checked the book out on Amazon. The reason for the difficulty was a change of title. It is now listed as The Boatman. Considering the book was published in 2013, I found this difficult to understand, and felt it could be confusing for readers.

Chris Longmuir

The Abomination/The Boatman at Amazon.co.uk

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

The Reek of Red Herrings by Catriona McPherson

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

This is the first Dandy Gilver book I’ve read, although it is not the first of the series. However, it read well as a standalone crime novel, and I did not feel I’d missed anything by not reading the earlier books first.

Set in 1930s Scotland, Dandy Gilver, and her partner, described as her trusty cohort, Alec Osborne, are employed to investigate when body parts keep turning up in barrels of salted herring. They set off to infiltrate the fishing community in a stormy, dismal fishing village on what is described as the ‘wave-lashed, wind-battered Banffshire coast’ in north-east Scotland.

In order to investigate without arousing the villagers’ suspicion, they describe themselves a philologists who wish to study the fishing community’s language. Their investigations also lead them to an unusual museum of stuffed animals, run by two men who are as odd as their museum.

The book is well written and the characters and customs of the fisherfolk are authentic. The language used flows well and I particularly liked some of the descriptions – sentences such as ‘The sea roared and surged, dark green as a bottle of blood, seething and shattering endlessly against the rocks.’

The weather dominates throughout the book. It is always wild and stormy, the rain never lets up, and it culminates in a storm that tears part of the coastline down, and isolates the village.

I enjoyed reading this book, however if I had a criticism it would be the use of ‘Scotch’ to describe places and people, when it should have been Scottish, but many readers would not pick up on this. It did surprise me though, because the author was born and educated in Scotland, so I would have thought she would have known that Scotch is only used for whisky and eggs, not people or places. On the other hand this basic error could have been caused at the editing stage by a publisher’s editor. I would certainly like to think that.

I did enjoy the book, it was a good read.

Chris Longmuir

The Reek of Red Herrings at Amazon.co.uk

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

Murderers Fête by Roger Keevil

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

One of the books I read and commented on for the Cosy Crime section of my own nonfiction book Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution, was Murderer’s Fête by Roger Keevil. This was a classic detective mystery with touches of humour. I liked the play on names. There was an Inspector Constable, and a Sergeant Copper. The lady of the house, who was also a Justice of the Peace, was Lady Lawdown. The solicitor was Robin Allday. There was also an author whose pen name was Jake A Rawlings, and she wrote books about a schoolgirl magician, Carrie Otter. The titles of her books were Carrie Otter and the Photographers Stain, Carie Otter and the Half Boiled Pants, and Carrie Otter and the Deadly Pillows. This play on names added a light touch and made the book resemble a parody, although the plot followed the lines of the classic or traditional murder mystery.

The setting was one that is in frequent use in Midsomer Murders type mysteries. There was the village of Dammett Worthy, the parish church, and Dammett Hall, the home of Lady Lawdown, where the action takes place. Everyone in this book had secrets, and while it was comparatively easy to guess some of the secrets, the plot was sufficiently convoluted to keep me guessing.

The book was well written, edited, and formatted. It started life as a dinner theatre murder mystery which didn’t surprise me. I found it an easy, non-taxing read with good, natural dialogue, which would be ideal for reading on a journey or relaxing on a beach.

(excerpt from Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution)

Chris Longmuir

You can buy Murderer’s Fête from:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

and you can buy Crime Fiction and the Indie Contribution from:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Fishing for Clues by Ann Evans

Reviewed by Amy Longmuir, age 11

Fishing for Clues was about Candy and Jake solving the death of Benjamin Fisher, and the story was fab. I was wrong about who the murderer was, but it was really good. I liked the story’s plot and it kept me guessing.

Amy Longmuir

This review was written by my granddaughter, Amy, after she read this book from the Little Tyke Murder Mysteries. She really enjoyed it and I'm sure she could have said much more about Candy and Jake, the two child detectives who set out to solve the mystery of the disappearance of Benjamin Fisher. She did tell me she was sure she had guessed who the murderer was, but she was wrong and the identity of the killer was a surprise. I am sure that if my granddaughter liked this book, then so would any other similar aged child.

Chris Longmuir

Book link for Amazon.co.uk

The Assassins’ Village by Faith Mortimer

Reviewed by Chris Longmuir

Mystery and Murder

I bought this book because of the crime element, and it was described as a classic detective story, so I was expecting something similar to an Agatha Christie book. But it was far more than that. It was a character study and a literary feast.

The descriptive passages were so real I could imagine I was walking down a dusty road in the heat of a Cyprus summer, and I shared the lives of the characters. To give you some idea of how effective the descriptive passages were, I had to leave the house to purchase a carry out of fish and chips after reading a chapter where everyone was eating. I had planned to have a slimming salad but the narrative about food, which I could smell and almost taste, set my digestive juices flowing and made me hungry for something cooked.

There are a lot of characters in this book and when I started reading I found this a bit confusing, although the reason for my confusion may have been because I was reading it last thing at night before I went to sleep. However, it wasn’t long before I got so engrossed in all the characters’ lives and I couldn’t wait to find out more about them. I found the cultural differences between the expats and the Cypriot natives, fascinating. It was like living in the modern age and in a historical time warp all at the same time.

The build up to the murder was gradual, and it became obvious who the victim would be, but not so obvious who was going to do it. And this was where the book differed from a classical detective story, where the murder takes place, and the sleuth does the detecting. This murder was committed nearer to the middle of the book rather than the beginning, although there was a prologue to alert you that something murderous was going to happen.

The mystery in this book was built up through the character studies and the sense that a murder was imminent.

My enjoyment in this book was two-fold. I enjoyed the murder-mystery element, but I also enjoyed the character driven storyline.

You can buy the book at:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com