Facets of Death by Michael Stanley

 

The Detective Kubu novels by Michael Stanley are an established series and Facets of Death is a prequel, jumping back in time to when Kubu first joined the force as a fresh-faced, fast-tracked detective, straight out of university. As with fast-tracked graduate recruits in police forces everywhere (for example, I’ve heard this is the case in UK police forces, too), Kubu attracts the envy and suspicion of those not on the speedy-promotion route. So he has much to prove and soon gets the chance to do so. When a local diamond mine is robbed of a huge haul of gems, his opportunity to slay his doubters presents itself.

For a good few years so-called Nordic-noir was the big thing in crime fiction. Crime novels set to a backdrop of chilly Scandinavia are still going strong, but for readers such as myself who never really got onboard with the whole Scandi-thing, and who prefer other locales, the steady rise in crime fiction set elsewhere - Australia and South Africa to name just two - has been welcome. The Kubo novels are set in Botswana and I love how Michael Stanley uses the land, wildlife, culture and traditions to bring these stories alive.

Facets of Death is no exception and we have witch doctors, curses, black magic and voodoo aplenty. This is a rich vein which Stanley has tapped in previous Kubu novels (or should that be later novels, seeing as this is a prequel) and it always adds an intriguing dimension to the plot. It’s no exception here, as it adds a unique blend to what is in effect a heist story. 

This is a great addition to the Detective Kubu canon and while it can be read as a standalone, by being a Kubu origin story, it also casts the rest of the series in a new light. I’ve always been a fan of prequels and origin stories and have never understood why some people don’t like them, and I really enjoyed fleshing out the character of Detective Kubu in greater depth.

Vanished by James Delargy

 

Set in the outback of Australia, a young family who have run from their troubles, have now vanished. Lorcan Kane, an analyst employed by a data company which is owned by two brothers with a shady past, has stolen some valuable data from them; Naiyana, Lorcan’s wife, is an activist who has almost bankrupted a major foodstuffs conglomerate, and upset some powerful people in the process; their six-year old son, Dylan, is an innocent along for the ride through no fault of his own. They ran to the abandoned mining town of Kalyee, where they tried to renovate an old wreck of a house. But they soon discovered an illegal mining operation, and with the past chasing them, something happened and they've disappeared. 

Detective Emmaline Taylor is put in charge of finding out what happened to them and it isn’t long before she discovers that it’s something bad. Whether it’s the miners, someone from Lorcan’s past, or someone from Naiyana’s, it’s apparent that the family’s hopes of reinventing themselves in the middle of nowhere has gone seriously awry.

Vanished is told from various character’s perspectives in the past (the period of the Kane family’s stay in Kalyee) and from Detective Taylor’s perspective in the present day (after the family has been reported missing). The narrative pieces together all that has happened, reveals how the family’s dreams soured, and what has happened to them. 

I don’t want to divulge spoilers, so will say no more, but this is a deftly plotted novel which keeps you guessing until the last page. It’s well worth a read.

The Source by Sarah Sultoon

 

Marie is a TV journalist working on the production side (editorial, behind the camera, rather than a presenter or reporter) and employed by a major television news channel. She and her team are investigating a sex trafficking ring and have undercover footage of the traffickers selling a young woman. But just as they are about to broadcast the story, the Metropolitan police announce a breakthrough in Operation Andromeda, an investigation into historical sexual abuse in the army. Andromeda has been an enormous scandal, because although the police secured some convictions, many of the suspects escaped prosecution. Now they claim they have further leads which merit reopening the inquiry, and this overshadows and thus scuppers the sex trafficking investigation that Marie and her team have spent months working on.

Meanwhile, in alternate chapters set in the past at the time the abuse was occurring, we meet Carly, the daughter of an alcoholic and neglectful army widow. As far as Carly is concerned, the only good thing in her life is her baby sister Kayleigh. Carly’s older brother, Jason, is a soldier and he provides the family with food and essentials. But soon he helps groom Carly and her friend Rach for the sexual abuse occurring in the barracks.

The Source is told through two timelines - that of Carly experiencing the abuse and that of Marie, who first is investigating the sex trafficking ring, but when that’s superseded by Operation Andromeda, works on the news channel's investigation of that. From the outset it’s clear Marie knows more about the historical sexual abuse within the military than she lets on, and it isn’t long before both stories, that of Marie and that of Carly, converge.

The Source is a very well-written novel. When I first picked it up I assumed it was going to be a more straightforward thriller set in a newsroom, and as a former TV journalist myself, I had mixed feelings about that. Sometimes such stories seem to me to be a little navel-gazing. But the author, Sarah Sultoon, resisted this, and while the story is ostensibly about a journalist, in fact it’s about much more than that. Instead, the topical issues of historical sexual abuse, how society treats victims of such abuse, and the institutional coverups which often occur in such situations, take centre stage. While the issues touched on are sensitive, this isn’t a gratuitous book, but rather a gripping story that will keep the reader turning the page.

The Old Enemy by Henry Porter

 

Ex-MI6 officer Paul Samson, the protagonist of the author’s previous two novels (Firefly & White Hot Silence) has been tasked with secretly guarding a gifted young woman, Zoe Freemantle. She’s an analyst working for an opaque international NGO and he is guarding her without her knowledge, volunteering in her workplace so as to be in close proximity to her and following her about the streets. One day, while tailing her, he’s attacked and it seems that he was the target, rather than the woman he is guarding. 

 

Meanwhile, his old MI6 mentor, Richard Harland, is assassinated while painting in Estonia. This despite the fact he has terminal cancer. And the billionaire philanthropist, Denis Hisami, is poisoned with a nerve agent while testifying before Congress. It quickly becomes apparent that all three events - the attack on Samson himself, the murder of Harland, and the poisoning of Hisami - are all linked.  Samson decides to find out what is going on and soon becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine plot where nothing is as it seems. 

  

As mentioned, The Old Enemy is the third in the author’s Paul Samson series. While it can be read as a standalone, and it’s not imperative to have read either Firefly or White Hot Silence (the relevant information is drip-fed throughout the narrative of The Old Enemy so that those who haven’t read the previous titles can still follow the plot) it’s much more enjoyable if you have. Luckily, the previous two titles are very well-written, so this is no bad thing. 

  

These are very topical thrillers: Firefly focused on the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, White Hot Silence focused on far-right groups across Europe and from where they get their funding, while The Old Enemy continues this focus and concentrates on Russian interference in the West’s political systems and Russian killings in the US and Europe. 

  

Like the previous titles, The Old Enemy is skilfully plotted. It’s a fantastic thriller and confirms Henry Porter as a spy novelist at the top of his game. It’s little wonder that the novel comes with a glowing endorsement from Charles Cummings (another leading spy-thriller author) and I can’t recommend this title enough. I have a strong feeling that there will be another Paul Sampson novel at some point, and I for one will certainly read it.

How To Betray Your Country by James Wolff

 

August Drummond is a disgraced British intelligence officer. He’s been drummed out of his job under suspicion of leaking information for moral purposes – information he felt the public or foreign law enforcement should know, and which his employers were keeping secret for their own bureaucratic reasons. He found his conscience after meeting an idealistic activist who he fell in love with, and who challenged his preconceptions. After her death in a traffic accident, and his being forced out of the service, Drummond has sunk into alcoholic despair. He’s taken a job in Turkey, and is on the flight there, when he sees a young man acting suspiciously. Guessing he’s an ISIS recruit on his way to fight in Syria, Drummond follows him when they land. The man is arrested by the Turkish police, but not before he dumps something in a bin. Drummond retrieves it and discovers a note detailing a rendezvous in a cemetery. He guesses the meeting to be with an ISIS facilitator/recruiter and on a whim decides to take the arrested man’s place. Needless to say, things aren’t all they seem, and soon August is out of his depth and in serious trouble.

 

How to Betray Your Country is the author’s second novel, following on from a brilliant debut, Beside The Syrian Sea. It’s a standalone really, in that the story doesn’t follow on from the tale the debut told, and while the main character and plot of the author’s debut is touched upon, this is a self-contained narrative that can be read on its own. That said, the author plans a third novel, and the trilogy is thematically related, and the novels certainly complement each other. They’re both extremely good books too, and I would recommend them both.

 

Like with the author’s debut, How to Betray Your Country centres around what happens when an intelligence officer acts against the system. The main character (as with the protagonist of his debut) is not a traitor turned by a foreign power or terrorist group but has his own reasons for his rebelliousness. Both novels do not portray the intelligence services in a good light, which is perhaps (or perhaps not) a surprise, seeing as the author is writing under a pseudonym and the publishers tell us he worked for the UK government for over ten years. Reading between the lines, it appears Wolff might well have worked for the intelligence services himself, and thus perhaps his negative portrayal might be more nearer the mark than the intelligence services themselves would care to admit.

 

Like Mick Herron’s Slough House series, James Wolff’s novels buck the trend of espionage novels, which tend to portray the intelligence services as all-powerful and their personnel as superhuman James Bonds. Instead, we have all too human people, many incompetent and/or venal, employed by clunking bureaucracies which are as keen to cover up their own errors as they are dangerous plots.  

 

How to Betray Your Country is a brilliantly written novel and well worth a read. I would recommend the author’s debut as well and look forward to reading the third title in the trilogy whenever it might come.

Repentance by Eloísa Díaz

It’s 2001 in Buenos Aires and Inspector Joaquin Alzada is called to the city morgue after the body of a young woman is found in a dumpster. Getting there is easier said than done because the city is at a standstill due to protesters filling the streets. Argentina is in crisis brought on by near economic collapse and political misrule and it seems the entire country is in revolt. Not Alzada though, as apart from having a job to do (he’s unable to retire because the state can’t afford to pay police pensions) he likes to steer clear of politics. This is something he’s always done (apart from a brief period in his youth), but his reticence is also due to a brush with the forces of the state back in 1981. Then Argentina was in the grip of a military dictatorship, and his activist brother and his brother's wife were abducted. 

 

Repentance is told in two timeframes: 2001, with Inspector Alzada lumbered with a new partner and investigating the death of the woman in the dumpster, and 1981, when his brother and his wife are disappeared, and he desperately tries to get them back. Both timeframes complement the other and both give an insight into Argentina at the time. Indeed, Repentance is much more about Argentine society than it is about either case – the murdered woman, or the abduction of his brother and his wife – and these events serve more to guide us through their respective periods. It’s an effective method, because while I knew something of Argentine history, Repentance brought these periods to life for me and I feel like the book opens a window into the history of the times.

 

Repentance is a well-written story that gives a real insight into the twin periods in which the author sets her narrative. Alzada and the other characters are compelling and likeable enough to drive the story forward, and while the plot, especially that set in the 2001 timeline, is somewhat sparse, it’s more than compensated for by the novel’s compelling sense of history and place.

 

The Khan by Saima Mir

 

Jia Khan is a successful criminal law barrister. She’s also the estranged daughter of a powerful Bradford-based crime lord, Akbar Khan. The Khan’s are Muslim and of the Pukhtan ethnic group, which hails from Afghanistan and north-west Pakistan. They’re revered in the Pakistani community of Bradford, and rule through the carrot and the stick - enforcing their will and appealing to traditional values, but equally keeping the peace and a lid on petty crime. But when her father is murdered, and her bother abducted, the latter by Andrzej Nowak, an East European crime boss (and Jia suspects he’s responsible for her father’s murder, too), she has to return to the family fold to help. 

This is a book which many have compared to a modern-day Godfather, and the comparison is apt. It’s as much a family saga as it is a crime novel, with Jia Khan the Al Pacino character, e.g. the reluctant prodigal child who ends up rising to the top (I confess to never having read the novel by Mario Puzo, and am basing my remarks on the films). And like The Godfather, we follow Jia as she’s inexorably drawn into the criminality she ran away from, the close knit bonds of family and tradition compelling her to do so to defend those she loves. Though again, without meaning to labour the comparison, just as with Pacino’s character, there’s a sense that Jia is not as reluctant as she at first seems.

There are a couple of niggling issues I had with The Khan. The criminal network she leads finds it a little too easy to outwit the authorities by using Tor and the dark web. In reality, the police, the National Crime Agency, and other enforcement agencies, can track such people down, as recent successes against the Encrochat encrypted phone system and others show. It’s difficult, and many get away with it, but to imply the authorities are clueless of such things, and that such a large criminal organisation as the Khans’ would never be spotted, stretched credulity. That said, this was a minor point and I accept the author engaged in a little creative license, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

There aren’t too many novels which examine organised crime from within the Muslim community, or indeed from Bradford, and this was a book firmly set in that community and environment. It worked well and gave an insight into the close-knit bonds of kinship within those communities. There are several linked issues which the author touched upon too, which added to the rich atmosphere she evoked, such as how Asian youth involved in the Bradford riots of 2001 received harsher penalties than white participants, and how this fostered resentment in those communities. This sort of detail grounded the novel in the area's history and added to its sense of place.

The Khan is an impressive debut, and Saima Mir is an accomplished writer. I look forward to reading whatever she writes next, especially if Jia Khan features in a sequel. 

4 out of 5 stars