Use Your Psychic Powers to Have It All by Uri Geller

 

Self-improvement titles are not my usual read and Uri Geller is someone who divides opinion. Some think he’s a true psychic, some not. So I picked this up on a whim, not exactly sure what I was going to get.

I actually found this title quite inspirational. You don’t have to believe in the author’s claimed psychic powers to benefit from this title, a lot of the content involved visualisation techniques and positive thinking methods which are helpful and effective.

This is a short book, but an engaging one, and Geller has a good writing style which kept me turning the pages.

The Inheritance by Gabriel Bergmoser

 

A sequel to the author’s brilliant first novel in the series, The Hunted, The Inheritance picks up a little after the first novel ended, with Maggie trying to live a quiet life while still searching for her mother. 

She’s got a job in a bar and when her manager is attacked by a patron who’s clearly extorting money, she follows the man and blows up the warehouse he’s in. She’s always been a little impulsive and has an urge for natural justice, after all. The man is linked to a drug cartel though, and it’s no surprise that he ends up following her to Melbourne, where she’s following a lead as to where her missing mother might have gone to.

In Melbourne she falls in with an ex-cop friend of her father’s who she’s unsure she can trust and the two soon become cross paths with a biker gang called the Scorpions. Between them and the gangster following her, this is a recipe for violence galore.

The Inheritance isn’t as good as The Hunted in my opinion, but it’s still an excellent read. I would love Maggie to return in a third instalment and hope that she will.

The Witch Bottle by Tom Fletcher

 

Daniel is a milkman who’s split up from his partner and young child. He lives and works in a remote rural area and does his rounds and has little in the way of any social life. The village and surrounding areas are full of eccentric characters and his work colleagues aren’t all particularly collegiate or nice. 

It’s when people begin to have nightmares that the real troubles begins. And the Fallen Stock drivers (Fallen Stock being the people who collect dead animals up from farms) keep running people off the road. When Daniel meets Kathryn, a witch who makes witch bottles which stop the nightmares, and gets Daniel to distribute them to those afflicted, he soon begins to attract thew wrong attention.

This is a sinister and chilling novel which is expertly written and well worth a read. Highly recommended. 

The Watchers by A.M. Shine

 

A novel set in Ireland, the protagonist Mina is an aspiring artist who's struggling for money, and accepts a job from a friend in the pub to deliver a parrot to a buyer. She drives into a remote part of Galway where her car mysteriously breaks down on the outskirts of a wood. She walks along the road which leads through the woods and this is the worst mistake she could make. Because at nightfall, with screams chasing her, she’s beckoned into a building by an older woman who then slams the door shut Inside, she finds her rescuer, Madeline, and two others, Daniel and Ciara. But now the real nightmare begins, because watching them through the window are monsters, who will kill them if they leave.

The Watchers is a fantastic horror novel, which delves into ancient Irish myths. I’ve been reading a lot of horror recently, and this is one of the best I’ve come across this year. Hugely enjoyable and well worth a read.

Vine Street by Dominic Nolan

 

I’m a fan of Dominic Nolan’s first two novels, contemporary crime thrillers, Past Life and After Dark. Vine Street is a departure from Nolan’s previous books because it is a historical crime thriller, set in London in the 1930s. I’ve always loved London’s Soho and used to enjoy night outs there in the 1990s, and its reputation and history is rich and storied.

Vine Street is set in a world of organised crime set around prostitution, prostitutes, and corrupt police. With the war on the horizon in the first half of the novel, and then the war itself and postwar, there are also fascists in the guise of the Blackshirts and spies. And in the centre of it all, is a serial killer, whose murder spree crosses decades and whose killings aren’t recognised as such except by DS Leon Geats, a member of the porn squad,  DS Mark Cassar of the flying squad, and WPC Willamina 'Billie' Massey.

This is a sprawling book, 600+ pages, and is an incredibly impressive feat. It’s a great story and the characters are well drawn and interesting. The serial murders are gruesome, the victim’s fates horrific to contemplate. The story is compelling and I highly recommend this novel.

 

Bad Apples by Will Dean

 

The 4th in the Tuva Moodyson series, and Tuva is back in Gavrick, but her beat now extends to a town up the road, the hill town of Visberg. In fact, the story opens with Tuva visiting the town and after hearing a cry for help in the woods, discovering a headless corpse.

Will Dean’s strength is in his conjuring of eccentric characters. In the previous three novels he’s filled Gavrik and the surrounding woods with such people, and now he populates Visberg with more. And his best creation of all returns in this novel: the wood carving sisters, complete with their gruesome trolls.

Visberg is a town of secrets, not least its sinister festival of Pan Night, where the townsfolk all get together to engage in cult-like behaviours. And then there’s the no-questions asked storage facility. Indeed, while the plot of the novel is compelling, it’s this characterisation and environment which places Dean’s books a cut above the rest. There’s plenty here for future novels too, and I imagine Visberg will return to fill the pages of a good few Tuva Moodyson books yet.

4 out of 5 stars 

Bloody Foreigners by Neil Humphreys

 

Inspector Stanley Low is a Singaporean Detective in London to give a lecture at the London School of Economics. When a Singaporean man is stabbed to death, he’s asked to consult. Graffiti for the xenophobic group Make England Great Again was daubed above the body, which complicates things. Low is something of a loose canon, and so he needs to be kept in check by DI Ramilla Mistry, who also so happens to be his ex-lover.

Bloody Foreigners is apparently part of a series, though most of the books don’t appear to have been published in the UK, at least not be a publisher who markets them properly. I had seen the author’s work before but not read any of his novels, so this was my first introduction to his writing. Despite being part of a series, the book can be read as a standalone, as I did.

This is an enjoyable read, it has clear social commentary on the state and decline of the UK, without layering it on too thick. It’s one-part police procedural, one-part action thriller. There are parts of the narrative which stretch credulity a little, but nothing too extreme to spoil the enjoyment of the narrative. Low is an enjoyable misanthropic character, who despite his obvious flaws, is committed to justice and doing the right thing. the other characters are also well drawn out and I particularly liked the villains of the piece, especially a character who has more than a passing resemblance to Nigel farage.

This is a really enjoyable read and I’d recommend it.

4 out of 5 stars 

The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox

 

Detective Inspector Joe Lazarus stands in a ditch outside a deserted Lincolnshire farmhouse. It’s being used by a gang of countylines drug dealers to store drugs. It's a gang he’s been working hard to bring down and he’s conducting a solo surveillance of the house. But then a teenage girl walks up to his hideout and asks what he’s doing. She seems to know about the operation and so he assumes she’s undercover police or an informant. She accompanies him into the house and there he finds a couple of dead drug dealers and his own dead body. Because Lazarus has himself been murdered and is now a spirit.

So start’s his quest to solve his own murder. The girl, Daisy May, takes him to a bleak purgatory and The Duchess, the woman in charge of this halfway house of the afterlife, tells him if he wants to move on from there and to a better place (or perhaps worse) he needs to return to earth and find out who killed him and why. But there are complications. The air on earth is toxic and rots his memories, and if he doesn’t solve the crime quickly, he will lose his mind completely and be condemned to walk the earth, a mindless ghost.

The Dying Squad is the author’s debut and is a supernatural crime thriller. The book has two strands running through it - Joe’s attempt to solve his murder, which is the crime thriller bit, and the supernatural strand which brings in heaven and hell, and a sinister beast, the Xylophone Man, who snatches souls to carry down to eternal damnation. 

This is a well-plotted novel, and the characters are compelling. Daisy May in particular is an interesting character. It also has a surprising twist, and I thought I knew who was behind Joe’s murder until near the end when the surprise was sprung. The narrative resolved itself well and is left open for a sequel, though it equally could remain as a self-contained story if the author wanted to write something else.

An impressive debut by a novelist to watch. 

The Rule by David Jackson

 

When we first meet Daniel we think he’s a child. He acts like a child and speaks like a child and his inner monologue is that of a child. But we soon learn he is in fact about to turn 23 and is looking forward to his birthday. 

But Daniel also has a rule which his parents insist he must follow, and The Rule is not to touch anyone. We soon discover why: Daniel is uncannily strong and can cause harm without meaning to. 

Daniel lives with his mum and dad in a block of flats and one day they encounter a man in the lift, a drug dealer, and things go awry.

I won’t divulge spoilers but needless to say, Daniel’s strength now leads the family into great peril. Because the drug dealer’s associates want to know what has happened to him, as do the police, and it isn’t long before they’re all closing in

The Rule is the second novel by David Jackson that I’ve read, after his excellent novel The Resident. This isn’t a sequel, but it’s similar in that it takes a surprising premise and runs with it. Like The Resident, The Rule is well worth a read.

The Colours of Death by Patricia Marques

This is an intriguing novel set in an alternate universe Lisbon where a small percentage of the population have psychic powers and are treated with mistrust by the rest. When a man inside a train carriage is lifted by invisible forces and slammed against the carriage walls until he’s dead, psychically gifted Inspector Isabel Reis is put on the case. 

This is a good and original sci-fi which touches on various issues, not least the prejudice minorities face. The gifted community are treated with suspicion by most, and hatred by more than a few, especially after an event in the past where a powerfully gifted girl caused a disaster. In this way their treatment is reminiscent of how Muslims are treated today: a tiny minority commit atrocities and yet the majority suffer intolerance because of it. The victim is linked to the head of a powerful anti-gifted party and this too has strong similarities to the anti-immigrant nationalist parties we have today. 

There’s a slight oddity to the narrative in that we never learn the wider context - how the gifted came into existence (it’s a relatively new phenomenon) and whether they exist anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the wider world outside of Portugal is never mentioned. That said, this doesn’t spoil the story at all, it just leaves the reader with some unanswered questions.

A great read this, and presumably there’ll be a sequel. If so there’s plenty of space for the author to flesh out the world she’s created.

 

The Basel Killings by Hansjörg Schneider

 

It’s the end of October, though it could be December, as it’s unseasonably cold and wet. The setting is Basel, a city in northwestern Switzerland. It’s late at night and Inspector Humkeler is walking home, a little worse for wear, when he spots someone he knows, old man Hardy. He stops, hoping to beg a cigarette from the old man. But Hardy is dead, his throat slit ear to ear. The police and media assume it is the work of Albanian drug traffickers, but Inspector Humkeler remembers an earlier case, that of Barbara Amsler, who was murdered in a similar fashion. He investigates and visits Basel’s seedier side - the red-light district and underworld - and soon finds a conspiracy which leads to the political and industrial elite.

This is the first novel in a new series and it’s the first book by the author that I’ve read. It’s a solid noir, reminiscent of the Private Investigator novels of old, in that Inspector Humkeler is very much doing his own thing. He’s part of the police, but because the force he belongs to is pursuing the Albanian drug trafficker angle with which he disagrees, he’s conducting his own investigation.

Switzerland is a rich, industrial nation, but it has its darker side. Well known for laundering dodgy money through the its banking system, but the country also has its fair share of illegal migrants and the people who prey on them, prostitution and drug trafficking. In a past life I worked as a journalist for Channel 4. I worked on a documentary filming in Switzerland which touched on some of these issues. The author does a good job of portraying this scene, the desperation of those who fall victim, and the unsavoury characters who ply their trade.

The Basel Killings is an excellent book and a strong start to a series.

Passenger List by J.S. Dryden

 

When Kaitlin Li’s twin brother, Conor, disappears after Atlantic Airlines Flight 702 vanishes while flying across the Atlantic, with all passengers and crew presumed dead, she becomes obsessed with solving the mystery. She sets up a Facebook page for tips and is soon investigating. Inevitably this leads to a whole heap of conspiracies and various people who might be kooks, spies, or various shades of baduns.

The tragic, and downright weird, tale of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared without a trace over the Pacific in 2014, clearly inspired Passenger List. MH370 has inspired many conspiracy theories and these are clearly also an inspiration for Passenger List. In real life I have no time for conspiracy theories, but in fiction I love a conspiracy thriller. For example, personally I suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, but I love a JFK conspiracy novel or film and Oliver Stone’s movie might be hokum but was great fun.

That said, as I read Passenger List I wondered whether this was going to be just a rehash of MH370 conspiracies, all pushed along by cardboard cutout genre fiction tropes and two-dimensional characters. This is a novel inspired by a podcast (a drama podcast, obviously. Not a true crime one). It feels cardboard cutout and there is little depth to the characters. That said, the plot moves along at pace and when the final denouement occurs it is believable, even for someone like me who doubts conspiracy theories in real life. The author doesn’t go with the most outlandish theory, but ends with something much more realistic, knowing as we do how governments have a tendency to cover their backs.    

Anthrax Island by D.L. Marshall

 

The island of Gruinard, off the coast of Scotland, is the setting for this novel. It’s an actual island which was poisoned with anthrax during the second world by a British Government experiment on germ warfare. Unfortunately anthrax spores are hardy and the island remained polluted for decades until a hugely expensive clean up operation. But what if the government failed in their endeavours and anthrax has returned? Such is the scenario painted by debut novelist D.L. Marshall.

A technician has died from a virulent strain of the disease. Attached to the new scientific mission to clean up the island, his death is a mystery and the intelligence services despatch freelance operative John Tyler (under the guise as the technician’s replacement) to investigate what has happened. It quickly transpires that the technician’s death might well be foul play and so John has a captive cast of suspects (for obvious reasons access to the island is strictly controlled). 

What follows is one part locked room mystery, one part spy thriller. It’s an interesting set up and John Tyler is a well-drawn protagonist. The suspects are well-drawn too, and the novel is adeptly plotted. Did I guess who the killer/killers were? Well, no, I must confess that I didn't. But they were credible and their motives believable when the reveal came, and the narrative led to a satisfying denouement.

Tyler himself is clearly set to return in a sequel and it will be interesting to see his back story. He’s an action hero in the mould of many in the espionage/action genre, though Marshall tells us he’s never been in the military. That was a little confusing as we gather he knows his way around weapons, etc. But I’m sure Marshall will explain this as the series continues and I’m not somebody who needs everything to be spelt out on page one of book one.

This was a great read, and Marshall is a great talent. Bring on book two in the series.

I Know What I Saw by Imran Mahmoud

 

Xander Shute is a once wealthy banker now living on the streets. After a fight with another homeless person in a London park, Xander sees an open door and shelters inside someone’s flat. Only they return when he’s there and he witnesses the woman of the house being murdered. Filled with shame at his cowardice in not stopping the assault, Xander becomes obsessed with finding out who her attacker was and bringing him to justice.

This is the author’s second book and a worthy follow on from his excellent debut, You Don’t Know Me. It’s not a sequel and does not follow on from his earlier title (although I would encourage people to read both books, as they’re both excellent). 

While the two titles have something in common in that they’re both told in first person from the protagonist’s point of view, and the reader has to decide how much of their account to believe, Xander Shute is a much more unreliable protagonist than the young man on trial who was the centre of the plot of the author’s debut. 

Xander had quite an eccentric childhood, fiercely bright but encouraged by his father to compete with his much more gifted younger brother, a contest he always lost. This led to years of resentment on Xanders' part, although his brother was always kind to him. But then tragedy struck and Xander went off the rails and now his memory is flawed. Throughout the narrative he discovers things about his past which cast his memory of the murder in a new light. This keeps the reader guessing until the end.

I Know What I Saw is a brilliant read and I finished it in just a couple of sittings. Xander is a sympathetic character, and the plot is compelling. This is a great read.

True Crime Story by Joseph Knox

 

Zoe and Kim Nolan are identical twins who have recently enrolled at Manchester University. They’re housed together in a flat in a hall of residence, and the narrative revolves around them and their flatmates, and some other students they befriend. Most important is Zoe’s boyfriend, Andrew Flowers, her course mate, Fintan Murphy, a flatmate of the twins, Liu Wai, and one of Andrew’s housemates, Jai Mahmoud. Other friends and flatmates appear in the narrative but are less central. Soon after the term begins, just three months into their time at university, Zoe Nolan goes missing and is never heard from again.

True Crime Story is written as a true crime book (hence the title) and includes emails between the author, Evelyn Mitchell, and a character called Joseph Knox (yes, THE Joseph Knox), who in an act which kind of breaks the fourth wall, appears in the narrative of his own novel. There are even references to Knox’s brilliant Sirens trilogy. Evelyn is obsessed with the case and interviews all the surviving participants - Andrew Flowers, Fintan Murphy, Liu Wai, and Jai Mahmoud, and Zoe and Kim’s parents, as well as the police liaison officer and some other people who become involved in the case.

The case became a media sensation, with Andrew Flowers, Kim Nolan and Jai Mahmoud in particular, coming under suspicion. Evelyn pulls on these threads, and on others, and soon exposes the dark underbelly of this story. For example, the twins' dad is quickly exposed as a repellent piece of work, as are others.

This is an innovative crime thriller that will keep readers guessing until the end and is not like many books on the market. It’s well worth a read.

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

 

A landline rings, just as Agneta Broman, the wife of Stellan Broman, a post-war Swedish TV celebrity who the Swedish viewing public saw as an “uncle” to the nation, is waving her grandchildren goodbye. She answers the phone only to hear one word: “Geiger”. She immediately digs out a gun she’d kept hidden for years, shoots her husband dead, and disappears.

So starts this absolutely brilliant Swedish crime/espionage thriller.

Sara Novak is a vice cop who grew up a friend of the Broman’s daughters, Lotta and Malin. She was always the poor friend, her mother the Broman’s housekeeper, and as the narrative continues we learn the Broman daughters bullied her somewhat. She’s drawn into the investigation and it soon becomes an obsession. 

The police only know that Stellan is dead, and Agneta is missing, and are unaware that she was the one who murdered her husband. But as the bodies pile up and things point to a motive linked to the cold war and the conflict between the Communist East and that Capitalist West, it isn’t long before a nest of international intrigue is discovered.

The publishers billed Geiger as the most gripping debut since I Am Pilgrim, and I have to say I thought the analogy was apt. This is an ambitious thriller, encompassing big themes, not least, the Cold War and its legacy, establishment sex rings and cover-ups. Sara is an interesting protagonist, while Agneta makes for a brilliant antagonist, reminiscent of the anonymous English assassin in Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal. In both novels the police and protagonist are unaware of the identity of who they are after until near the end, and this is a device which works as well in Geiger as it did in Forsyth’s classic.

At the time of writing this review, Geiger is my book of 2021. There’s still a good few months to go, so other titles might well surpass it, though I suspect even if this were to happen Geiger would remain a close contender. Either way, this is a brilliant novel and highly recommended. 

Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka

 

Korean movie-makers have a long history of producing wacky, violent thrillers - Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance being the most obvious examples; their horror movies, too, are renowned, such as the zombies-on-a-train fest which is Train to Busan. But in narrative fiction, too, Korean writers often produce works which are similar; The Plotters by Un-Su Kim, is a notable example. Japanese cinema and narrative fiction has its own tradition of such off-beat mayhem, albeit not as well known as Korea’s. But Kotaro Isaka’s barmy novel, Bullet Train, which is being made into a movie, might well bring the country out of its neighbour’s shadow.

The description on the dust jacket reads: “Satoshi looks like an innocent schoolboy but he is really a viciously cunning psychopath. Kimura's young son is in a coma thanks to him, and Kimura has tracked him onto the bullet train heading from Tokyo to Morioka to exact his revenge. But Kimura soon discovers that they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Nanao, the self-proclaimed 'unluckiest assassin in the world', and the deadly partnership of Tangerine and Lemon are also travelling to Morioka. A suitcase full of money leads others to show their hands. Why are they all on the same train, and who will get off alive at the last station?”

But this gives only a taste of the mayhem that is to follow. Bullet Train builds the tension slowly but surely from the first page. It isn’t non-stop action, and neither are the gangsters and assassins mentioned on the dust jacket the only ones on the train, or the only ones to feature in the narrative; soon it feels like every passenger and member of the crew is out to kill someone else. That said, the characters mentioned are the main protagonists, and the author takes the time to flesh them out. My favourites are Tangerine and Lemon, a duo who bicker amongst themselves like an old married couple. 

But it’s Satoshi who steals the show. Frankly, I haven’t read a more chilling character since Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. In this schoolboy, the author constructs a true psychopath, far worse than many of the schlock versions in your average slasher movie, and I imagine far more realistic too.

Bullet Train is a brilliant novel and is wonderfully cinematic. It reads like a story set for the big screen, so I wasn't surprised to learn an adaptation was in the works. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for anything else written by this author.

Seat 7a by Sebastian Fitzek

 

Mats Krüger is a German psychiatrist living in Argentina. Despite treating phobias and other psychological conditions in his professional life, he ironically suffers from aerophobia, an irrational fear of flying. Mats is estranged from his daughter, Nele, after running out on his wife on her death bed and having an affair. Nele is heavily pregnant and Mats is intent on flying back to Germany to be with her at the birth, with the hope of patching things up. But when she books a taxi to take her to hospital for a caesarean, Nele is kidnapped and taken to a derelict dairy. There her kidnapper ties her up and points a live video camera at her. He rants about the cruelty of the dairy industry and what misery cows have to live through. Meanwhile, a mystery caller contacts Mats on board the now airborne flight and orders him to psychologically destroy an old patient of his, who works as a flight attendant on the plane. The caller wants the woman to become psychotic and homicidal and cause the plane to crash, killing all onboard. The caller tells Mats that if he fails to do this, the kidnapper will torture Nele and the baby and kill them.

Thus we have the setup for another madcap psychological thriller by the German author Sebastian Fitzek. Fitzek has made a name for himself with preposterous plots and over-the-top stories. Seat 7a is no different and takes as its inspiration several disasters which have afflicted aviation over recent years. Most notably the German Wings disaster of 2015, which is mentioned during the narrative, in which a disturbed pilot crashed a jet into a mountainside killing all on board. Equally pertinent might be Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which though as yet unfound, many believe the pilot or co-pilot to have purposefully crashed into the sea (though I think Seat 7A was published before the MH370 disaster). But regardless, these disasters and others like them have led the European Union and others to debate what they can do to stop them, including mandatory blood testing and psychological screening. 

As with one of Fitzek’s previous titles, Passenger 23, the plot of which took place on a cruise liner, Fitzek has clearly researched air travel extensively. For example, he references the safest places to be on a plane during a crash, and those where you’re guaranteed to die. I haven’t checked these facts out for myself, but I checked out some of his research for Passenger 23 and it all proved correct, and so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was accurate here, too. It all helps him to spin a fiendish web of intrigue.

Factual detail aside, Fitzek’s books are always extremely far-fetched and require a suspension of disbelief. But to be fair to him, that’s all part of the fun. He’s the antithesis of a certain type of police procedural writer, who strenuously strives for believability. Instead, Fitzek offers a rollercoaster ride of plot twists and non-stop tension, and if you accept that and run with it, his books are a very enjoyable read.   

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

Nighthawking by Russ Thomas

This is Russ Thomas’ second novel, and an eagerly awaited sequel to his debut, Firewatching. Once again, we’re in Sheffield with DS Adam Tyler. He’s still heading up the cold case team, but now has a protégé in the guise of DC Mina Rabbani (who was in uniform in Firewatching but has since gained a spot in CID), but it isn’t long before they’re both seconded to a murder inquiry when the body of a woman is discovered buried in the city’s botanical gardens.

The body was unearthed by a nighthawker, a metal detectorist, but one willing to trespass on private land and at night, and keep or not declare their finds. This is a major theme running through the book (hence the title) and several characters are members of a detectorist group and keen nighthawkers. It quickly becomes apparent that the woman is linked to the group and that one or more members might have something to do with her murder. Muddying the water is the fact she was a Chinese national and the daughter of a powerful figure within the Chinese Communist Party, and that she might have been involved in some kind of smuggling operation.

While part of a series, Nighhawking could be read as a standalone. That said, it is far more enjoyable if read after the author’s debut. The events of Firewatching have left their mark on several characters, and it is easier to understand some of their motivations if you know what they went through in the previous title.

Firewatching was an impressive debut and made something of a splash when published. There’s always a concern that the “curse of the second novel” will strike when a debut novelist has made such a mark, but Russ Thomas has no such concerns on that front. Nighthawking is a fantastic follow up, both brilliantly plotted and brilliantly told. This is a great book and I look forward to reading the third in the series whenever Russ is ready to unleash it on the book-reading public.

4 out of 5 stars

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

 

Ted lives in a dilapidated house with his daughter, Lauren, and his cat, Olivia. Their house is at the end of an ordinary street called Needless Street (hence the title) but the windows are all secured with wooden boards, with just small holes drilled into them to see out of. A decade before, a girl called Lulu went missing from a nearby lake, and her family broke apart as a result: the mother walked out on them; the father died of a broken heart; Lulu’s sister, Dee, was left alone with her guilt and self-recrimination. Now Dee believes that Laura (who she hasn’t seen yet, but has heard Ted talking to) is Lulu, and Ted is the man who abducted her sister all those years before. She’s intent on finding the evidence, bringing Ted to some kind of justice, and rescuing her sister.

As least that’s what we think is going on. This is a twisty-turny Gothic horror chiller, told from a variety of perspectives, not least that of the cat, Olivia. While the set up seems straightforward at the start, it isn’t long before readers are unsure of their footing. All the people in the book are unreliable narrators, to use that overused term, and revelations come aplenty as the narrative unfolds.

The Last House on Needless Street has received much praise, not least from Stephen King. The film rights have been optioned and it will come to screens shortly, I’m sure. But I have to say, this novel really didn’t do it for me. I really wanted to enjoy this book, not least because all the buzz told me I should - The Times Thriller of the Month, an Observer Thriller of the Month, a Guardian 2021 in books pick, a Waterstones March 2021  pick, a Red Magazine March 2021  pick, a Refinery 29th March 2021 pick - the list is exhaustive. But I’m afraid to say this book just left me cold. It never seemed to know what it wanted to be - gothic horror? crime thriller? - and I found all the twists and turns confusing.

It was an enjoyable enough read, and lots of people will disagree of course (they already do, look at the plaudits), but for me it just didn’t work.

3 out of 5 stars

The Disappearing Act: The Impossible Case of MH370 by Florence de Changy

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, with all its 239 passengers and 12 crew, is one of the strangest aviation mysteries of modern times. How could a modern airliner vanish from thin air? The mystery is both jaw-dropping, and in a world where air travel is ubiquitous and something we all take for granted (at least prior to COVID-19, and hopefully in the future too) disconcerting and horrifying. It’s never really been explained, though there is an official narrative of sorts after various inquiries.

In this book, Florence de Changy, a French journalist and foreign corespondent for Le Monde, painstakingly challenges the official narrative of pilot suicide (along with various conspiracy theories) and claims instead the plane was shot down. It’s a great piece of investigative work, and she sources her claims with endnotes in every chapter. 

The problem I have with her work is there is an equally convincing long form article in The Atlantic by William Langewiesche, which argues precisely and convincingly for the suicide theory. Similarly, Blaine Gibson, a man who has found over half the verified pieces of MH370 wreckage to be recovered so far, supports the suicide theory and dismisses this book as a conspiracy theory.

So, as often happens in a world of information at our fingertips, unless the reader conducts the investigation for themselves (and I don't mean reading random Facebook posts and watching Youtube videos, but actually doing the investigative work that Florence de Changy and William Langewiesche presumably have), they’re left unsure who to believe. The two conflicting, and to a layperson, equally convincing, theories about the fate of MH370, are perfect analogies of our times. As someone old enough to remember the dawn of the digital age, I recall being told the internet and social media would empower us with information. In fact, the reverse has happened, and we suffer information overload.

I literally do not know who to believe, Florence de Changy or William Langewiesche; the narrative put forward in this impressively crafted book, that the plane was shot down, or that in the equally impressive Atlantic article, that the pilot or co-pilot committed suicide with all on board. 

4 out of 5 stars

Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev

 

The blurb of this book reads: "Professor Kalitin is a ruthless, narcissistic chemist who has developed an untraceable, extremely lethal poison called Neophyte while working in a secret city on an island in the Russian far east. When the Soviet Union collapses, he defects and is given a new identity in Germany. After an unrelated Russian is murdered with Kalitin's poison, his cover is blown and he's drawn into the German investigation of the death. Two special forces killers with a lot of Chechen blood on their hands are sent to silence him – using his own undetectable poison. Their journey to their target is full of blunders, mishaps, holdups and accidents."

As someone who reads a lot of crime fiction and thrillers, and someone who is very interested in politics and current affairs, I really, really, really wanted to like this book. It sounded perfect for me. Unfortunately though, I just couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s the translation or just the author wanted to write in a literary style, but I found this book plodding and dull. I’m perfectly happy for characters to self-reflect, but here the self-reflections go on for pages and pages and pages. What promised to be a great story was weighed down and saggy.

2 out of 5 stars