In Cold Blood by Mark Dawson

Mark Dawson is something of a hero of mine. As an aspiring author myself I am in awe of the amount of work he manages to produce. What’s more it’s all of a consistently high standard. For many years he’s been self-published and has been very successful. Unlike many self-published writers, his books aren’t riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Nor are his stories littered with plot holes. His Beatrix Rose trilogy is the first to be picked up by a mainstream publisher, commissioned by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint. I find it absolutely amazing that it’s taken a publisher this long to come knocking at his door, his work is that good.

So In Cold Blood, the first in the Beatrix Rose trilogy. Is it any good? Well yes actually, unsurprisingly it is. Beatrix is a super-assassin; think a female equivalent of Jason Bourne, albeit less the amnesia, angst and moral compunction. By that I don’t mean she’s psychopathic in some way, more that she has a laser like focus on her objectives, which in this trilogy is revenge. We were first introduced to Beatrix in Dawson’s earlier works, which centred on an assassin named John Milton. Beatrix was employed by Group 15, the same unit as Milton, and was a contemporary. The back-story to her own trilogy is that she was betrayed by Control, the head of Group 15, her husband murdered, her daughter taken away from her. In Cold Blood picks up the plot a good few years later, Beatrix is reunited with her daughter and they are in hiding in Marrakech where she plots her revenge on Control and the agents he sent after her family.

In Cold Blood sees our heroine receive help from the new head of Group 15 as she plots her revenge. She discovers that one of the agents sent to kill her is a hostage of pirates in Somalia and off she goes. I don’t want to say anymore about the plot at risk of divulging spoilers, but needles to say there follows a lot of high-octane mayhem and violence.

Mark Dawson develops Beatrix’s character well. We have a real sense of her motivations and her burning desire to avenge the injustice done to her family. He is also very good at evoking a sense of place. I don’t know how well travelled he is but I found his description of Marrakech and a refugee camp in Kenya convincing. Later in the novel, his description of Somalia is equally compelling. With a character like Beatrix with the skill-set she has, there is always a danger that slip into caricature, a two-dimensional Rambo type figure, unstoppable, mowing down baddie after baddie. The author avoids this and while the reader knows she has to survive (after all this is the first in the trilogy) he manages to still ingrain a sense of peril.

I award this book 5 stars

The Murders at White House Farm by Carol Anne Lee

Before reading this I only had a sketchy idea of the events of 7th August 1985 at White House Farm. I knew that on that night a whole family had been brutally murdered – father, mother, daughter and her two young children. I knew that a young man, Jeremy Bamber, the son of the elderly couple who owned the farm, was eventually tried for the murder, convicted, and has been protesting his innocence ever since. It was one of those notorious cases that resonate, like the Moors’ Murders and that of the Yorkshire Ripper, and unsurprisingly Jeremy Bamber has become something of a hate figure for the tabloid press.

Beyond that I knew snippets: something about a silencer with paint on, Bamber’s assertions repeated by his vocal band of supporters that movement had been spotted from within the house when Bamber was outside with the police, that he claimed that it was his sister, Sheila, an erratic and mentally unstable schizophrenic, who fired the shots.

Carol Ann Lee has form; she seems to like delving into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. I’ve only read one of her previous works, an exhaustive investigation into the mind and motivation of Myra Hindley. It was powerful but disturbing stuff, definitely not for the weak hearted. But it was also fair and balanced. One thing I applauded about that earlier work is how she refused to allow the wool to be pulled over her eyes. Many of Hindley’s supporters argue that she was led astray by the evil mind of Ian Brady. While acknowledging Brady’s psychopathology the author demonstrated that Hindley herself had many questions to answer, that on numerous occasions she had shown irritation and contempt towards the relatives of her victims.

So the author has the credentials and gravitas to tackle a case as sensitive as the murders at White House Farm, a massacre that in some ways is more controversial than the Moor’s Murders, for there has never been any doubt as to Brady and Hindley’s guilt. Does she manage it? I think she does. The Murders at White House Farm is as exhaustive account as her previous work, perhaps as definitive an account of what happened that night that we can ever hope to get. The author delves into the family and its wider milieu; she places Jeremy and Sheila’s upbringing under a microscope (the siblings were adopted) she pores over their tensions and schisms. Carol Ann Lee subjects the murder scene, police investigation, forensic evidence and trial to meticulous examination and while there is some evidence that Sheila had religious mania and was a seriously unwell woman the narrative of this tome comes back to one subject: Jeremy himself.

Jeremy Bamber does not come out of this book well, should he read it he won’t be pleased. He comes across as a cold, calculating and money obsessed psychopath, a man who resents his adopted parents for tying him to the farm, not allowing him to lives his own life, and most of all, not providing him with the monies to do so. He poses as heartbroken by his family’s graveside only to smile when the press has gone. He refers to Sheila’s children as a burden and thinks their father Colin should be grateful that he killed them. In prison he appeals and appeals, perhaps having convinced himself of his own innocence, but his efforts come to nothing, as there is nothing to be found.

One thing that did surprise me was the admissibility in court of the silencer. Rather than the police it was relatives who found it. The author’s account makes clear that they repeatedly handled it and didn’t immediately alert the police to its presence. Even once they were alerted to it, the police were slow to seize it and place it in evidence. There’s little evidence of conspiracy here and the author demonstrates that the anomaly is more than likely down to police procedure of the time, the issue does demonstrates a fascinating difference between US and UK law. In the US legal system there is a concept of The Fruit of The Poisoned Tree, whereby evidence is struck out if it was accumulated in a questionable way. My understanding is that the UK legal system does not recognise this concept. So while one might wonder about the chain of custody that doesn’t appear to have unduly concerned the court, either then or since.

At no point does Carol Ann Lee give her opinion as to Jeremy’s guilt, rather she lets the evidence speak for itself. On the basis of what I’ve read in The Murders at White House Farm there’s little doubt. I’m sure Jeremy and his supporters will condemn this book but for those with an open mind this is a magisterial and forensic account.     

I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars

Blood Salt Water by Denise Mina

I haven't read a book by Denise Mina since her novel, The Field of Blood, which was the first in her Paddy Meehan trilogy. I really enjoyed that book and don't know why I haven't read the rest of the trilogy, yet alone any of her other books, I just never seemed to get around to it.

Which leads me to Blood, Salt, Water, which is her latest. And wow! What a read! This is apparently the fifth featuring her protagonist Alex Morrow and on the strength of this I might have to go back and read the other four, and then finish her Paddy Meehan trilogy, and then read everything else she has written. Alex Morrow is a well rounded character, as are all the other people to feature in the novel, but what most excites me about this book is the story itself.

So many crime novels feature a serial killer or some variation of the theme. In fact, if memory serves me right, the Paddy Meehan novel I read had one. Quite frankly, I am tired of reading novels with deranged or psychotic killers murdering women or children in increasingly hideous way. Apart from the fact that real life serial killing is rare and that when it does occur the murders tend to be committed in less arcane and complex ways than those portrayed in pulp novels, there’s something a little sordid, a little sensationalist, a little voyeuristic about our obsession with what is quite frankly horrific crimes. This unedifying spectacle isn't helped by the fact that so often writers reduce their victims to what is little more than a carcass. So what is their left for someone who loves crime fiction but doesn't want to read about the antics of some psycho who wears other people’s skin? Gangsters? Yeah, but often that sinks into Mockney parody.

 A way through this dilemma is shown by Denise Mina in her latest book. Taking care not to give away any spoilers, the novel centres on an investigation into a drug dealing and money laundering gang. Through her description of Morrow watching surveillance footage we get to know the main target of this investigation, a woman called Roxanna Fuenticilla, in quite intimate detail. Which is important because she then disappears. Another character we get to know, again quite intimately, is a local thug who’s just killed and dumped a woman in a lake. These plot strands eventually come together thanks to a sinister professional criminal (and not who the reader thinks it’ll be, this books keeps you guessing until the end).

What Denise Mina achieves, and does it with quite extraordinary aplomb, is to humanise almost all the participants in this crime novel. There's no pantomime serial killing and none of the characters are mere one-dimensional victims. The plot itself is quite ingenious, but what sets it apart is that you end up having at least some sympathy for all the major characters, even those who aren't exactly very nice.

All in all this is a fantastic read and have no hesitation in awarding it 5 out of 5 stars.

Under Ground by S L Grey

Post-apocalyptic fiction is all the rage these days, and while this resurgence is mostly powered by the putrid rotting flesh of hordes of undead – the zombie apocalypse being the most popular method amongst writers for killing off their fellow humankind – there is a smaller, but equally vibrant bunch of writers who point the finger at flu. And for good reason, Spanish Flu infected 500 million, wiping out between 50 to 100 million, and a plethora of scientists have warned in recent years that should there be another pandemic, flu virus would be the most likely culprit.

Most books dealing with this kind of subject – zombies or flu - look at the world after it’s gone to hell in a handcart. Or at the very least they show the pandemic start, spread, cross beyond the point of no return, societal collapse, and then the aftermath. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good post-apocalyptic novel or film, but what I think many writers miss is the rich seam of a society teetering on the edge, the psychology of people as their world balancess on the brink. And it is here that S.L. Grey place their story.

Basically, a bunch of rich people have bought into a bunker should the world go to poop. An outbreak of flu breaks out, thousands upon thousands are dying, these rich folk head for the hills. But upon entering their sanctuary things go wrong. First, it’s not quite as cosy and well constructed as it looked in the brochure. Second, the various families don’t know each other until they get there and then when they do, they don’t all get along. And third, people start dying. I won’t say anymore should I divulge spoilers, but needless to say things go downhill from here.

I liked this book, I liked it a lot. It’s kinda like reading an account of a very dodgy series of that programme Big Brother, one where none of the contestants are particularly nice, they might die in horrible ways at any moment, and you just can’t help but watch. Or like when you drive by an accident on the motorway, you know you shouldn’t look, but you just have to. I say that in a good way. I found it compelling. I didn’t really warm to any of the characters, but I think that was almost the point; you just wanted to know which one would be bumped off next.

       

I would give this book 4 out of 5 stars

Future Crimes by Marc Goodman

Reading this book I started off a little disconcerted, went through scared, and ended on downright terrified. For Future Crimes basically does what it says on the tin: outlines the direction crime will take in the future as it embraces our increasingly interconnected world, robotics, 3D printing and even advances in biology.

A confession of sorts. A long time ago I read for an MSc in Criminology at the LSE in London. It was the late 1990’s and criminologists everywhere were grappling with an odd conundrum: crime was falling, across the board, all over the Western World. Giuliani claimed it was his zero-tolerance policing, perhaps, problem is it wasn’t just New York. In cities across America and Europe, no matter the policing policies, to a lesser or greater extent crime was falling. Read any paper and that debate is still occurring. Crime statistics still tell a tale of inexplicable declines and no one appears to know why. Is it women’s greater access to abortion as the authors of Freakonomics once contended (greater levels of abortion = less young men, less young men = less crime)? Is it the decrease in levels of lead in the atmosphere due to the introduction of lead-free gasoline? Is it that society has just become more civilised? Well perhaps we now have an answer: Crime just moved online.

Future Crimes starts off with what to a greater or lesser extent we already know: identity theft, credit card details being swiped from online stores and retailers, hacking. What new can be said about that? Well apparently a lot. For example, he deals with the issue of botnets, swarms of computers taken over by criminals for some nefarious purpose, all without the owners’ knowledge. Apart from the irritation of your computer slowing down, do we really care if someone launches a denial of service attack at some multinational? Well think again. Did you know that a botnet might be used to host child pornography? Yup, that’s right, thousands, maybe millions of computer owners around the world might be inadvertently and unknowingly aiding and abetting the abuse of children.

And it goes downhill from here. As Marc Goodman projects further and further into the future the scenarios become more and more bleak. Banks are bringing in biometrics to protect your accounts? Well the gangsters have already figured out how to lift your fingerprints from a glass of water. An American libertarian has already invented an untraceable and fully working 3D automatic rifle; drone and tracking software is increasingly being wielded by stalkers; medical implants have been hacked so that it’s only a matter of time before someone is murdered by having their pacemaker switched off.

Moving further still into the future we have viruses to match a victim’s DNA profile so that they’re the only people to die in the room, while bio-cartels might grow opium in wheat, corn, or even print THC or Oxycodone on a bio-printer. Some might see all this as hyperbole, but the author is careful and meticulous in grounding his predictions in hard science. For example he points to advances scientists are making in personalising medicine, crafting anti-cancer drugs honed to an individual tumour, so why not a virus honed to an individual DNA profile?

The end of the book contains the author’s suggestions on how society might harness the undoubted good all this technology might bring, whilst negating the harm. He also has a section on what you and I, as average computer users can do to protect ourselves. But after all the warnings and dire predictions that preceded it, it just all seems so futile.

I would recommend people read this book and would unhesitatingly award it five out of five stars, but really that’s more to do with my penchant for scaring the bejeezus out of myself than any real expectation that reading it can make a difference.