+ crime fiction, Danish Noir, Denmark, fiction, journalist, murder, police drama, review, Scandi noir
Back From The Dead by Heidi Amsinck (A Jensen Thriller #3)
A Missing person … a headless corpse … Jensen is on the case.
June, and as Copenhagen swelters under record temperatures, a headless corpse surfaces in the murky harbour, landing a new case on the desk of DI Henrik Jungersen, just as his holiday is about to start.
#BackFromTheDead @HeidiAmsinck1 @MuswellPress #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour #ScandiNoir
Elsewhere in the city, Syrian refugee Aziz Almasi, driver to Esben Nørregaard MP has vanished. Fearing a link to shady contacts from his past, Nørregaard appeals to crime reporter Jensen to investigate.
Could the body in the harbour be Aziz? Jensen turns to former lover Henrik for help. As events spiral dangerously out of control, they are thrown together once more in the pursuit of evil, in a case more twisted and, more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.
My Review
This is my third Jensen novel and it’s just as good as the first two. In my review of My Name Is Jensen, I said I wasn’t that keen on her. I quite like her now, she’s grown on me, though her choice of men is still debatable. Her ex-lover DI Henrik Jungersen who I described as “…uncouth, uneducated, untidy, rough and bald. What’s not to like? Ha! What is to like? Not a lot it would appear,” I haven’t changed my mind one bit.
Jensen’s current boyfriend is Kristoffer Bro. Tall, muscled, handsome and very rich, he sounds far more attractive, but while with Henrik, what you see is what you get (probably his best or worst feature, depending how you look at it), with Bro you get a secretive man with a lot to hide. He won’t talk about his childhood or his family, which Jensen doesn’t question, but Henrik has a lot to say about it. But then he would, wouldn’t he.
The book opens with a headless corpse that has been fished out of the harbour. Henrik is called to investigate, just as he is about to go on holiday with his wife and family, with whom he has now been reunited. It’s not a good time, but he needs to be at work. Without a head or fingerprints (I won’t say why), it’s impossible to identify the body.
In the meantime, MP Esben Nørregaard’s driver, Syrian refugee Aziz Almasi has gone missing. Has he been kidnapped? Is it something to do with his escape from Syria? Esben and Jensen have been friends since the beginning, but while she wants to call the police, Esben is adamant he doesn’t want anyone else to know and asks Jensen to investigate.
Of course, we immediately think the headless body must be that of Aziz. There are many similar characteristics. So Jensen must turn to Henrik for help, and that inevitably throws them back working together. But Jensen has a boyfriend now, whom Henrik is not enamoured with, and let’s face it, if he appears too good to be true, he probably is.
It’s a great third instalment and we still have most of the characters from the first two books – Jensen’s boss at Dagbladet, editor-in-chief Margrethe Skov, her teenage nephew and Jensen’s apprentice Gustav, coffee kiosk owner Liron, hacker Fie, and elderly features writer Henning, amongst others. It’s once again set in Copenhagen, it’s June, and the temperature is stifling. It all adds to the menace and feelings of claustrophobia.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Heidi Amsinck won the Danish Criminal Academy’s Debut Award for My Name is Jensen (2021), the first book in a new series featuring Copenhagen reporter sleuth Jensen and her motley crew of helpers. She published her second Jensen novel, The Girl in The Photo, in July 2022, with the third due out in February 2024. A journalist by background, Heidi spent many years covering Britain for the Danish press, including a spell as London Correspondent for the broadsheet daily Jyllands-Posten. She has written numerous short stories for BBC Radio 4, such as the three-story sets Danish Noir, Copenhagen Confidential and Copenhagen Curios, all produced by Sweet Talk and featuring in her collection Last Train to Helsingør (2018). Heidi’s work has been translated from the original English into Danish, German and Czech.
+ devil worship, fiction, folklore, gothic, gothic horror, magic, mythology, review, superstition, wales
The Shadow Key by Susan Stokes-Chapman
There’s something mysterious about the village of Penhelyg. Will unlocking its truth bring light or darkness?
Meirionydd, 1783. Henry Talbot has been dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital. The only job he can find is as a physician in the backwaters of Wales where he can’t speak the language, belief in myth and magic is rife, and the villagers treat him with bewildering suspicion. When Henry discovers his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers.
Linette Tresilian, the unconventional mistress of Plas Helyg, lives a lonely life. Her father is long dead, her mother haunted by demons which keep her locked away in her room, and her cousin treats her with cool disdain – she has had no choice but to become fiercely self-reliant.
Linette has always suspected something is not quite right in the village, but it is only through Henry’s investigations that the truth about those closest to her will come to light…a truth that will bind hers and Henry’s destinies together in ways neither thought possible.
My Review
I’m beginning to think that Gothic Horror is rapidly becoming my new favourite genre. Maybe it’s because I was obsessed with Dennis Wheatley when I was a teenager, particularly The Devil Rides Out (not technically Gothic) and I kept getting those vibes while reading The Shadow Key. Nothing like a bit of devil worship and ritual sacrifice. I was waiting for Henry to recite the words of the ‘Sussamma Ritual’ or shine his headlights on the rising goat-like figure in his midst (ooops no headlights yet). But in the case of the Tresilian family and Plas Helyg, it’s just folklore and superstition. As a man of science Dr Henry Talbot doesn’t believe in any of that nonsense.
Having been dismissed from his job at a prestigious London Hospital, and unable to find another position, he is surprised to be offered a post in the mining village of Penhelyg in rural Wales, where myth and magic are rife. He is hired by Julian Tresilian, who is looking for a local doctor, but also someone to take care of his wayward cousin Linette (she wears men’s clothes and is very outspoken – this is 1783 after all), and her mother Gwen, who is suffering from what the Victorians later on would call ‘hysterical madness’ following the death of her husband.
Henry soon discovers that the locals hate the English, especially the ones who don’t speak Welsh (which is basically all of them), and treat him with suspicion and often downright rudeness. But Henry gets on well with Linette, her dog Merlin likes him (a sure sign), and he feels certain he can turn them around eventually. They urgently need a doctor as his predecessor died ‘under mysterious circumstances’ and the nearest one is miles away.
On his arrival, Henry’s accommodation has been ransacked, and he is shot at in the woods. Hopefully, it’s only because he’s the interloper – not that I’ve ever been shot at when moving to a new house – and they’ll soon get to accept him. But things start to turn even more sinister, and Henry and Linette must join forces to outwit the power of darkness. This book is so my cup of tea, I absolutely loved it, and while wanting to know the outcome, I didn’t want it to finish.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Susan Stokes-Chapman was born in 1985 and grew up in the historic Georgian city of Lichfield, Staffordshire. She studied for four years at Aberystwyth University, graduating with a BA in Education & English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, Pandora, was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction prize 2020 as well as longlisted for the Bath Novel Award that same year. You can find Susan on Instagram and Twitter under the handle @SStokesChapman. Her website is www.susanstokeschapman.com.
In a small town, it’s impossible to hide…
Two decades after she left Ireland, Leah Ryan is back. She knows she won’t get a welcome reception in her hometown of Dungarry, but she’s finally ready to face up to the events that forced her to leave as a teenager.
As she arrives home, another tragedy is waiting for Leah – her first love, Eamon Lonergan, has been found brutally murdered.
At first, Eamon’s murder appears unrelated to Leah’s past. But in a small town like Dungarry, everything is connected and everyone has secrets. Sometimes there’s only one way to ensure the truth stays buried.
A tense and emotional thriller set in Ireland. Perfect for fans of Claire McGowan and Patricia Gibney.
My Review
I love that I was able to read this with my online book club The Pigeonhole, in ten staves, one stave each day for ten days. It meant that my fellow pigeons (as we call ourselves) and I could try and work out whodunnit.
Basically, Leah Ryan (a successful lawyer in Australia) returns home to Ireland after 18 years, just at the time – coincidentally – when her ex-boyfriend and twin brother of her best friend Aisling is brutally murdered. Aisling is pregnant with partner Jim’s baby. So far so good.
However, Leah’s mum Mary was knocked down by an unknown hit-and-run driver and left with severe disabilities, and while Leah ran away, her older brother Frank had to remain in Dungarry to look after her. That was basically the end of his life’s ambition.
But peddle back a bit and 15-year-old Leah has ditched Aisling to be ‘besties’ with Coco, a jealous, manipulative witch, who has just moved from Dublin with her mother Isabelle (another jealous, manipulative witch). So when Leah ditches Coco for Eamon, Coco gets very annoyed. Isabelle’s boyfriend Seamus is a sleazebag, with a penchant for groping teenage girls, but he disappears one day. Was it him who knocked down Mary Ryan?
Finally we have Tom Lonergan, father of Aisling and Eamon, who is in love with Isabelle. Everyone has secrets and they are all lying (well almost all).
So who killed Eamon? It was great fun trying to work it out! I really loved it, even though most of the characters are quite horrible, including Leah, though we forgave her behaviour as being typical of a selfish teenager. Not sure the same could be said of Coco.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Sheila Bugler is the author of the Ellen Kelly and Dee Doran crime novels. Her first stand alone novel, The Lucky Eight, was published in July 2021.
She grew up in a small town in the west of Ireland. After studying Psychology at University College Galway, she left Ireland and worked in Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, Argentina and London before finally settling in Eastbourne, where she now lives with her husband, Sean, and their two children.
Florence Butterfield has lived an extraordinary life full of travel, passion and adventure. But, at eighty-seven, she suspects there are no more surprises to come her way.
Then, one midsummer’s night, something terrible happens – so strange and unexpected that Florrie is suspicious. Was this really an accident, or is she living alongside a would-be murderer?
#TheNightInQuestion @sfletcherauthor
#RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour
The only clue is a magenta envelope, discarded earlier that day.
And Florrie – cheerfully independent but often overlooked – is the only person determined to uncover the truth.
As she does, Florrie finds herself looking back on her own life . . . and a long-buried secret, traced in faded scars across her knuckles, becomes ever harder to ignore.
Readers of Elizabeth is Missing, Small Pleasures or Dear Mrs Bird will love prize-winning author Susan Fletcher’s The Night in Question – an absorbing and uplifting novel with a uniquely loveable protagonist at its heart.
My Review
It’s not often that the main protagonist in a novel is old enough to be my mother, and still alive. But in The Night In Question, we have Florence Butterfield (Florrie), 87 years old (soon to be 88), one leg and a wheelchair user. So don’t expect any fast car chases or wrestling to the ground, because while there is a death and a possible attempted murder, it’s more about Florrie reflecting on her life. And what a life it has been, a life ‘full of travel, passion and adventure.’
Florrie lives in an assisted living facility, her ‘apartment’ being an old apple store, while the others include an old pig sty, converted into four dwellings! Those less able live in the main house like Tabitha Brimble and Nancy Tapp. Renata is the manager, a tiny forty-something woman with pale skin and platinum hair.
The residents are described in such perfect and humorous detail, particularly the Ellwood twins, who are not actually sisters, or in fact twins. They are the gossips and know everything that’s going on, not that they pry or snoop, heaven forbid.
There were six loves in Florrie’s life – from Gaston Duplantier, who without Paris they would never have met, Jack Luckett (Florrie can still see his musculature and the colouring of his forearms) in Africa, and her husband of 30 years diplomat Victor Plumley. What fun they had! Then there was Hassan abu Zahra, Dougal Henderson and finally (though in fact first if we were doing this in chronological order) Teddy Silversmith, the latter involved in that Hackney business, which we desperately want to know about.
Florrie lived with her eccentric mother Prudence, father Henry, a policeman who was killed on duty when she was quite young, Aunt Pip who fled an abusive marriage to take care of them all, and poor Bobs, her older brother, devastatingly injured during the 2nd World War. There is also Gulliver the cat, always there throughout Florrie’s childhood. We had a dog named Gulliver – he was huge like Gulliver in Lilliput. The cat was more like Gulliver in Brobdingnag.
And I wish I had a friend like Pinky. Always loyal, always there.
If I could give this book six stars I would. I cried (no surprise there) for Florrie when the truth of that Hackney business is finally revealed. In fact I cried for a good half hour at the end. I cried for a life well lived, but never fully realised, for second chances and for love, of course. Beautifully written and observed, a true masterpiece.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Susan Fletcher was born in Birmingham and studied English Literature at the University of York. Whilst taking the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, she began her first novel, Eve Green, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award (2004) and Betty Trask Prize (2005). Since then, Susan has written seven novels – whilst also supplementing her writing through various roles, including as a bar person, a cheesemonger and a warden for an archaeological excavation site near Hadrian’s Wall. Most recently, she has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of
Worcester. She lives in Warwickshire.
Troubled ex-journalist Luke Seymour discovers an untapped talent for time travel after being recruited to rescue the stricken leader of The Nostalgia Club, an eccentric band of time travellers who meet in the back room of an Edinburgh pub.
As he hones his skills and learns the stories of the Club’s members, Luke delves deeper and deeper into his own past – where the terrible mistake which scarred his life is waiting…
About The Author
Paul Carnahan is a former national newspaper journalist-turned-writer who lives and works in Central Scotland. How Soon Is Now? is his first novel – a second, End of a Century will follow later this year.
Author’s Website: www.paulcarnahan.com
Handles/Tags
X (Twitter)
@KellyALacey
@lovebookstours
#Ad #LBTCrew #BookTwitter #FreeReview #FreeBookReview #ScottishFiction #TimeTravelFiction #GlasgowFiction #EdinburghFiction
Instagram
@pacarnahan
@lovebookstours
#Ad #LBTCrew #Bookstagram #FreeReview #FreeBookReview #ScottishFiction #TimeTravelFiction #GlasgowFiction #EdinburghFiction
Threads
@lovebookstours
Facebook
@lovebookstours
TikTok
@lovebookstours
Gabriella’s name meant love and lies…
When Sam Harrigan agreed to find runaway bride Gabriella Cole, he expected to be looking for a marriage-scammer, not a lovely phantom with a trail of devastation in her wake whose victims include washed-up celebrities, politicians, and even mobsters.
Now everyone wants to get their hands on Gabriella, but with each step Sam takes, she seems further away as danger races closer and romance, lust, and murder are never far behind!
Read the first full-length mystery starring Sam Harrigan, the private investigator featured in the pages of Guilty Crime Story Magazine!
Author bio
Brandon Barrows is the author of several crime and mystery novels. His most recent, The Last Request, was published September, 2023 by Bloodhound Books. He has also published over one hundred short stories and is a three-time Mustang Award finalist, as well as a 2022 Derringer Award nominee. Find more online at https://www.brandonbarrowscomics.com/
Instagram
@brandon.a.barrows
@lovebookstours
#Ad #LBTCrew #Bookstagram #Thriller #Mystery #FreeBookReview #lbtcrew #LBTThriller
Think you know the story of Little Red? Think again! This time Little Red is under the hood. What challenges will she encounter on her way to grandma’s this time?
Would you dare take a risk if your life depended on it? Especially on a day when everything seems to go wrong? Little Red dares to be different and takes bold risks as she ventures into a field that is out of the norm for girls.
Genre: Children’s Fiction
Age: 5-10
Publisher: Two Season Press
Perfect for girls and boys ages 5 to 10 who love cars, fixing things, and fairy tales, this empowering story is a modern mashup between Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Little Red Driving Hood and the Three Repairs is a treat for little mechanics-in-the-making and girls who will grow up into empowered women with the choice to challenge gender roles for a better society.
My Review
How appropriate that I read this on International Women’s Day. Little Red is a great example of a girl who will let nothing stand in her way of doing what she wants. And what she wants is to be a mechanic like her mum, who owns an auto repair shop.
But this day not everything goes to plan. It looks like it could be a disaster, especially when she encounters big, bad Papa Wolf and he’s seriously scary. Little Red had tried to fix Baby Wolf’s car, but it still wouldn’t go. Then she tried to help Mama Wolf fix her car, but it went up in smoke. So when Papa Wolf says she has to fix his car or he’ll eat her up, she has to try.
Poor Little Red. What should she do? She needs to find out and quickly.
Children aged 5-10 years old will enjoy this. It teaches us that being a car mechanic isn’t just for boys. It’s for girls who believe in themselves and ‘will grow up into empowered women with the choice to challenge gender roles for a better society‘. Hooray!
Many thanks to @lovebookstours for inviting me to be part of the #LittleRed blog tour
Buy Links
www.amazon.co.uk
www.amazon.com
Handles/Tags
X (Twitter)
@StaceyRayz
@KellyALacey
@lovebookstours
#Ad #LBTCrew #BookTwitter #FreeReview #FreeBookReview
Instagram
@stacey_rayz_author
@twoseasonpress
@lovebookstours
#Ad #LBTCrew #Bookstagram #FreeReview #FreeBookReview
Threads
@lovebookstours
Facebook
@lovebookstours
TikTok
@lovebookstours
+ fiction, Historical fiction, London, murder, prostitution, review, serial killer, Victorian Britain
Whitechapel Autumn of Error by Ian Porter
Whitechapel 1888; a killer is on the loose and the newspapers are ensuring the nation knows all about not just the crimes but the terrible living conditions in which they are being perpetrated.
Nashey, a tough, scary yet charismatic man of the night, whose mother had to prostitute herself when he was a boy, knows the identity of the killer but keeps it a secret. He believes the publicity generated by the murders is forcing the authorities to address the poverty and degradation in the area. He allows the killer to remain free (whilst ensuring no more women are attacked) so the unsolved murders continue to dominate the headlines.
#WhitechapelAutumnOfError #IanPorter #JackTheRipper #WhitechapelMurders #TheFive ##RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour
He meets Sookey, an eccentric middle-class slummer and civilising influence. The two of them share a mutual friend, Mary Kelly, a fiery young prostitute whose back-story tells of how she was reduced to such a life.
To fund his surveillance of the killer, Nashey agrees, against his better judgement, to assist an old adversary to commit a daring night robbery under the noses of the huge police presence in the area.
Is it too late for Nashey and Mary to correct their mistakes?
My Review
A somewhat different approach to the usual Jack The Ripper stories – Whitechapel doesn’t centre on the killer himself or the police who are tracking him down. His identity here is almost irrelevant. Out main protagonists are Alexander ‘Nashey’ Nash, who lives in Whitechapel, his friend and prostitute Mary Kelly, who has come to London following a sad start in life, and the eccentric, middle class Sookey, who struggles to be accepted as a ‘slummer’.
Now as I know the story pretty well, there were no surprises about certain outcomes. Some characters are real like Mary Kelly, Lloyd-George and George Lusk, while others are totally fictitious. There were times when the story read like non-fiction, giving us an insight into life in a slum in the late 1900s, while at others, it was a novel like any other.
The relationships between Nash, Mary and Sookey were well handled, but there is nothing romantic or soppy. Life was hard and people had to do what they did in order to survive. Prostitution for many women (and no doubt boys and young men) was better than the workhouse, though I can’t imagine anything worse. The danger and the degradation led many to spend a large part of their earnings on gin to overcome the disgust.
Nash is a big, scary, hard man. He’s actually intelligent and self-educated like Mary. He often wears a Peaky Blinders cap when he goes out, and uses it, but only in defence of others. Sookey had a privileged background, but admits she is not very clever or knowledgeable. Nash believes that leaving the killer on the streets will finally bring the terrible squalor and poverty to the attention of the politicians, a plan which ultimately works, but with horrendous consequences. Can the end ever justify the means? Easy for us to say never (personally I believe it never can), but life was very different then.
The book is written in what is often an unemotional and non-judgemental way (also making it seem like non-fiction at times), but I think that’s the intention. We are observers – it’s not for us to judge the behaviour of these people – we can’t possibly understand their plight. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
As a PS I love rhyming slang so the inclusion of a few examples really made my day. Even though I’m nowhere near London, I often ask someone if they are a bit ‘mutton’ or whether their whatever has been ‘half-hinched’. A friend of my son’s from Birmingham just looked at me like I’d gone nuts.
About the Author
Ian Porter is a historian, lecturer, public speaker and walks guide. He has a particular interest in women’s history and social history. His novels are renowned for being extremely well researched and historically accurate. Whitechapel Autumn of Error is a typically feminist, social history novel that brings the dark streets of the East End 1888 to life. He has written several other novels including the highly acclaimed Suffragette Autumn Women’s Spring, set during the fight for the vote for women, and A Plague On Both Your Houses, set in both London & Berlin in 1918/19 during the final months of The Great War and the Spanish Flu. Ian is getting on a bit (well, aged 69). His grandparents were young adults living in East London at the time of the Whitechapel Murders.
In 18th century London, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. A lot of knowledge is deadly.
When ambitious apprentice chemist and secret alchemist Peter Woulfe is tasked with caring for a mysterious illustrated book, the Mutus Liber, he quickly realises that the grimy underworld of Georgian London is even more dangerous than he first believed.
#SparksOfBrightMatter #LeeanneODonnell @Tr4cyF3nt0n #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour
Soon the book is stolen by the light-fingered Sukie and Peter finds himself being pursued by threatening men who are willing to do anything to get the book back. Where in teeming London might Sukie be found? Why is Peter so enthralled by her? And what is it about the Mutus Liber that is so enticing? As the search for the book becomes an urgent game of cat and mouse, it seems that the key to Peter’s present dilemma might only be found in half-remembered events from his childhood, and then further back still, in the mists of Irish myth.
A spell-binding and unputdownable tale about spirit and matter, love and lust, and reality and magic.
My Review
This is a story about a book, the Mutus Liber. It’s also a story about a student of alchemy called Peter Woulfe. It’s not his book, he is supposed to be delivering it to Baron Swedenborg. And all the while he is trying to make gold out of lead, or something similar. It’s also a story about a prostitute called Sukie, with whom Peter is obsessed. But she has stolen the book and he must get it back at all costs.
But then again it’s about the Jacobite Rebellion and the men who will stop at nothing to put the rightful King on the throne. As an aside, when I was at school, I had a classmate who believed in the same thing. During assembly she would refuse to sing the National Anthem, instead, toasting the ‘King over the water’.
It’s also a story about the myths and magic of Peter’s birthplace and spiritual home in Ireland. Even though he travels extensively, he is always drawn back there, and to the strange woman called Bridey Leary who told him fantastical stories when he was a child.
The book moves back and forth through time, Peter as a child in Ireland in the early 1700s, as a young adult in 1744 when he discovers other pleasures with Sukie, then later in 1780 when he is older, and obsessed with his study of alchemy, to the exclusion of all else including having a wife and family. We also jump ahead some years later, when he is in his fifties.
Unlike a couple of other reviewers, I was far more interested in Peter than in Sukie. He’s an interesting character. He is fascinated by Sukie and the smell of her neck, but for me I can only imagine how everyone stank, especially a prostitute.
Sparks of Bright Matter is beautifully written, almost lyrical, with a style slightly reminiscent of The Night Circus. It’s got that whimsical feel about it, with a lightness of touch to the text. It won’t be for everyone and I accept that there are some loose ends that didn’t get tied up like Nico and Katia, but it’s a work of art and needs to savoured for its sheer beauty.
Many thanks to @Tr4cyF3nt0n for inviting me to be part of the #CompulsiveReaders #blogtour and to NetGalley for an ARC.
About the Author
Leeanne O’ Donnell was born in Dublin and now lives in an old farmhouse on the foothills of a mountain in the remote south west of Ireland. She feeds her cats, dogs, chickens, daughters and wife reasonably regularly – and occasionally waters her poly-tunnel. She has yet to learn to write a proper shopping list but has managed to finish her first novel while hiding in an old caravan in the garden.
Sparks of Bright Matter was inspired by the magic of the mountain where she lives and the whispers of the ancient stories buried in the surrounding landscape. She is interested in all the big questions like what it means to be alive, and which crisps go best with a pint of Murphy’s stout. In Sparks of Bright Matter she explores the liminal spaces between magic and reality, spirit and matter, love and lust.
She started her storytelling career working in radio with RTE and BBC – and has made a number of award winning documentaries for RTE’s Doc on One series. Notably THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN about two Irish aristocrats who ran away together in the 18th century and DIVING AND FALLING about dancer and artist Lucia Joyce. She is also a trained psychotherapist and is frequently awed by the sacred work of helping people to understand and transform their own real-life stories.
Meet Fred. He is about to turn forty and has invited an eclectic group of friends to celebrate at a rented stately home.
He is a wheelchair user after being paralysed in a road traffic accident, has been busy at work at his memoir and is longing to reconnect with long-standing university crush, Heather, a high-flying TV foreign correspondent. What should have been a jolly weekend in the country starts getting decidedly more complicated when Heather realises that the publication of Fred’s book could threaten her career ambitions.
#TheHaHa @TommyShakes @Duckbooks #RandomThingsTours @annecater @RandomTTours #blogtour
The Ha-Ha is a thoroughly engaging and very entertaining novel about friendship, sex, hallucinogenic drugs, marriage and putting the past behind you. There is also a very hungry pig who may or may not have eaten Fred’s stolen memoir.
It also proves that you can write about disability without making a big fuss of disability and that you can pay tribute to the immortal world of Blandings without ever including a PG Wodehouse character.
My Review
“…you can pay tribute to the immortal world of Blandings without ever including a PG Wodehouse character…” The pig comes closest.
And in The Ha-Ha we have a pig AND a dog. What could be better than that? And a seven-year-old with a very good aim with a bow and arrow, but that comes much later.
Something I love about Fred Twistleton is that he never seems to resent his disability, which resulted from an accident twenty years earlier. He’s always happy and cheerful, and that must be hard.
This weekend it’s his fortieth birthday and he’s having a party. He’s rented a stately home called Threepwood and invited his brother and sister-in-law, his friends from university and their various partners and children. Well one child actually, with a penchant for murdering the recorder – Freya only knows one tune Frère Jacques – and follows people around playing it.
Fred doesn’t always see eye to eye with his brother Roddy, a budding MP, and feels rather sorry for his wife Charlotte. Polly is probably his closest friend, mother of aforementioned Freya, who shares parenting with her ex-partner. Then we have Hugh, a socially awkward eccentric who is staying in his van rather than the house, Robin the psychiatrist who is bringing his Costa Rican boyfriend Alberto, and Sonia the literary agent who has promised to read his memoir. Except none of his friends want him to publish the memoir because they know their secrets will be revealed and together they hatch a plot to make it disappear. This involves a large document, a memory stick and a very greedy Vietnamese Pot Bellied pig.
Fred has a ‘long-standing university crush on Heather, a high-flying TV foreign correspondent‘. Except we all know she’s totally unsuitable as a life-partner and to make matters worse, Fred has a terror of naked women, following his accident. Nel, the pig’s ‘carer’ is far nicer, but will Fred realise that before they leave?
And did I mention there is also Fred’s lazy pug Humphrey?
‘Less of a dog, more of a pop-eyed hot water bottle.’
The whole thing is hilarious, witty and well-written. I would certainly read more by this author. Especially if the next book includes more unruly animals and children.
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Tom Shakespeare CBE is a social scientist and bioethicist, an academic who writes and talks and researches mainly about disability, but also about ethical issues around prenatal genetic testing and end of life assisted suicide. Born in 1966 in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, he studied at Cambridge University and has lived in Gateshead, Geneva and Norwich, while working at Universities of Sunderland, Leeds, Newcastle, then at World Health Organisation in Geneva, afterwards at UEA Medical School, and presently as Professor of Disability Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Tom has presented programmes and documentaries on BBC Radio and has written for publications including The Guardian and The Lancet, alongside talking to academic, professional and lay audiences around the world. He has been a stand-up comedian, an actor, a dancer, and an artist. A father of two grown-up children, he now lives in London. https://farmerofthoughts.co.uk/
Welcome to the sleepy village of Pudding Corner, a quintessentially English haven of golden cornfields, winding cobbled lanes … and murder.
Daphne Brewster has left London behind and is settling into her family’s new life in rural Norfolk, planting broad beans in raised beds and vintage hunting for their farmhouse.
But when the local headmaster is found dead in his potting shed, amongst his allotment cabbages, the village is ablaze: Who would kill beloved Mr Papplewick, pillar of the community? Daphne soon comes to realise perhaps the countryside isn’t so idyllic after all…
When the headmaster’s widow points her finger at Minerva, Daphne’s new friend, Daphne vows to clear her name. Sneaking into the crime scene and chasing down rumours gets her into hot water with the local inspector – until she comes across a faded photograph that unearths a secret buried for forty years…
They say nothing bad ever happens in close-knit Pudding Corner, but Daphne is close to the truth – dangerously close…
There’s death amongst the dahlias… A truly unputdownable whodunnit by Paula Sutton – otherwise known as Instagram’s happiest influencer: Hill House Vintage, the queen of cottagecore – an unforgettable new voice in cosy crime. Perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Janice Hallett and Richard Coles.
My Review
I don’t read a lot of cosy crime – I am usually attracted to more gritty and gruesome murder mysteries. That’s probably why I love a good Scandi Noir. Or Silent Witness. But The Potting Shed Murder was very entertaining and I really enjoyed reading it with my online book club over ten days.
Daphne Brewster, her husband and three children have upped sticks and left London for the peaceful Norfolk countryside. At least that was the plan. They have moved into a gorgeous house called Cranberry Farmhouse, in the beautiful village of Pudding Corner (I keep thinking of The House at Pooh Corner) and plan to grow their own, while Daphne restores old furniture. The kids have made friends, including Silvanus, who lives with his mum Minerva in what the locals believe to be a den of iniquity, where Wiccans and witches cast spells and no doubt dance around in the altogether.
But they have hardly been there more than a few weeks, when local headmaster Charles Papplewick is found dead in his potting shed. Was he murdered or did he simply have a massive heart attack? And why would anyone kill him? Everyone loved him, didn’t they?
Fingers are pointed at three women. His wife arch-bitch Augusta, snobby Marianne who wanted him to help get her son into a prestigious private school, and Minerva, with whom he has a secret relationship. But then there’s also Patsy from the local shop, whose sister Nancy has always believed she’s been holding a candle for him for over forty years.
There’s plenty of motive, means and opportunity, but surely none of these women would actually want to bump him off. Or would they? I enjoyed finding out.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Paula Sutton is the face behind Hill House Vintage, with over half-a-million Instagram followers. Named by British Vogue as the ‘happiest influencer on Instagram’, Paula is a vintage-hunting interiors stylist, author, columnist and television personality showcasing her wonderful cottage-core and cosy Norfolk life through a lens. Paula upped and left her glamorous London life – where she worked in fashion publishing – over ten years ago to move to Hill House in Norfolk with her family. Since then, Paula has curated a beautiful country home, mixing new with vintage, to find her perfect aesthetic, and is the creator of the popular blog, Hill House Vintage.
Amongst the scholars, secrets and soporifics of Victorian Oxford, the truth can be a bitter pill to swallow….
Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings. When the young man’s guardian blames the college for his death and threatens a scandal, Basil Rice, a Jesus college fellow with a secret to hide, is forced to act and finds himself drawn into Sidney Parker’s sad life.
The mystery soon attracts the attention of Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan, a young Welsh polymath and one of the young women newly admitted to university lectures. But when neither the college principal nor the powerful ladies behind Oxford’s new female halls will allow her to become involved, Non’s fierce intelligence and determination to prove herself drive her on.
Both misfits at the university, Non and Basil form an unlikely partnership, and it soon falls to them to investigate the mysterious circumstances of Parker’s death. But between the corporate malfeasance and the medical quacks, they soon find the dreaming spires of Oxford are not quite what they seem.…
An intriguing first installment of The Oxford Mysteries series by master crime writer, Alis Hawkins. Perfect for fans of Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Sarah Waters and Kaite Welsh.
My Review
I knew as soon as I started reading A Bitter Remedy that it would become one of my favourite books of the year so far. In fact I’ve already recommended it to my brother and downloaded a sample of the next book in the series.
Set in 1881, we meet Rhiannon ‘Non’ Vaughan, an unusual and very liberated young woman, who has come to Oxford from semi-rural Wales. Life was different there and Non hates that she has to keep her mouth firmly shut at Oxford, so as not to hinder other women from being admitted to the university. She is so far only allowed to attend lectures – she cannot be a ‘proper’ student as such. Any bad behaviour could put the women’s movement back years.
But Non isn’t one to keep quiet and immediately puts the back up of a male student, by discussing the story of Lysistrata in detail, a subject considered unseemly for a woman. He complains and she is banned from lectures for a term.
Non forms a partnership with lecturer Basil Rice, who has enormous respect for her intelligence and initiative – but then he has his own secrets to keep.
When student Sidney Parker is found dead in his lodgings, Rice is called to investigate and to try and steer the blame away from the college. But Parker’s guardian George Reardon has other plans and it all becomes very complicated and lurid. Can the university prevent a scandal? Was Parker murdered? We shall have to find out. And Non is not to be deterred from becoming involved.
But probably the most important aspect of the book revolves around a disease known as spermatorrhoea, which young men were diagnosed with in the 19th century. It was supposed to cause every malady known to man (it didn’t affect women – if you read up about it you’ll understand why). And of course every quack in the country was selling their own cure to alleviate the symptoms. Poor Sydney was treating himself for an illness which didn’t even exist.
I simply adored A Bitter Remedy. I am always a bit wary of historical fiction as it can be overlong and frankly a bit boring, but this book is amazing. It’s got drama, it’s got murder. It’s even got humour. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Many thanks to The Pigeonhole, the author, and my fellow Pigeons for making this such an enjoyable read.
About the Author
Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. Her inner introvert thought it would be a good idea to become a shepherd and, frankly, if she had, she might have been published sooner. As it was, three years reading English at Corpus Christi College, Oxford revealed an extrovert streak and a social conscience which saw her train as a Speech and Language Therapist. She has spent the subsequent three decades variously bringing up two sons, working with children and young people on the autism spectrum and writing fiction, non-fiction and plays. She writes the kind of books she likes to read: character-driven historical crime and mystery fiction with what might be called literary production values.
Bookchatter@Cookiebiscuit 