In Her Blood by Annie Hauxwell

In Her Blood is the debut novel from Annie Hauxwell. The first in a series of books featuring Catherine Berlin, it is a gritty crime novel which opens with a body being found about 3 minutes from where I used to live in London, which was a bit of a shock. Much in the same way as with The Murder Wall, which is set in my current location of Newcastle, I found myself trying to see how many of the places I recognised. There were quite a few, but luckily I’ve never seen a dead body in any of them…

Catherine Berlin is an investigator with the Financial Services Agency who, rather predictably, refuses to play by the rules. Following the death of her informant, ‘Juliet Bravo’, her investigation into Juliet’s information is closed down and she is suspended for failure to follow the correct procedure. She knows that the death is linked to the activities of notorious loan shark who is well-known to the Agency, but when she finds out that her father knew Doyle’s father, things start looking more personal. It gets worse when her GP is murdered and his stock of legal heroin is stolen. Berlin is a long-term addict, and Dr. Lazenby was one of the only doctors who would still prescribe heroin rather than methadone. Berlin manages to get 7 vials via some stolen prescriptions, giving her a week to solve the murders and find another doctor before withdrawal begins.

It did take me a little while to get into In Her Blood, perhaps due to the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of YA books recently and wasn’t quite prepared for the change in tone. However, when I did get into the swing of the novel, I rather enjoyed it. Berlin is a strong character – very much in the vein of the glut of dour cops, but still original. Yes, she has her predictable moments, such as refusing to share information which would save her a beating, but she has an edge of instability which makes her an entertaining character.

Other characters are well-handled, with crooked cops, East-End gangsters, victims of money-lenders and bent City bankers all represented. Hauxwell is also good at inserting relevant references to the political and financial climate without sounding preachy. Cuts to the policing budget and the subsequent downturn in efficiency are shown to be to blame for at least one of the book’s many murders, as well as the presence of corrupt officials and policemen.

It was a welcome surprise to me that the novel had a good ending, with the numerous plot strands all tied up, although not too neatly. Although not necessarily the kind of book that I would buy for myself on first glance, I’m grateful to have been sent it and I look forward to the next novel in the series.

3.5/5

This was sent to be by the publisher, but I was not paid for the review and all views are my own.

The Child Who by Simon Lelic

I loved Simon Lelic’s first novel, Rupture, so I was excited when I was sent The Child Who, Lelic’s third book. Lelic’s writing is powerful, and he writes about topics that can definitely be considered controversial: Rupture was about the motivations of a teacher who shot students in a school assembly, and The Child Who tackles the uncomfortable subject of children killing other children.

When Leo Curtice, a small-town solicitor, picks up the phone one afternoon, little does he realise that his life is about to be altered irrevocably. The phone call is to request a solicitor for Daniel Blake, a 12-year-old who is accused of murdering his classmate, Felicity Forbes. Leo is understandably excited about the opportunity to take such a high-profile case, but has no idea just how much publicity it will generate.

What made this novel a cut above the usual ‘evil child’ narrative is that he concentrated on Leo’s life and how it is changed by him representing Daniel. Daniel’s guilt is never in doubt, nor is the horrendous nature of his crime, but Leo can’t help but see him as a victim too and is resolute in his determination to represent him, despite the detrimental effect that the case has on his own family. However, when his 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, vanishes after a series of threatening anonymous letters, Leo is forced to question his decisions.

This is a compelling narrative, but I didn’t find it quite as affecting as Rupture. Passages scattered throughout the narrative flash-forward to point suggestively to a tragedy for Leo, and his wife Megan, but I found the ending, if not disappointing, then slightly anti-climatic. Lelic’s writing continues to be excellent – polished, assured and forceful, and The Child Who is a good read, but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as Rupture.

3.75/5 (This is where I wish that I gave ‘marks out of 10′!)

This was sent to be by the publisher, but I was not paid for the review and all views are my own.

The Sick Rose by Erin Kelly

I reviewed Erin Kelly’s first novel, The Poison Tree, last summer and, whilst I could see the strength of the writing and plotting, I just wasn’t overcome with enthusiasm for it (unlike almost everyone else who reviewed it, I must add). It was a different matter with her second novel, The Sick Rose, which I found to be far more enjoyable.

Kelly weaves her tale from three different narrative threads, which come together in a genuinely shocking climax. The two main characters are Louisa and Paul. Louisa is a 39 year old expert in rare plants working at Kelstice, a fictional country house in Warwickshire, restoring its neglected garden to its former glory. Paul is a 19 year old petty criminal who arrives at Kelstice to join its other youths there on community service. However, his participation is slightly different – he has been placed 300 miles away from his home in Essex, in the hope that he won’t be tracked down before he can testify at his former friend’s murder trial. The tentative and risky developing relationship between Louisa and Paul is told in one of the narrative threads, set in 2009/10.

The two other narratives are flashbacks, showing Louisa and Paul in their former lives. Louisa’s strand shows her in 1989, as an 18 year old who shuns university to work on a market stall selling alternative remedies in Kensington Market. She meets her match in Adam Glasslake, whose death she is still mourning in 2009. Paul’s flashback tells of his early teenage years, from his witnessing his father’s death, which leads to a crippling phobia of blood, to his ‘friendship’ with Daniel. It’s this relationship which both led Paul into the world of petty thieving, and also to Kelstice, as he ran from Daniel’s father Carl.

Both main characters are well-drawn, especially Paul, who is a believable mix of the childish and the mature. As a boy who had to look after his mother after his father’s death, he grew up quickly, in some ways, but occasionally the fact that he is only 18 come shining through, making him seem vulnerable and real. The slow feeling of suffocation that he feels as Daniel and Carl invade more and more of his life is vividly described and provide a powerful contrast to the feelings of freedom that he feels at Kelstice. I felt that the character of young Louisa was similarly well developed, especially in terms of her jealousy and the all-consuming nature of first love. The older Louisa, however, felt slightly less convincing. She is almost 40 but still acts like a teenager for much of the time. This does reflect the fact that she shut off emotionally when her love affair with Adam ended in tragedy, but is a little distracting.

As regular readers will know, one of the things that annoys me most is a disappointing ending. So many thrillers are fantastic until the last couple of chapters, where everything suddenly speeds up and ends up feeling rushed. Thankfully, Kelly has avoided that and the denouement is satisfyingly shocking (and surprisingly emotional). The epilogue felt a little contrived, but I’m so happy that the climax was not condensed into one chapter that I’ll put that down to the semi-Gothic tone of the novel.

 I enjoyed The Sick Rose and would recommend to people looking for a psychological thriller in the Barbara Vine mode.

3.5/5

Thanks to the author for sending me a copy of the book. All views are mine and I wasn’t paid for the review.

Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid

This one came to me at the same time as Tanya Byrne’s Heart-Shaped Bruise, which made that day one of the best post days for a long time. Like Byrne’s novel, Black Heart Blue is a debut Y.A./crossover novel, and also does not shy away from tackling serious issues without over-simplifying them.

Rebecca and Hephzibah are teenaged twin sisters who are brought up knowing nothing about the modern world. Hephzi is beautiful and strong-willed, whilst Rebecca, the younger twin, is disfigured by Treacher Collins syndrome, and much meeker. That is, she is much meeker until she finally has to be the strong one. Their father, a violent drunk who also happens to be a vicar, demands that they be taught at home, and never allowed out of the vicarage to meet other children. When they finally are allowed, under sufferance, to attend college for their A-levels, they are amazed at what they have missed, but are also worryingly naive about life.

Told in alternating passages by each twin, Hephzi tells of events leading up to her death and Rebecca’s story is concerned with what happened afterwards. The cause of Hephzi’s death is hinted at, but the revelation is withheld for much of the novel, leaving the reader to speculate about who is responsible. Rebecca’s chapters are the more harrowing, being about the abuse that her and her sister suffered at the hands of their father, whilst Hephzi’s are more recognisably about the normal troubles of being a teenager. The contrast between them, as you learn about what both were going through, is almost unbearably poignant.

This chilling and brilliantly written thriller confirms Reid as a fantastic new voice in Y.A. fiction.

4/5

This book was provided by www.welovethisbook.com , but the views are my own and I wasn’t paid for my review.

Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne

Of all of the books that I’ve been sent from We Love This Book for review, this is the one that I was most excited about. There had been rumblings on Twitter for a few months before I received it, about a new Y.A./crossover novel which was making people sit up and take notice, and it sounded really interesting. This is it!

Set in the psychiatric ward of young offenders institute, Tanya Byrne’s début, Heart-Shaped Bruise, is a gritty and fascinating look at the need for revenge and redemption, and whether retribution can ever really be worth the sacrifice.

Emily Koll is a 17 year old inmate. The narrative is told through her diary entries, which she then leaves in her room for the next inmate to find. Emily’s diary notes that her case has been in the press for months, with the tabloids jumping on a violent crime committed by a pretty teenager. As we’re not actually privy to these headlines, Emily’s crime remains a mystery until the last few pages. Byrne shows great restraint here, as it would have been easy to make the whole novel about Emily’s violent act. Instead, we get a finely wrought story about a teenager’s fight to come to terms with her history, and her equally fraught battles with her therapist.

Although Emily isn’t necessarily be a likeable character, she is certainly sympathetic, especially when trying to avoid Dr Gilyard’s probing questions about her past.  She’s cynical, ballsy and manipulative, but also sensitive. She’s basically a normal teenager, albeit one with a hidden agenda. She’s also unexpectedly funny, with a black humour that made you chuckle and then immediately look around to see if anyone saw me inappropriately giggling.

Byrne’s writing is both lyrical and gritty, much like Emily herself, and the novel is compulsively readable. I read it in one go, gobbling down the pages, eager to get to the end and find out what had happened, but also scared in case it was an anti-climax. To my great relief, it wasn’t. I’d tried to avoid speculating what was going to happen, and what Emily’s crime actually was, but I wouldn’t have guessed. It is beautifully handled – although the revelation is shocking, it is not sensationalist, which makes it even more affecting. 

I was nervous that Byrne would not be able to resist giving Emily a traditional happy ending but she did, and I was so thankful. To have Emily skip off into the sunset would have been both insulting to the reader and the story, as well as unrealistic. I don’t think that I’m ruining the book to say this, as I think that anyone who starts reading the novel will see that Byrne is too honest a writer to take the easy way out.

Heart-Shaped Bruise totally lived up to the hype, and is a fantastic read. Emily is a believable character and, despite her crime, I found myself rooting for her to be able to put it behind her. I’m still thinking about the book, and I finished it a month ago, which I think speaks volumes about the writing. I really can’t wait to see what Byrne comes up with next, so hopefully she won’t keep us waiting too long!

It is published on the 10th May 2012 as an adult title.

4.5/5

This book was provided for review by http://www.welovethisbook.com all views are my own and I was not paid for the review.

The Reader by Ali Smith

(apologies for the blurry photo – it’s from Constable’s website, as I can’t find my camera. I’ll update it when I do!)

I have a bad record with short stories. I adore Angela Carter’s, perhaps more than her novels, but they’re an exception. I generally prefer the way that I can get lost in a novel – being able to inhabit a different world for 300 pages is one of the things that I’ve always loved about reading, and I’ve always felt that, with short stories, I get jerked back to reality just as I’m beginning to feel at home. However, I’ve been trying to broaden my literary horizons recently (no, really), and so have decided to try and branch out from novels now and again.

 The Reader has been looking at me from one of the shelves in the shop for months now, begging me to give it a try, and I finally succumbed yesterday. Complied by Ali Smith, the book is a collection of her favourite writing; not only short stories, but poetry, song lyrics, extracts from novels and non-fiction. I suspect that I decided to give it a try because it features some authors whose work I already knew that I liked – Tove Jansson, Angela Carter, e. e. cummings, Margaret Atwood, Virginia Woolf – but the real joy is discovering the writing of authors who I hadn’t previously read.

For example, ‘The House I Live In’ by Maggie O’Farrell is a brilliant and (literally) haunting short story about the restless spirit of a young boy. I read the ending as ambiguous, which added another layer of atmosphere and foreboding to the tale. I’ve read one of Maggie O’Farrell’s novels before and I liked, but didn’t love it; however, I’ll definitely give her others a go after this.

 The foreword by Ali Smith is also a joy to read. She has a way with language that can make the most tired sentiment sound fresh, and she does that here with her words about the joys of reading:

“That’s the thing about books. They’re alive on their own terms. Reading is like travelling with an argumentative, unpredictable good friend. It’s an endless open exchange” (p. 2)

I’ve always felt this way about books – from reading Enid Blyton under the covers when I was little, to curling up with a chunky novel and a cup of tea now. Without meaning to sound melodramatic, I’ve never felt alone with a book. Unlike many people I’ve spoken to, I was lucky enough to be able to read when I was suffering from depression, and it was one of the biggest comforts you can imagine.

I’ve gone off-topic somewhat, but what I wanted to say was that, with The Reader, Ali Smith has achieved something special – in addition to being full of wonderful writing, her compilation has reminded me why I love reading, which, as a book reviewer and blogger, is an important thing to remember.

4/5

And the winner is…

Good morning!

I’ve used random.org, which has picked a winner of the signed copy of Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, and it’s number 13. Well done

Ann Salisbury!

Ann, I’ve emailed you and the book should be winging its way over the Atlantic very soon (such a good image…)

Thanks for all the entries, some of them were hilarious, and definitely worthy of inclusion in a volume 2! Even if you didn’t win, you should still think about buying a copy of Jen’s book – it’s been in the Sunday Times best-seller list for the last two weeks, so let’s see if we can keep it there for a bit longer.

Tom-All-Alone’s by Lynn Shepherd

I’m the first to admit that, despite having both an undergraduate and postgraduate degree in English Literature, I’m not the biggest reader of ‘classics’. I can count the number of Shakespeare’s plays that I’d like to read/see again on the fingers of one hand, can’t get past the third chapter of any Thomas Hardy novel and have only finished 2 of Charles Dickens’ tomes (and one of those was Hard Times, which doesn’t even count as a tome…). So when I was sent a review copy of Lynn Shepherd’s Tom-All-Alone’s, I was a little worried. Inspired by Dickens’ Bleak House, and running along side it, in terms of plot, Shepherd’s novel is a look at the seedy underbelly of Victorian London. Combining her own interpretations of characters from Bleak House and A Woman in White, as well as her own creations, Shepherd has managed to breathe new life into the sometimes tired genre of Victoriana.

Shepherd’s protagonist is Charles Maddox, a young man attempting to forge a career as a private detective, having been unfairly dismissed from the Metropolitan Police after an altercation with the infamous Inspector Bucket. His great-uncle, also called Charles Maddox, is the famous thief-taker from Shepherd’s first novel, Murder at Mansfield Park. The two are close, and when the elder Maddox starts suffering from a mysterious ailment resulting in periods of memory loss and violent behaviour, Charles moves from the lodgings that he shared only with his cat into his uncle’s house. From a modern perspective, it is clear that these episodes are symptomatic of dementia, or Alzheimer’s, but Shepherd has cleverly left it unnamed. The puzzlement and fear that Charles and his great-uncle’s servants feel when confronted with the disease echoes Maddox’s confusion, making this aspect of the story even more poignant.

Aside from the familial situation, Charles’ life is further complicated by the case that he is asked to look into, by the sinister solicitor Tulkinghorn. Engaged to discover the author of some anonymous letters, Charles is convinced that there is more to the case than meets the eye, a view that is confirmed when he meets intense, and violent, opposition to his investigations. Determined to discover what Tulkinghorn and his cronies are hiding, he delves deeper, resulting in his own life and those of his loved ones being threatened. There are some gory sections, including one particularly nasty scene which made me reach for something to hide behind.  Shepherd doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to representing the grim reality of aspects of Victorian London that Dickens, in view of the sensibilities of his readers, could only hint at.

Charles’ sections of the novel have an omniscient narrator who invites the reader to accompany him as he watches Charles and his investigations. Running alongside this narrative is that of Hester, an inhabitant of The Solitary House. She has been taken there by a mysterious ‘guardian’, and is one of a number of girls who live there. She speaks with great affection for her guardian, and for Mr. Jarvis, the man in charge. As her narrative begins, it is easy to think that she is just naive (for example, her descriptions of her mother’s frequent male ‘callers’ leave the reader in no doubt as to her profession, but her daughter is unaware), but it quickly becomes more sinister. It is hard to see how Hester and Mr. Jarvis fit with Charles’ story, but both tales are skilfully, and movingly, brought together at the end of the novel, with a twist that I didn’t see coming. As I’m the annoying person who guesses the murderer within 5 minutes of an episode of Inspector Morse beginning, this was quite a surprise…

Shepherd has written an atmospheric and thrilling novel, which invokes the spirit of Dickens, but in a very modern way. If I was going to complain about anything, it would be that the occasional comments from the omniscient narrator which looked back at the Victorian period from a modern view-point are annoying and unnecessary, pulling the reader out of the grim, smoky atmosphere just as they are getting used to it. Despite this irritation however, I found Tom-All-Alone’s a fascinating look at Dickensian London, as well as an intriguing murder mystery.

4/5

This book was provided as a review copy, but I was not paid for my review, and the views expressed are mine. 

The Murder Wall by Mari Hannah

Mari Hannah is a writer from the North-East whose first book, The Murder Wall, was released in paperback last week. She was signing copies signing copies in Newcastle, so I sent Mr. Mouse along to get me a copy. Set in Newcastle, Hannah’s début is a taut police procedural, centred around the complicated D.C.I. Kate Daniels and her team.

When Daniels visits her local church to light a candle for her recently deceased mother and discovers the victims of a double murder, she vows to catch the killer, no matter how long it takes. 11 months later and the investigation has ground to a halt, leaving Daniels feeling like a failure, whilst still haunted by what she saw in St. Camillus. When she is made the Senior Investigating Officer for a shooting on the Quayside, she jumps at the chance, hoping that she can make amends for the lack of closure in the previous case. However, the case doesn’t get off to the best start when she fails to disclose that she knows the victim, Alan Stephens, and it quickly gets more and more complicated for Daniels.

Much of the narrative focuses on Daniels, and thankfully she is a great character. She’s clever, brilliant at her job but also, crucially, she is far from perfect. Her private life is a mess, the Assistant Chief Commissioner hates her and, as a result of the St. Camillus murders, she is increasingly prone to ignoring protocol and working by herself. Her team is also peopled with properly fleshed-out characters, especially her favourite sergeant, Hank Gormley. Like his boss, his home life is falling apart due to the hours he gives to his job so he stays at work longer, in a vicious circle that has been seen many times in detectives before. Daniels’ immediate boss, Chief Superintendent Bright, is also a character who has been allowed a fair amount of ‘screen time’ throughout the novel. He is Daniels’ mentor and has always supported her decisions, but this case might be the one to tear them apart, as he resents her relationship with another member of the team.

Alternated with the narrative following Daniels and her team is another which focuses on the killer. The contrast between the two is well-drawn, and Hannah has a truly hideous creation in the vicious and sadistic villain. His motivations are slowly revealed as the story goes on, with information being drip-fed to the reader until the police work out who it is, when the pace suddenly accelerates towards the climax of the novel.

Hannah has a background in scriptwriting, and it shows. The chapters are short and snappy, keeping the story moving, and allowing the narrative to jump between characters without losing momentum. My only real criticism is that there are occasionally unnecessary repetitions of information; for example, I’m not convinced that we need to be told quite so many times that Bright is drinking too much, or that Daniels  has ruined her relationship with her lover. However, this is a tiny negative in an otherwise neat example of a police procedural.

3.5/5

More pretty books

(photo from Virago’s tweet)

Twitter is good for many things. Many people would say that one of their favourite things about it are the stupidly cute pictures of animals that people tweet, but I prefer the ridiculously pretty book pictures (ok, I love the sloths too). These beauties are the latest Virago Modern Classics Designer titles, designed by Neisha Crosland, and are just gorgeous. Following on from the publication of My Cousin Rachel that I featured last year, Virago have chosen three more Daphne du Maurier favourites: Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and Frenchman’s Creek. Obviously I’m excited about the lovely new Rebecca, but I think that Jamaica Inn might be the prettiest, which is handy as it’s one of my favourite Du Maurier novels.

The books will be out in May 2012, and will be £12.99.