Book #88 The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher

The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher by Ahn Do-hyun
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A gentle, heartfelt fable for our time. Ahn Do-hyun is a multi-million copy bestselling, award-winning Korean poet. Told through the eyes and the heart of Silver Salmon as a shoal cross the great ocean towards their spawning grounds on the Green River, facing the dangers of humankind, not just from net fishing and fish eagles but the pollution of river water caused by man. He falls in love with a female: ”My name is Clear-Eyed Salmon”. The salmon will swim upstream to the place of their birth to spawn, and then to die. A tale about aching and ardent love as Silver Salmon and Clear-Eyed Salmon pursue their dream, to swim upstream, to leap high over rapids, to continue the existence of their species.

To those who believe hope and love still exist in this world - this book is for you.

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Book #87 Murder on Christmas Eve

Murder on Christmas Eve: Classic Mysteries for the Festive Season by Cecily Gayford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perfect for this time of year. Ten stories edited by Cecily Gayford, not all include a murder I should add. My favourites are The Trinity Cat by Ellis Peters, about a cat that knows who killed its owner (perfect for any cat lover!), A Wife in a Million by Val McDermid, a rather chilling story told in just sixteen pages, As Dark as Christmas Gets by Lawrence Block, masterful tale about a missing manuscript told in forty pages and No Sanity Clause by Ian Rankin.

This collection of tales probably would not have the same impact if read at any other time of year. They all feature Christmas Eve. Perhaps get yourself a copy for Christmas 2018, then….

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Book #86 The Hazel Wood

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This has confirmed that I should be more circumspect in the ARCs I accept to read. The Hazel Wood was not for me. Unfathomable, well almost. Is this a dark fairy story, a story within a fairy story, is it supernatural, is it ”an unfathomable vastness, like lentils scattered through ashes”?

I can say it’s about seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother Ella, spending life on the road, no permanent abode, habitually having to avoid bad luck - until Ella is taken - to the Hazel Wood, the Hinterland? The abode of Alice’s recently deceased grandmother, author of supernatural fairy stories, Tales from The Hinterland. Her mother leaves behind a message for Alice: Stay away from the Hazel Wood. But, like a magnet, the Hazel Wood pulls Alice into a nightmare world of dark characters and monsters, stories within stories, as Alice seeks her mother. It’s all rather bewildering.

One character says to Alice: ”The quickest way to end this is to begin it, and that’s no way to start, is it?” Well, I rather wish I hadn’t. I struggled to finish The Hazel Wood, almost abandoned it, several times. Not my cup of tea at all.

I must still thank NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read this ARC.

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Book #85 The Woman In The Window

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

With thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for this ARC of The Woman In The Window.

I had heard so much about this book by A.J. Finn; so much praise from highly regarded authors including Stephen King ”unputdownable”, Val McDermid ”twisted to the power of max” - such comments I often ignore. How wrong can I be?! WOW!…

Without a moments hesitation let me say that The Woman In The Window is a read-in-one-sitting-book. No doubt. I know. Half way through I was faced with the distraction of meeting good friends for drinks and dinner. That’s the evening gone I thought. I almost cancelled, to my shame. I didn’t. My wife and I got back home at 10:30pm. I picked up where I left off and read into the early hours. (I still count this as a one-sitting-read. It would have been if an evening out hadn’t interrupted). I could not read fast enough! Page turning in a blur. Pulse racing. Short chapters racking up the unbearable tension. The first reveal, when it comes, smacks you in the face! Everything you thought you knew turned on its head… as Dr Anna Fox haunts the rooms of her old New York house that she hasn’t left for ten months, suffering with agoraphobia. And for understandable reasons. Separated from her husband and daughter, a separation that is heartbreaking. Anna is just too terrified to step outside. Uses her Nikon camera watching her neighbours, through her window, particularly the Russells, on the face of it a happy family of three and a reminder of what once was hers. And then…

The scream. It hurtles across the silence and Anna witnesses something - dreadful. What to do? Does she report what she has seen? Given her state of mind will anyone, including the police, believe her? Can she uncover the truth? Can she believe herself?

Haunting, harrowing, creepy, frightening - the last sixty pages or so are a real white-knuckle ride, really left me stunned and breathless. As Ruth Ware said: ”Hitchcock would have snapped up the rights in a heartbeat”. There is no doubt about that!

My thriller of the year…


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Book #84 The Heart's Invisible Furies

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK Transworld for my ebook copy of The Heart’s Invisible Furies.

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne is the best book I have read this year, one of my all time best, featuring alongside Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks and An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. It is that good. A novel that spans seven decades, a tapestry of social and political events in post-war Ireland. A tale of one man seeking happiness, looking for his true self in a country beset by the Catholic church, moral hypocrisy and sexual repression. One man - Cyril Avery.

Who is Cyril Avery? Adopted at birth in 1945 by Charles and Maude Avery his adoptive parents who persist in telling him he is not a real Avery and never will be. Despite this he is well looked after and cared for by the wealthy Averys. He was born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community. Cyril has no idea who his birth mother is. Cyril will spend a lifetime seeking an identity, a journey that will take him to many countries over his three score years and ten when happenstance will feature so often. The reader knows what Cyril doesn’t. Throughout, this results in passages of belly-laughing hilarity and heartbreaking moments that reduced me to tears.

This is the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. It has made me laugh out loud and well up with tears, often on the same page. it reminds us of the redemptive power of the human spirit. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a joy to read, a treasure, near six hundred pages of perfection.

I loved this book and have been fortunate enough to obtain the hardback edition signed by the author. A wonderful keepsake.


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Book #83 A Maigret Christmas

A Maigret Christmas by Georges Simenon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received with thanks a pdf for Kindle from NetGalley, which should contain three stories. For some inexplicable reason the file I opened contained only the first story - A Maigret Christmas - that I am happy to review as I enjoyed it so much. Just a pity that I did not get to read the other two.

”It wasn’t snowing. It was ridiculous for a man of more than fifty to go on being disappointed that there was no snow on Christmas morning…” Maigret and his wife are spending a quiet Christmas at their apartment in Paris, in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. Christmas morning they exchange presents: “A pipe for him as usual. For her, the latest model of a brand of electric coffee-maker which she had wanted plus, to remain true to tradition, a dozen finely embroidered handkerchiefs.” A cosy start to Christmas day - what could possibly go wrong. Georges Simenon was a master at creating an intriguing plot from everyday occurrences.

Maigret is rather taken aback when two women, who live in an apartment across the boulevard, come calling - on Christmas morning. Mademoiselle Doncoeur and Madame Martin are perplexed. Martin is looking after her niece, Colette (since Colette’s mother died). Colette told M Martin that she saw Father Christmas in her bedroom, in the early morning hours, looking in a hole in the floor. Put a finger over his mouth and “Sshhh” before leaving. The two women have no idea who he might have been but are nonetheless - concerned…

How do you take such a minor, albeit intriguing, event and create a tale of thrilling complexity? Simenon knew how. He did it with A Maigret Christmas. How the storyline unravels is mystery writing at its best - a delight to read.

I loved it.

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Book #82 A Map of The Dark

A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton, Mulholland Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Is this the first in a new series perhaps? It bears all the hallmarks and the notes do say a thrilling new FBI series…

A Map of The Dark introduces FBI agent Elsa Myers. An agent with a troubled past, a past riven by physical abuse from her mother. Elsa specialises in finding people. Detective Lex Cole asks specifically for Elsa to help find a missing seventeen-year-old girl. He knows of her reputation. Their investigation indicates the work of a ‘repeater’; other girls are known to have gone missing.

This is a slow starter; indeed the first seventeen chapters or so look back on Elsa’s early years and that of her sister - an abusive mother and a hapless father, Roy. The mother is now dead and Roy is dying from cancer. Perhaps rather too much of the story is spent on providing this background. (A protagonist with a similar past to that of DI Helen Grace…) But then, Chapter eighteen onward and suddenly the brakes are off…

A Map of The Dark becomes a helter-skelter ride, the chapters shorten, the pace quickens - often no time to catch ones breath. The plot becomes dark and disturbing as the investigating team race to find the missing girls before it’s too late.

And there is a twist in the tale that is not entirely unforeseen but completes a darned good thriller.


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Book #81 The Crow Road

The Crow Road by Iain Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this free e-book of the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Crow Road.

Prior to this I had read just one book by Iain Banks - Raw Spirit, In Search of the Perfect Dram. The Crow Road is a revelation, first published in 1992 and contemporaneous with that time. A great panoply of a story, a lengthy tale, a huge canvas covering the trials and tribulations of the McHoan family, narrated for the most part by Prentice McHoan, who has returned to the bosom of his Scottish family in Gallanach.

”It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B Minor…” A riveting start to a story, indeed!

Warm, funny, enchanting, poignant - the scope of The Crow Road is complex, telling the tale of the McHoan family - past present and future. A tale of unrequited love, a man preoccupied with death, sex, drink, God and illegal substances. There are passages that had me shaking with laughter; stuck in the mind, had me laughing out loud hours after reading them. Yes, it’s that good! With a satisfying mystery that Prentice is determined to solve, with unexpected consequences.

Bearing in mind that The Crow Road was published twenty-five years ago it still reads as a contemporary tale, although any background events take place in the 80s and 90s.

The Crow Road is considered by many to be Banks’ finest novel.

I loved it.


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