Book #32 Snap

Snap by Belinda Bauer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Mesmerising, in the true sense of the word. Belinda Bauer is a master at creating the perfect crime novel. She often focuses on a child and how trauma affects them. Jack and his siblings, Joy and Merry. Left alone in a broken down car on a motorway as their mother seeks help, looking for a motorway 'phone. She never returns.... Move forward three years. Seemingly unrelated events form threads in the plot. Inexorably they develop and intertwine. The pace of the first few chapters was hypnotic. Think of the soundtrack to "Jaws" - staccato rhythm. Had me holding my breath. It is difficult to say more without spoiling the plot for future readers. I will say that SNAP goes to the top of my Best Reads of 2018. A stunning crime novel.

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld publishers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Book #31 The Brighton Mermaid

The Brighton Mermaid by Dorothy Koomson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for the opportunity to read this ARC.

A tangled, intriguing web spread across twenty-five years in my home city of Brighton and Hove. The setting is realistic, the locations are authentic. I know them all - not so much the beach where teenagers Nell and Jude stumble across the body of a young woman at the waterline. It is 1993. She has an intricate tattoo of a mermaid, the only distinguishing feature, and inevitably becomes know as the Brighton mermaid. Three weeks later Jude disappears. The crime is not solved and Jude is never found. Wind on 25 years and Nell is obsessed with solving the identity of the Brighton mermaid and finding her friend, Jude.

Nell has saved enough to take a year off work in order to carry on her investigation using genealogy and DNA profiling to try and find a familial link. Her sister suffers with OCD, for reasons that become apparent in the plot, and is constantly irritated with Nell's determination to seek a solution to the 25 year old mystery. It puts them in harms way. Someone doesn't want the truth to be revealed....

Other characters are drawn into a plot that spools backwards and forwards through the timeline. A slow burner that picks up pace and leads to a breathtaking climax.

Well worth a read.

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Book #30 The Murder List

The Murder List by Chris Merritt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This thriller has it all! DI Zac Boateng is attached to Lewisham MIT. Has a good team around him. Five years after the random shooting of his young daughter Zac still seeks revenge. Revenge or justice?

The team have to investigate the brutal killing of a pawnbroker; find a ruthless perpetrator. What motive was behind this killing? How threads intertwine here!

It's a slow starter but as the pace gathers and other killings occur Zac finds himself inexorably getting closer to the devastating truth about his daughter. Will he cross the line? Will his anger be all consuming? How do his wife and son cope with Zac's mood swings?

A helter-skelter, breathtaking, pulse-racing read with plenty of sub-plots with much of the narrative seen through the eyes of the killer. Great stuff!

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Book #29 Incidents in the Rue Laugier

Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another journey into the human psyche. Anita Brookner was a master at making the reader interested in her characters. I found myself totally immersed in the story of Maud, a young French woman, and Edward Harrison, a stoic Englishman and his irresponsible and capricious friend David Tyler. Tyler and Harrison are in Paris when they are invited to spend a long weekend at the home of Maud's aunt, Germaine along with Nadine, Maud's mother. What occurs will have an impact on the rest of their lives. Maud and Edward eventually marry, a marriage of convenience. But the shadow of Tyler is always evident.

The story is told through the eyes of Mary Françoise, a daughter born late in marriage to the hapless couple. She finds her mother's notebook with just one entry....

A tale of inadequacy, disappointment and loss that is beautifully structured. Brookner's observations are perfect when writing about relationships. I enjoyed Incidents in the Rue Laugier.

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Book #28 A Start in Life

A Start in Life by Anita Brookner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Anita Brookner's debut novel first published in 1981. This paperback edition reissued in 2016 by Penguin Random House as part of a series in perfect understated livery.

"Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature." A captivating first line... She is studying the heroines of Balzac in order to discover where her own childhood and adult life has gone awry. She is seeking enlightenment. I have a weak-spot for any book that uses Paris as a location although Weiss' Parisian love affairs were doomed from the start.

Brookner's novels explore themes of emotional loss. (She was once labeled "the mistress of gloom"). But beyond this tag her writing is exquisite and A Start in Life is a beautiful, sophisticated work endowed with many moments of gentle comedy. And it should not be overlooked that Brookner won the Booker Prize in 1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac (which I have read). Her talent for excellent prose is evident with A Start in Life.

I suppose that Brookner is (was - she died in 2016) an acquired taste. Well, I enjoy her writing and I can anticipate reading another twenty-two novels that she wrote after a distinguished career as an art historian. I might even try some Balzac....

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Book #27 Time is a Killer

Time Is a Killer by Michel Bussi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My thanks to the Orion Publishing Group and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC of Time is a Killer.

I have previously read After The Crash and Black Water Lilies by Michel Bussi (both excellent) so I had some idea of what to expect with this new book. So I thought. But Michel Bussi just gets better. He has an extraordinary ability to intrigue. Time is a Killer presents a broad tapestry of the Idrissi Corsican family. A catastrophic car crash in the summer of 1989 leaves three members of a family dead; only the daughter Clotilde survives. Wind on twenty-seven years. Clotilde (Clo) returns with her husband Frank and teenage daughter Valentine. Clo wants to exorcise the past and build bridges with her errant daughter. They visit the ravine where the crash occurred.

”It was here, Valentine. It was here that your Grandpa and Grandma died. And your Uncle Nicholas as well…". Frank and Valentine appear disinterested.

In 1989 Clotilde kept a journal of events that summer. It remained lost for twenty-seven years. Or so she thought. Someone is reading it. Could it contain clues to what really happened? And then Clotilde receives a letter, in her mother’s unmistakeable handwriting. As if she were still alive…

Bussi moves smoothly from events in 1989 to present day. Fragments of memory return to Clotilde. But how can her mother be alive? The tension and menace builds, page after page. The pace is relentless as further clues surface. The reveal is breathtaking.

The Corsican characters are totally believable, some hide behind omertà, the code of honour that places importance on silence and non-cooperation with authorities. What is there to hide?

Michel Bussi has written another compelling and stunning read with a truly shocking ending. Certainly a candidate for my Best Read of 2018.

Praise must also go to Shaun Whiteside for the brilliant translation from the original French.

Highly recommended.

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Book #26 A Swollen Red Sun

A Swollen Red Sun by Matthew McBride
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I cannot remember another occasion when I have read a book based on the recommendation of another fictional character! A Swollen Red Sun according to Jack Taylor is in his top ten. I suppose I should thank Ken Bruen...

I enjoy a good thriller but perhaps not so brutal as this. The author, Matthew McBride, lives in rural Missouri. He knows the people of Gasconade County. Well, I trust he doesn't know any of the lowlives that feature here. Meth freaks, dirty cops, the fearsome Reverend Butch Pogue. Deputy Sheriff Dale Banks discovers $52,000 hidden in the broken-down trailer that Jerry Dean Skaggs uses for cooking crystal. Shades of Breaking Bad here. Banks takes the money and sets in motion a spiral of violence and revenge killings. He thinks he took the money for all the right reasons. But there is a consequence. Jerry Dean cannot afford to lose that money - he owes it to his partners....

A desperate tale of corruption, drugs and morality that contains a great deal of gratuitous thuggery.

Not sure I quite agree with you, Jack!

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