Book #22 Burial Rites

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Burial Rites is a haunting novel, set in Iceland, and based on real events. Agnes Magnúsdóttir was the last woman to be executed in Iceland, along with Fridrik Sigurdsson, in January 1830, for the murders of Natan Ketilsson and Pétur Jónsson. Hannah Kent has spun her own take on the events that led to the convictions, based on a great deal of research and historical documents and has created an intriguing story. Agnes’s story. I recall the harsh landscape that forms the novel’s background, having visited Iceland several times myself.

There are those who have interpreted events differently. There is much speculation here. But in writing this book from the viewpoint of Agnes, Kent has composed a heartbreaking story. There is no redemption, no forgiveness. The evidence of Agnes’s guilt is compelling. But there is room for compassion from the family forced to take her in, as she awaits her execution date, and the priest tasked with absolving her and offering comfort in her desolation. We know Agnes’s fate from the beginning, but her story is utterly compelling. The final pages are heartrending.

In some respects Burial Rites reminded me of Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekbäck. Both are Scandinavian crime stories told with great creativity.

I recommend Burial Rites without reservation.


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Book #21 Corpus

Corpus by Rory Clements
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Corpus crackles with derring-do, constitutional crisis, conspiracy, Cambridge and a maverick history professor, in a rollocking tale set in 1936, peppered with Bolsheviks, British Communists, Fascists, Blackshirts and Falangists in a potpourri of skulduggery that reminded me of the exploits of Dick Barton (unless you are of a certain age you might have to Google him!) with a whiff of Richard Hannay (although he populated an earlier era).

It’s 1936 and Europe is in turmoil. King Edward VIII wants to marry a divorcee, Wallace Simpson but the machiavellian Stanley Baldwin is having none of it. He is insisting that Edward abdicates to make way for his brother, Albert. There are supporters for the king, who see nothing wrong with his nuptial intentions and those led by the prime minister, who view this as completely unacceptable. Meanwhile, the Nazis have marched into the Rhineland, Stalin continues his murderous campaign in Russia and Spain has erupted in Civil War.

What then of two English women who attend the Olympic Games in Berlin? One of them has a clandestine meeting with a Jewish scientist. Weeks later she is found dead in her Cambridge bedroom, a silver syringe clutched in her fingers. Following the horrific murders of a renowned member of the county set and his wife, our protagonist, Professor Thomas Wilde - a history master at Cambridge University - finds himself unwittingly dragged into a world of espionage. Are these deaths linked? Why does Wilde become involved? What does this have to do with the scandal surrounding the king and his mistress? Who is Lydia and what is her rôle in a conspiracy that could rock the nation?

Rory Clements cleverly intertwines actual historical events within a fictional plot that seethes with tension and suspense. Historical fiction, based on factual events, at its best. And Dick Barton would have made a great sidekick for Thomas Wilde….


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Book #20 My Name Is Lucy Barton

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 and bestowed with numerous critical appraisals, My Name Is Lucy Barton deserves to be read in one sitting. Owing to other commitments it has taken me four days and that has detracted from its appeal. It handles the nuances of human relationships with great skill; Lucy's relationship with her mother who visits her for the first time in six years whilst Lucy recovers from an operation in a New York hospital. The conversations between mother and daughter result inevitably in Lucy recalling a troubled rural childhood, a frail marriage, her children - a re-evaluation of times lost. The memories reveal a longing for better things to come, a forensic examination of her family relationships.

It is a tender story told with Strout's sympathetic approach to life. It is worthy, as I have said, to be read in one sitting.

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Book #19 Sirens

Sirens by Joseph Knox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

More noir than a bucket of tar. Although perhaps the protagonist does not quite fit the noir bill. Detective Constable Aidan Waits is a disgraced officer working in the sleazy drug world of Manchester. He is coerced into running a sting operation by his Superintendent, against a local drug lord. Nothing is as it seems though when he is summoned to the penthouse home of David Rossiter MP, a manipulative man with powerful friends. His daughter Isabelle has run away again. Waits is to find her but not bring her home? Waits' investigation takes him into the nocturnal, Mancunian world of drug dealers, users, prostitutes, BDSM and all things perverse.

In retracing Isabelle's steps he finds an intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who is scared to death of something. And how is her predicament linked to the unsolved disappearance of a young woman just like her? All along, Waits struggles with his own redemption. He is a user - cocaine, uppers, downers - more often than not he doesn't know whether he is 'up' or 'down'. How can this troubled junior detective come out of this alive as he is stalked by an unseen killer.... Is there a common denominator that links all of these events?

This first novel from Joseph Knox is a tough read, not for the squeamish. It is dark and brutal and utterly compelling.

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Book #18 The Girl From Venice

The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ever since reading Gorky Park so many years ago I have been a fan of Martin Cruz Smith. So many thrillers; so much enjoyment. Smith is a master of his craft with a supreme gift for characterisation. The Girl From Venice rather took me by surprise. That same element of suspense but wrapped up in a love story set in Venice as World War II reaches a cataclysmic end for Italy. This is a powerful story encompassing the final days of the Wehrmacht SS, the Blackshirt fascists, the partisans - all jostling for position in the face of the final advance made by American military forces through northern Italy. The war is waning but Venice is still occupied.

Cenzo is a fisherman; whilst out on his boat Fatima he comes across a young woman's body floating in Venice lagoon. She is still alive. Giulia is a beautiful Jewish girl on the run from the Nazis. What will Cenzo do? Hand her over or try and protect her from certain execution from the dregs of the Wehrmacht SS who haunt the lagoon in their gunboats, hell bent on continuing their extermination of Jews. Cenzo's spontaneous act of kindness leads him and Giulia into a world of partisans, random executions, the mad Mussolini and broken promises, not the least from his own brother, Giorgio.

For me, this is a literary masterpiece; full of suspense against the backdrop of the final days of the war, set in the beauty and mystery of occupied Venice and the dark nature of the lagoon. Pitch perfect prose and great characterisation. An authentic story, full of atmosphere and persons I felt genuinely concerned about.

I loved it.



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Book #17 Dear Amy

Dear Amy by Helen Callaghan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recent publications are peppered with psychological thrillers, a favourite genre of mine. I spotted Dear Amy in Waterstones; it sounded good and had many positive reviews and so I bought a copy of this debut thriller by Helen Callaghan. For the most part I am not difficult to please but for some reason Dear Amy did not resonate with me. It is well written and Callaghan has clearly done her homework concerning psychosis, PTSD, fugues, etc. much of which forms the background to the plot.

The key protagonist is Margot Lewis, agony aunt of the 'Dear Amy' advice column in the local Cambridge press. She becomes dismayed when receiving a letter purporting to be from Bethan Avery, who went missing as a young girl some twenty years ago. The letter must be a hoax? Further letters arrive, which happen to follow the disappearance of another teenager, Katie Browne. Lewis is convinced that the girls' disappearances are connected. Unlike the police she becomes consumed with finding the sender.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, yes and no for me. Whilst the plot is full of twists and turns there were many occasions when I just became irritated with Margot and the dreamscapes she experiences, which do provide clues to her real identity, although at times I found myself muttering "do get on with it" and, indeed, the last 50 pages or so do rack up the tension.

Thinking of other psychological thrillers I have read recently Dear Amy gets 3.5 stars from me.



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Book #16 Faversham Through Time

Faversham Through Time by Robert Turcan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My wife and I spent an enjoyable mid-week break last week at The Sun Inn, Faversham, a town in Kent just four miles from my birthplace. Faversham Through Time is a delightful social history of this charming, medieval town. King Stephen and his wife Matilda put Faversham on the map with the construction of a massive abbey, a building larger than Rochester Cathedral and for a brief time the town was the capital of England. The abbey suffered the same fate as so many during the period of the dissolution of monasteries.

Faversham is recognised as having been the cradle of the gunpowder industry. Explosives from the town's factories were used at Trafalgar and Waterloo. Today, Faversham is famed for its brewery industry. Britain's oldest brewery, Shepherd Neame, has its headquarters here and hops are still farmed locally.

Faversham retains its old-world pace of life and communal strength. Looking at photographs in the book with comparisons taken around 100 years ago with present day, it is evident that little has changed over the last century or so. I like that. Faversham is a beautiful place and this book is an exemplary record of the town and the persons who helped to make it what it is.

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