ramblingmads

What kind of person knows they may kill before the day is out?

Kate Arden must soon find out.

It’s London, 1999. A family tragedy breaks her heart and forces her into a new job with an elite police unit called SO19.

SO19 is all speed, power and adrenaline. There are fast cars, serious weaponry, unpredictable threats. It’s disciplined, aggressive, and highly addictive, a very long way from regular policing.

Kate is one of a tight team of firearms specialists. Their job is to protect the people from those who would steal, kill and destroy.

Including one ex-marine sniper with a grudge …

Fast-paced, gritty, and very human, The Snake looks at both sides of the ancient question – what is evil?

Philip Gladwin is a novelist, screenwriter, development executive and educator, with long experience of many different genres across TV, film and radio.

Philip has over 60 TV broadcast credits in both primetime and children’s drama. He has developed for many long running TV series, and has been commissioned to write scripts by people like Lynda La Plante, Russell T. Davies and Tony Garnett.

He is also strong at series construction, having worked on many bibles and series story documents, and has helped to create seasons of some of the UK’s most loved shows, including Casualty, New Tricks, Grange Hill, Holby City and The Bill.

The series of The Dumping Ground on which he was series script editor received two BAFTA nominations, including best Childrens’ Drama, and won a Writers Guild Award.

My thoughts: I found this a fascinating read, offering two contrasting characters, Kate, a police officer, who after the death of her sister joins SO19, the firearms unit, and tries to seek solace in her work. She’s also always looking for the man who shot her sister, wanting revenge.

And the sniper Chris, formerly a Marine, now following the orders of a voice in his head. A voice he believes to be that of a snake that bit him on his last official mission. As his grip on sanity lessens, he becomes increasingly dangerous and the police are searching for him.

Both characters are dangerous, but in different ways, Kate is tightly wound and grateful every time she doesn’t have to pull the trigger. She takes risks and pushes back against her brother-in-law who is now her teammate and constant companion in work.

Chris reacts with aggression and violence to any provocation – the neighbour’s yappy dog, his aunt’s attempts to help him, as well as the victims his inner monster demands from him. He might appear to be functioning but inside he’s barely alive.

As the two head towards the final showdown in a run down estate in Harlesden, can either of them contain their darkness enough to survive? 

Intriguing and strangely beguiling, this is an unusual and powerful read. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Fallowfield is a story for our times: an exploration of how the past remains actively alive in the present and of memory’s slippery grip on reality. 

The novel’s damaged heroine, journalist Rowan Woodhouse, has always known Fallowfield Hall as the fabled backdrop to her parent’s youthful love-story. Now, mourning the loss of her artist-teacher father, she hopes a research project to celebrate the college’s half-centenary will reveal more about his life and work, and bring a deeper understanding of her enigmatic mother, who died tragically young.

Tracking down college alumni and tutors to interview, Rowan soon discovers that Fallowfield wasn’t the idyll of student hedonism and picnics on the famed daffodil lawns that it seemed. Jealousies, betrayals and rivalries emerge when she learns of the mysterious death of one young woman and the unsolved disappearance of another. As past and present become dangerously intertwined, her own contemporary world and circumstances are impacted more than she could have imagined.    

Perfect for fans of commercial fiction with ‘amateur sleuth’ female heroines, this thrilling story has a literary quality and elements that will also appeal to readers of historical fiction and dark academia, as well as those with a passion for art and design. Fans of Donna Tartt, Barbara Vine and B.A. Shapiro may also find much to enjoy in Nicole Swengley’s books.

Nicole Swengley is a highly-regarded and experienced journalist who has written about art and design for titles such as The Times, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, London Evening Standard, Wall Street Journal and many others. A past student of the Faber Academy, Nicole has written non-fiction books for Collins and Adlard Coles and has had several short stories published in magazines and anthologies. Her debut novel, The Portrait Girl, was published by Breakthrough Books in 2024. Fallowfield is her second full-length work of fiction. 

My thoughts: Asked to gather a few anecdotes from former staff and students for Fallowfield art school’s anniversary celebrations, journalist Rowan finds herself investigating the death of a young woman in the 1970s. Her own parents were at the college then, her mother was a student and her father student turned tutor. 

As she interviews the people who were there, she becomes concerned that her father, now deceased, might have been involved in the death of Zizi, who had modelled for some of his paintings. But she’d always been told that he had been madly in love with Annie, her mother, from the moment they met, so why would he have been involved with another woman? 

Struggling to find the truth in amongst the half remembered past, and one person’s outright lies, Rowan questions everything she knows about her father. But the truth is much sadder and more disturbing than she expected. 

A fascinating and interesting read, I liked Rowan, it must be hard not really knowing your parents because they never talked about the past, my mum has told me all sorts of stories from her life, my dad’s a bit less forthcoming, or just has fewer stories. Rowan’s mother died when she was five, and in his grief, her dad, Nick, just never really said much.

But the former students, some of whom were friends with Annie, help her piece together the events and give her their memories of her mum, filling in some of the blanks. I really enjoyed this mix of mystery and memory.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.