Month: Nov 2020

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Heat – Sean O’Leary*

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Jake is a loner who works nights in a Darwin motel and lives at the YMCA. He’s in love with Angel, a Thai prostitute who works out of the low-rent Shark Motel.

A vicious murder turns Jake’s life into a nightmare. He must fight for his life on the heat-soaked streets of Darwin and Bangkok in the wet season to get revenge, and to get his life back.

Australian Bookseller

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Sean O’Leary has published two short story collections, ‘My Town’ and ‘Walking’. His novella ‘Drifting’ was the winner of the ‘Great Novella Search 2016’ and published in September 2017. He has published over thirty individual short stories and is a regular contributor of short fiction to Quadrant, FourW, Sudo, Close to the Bone (UK) and other literary and crime magazines. His crime novella ‘The Heat’, set in Darwin and Bangkok, was published in August 2019. Drifting and The Heat are both available on Amazon. His interviews with crime writers appear online in Crime Time magazine.

He has worked in a variety of jobs including motel receptionist, rubbish removalist/tree lopper, farm hand, short-order cook and night manager in various hotels in Sydney’s notorious, Kings Cross. He has lived in: Melbourne; Naracoorte; Sydney; Adelaide; Perth; Fremantle; Norseman; Geraldton; Carnarvon; Broome; Yulara; Alice Springs; Kakadu; Darwin and on Elcho Island-Galiwinku. He now lives in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, thinks that test cricket is the greatest game of all and supports Melbourne Football Club (a life sentence). He writes every day, likes travelling and tries to walk everywhere.

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My thoughts:

This was interesting and more complex than it first appeared. Jake drifts through his life, working in a cheap hotel and spending his down time smoking weed and hanging out with his Thai girlfriend, who works as a prostitute, sending money back home to her mother and daughter.

When she’s killed, the police seem completely disinterested in solving the crime, leaving Jake to not only find a killer but also take her savings back to her family in Thailand.

However Angel’s killer wants that money too, and he will do whatever he can to get it from Jake.

As Jake tried valiantly to do the right thing by Angel, he is thrown by a sudden friendship and must also deal with reconnecting with his mother, now herself living in Bangkok.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Turncoat – Anthony J Quinn*

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The sole survivor of a murderous ambush, a Belfast police detective is forced into a desperate search for a mysterious informer that takes him to a holy islandon Lough Derg, a place shrouded in strange mists and hazy rain, where nothing is as it first appears to be.

A keeper of secrets and a purveyor of lies, the detective finds himself surrounded by enemies disguised as pilgrims, and is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the purgatorial island, where he is forced to confront a series of disturbing secrets and ghosts in his own life.

Haunting and unsettling, Turncoat probes the legacy of the Troubles, the loss of collective memories and the moral consequences for the individual.

It is a story of guilt, survival and the terrible price of self-knowledge, told through the voice of a detective with a double life. Descending into paranoia, he uncovers a sinister panorama of cover-ups and conspiracies.

The closer he edges to the truth, the deeper he is drawn into the currents of power, violence and guilt engulfing his country…

Anthony J Quinn’s nine novels have received critical acclaim from The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Financial Times, The Daily Mail, TheDaily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Express, The Sunday Herald,The Literary Review, The Good Book Guide, The Sydney Morning Herald, Books Ireland, Der Spiegel, The Irish Times, the Irish Independent and other newspapers.

His debut Disappeared was picked as one of the Best Books of the Year by theSunday Times and was a Daily Mail Crime Novel of the Year. It was shortlisted by thebook critics of the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the San Francisco Chroniclefor a Strand Literary Award in the US. It was also selected as one of the top ten thrillers of 2012 by Kirkus Reviews and long listed for the Theakstons Crime Novel ofthe Year.

He teaches creative writing at Queen’s University Belfast and is currently writer-in-residence for County Cavan in Ireland.

My thoughts:

Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, following a police detective, who as the sole survivor of a shootout becomes the focus of suspicion and investigation.

Hiding out on an island sacred to pilgrims, he wrestles with his conscience and the events that led him to this point. His fear and paranoia have him believing that many of the pilgrims are spying on him for various factions.

This is a fascinating and involving book, exploring ideas of collective guilt, memory and conspiracy in those supposed to serve and protect the people.

You’re drawn into the web of secrets and lies within the agencies watching as well as the claustrophobic atmosphere of the holy Isle, where pilgrims walk the stations of the cross in prayer all day long, barefoot and fasting.

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

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Small Press Celebration: Inkandescent

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Inkandescent is a small press based in Dalston, East London and the very first independent publisher being celebrated here at ranblingmads.com

Founders Justin and Nathan
Inkandescent was founded in 2016 by Justin David and Nathan Evans to champion ideas and voices underrepresented in mainstream publishing. Threads, their first publication (and collaboration) was funded by Arts Council England and long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize, of which their second publication AutoFellatio by James Maker was the inaugural winner. The Guardian described their third publication The Pale Ones by Bartholomew Bennett as an ‘impressive debut’.

Justin David is their publisher; he’s also a writer and photographer. A child of Wolverhampton, he now lives and worked in London, graduated from the MA Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths, has read for Polari Literary Salon at Royal Festival Hall and was a founder member of Leather Lane Writers with Kit de Waal. His novella The Pharmacist is published by Inkandescent.

Nathan Evans is their editor; he’s also a writer, director and performer whose work has been funded by the Arts Council, toured with the British Council, archived in the British Film Institute, broadcast on Channel Four and presented at venues including Royal Court Theatre, Royal Festival Hall and Royal Vauxhall Tavern. His collection CNUT is published by Inkandescent.

Championing underrepresented writers from LGBTQ+, BAME, working class and financially disadvantaged backgrounds and bringing new diverse voices to the readership.

They’ve got some really interesting new books coming out soon that you should check out!

Twenty-four-year-old Billy is beautiful and sexy. Albert—The Pharmacist—is a compelling but damaged older man, and a veteran of London’s late ’90s club scene. After a chance meeting in the heart of the London’s East End, Billy is seduced into the sphere of Albert. An unconventional friendship develops, fuelled by Albert’s queer narratives and an endless supply of narcotics. Alive with the twilight times between day and night, consciousness and unconsciousness, the foundations of Billy’s life begin to irrevocably shift and crack, as he fast-tracks toward manhood. This story of lust, love and loss is homoerotic bildungsroman at its finest.

Forthcoming anthology of stories from the edges, MAINSTREAM, will be released in the summer of 2021 and is available for pre-order now on partner website, UNBOUND.
(I’m a backer!)

Mainstream brings thirty authors in from the margins to occupy centre-page. Queer storytellers. Working class wordsmiths. Chroniclers of colour. Writers whose life experiences give unique perspectives on universal challenges, whose voices must be heard. And read.

The collection places emerging writers alongside some of our favourite established authors. Contributors are Aisha Phoenix, Alex Hopkins, Chris Simpson, DJ Connell, Elizabeth Baines, Gaylene Gould, Giselle Leeb, Golnoosh Nour, Hedy Hume, Iqbal Hussain, James Maker, Jonathan Kemp, Julia Bell, Juliet Jacques, Justin David, Kathy Hoyle, Keith Jarrett, Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal, Leone Ross, Lisa Goldman, Lui Sit, Nathan Evans, Neil Bartlett, Neil Lawrence, Neil McKenna, Ollie Charles, Padrika Tarrant, Paul McVeigh, Philip Ridley, Polis Loizou.

We’re still crowdfunding for this project. Great news! Mainstream has been funded! And it wouldn’t have been possible without so much support from our loyal customers.

We’ve reached our 100% minimum target, which means we can pay the authors and print the book. We’re now aiming for 200% so we can pay also our team of designers, editors, readers, etc. Please continue to help us get the word out there.

There’s still time on the clock for your friends to have their names printed in the back of the book. We’ll continue to keep everyone in the loop as the book makes its way through the publishing process. We’ve received around half the stories from the authors and are about to begin editing. Exciting!

Also coming in 2021—we’ve sat on this for a while but the cat is now out of the bag: we’re overjoyed to announce that we’ve acquired the rights to publish Neil Bartlett’s new book of fiction!

‘Address Book’ is a collection of seven interconnecting stories spanning three centuries. From a new millennium civil partnership celebration to profane love in a Victorian tenement, from a council-flat bedroom at the height of the AIDS crisis to a doctor’s living-room in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, these stories lead us through decades of change to discover hope in the strangest of places. In paperback and ebook from October 2021.

If any of this gets your fancy then you can follow the team on Twitter Facebook Instagram and visit their website where you can sign up for their newsletter to be the first to hear about their titles.

Thank you to Justin for sending me the photos and info to put this together.

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus – Jaime Jo Wright*

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1928

The Bonaventure Circus is a refuge for many, but Pippa Ripley was rejected from its inner circle as a baby. When she receives mysterious messages from someone called the “Watchman,” she is determined to find him and the connection to her birth. As Pippa’s search leads her to a man seeking justice for his murdered sister and evidence that a serial killer has been haunting the circus train, she must decide if uncovering her roots is worth putting herself directly in the path of the killer.

Present Day

The old circus train depot will either be torn down or preserved for historical importance, and its future rests on real estate project manager Chandler Faulk’s shoulders. As she dives deep into the depot’s history, she’s also balancing a newly diagnosed autoimmune disease and the pressures of single motherhood. When she discovers clues to the unsolved murders of the past, Chandler is pulled into a story far darker and more haunting than even an abandoned train depot could portend.

Amazon

Jaime Jo Wright is the author of five novels, including Christy Award winner The House on Foster Hill and Carol Award winner The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond. She’s also the Publishers Weekly and ECPA bestselling author of two novellas. Jaime lives in Wisconsin with her cat named Foo, her husband Cap’n Hook, and their littles, Peter Pan, and CoCo. Website

Website

My thoughts:

This was an interesting and thought provoking thriller, linking events at the home ground of Bonaventure Circus in 1928 and the present day – proving that the past is never as far away as we think.

A serial killer stalked the travelling circus and now haunts its winter home, where a newborn elephant fights for life and the adopted daughter of the circus’ owner delves into the secrets of her own past.

In the present day, Chandler has plans to develop the abandoned circus depot into a trendy mix of shops and apartments, but strange goings on and rumours of ghosts dog her efforts. When her young son is kidnapped, she’s thrust into the swirling mysteries that still linger around the empty buildings.

Powerful and shocking, moving and heartwarming by turn, this is an engaging and evocative thriller about the secrets in families and the people who will do anything to keep them.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Out For Blood – Deborah Masson*

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THE RETURNOF DI EVE HUNTER

DI Eve Hunter is back in the edge-of-your-seat new detective thriller from Deborah Masson, winning author of the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year2020.

A young man, the son of an influential businessman, is discovered dead in his central Aberdeen apartment.

Hours later, a teenaged girl with no identification is found hanged in a suspected suicide.

As DI Eve Hunter and her team investigate the two cases, they find themselves in a tug-of-war between privilege and poverty; between the elite and those on the fringes of society.

Then an unexpected breakthrough leads them to the shocking conclusion: that those in power have been at the top for too long -and now, someone is going to desperate lengths to bring them down…

Can they stop someone who is dead set on revenge, no matter the cost?

Deborah Masson was born and bred in Aberdeen, Scotland. Always restless and fighting against being a responsible adult, she worked in several jobs including secretarial, marketing, reporting for the city’s freebie newspaper and a stint as a postie -to name but a few.

Through it all, she always read crime fiction and, when motherhood finally settled her into being an adult (maybe even a responsible one) she turned her hand to writing what she loved. Deborah started with short stories and flash fiction whilst her daughter napped and, when she later welcomed her son into the world, she decided to challenge her writing further through online courses with Professional Writing Academy and Faber Academy. Her debut novel, Hold Your Tongue, is the result of those courses.

My thoughts:

This is a gripping, intelligent thriller exploring ideas of power and influence. When the son of a wealthy businessman is found strangled in his apartment and the body of a young woman is hung from a tree at the golf course, at first the police don’t see any links between these deaths, but as they dig into the lives of the victims, they discover a web of human traffickers and money that goes to the wealthy and powerful.

Well written, powerful and gripping, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to the next one as DI Eve Hunter is an interesting character.


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

blog tour, books

Blog Post: Busting the Brass Ceiling – Fanchon Blake & Linden Gross

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BustingTheBrassCeiling

Congratulations to author Linden Gross on the release of Fanchon Blake’s fascinating story, Busting the Brass Ceiling!

Read on for more details and an exclusive excerpt from the book!

BustingBrassCeiling-eBook-Cover_for publication

Busting the Brass Ceiling: How a Heroic Female Cop Changed the Face of Policing

Publication Date: November 20th, 2020

Genre: Non-Fiction/ Police/ History/ Women in History

FANCHON BLAKE joined the LAPD in 1948 and walked a beat in a skirt and heels for three years. Her ambition to rise in the ranks would be curtailed by an increasingly discriminatory agenda, but her relentless tenacity finally led to a promotion to sergeant nineteen years later. When LAPD policy barred her from rising any further and threatened to eliminate women from the department, she sued. The historic case would change the face of policing around the country.

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Excerpt

Enough!

The words CONFIDENTIAL SURVEY caught my attention. I picked up the paper and read: A Survey to Justify Why Men Do Not Want to Work with Policewomen. I loved the LAPD. But I sure didn’t love the way they treated the women on the force. Were things about to get worse?

I looked around the LAPD squad room, where I worked as a detective investigating forgery, but no one was paying attention to me. I gazed again at the paper I held. It was from the chief’s office, complete with an authenticated signature. For years, I had protested the fact that no new women officers were being hired, and that a substantial number of female sworn officers had already been reassigned to desk jobs. Now it seemed that management was setting up a justification to eliminate women from the job altogether.

Surely, the chief had more brains than to try to circulate something as bizarre as this survey, but nobody else would dare take that kind of action without his knowledge. I couldn’t let this go unchallenged. I would have to flush it out into the open, which meant confronting the chief. I couldn’t do that alone. He would crucify me.

I convinced the president of the Los Angeles Policewomen’s Association to ask the chief to explain the blatantly anti-female survey to his female officers. Surprisingly, he agreed to meet with us on January 10, 1971.

Available on Amazon

About the Author

linden-gross-omeara-photography-square-crop-black-white

LINDEN GROSS is a bestselling writer. She ghostwrote Julia “Butterfly” Hill’s New York Times bestseller The Legacy of Luna (HarperCollins, 2000). Publishers Weekly wrote that Hill’s “firsthand exposition of destructive forest practices … is extremely powerful, and her book, a remarkable inspirational document, records a courageous act of civil disobedience that places her squarely in the tradition of Thoreau.” Gross is also the writer behind Kathryn and Craig Hall’s national bestseller, A Perfect Score: The Art, Soul, and Business of a 21st-Century Winery (Center Street, 2016).

Gross has authored, co-authored, or ghostwritten an additional eight books, including Ms. Cahill for Congress (Ballantine, 2008), the stirring tale of public school teacher Tierney Cahill, who on a dare from her class ran for U.S. Congress, and Surviving a Stalker: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Yourself Safe (Incubation Press, 2013), a revised edition of To Have Or To Harm (Grand Central Publishing, 1994), the first book written about the stalking of ordinary people. Gross also functions as a writing coach and an editor, helping other people to write their nonfiction books and novels, several of which have gone on to become bestsellers.
Linden Gross

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blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Feral Snow – Mark Lowes*

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Alone and stranded in the Arctic wasteland, would you risk your life to save a stranger or try to get home?

Paul is a father-to-be; traumatised by his past, he’s terrified of becoming a father after his own beat him until he was unilaterally deaf. While working as a freelance cameraman in the Arctic, he’s caught in a blizzard, separated from his crew, and falls into a chasm. Alone, and waiting for death to come, personal demons plague his mind.

When a young native girl falls into the chasm with him, Paul must learn how to accept responsibility and what it takes to give your life for a child.

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Behind FERAL SNOW:

I began writing FERAL SNOW with the idea of writing a commercial thriller. Slowly, over time, it morphed into something more though. Paul’s layers began to unravel and his true colours came to the surface. His history of abuse became so much more important than I had first intended. I fell in love with all of the characters and I’ll admit I had a tear in my eye while writing the ending.

Mark Lowes is a former teacher, current early childhood educator, and future dad. He lives in Cardiff, Wales, UK, and is sometimes found lamenting over how awful his football team is. While he’s not working with deaf children and their families, he’s writing dark and twisty fiction.

His writing, so he’s told, is a mix between Chuck Palahniuk Josh Malerman and Ernest Hemingway (although Mark retains, all this praise is too much too high). He loves edge-of-your-seat fiction, novels that make you think deeper about the world but will also terrify you and live the world through the protagonist, experiencing every detail. He’s a fan of description, somewhat a lost art nowadays, and has a soft spot for a dark, unreliable narrator.

You can find him on Twitter @StrugglingMJ where he would be excited to hear your views.

Mark is the winner of Litopia’s Pop-Up Submissions and of a pitch contest at the Cardiff Book Festival.

My thoughts:

This was a really interesting and slightly bewildering book. Paul ends up in a crevasse out in the Arctic wilderness, trapped in the snow. He’s joined by an indigenous girl, Nanny, who is escaping from a polar bear (in a slightly ironic twist her name is Nanouk, which means polar bear).

Together they attempt to struggle back to the surface and survive the freezing cold.

This is where I start to get a bit bewildered, is any of what Paul then goes through real? At different points he seems to be hallucinating and I can’t tell whether he and Nanny are able to escape or even if she’s real. Obviously this is very clever work on the part of the author but it really threw me. So I now have to read the alternate ending (handy QR code inside the book) and see if that helps or just confuses me more.


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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Twins – J.S. Lark*

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From the moment they are born, twins Susan and Sarah are inseparable. Through good and bad, the girls will always be together… forever.

Until they meet Jonny.

Older, charming and handsome, Jonny offers the girls the much-needed love and attention they crave. But he can only choose one and for the first time in their lives the girls find themselves split apart – the invisible thread that binds them severed.

Set-free from her twin, Sarah builds a new life for herself, marries, has a daughter. But Susan’s life spirals further and further out of control.

And now Susan is back. And she’s determined to reclaim everything she feels Sarah has taken from her.

Her home, her husband…her life?

Amazon UK
Amazon US

Jane is a coffee, chocolate and red wine lover, and a late-night writer of compelling, passionate, and emotionally charged fiction.
Jane’s books may contain love, hate, violence, death, passion, a little swearing, and an ending you are never going to forget.

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My thoughts:

This book left me a bit confused, which twin was it? Who killed who? What exactly was going on? But I think that’s intentional as even they didn’t seem all too sure who was Sarah and who was Susan.

From a childhood of neglect to crime and drugs, then finally to safety in Cumbria, or not. When one twin comes after the other and no one else seems to be able to tell them apart (even Sarah’s husband and daughter struggle) then how can they know the truth?

Twisted and pretty dark, this is a very jarring story – as the secrets come out, the twins’ lives get bleaker and bleaker, no wonder Sarah doesn’t want her sister back in her life, she’s managed to lock all the awful things she went through away in her mind.

But that ending, very much a “who? What? Wait a minute?” reaction and I’m still not quite sure about a few things…

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Murder at the Gorge – Frances Evesham*

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A joke? A prank? Or something more sinister?

When the Exham-on-Sea residents are targeted by anonymous emails containing apparently harmless nursery rhymes, no one knows whether to laugh or shudder until an unexplained death touches the town.

Libby Forest, baker, chocolatier and Exham’s very own resident private investigator, alongside her partner Max Ramshore, set out to solve the puzzle before more people die. But when Max’s ex-wife arrives on the scene, ahead of Max and Libby’s long-awaited nuptials, things go from bad to worse.

With the town and their relationship under threat, Max and Libby need the help of the Exham History Society if they’re going to find the nursery rhyme killer in time.

Murder at the Gorge is the seventh in a series of Exham-on-Sea Murder Mysteries set at the small English seaside town full of quirky characters, sea air, and gossip.

If you love Agatha Christie-style mysteries, cosy crime, clever dogs and cake, then you’ll love these intriguing whodunnits.

Amazon

Frances Evesham is the author of the hugely successful Exham-on-Sea Murder Mysteries set in her home county of Somerset.

In her spare time, she collects poison recipes and other ways of dispatching her unfortunate victims.

She likes to cook with a glass of wine in one hand and a bunch
of chillies in the other, her head full of murder―fictional only.

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My thoughts:

This was a fun, clever read, with entertaining characters and some definite red herrings that it takes till right near the end to clear up.

I hadn’t read any of the previous books in the series, and it’s not vital to do so, but it will give a lot more background as there were a couple of moments where I went “who is this?” “what are they talking about?” but it does get explained a bit later, so if you can cope with waiting for answers (I have zero patience!) then you’ll be fine.

The locations in the book, especially the Clifton Suspension Bridge, become like extra characters, they’re so vividly described, and it makes you wonder about the dark side of Somerset, although more drinking of cider is needed! Those West Country stereotypes need reinforcing (my family are from Devon & Cornwall on my dad’s side and I like cider and clotted cream and also all the cheese!)

Max and Libby were interesting figures and I wanted to know more about the History Society and Libby’s chocolate making business, as well as the canine and feline supporting cast, they need their own book! So I’m going to be reading the rest of the series over Christmas.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Poleaxed – Peter Tyrer*

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It is 1967. A mysterious disease appears in an English town. People fall down suddenly, poleaxed, and many die. Is it caused by a bacterium, a virus, a poison? Nobody knows, and top doctors squabble over its cause. But then two junior doctors and a young anthropology student, who has recovered from the disease, join together.

The three investigators continue their work to find out the cause of the disease, a virus whose worst effects are only shown in those who are very anxious. They think they have found the cause and the solution. But will they be in time?

This is a gripping dystopian tale, very much relevant to events unfolding today and written by Emeritus Professor of Community Psychiatry at Imperial College, London, Peter Tyrer whose long-standing interest in the connections between mental and physical health informed the novel.

My thoughts:

I seem to have read a lot of books recently about pandemics and diseases, real and imaginary, which considering this year’s stellar performance of These Are The End Times, seems to make some sense.

This book, written in 2018/19, is very interesting in that the infection is highly localised and the town takes the decision to close its borders and see if they can wait out the virus, while also continuing to look for both the origin and a treatment. This isn’t a new idea, famously a village in Derbyshire, Eyam, chose to completely cut itself off during an outbreak of plague in 1665, rather than risk spreading the Black Death beyond its borders.

What’s most interesting, and for me somewhat unnerving, is the idea that this virus, Poleaxe, affects people with underlying anxiety disorders far more seriously than anyone else. I have anxiety disorder and panic disorder, as well as depression, so were Poleaxe a real disease I’d be struck down very quickly and struggle to recover.

Luckily the protagonist of this novel, the very clever anthropology student Barbara, does recover and indeed identifies the origin of the virus and the link between anxiety and the more serious symptoms. This allows the health authorities to lift the quarantine and treat the afflicted.

Written by an expert psychiatrist lends a certain air of knowledge and expertise to the novel – if this was a real disease I know who I’d want working alongside the other doctors, someone who has a great understanding of the link between mental and physical health, a fact that has been thrown into sharp focus by the current pandemic and lockdown, but is often overlooked when treating medical conditions.

This book is both timely and also, thankfully, very much science fiction as opposed to fact, I hope.

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