1933. Hannah Snow is fleeing her unhappy marriage when she finds herself in a small hotel on the banks of Loch Ness. But when a monster is spotted in the depths of the waters, the press descends – and Hannah finds her hiding place is discovered. Someone has been looking for Hannah, and when they find her events will take a devastating turn…
Present day. True crime podcaster Scarlett finds herself intrigued by the mystery of Hannah Snow, wife of a promising government minister who disappeared in 1933 – just months before her husband also went missing, presumed dead. As Scarlett works to uncover the truth, she discovers a tragic family secret, and a story as murky as the depths of the loch where Hannah and her husband were last seen…
My thoughts: I really enjoyed this, Hannah flees her unfortunate marriage for a new life in Scotland on the banks of the Loch Ness, just as monster fever sweeps the land. Can she stay hidden or will someone from her past show up?
True crime podcaster Scarlett is on Hannah’s trail years later. Did she and MP husband Laurie end up in the Loch or did they manage to disappear to new lives back in the 1930s, before the internet and social media would make that impossible?
As Scarlett digs through the archives and talks to locals, falling for a monster hunter and fellow podder along the way, she learns not just some secrets from the past but ones from the present that might make her horrible ex Charlie finally go away.
Fun and cheering, I loved Hannah, a very modern woman who wants to be a journalist and not a trophy wife and certainly not in a sham marriage. Her adventures in Scotland lead to a whole new life and I cheered her, and Scarlett, who also needed a new start, on.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Escape to Mermaid Cove, where pirates once roamed in underground coves and smugglers hid their treasure troves…
Like everyone raised in the magical seaside town of Mermaid Cove, the ocean was a huge part of Rose Barros’ life. She lived to the rhythm of the tides until a near-death experience changed her love for the water to a soul-deep terror, driving a wedge between herself and her sister, Reen.
Now, the only thing threatening to drown Rose is a mountain of bills and her sense of duty towards her ageing mother, Pearl. She needs her sister more than ever, but rebellious Reen has skipped town and shows no interest in returning.
When Pearl suddenly takes a turn for the worse, the sisters are forced to reunite. But they discover a heart-stopping secret about how their mother first came to live in the small town. Will Reen run from Mermaid Cove for good? Or will facing up to their family history allow them to leave the past behind and finally put down roots in the place that once captured their hearts?
My thoughts: what started as a romance novel with local girl Rose and newcomer cop Shane, with a mystery they need to solve, takes a rather odd turn into fantasy territory. I should have guessed at all the references to Splash (the 90s movie where Darryl Hannah played a mermaid who falls in love with Tom Hanks). Rose and Reen’s mum Pearl has dementia and is dying. But there’s something she needs to tell them.
As the sisters reconnect and read their mother’s diary, they learn her surprising secret, and why they never met any of her family, and they realise why their connection to the ocean is so strong.
Split into 3 sections, narrated by Rose, then Reen and finally Pearl, the story of the women in their family builds and shifts focus creating a family saga that seems unlikely in a small New England town.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Renowned photo-journalist Jude Montgomery arrives in Glasgow in 2014, in the wake of the failed Scottish independence referendum, and it’s clear that she’s searching for someone.
Is it Anna Mason, who will go on to lead the country as First Minister? Jamie Hewitt, guitarist from eighties one-hit wonders The Hyptones? Or is it Rabbit – Jude’s estranged foster sister, now a world-famous artist?
Three apparently unconnected people, who share a devastating secret, whose lives were forever changed by one traumatic night in Phoenix, forty years earlier…
Taking us back to a school shooting in her Texas hometown, and a 1980s road trip across the American West – to San Francisco and on to New York – Jude’s search ends in Glasgow, and a final, shocking event that only one person can fully explain…
David F. Ross was born in Glasgow in 1964 and has lived in Kilmarnock for over 30 years. He is a graduate of the Mackintosh School of Architecture at Glasgow School of Art, an architect by day, and a hilarious social-media commentator, author and enabler by night. His debut novel The Last Days of Disco was shortlisted for the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and optioned for the stage by the Scottish National Theatre. All five of his novels have achieved notable critical acclaim and There’s Only One Danny Garvey, published in 2021 by Orenda Books, was shortlisted for the prestigious Saltire Society Prize for Scottish Fiction Book of the Year. David lives in Ayrshire.
My thoughts: this is a blackly comic tale of roads converging, life changing events and secrets. Jude’s journey to Glasgow is a lifetime in the making in many ways, she’s not had it easy, and has some things to settle. But before that we need to go on tour with The Hyptones, and learn a bit more about Jude’s life and the moments that changed it.
A chance encounter at a gig going very wrong sends Jude on a lifelong mission of sorts, as she becomes a talented photojournalist in New York, haunted always by the moment Jamie Hewitt, guitarist of The Hyptones possibly saved her life, and by their one hit record.
That final trip to Scotland, partly to trace her late Glaswegian father, but mostly to find out what happened to the band and more specifically Jamie, is very powerful and moving in many ways. Fame dealt the members a pretty bad hand, well and Anna Mason – soon to be First Minister (replacing Nicola Sturgeon in the plot), daughter of a very dodgy man and the woman holding most of The Hyptones hostage financially.
But Jude isn’t easily swayed, she tracks down the members, a journalist called David F. Ross (hmmm) who wrote a staggeringly bleak article that has Madonna’s lawyers all over him, and AnnaFuckingBelle Mason too. But will she make it to lunch with her long separated foster sister, artist Rabbit? Or will the madness and sadness of The Hyptones get her too?
It’s gripping and unputdownable and dark and rather marvellous, from Texas to San Francisco, New York to Glasgow. One heck of a ride and with Dashboard Elvis there for it all.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Laura Robinson can’t be doing with people. She understands the theory but seems to have failed the practical. One day she receives the gift of a lobster. The fact that no one else can see it is less astonishing than what it allows her to see – visions of people’s inner motivations and torments. Laura goes from knowing nothing about people, to knowing everything. Using her new superpower Laura finally gets the life her mother always wanted. But is she happy? To distract herself from that question, she sets out to pay her gift forward, with Lobster’s help. It’s tough saving the world but it’s simpler than dealing with the things Lobster is showing her about her own life. Must she really face why her father left and what happened to her as a child? She has been living underwater and it’s time to come up for air.
I learn for a living and write for fun. An extrovert by nature, for some reason I very much enjoy closeting myself in a room with imaginary people and letting them surprise me with what they say and do. Having worked in mental health improvement for many years I write about the struggles that people face and the strength they show in living with and overcoming them.
I’m a single mum to the best thing I have ever done and a grateful resident of Scotland for over 25 years. I’m surrounded by a community of writers who have helped me achieve my dreams of seeing my work in print. This is my second book.
My thoughts: Laura isn’t very happy, she’s better alone, or so she thinks. But when a little Lobster only she can see appears on her shoulder, showing her the truth about people, she relents and starts to let people in.
By doing so she also recovers the truth about something terrible that happened when she was a child, something she’d been told was imaginary. But in learning it really happened, can she find the strength to rebuild her broken relationship with her dad and sister? Will she trust people and maybe try to be happy?
I liked the idea of a little lobster pal on your shoulder, showing you the hidden bits of people, helping out with the emotional stuff. I struggle to read people too and get things wrong sometimes. Laura opens up because of the lobster and finds she can be happy and not just go through the motions.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
When sound designer Su, a divorced mother of one daughter, falls in love with Jeremy, a widowed father of two sons, they want to build a new life together. As neither of their houses in Worcester is big enough for a family of five, they decide to build a dream home in farmland outside the city.
For Su, it’s an opportunity to heal the past wounds of betrayal and loss, while failed entrepreneur Jeremy sees a chance to finally impress his overbearing father. But with financial misjudgements, secret transgressions and lies creating cracks where this new family attempts to blend into one, will they ever be able to cement their ‘happily ever after’?
Alison Jean Lester was born in the US and has also lived for years in the UK, Singapore and Japan. She is the author of novels Yuki Means Happiness, Lillian on Life, Glide, poetry, short stories, plays, and non-fiction books on communication. She currently lives in Worcestershire, England.
My thoughts: this clever book charts the high points and the intense lows of a relationship in a blended family. Su is a sound engineer and mother of one teenage girl. Jeremy is slightly feckless and has two sons – Ned and Tom. Ned is still young enough to need a mother, while Tom is dealing with the drama of being a teenage boy. Su falls in love with these boys and when her and Jeremy’s relationship falls apart, it is leaving not only the house they’ve built, but the almost stepsons she struggles with.
Jeremy’s unbelievably stupid actions cost him everything, he throws away love, happiness and family by acting appallingly. He’s a bit of a child in many ways, living off an inheritance, he’s never really worried about how to pay for things or getting a job. Su has been supporting them while he “project manages” the house build. Only she has no idea about the amount of debt he’s got into – the bit where he breaks and then throws away a lamp that cost over £1000 made me gasp in genuine horror. What an insane waste of money.
The final straw is awful, the secrets Su discovers hidden on his laptop will make you feel a bit sick. He’s not a murderer, but what he was contemplating is really grim. I can totally understand Su’s immediate reaction and anger. Her hurt too, this is a man she trusted, she loved and who abused that.
As an examination of a modern relationship, this is an intelligent and very 21st century book. The children are the ones who lose the most, especially angry, confused Ned, who doesn’t remember his biological mother (she died when he was very young) and now seems about to lose Su, who he calls Mummy. Compelling and at times painful reading.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
They thought the past was dead and buried. But now it’s back to haunt them.
A local criminal is savagely killed, then another . . .
As the body count grows, Detective Inspector Scott Baker and his team are caught in a race against time as they hunt for a serial killer who is at once methodical and deeply disturbed.
The investigation soon reveals that all the victims have links to a terrible crime which occurred years before. Someone is looking for payback – and they won’t stop till everyone involved is dead, executed in the most brutal manner.
Scott knows he’s sitting on a time bomb – under relentless pressure from the mysterious assassin, Brighton’s criminal underworld threatens to explode, bringing chaos to the streets of the city.
As the killings become ever more savage, can Scott find the murderer before anyone else meets an horrific death?
Time to Die – the first in the gripping crime series featuring DI Scott Baker.
Jay Nadal writes UK police procedural crime thrillers. He’s the author of twenty novels and also writes private investigator and psychological thrillers. Hailing from Essex, he’s always had a passion for mysteries and crime thrillers and turned that into a full-time career as an author. He likes to write darker crime but enjoys lacing it raw human emotions and humour.
When not writing, Jay loves nothing more than spending time with his family, two daughters and four Yorkies.
Time To Die is his first police thriller with Inkubator Books. The Stolen Girls, book 2 in the series, will be released on the same day as book 1.
My thoughts: this was a clever little police thriller, when a club owner and then a drug dealer are found murdered, money stuffed in their mouths, the police think it’s about drugs and look at another dealer looking to move into Brighton. But when evidence points to a crime from several years before, it changes the whole case.
The team are slightly at odds with each other and the DI can be a bit prickly. He’s dealing with personal trauma that keeps him from sleeping, but the charming pathologist might distract him from his pain. After they solve the case.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
It’s nearly Christmas, a time for peace and goodwill. Or maybe not. First the house of a young Spanish family is burned down, and then a Dutch clog dancer is battered almost to death with his own footwear. On the night of the carol service, at which the Worldwide Friendship Club’s choir is singing, a Scottish bagpiper is found dead. By Martha, who has come across enough dead bodies already this year to last her a lifetime. Convinced there’s a link to the choir, Martha and best friend Lottie set out on the trail of the murderer. Their unconventional sleuthing methods land one of them in rather a lot of trouble… ‘Dead In Tune’, the sequel to ‘Hate Bale’, is an entertaining, festive cosy mystery set in rural France.
I’m an English immigrant living in France with my family, after many years in Ireland. We have a seventy-five acre farm with animals ranging from alpacas to zebra finches. I work part-time as a freelance editor. The rest of the time I’m helping to run our carp fishing lake business and inevitably cleaning up after some or other animal. I’ve written both fiction and non-fiction books, and plenty of them – somewhere around the fifty mark now! Originally I was published by two presses in Ireland, but more recently I’ve taken the self- publishing route. I’m a keen book blogger, and I also love knitting, natural dyeing, gardening and cycling. TwitterFacebookWebsite
My thoughts: a series of crimes aimed at the ex-pat community in rural France raises Martha and Lottie’s interests and they start digging around in their community, looking for clues. Could it be another member of the Worldwide Friendship Club?
With a charming Spanish family in her guest cottage, animals to look after and a police officer boyfriend who’d rather she didn’t get involved (he’s away skiiing), Martha is dragged more into the case than she’d like by Lottie’s enthusiasm for the investigation, which risks Lottie’s own safety.
A fun, slightly silly, caper, with two women who really should know better but clearly want to help out their friends and neighbours when threatened by someone with a really nasty streak.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
The King has fled London with the drums of war ringing in his ears. Across the country, lines are being drawn and armies raised.
Influential royalist Lady Carlisle switches sides and presses spice trader Thomas Tallant and his partner Elizabeth Seymour into Parliament’s service.
Soon Thomas faces double-dealing in his hunt for a lethal hoard of gunpowder hidden on the river, while Elizabeth engages in a race against time to locate a hidden sniper picking off Parliamentary officers at will in the city.
The capital also witnesses a vicious gang of jewel thieves take advantage of the city’s chaos to go on the rampage, smashing homes and shops, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. They hand pick their targets but refrain from selling any of their loot. There are more questions than answers.
When war finally erupts, Elizabeth is caught in the brutalising carnage of Edgehill while Thomas joins the Trained Bands in their defence of the city. As he mans the barricades at Brentford, in a desperate rearguard action to repel Prince Rupert’s surprise attack, he realises the future of London rests in the hands of him and a few hundred troopers.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth believes she has identified the jewel thief and goes underground to trace his hoard.
But all is not as it seems.
Writing has been central to Mike Ward’s professional life. On graduating from university he became a journalist, working in newspapers and for the BBC. He then went into journalism education, teaching and researching journalism practice before becoming head of the UK’s prestigious Journalism School at UCLan. For the last eight years he has run his own content creation company.
My thoughts: we return to Thomas Tallant’s London, in the grips of the English Civil War (Charles I vs. Parliament). London is for Parliament and the King is in Oxford (which he named his capital) with his Royalist soldiers.
Thomas is hired by Parliament to find out where some stolen black powder is being smuggled out of London from, which he does. Getting himself involved with turncoats and conspirators. Can’t see any of today’s MPs on the frontline of a battle wielding a musket somehow!
Meanwhile Elizabeth, Thomas’ friend, has been asked by the King’s physician to assist him in his field hospital. Sickened and saddened by the chaos and death she returns to London angry and traumatised. She’s been tasked to find a jewel thief and us poking around the Goldsmith’s Guild, despite having been warned off. Will this help soothe her after witnessing the brutality of the battlefield?
It was interesting to read about the fighting in Brentford and the taking of Syon House – places I know, and battles that aren’t as well known as Edgehill. The Civil War was a time that saw families divided and brothers on opposite sides. Thomas’ father wants to remain neutral, in the hope that his trading won’t be interrupted, but that’s probably not going to work for long.
The historical facts (the war, the jewel thefts) are real, which adds depth to the story and allows the author to bring things to life that are usually just a list in a textbook. Another enjoyable outing for Thomas and Co.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Everybody loves Thomas Davies. Don’t they? When policeman Thomas Davies falls from a crag on a visit to the Lake District in full view of his partner, Mia, it looks for all the world like a terrible but unfortunate accident — until a second witness comes forward with a different story. Alerted to the incident, DCI Jude Satterthwaite is inclined to take it seriously — not least because of Mia’s reluctance to speak to the police about the incident. As Jude and his colleagues, including his on-off partner DS Ashleigh O’Halloran, tackle the case, they’re astonished by how many people seem to have a reason to want all-round good guy Thomas out of the way. With the arrival of one of Thomas’s colleagues to assist the local force, the investigation intensifies. As the team unpick the complicated lives of those who claim to care for Thomas but have good reasons to want him dead, they find themselves digging deeper and deeper into a web of blackmail and cruelty … and investigating a second death. A traditional British police procedural mystery set in Cumbria.
Jo Allen was born in Wolverhampton and is a graduate of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and the Open University, with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in geography and Earth science. She’s been writing for pleasure and publication for as long as she can remember. After a career in economic consultancy she took up writing and was first published under the name Jennifer Young, in genres of short stories, romance and romantic suspense. She wrote online articles on travel and on her favourite academic subject, Earth science. In 2017 she took the plunge and began writing the genre she most likes to read — crime. Jo lives in the English Lakes, where the DCI Satterthwaite series is set. In common with all her favourite characters, she loves football (she’s a season ticket holder with her beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers) and cats.
My thoughts: this was another excellent outing for DCI Jude Satterthwaite and the team as a holidaying Welsh policeman is pushed off one of the Lakes peaks in front of his partner.
But why would anyone want to murder the very nice Thomas Davies – what secrets are his loved ones hiding? Jude is determined to solve this mystery.
Things get complicated by the arrival of a colleague from the North Wales police who has her own agenda. Jude and Ashleigh’s relationship is a bit rocky, Ashleigh being a very astute person knows Jude and Becca still have feelings for each other that they haven’t acted on. Will that change 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.
Forty years in the making, Bob Mantel’s thrilling debut novel challenges today’s social standards with compelling characters while infusing the Big Apple’s unmistakable presence.
In The Velvet Badge: A New York Noir a tasteless nightclub run by a failed JFK assassination co-conspirator brings out the worst in 1970s New York. Songbird Sadasia Trayne runs into a disco-era buzz saw of wine, women, and murder when she hooks up with the Brooklyn-based creator of a notorious TV sitcom. Her frantic SOS to a long-lost love, the Big Apple’s closeted lesbian Chief of Police Detectives, drives this tale of memory and regret, compromise and topiary, politics and a corrupt press, Kris Kringle and twisted acts of love. Will the headline-grabbing sex crime she sets out to solve max out the Chief’s investigative skills or deep-six her career?
The Velvet Badge combines edge-of-your-seat storytelling with stone-cold hilarity and just a touch of holiday ho-ho-ho. A fast-paced novel embedded with elements of suspense and dark humor, The Velvet Badge is perfect for readers who enjoyed Meatpacking by Michael Heslin, The Burn by Kathleen Kent, or Cold Evidence by Robin James.
Mantel creates a world of mystery while infusing dark comedy in a fresh way. “The novel’s New York episodes were inspired by the 1970s city I lived in during my Columbia College days…I was a classic hick, struggling with classes and discovering the highs and lows of the city. Many of these stories found their way into The Velvet Badge,” he said.
Authentically reflecting the sights and sounds of the city he loves, Mantel’s talent for bringing the diversity of New York to life on the page may seem effortless, but it wasn’t always easy. “Like many other writers, I knew what I wanted to accomplish in my first book but didn’t know how to pull it off,” he said. “I worked on The Velvet Badge, off and on for many years, and even completed several drafts, but never to my satisfaction. I took it up again after I retired in 2017 and, this time, all the missing pieces seemed to fall into place–including an ending that I’d previously been unable to conjure.”
Bob Mantel was educated at Columbia College, where he won the Cornell Woolrich Award for Fiction, and the University of Chicago. He lives in New York and enjoys visiting cities that have ballparks and concert halls. The Velvet Badge is his first novel. Learn more at bobmantel.wordpress.com and follow him on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Bob Mantel Blogger Q&A
How long did it take you to complete The Velvet Badge?
An embarrassingly long time–more than 40 years–although I didn’t work on it steadily and often left it untouched for years. One of my problems was taking Ulysses too much to heart and spending nearly a decade badly imitating Joyce’s prose. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, which is why I call that magnificent book “the great crippler of young adults.” Long story short: you may know what you want to write but have no idea how to bring it off. I completed any number of drafts until I finally figured out a decent ending for the book. After that, everything else finally fell into place.
Have you ever experienced writer’s/creator’s block? How do you get out of it?
Writer’s block for me turns out being a function of not having thought through my material to the point where it’s ready to work on. Whenever one crops up, I make a backup copy of the chapter I’m working on, save it as Chapter X-GARBAGE, then write away as well as I can, not expecting to keep much of what I’m producing. If I keep at it, I eventually understand how I need to shape my material and I can get back to my original draft, revise as needed and move forward.
How much of your work is autobiographical?
All of it, just like every first novel is autobiography. I’ve been inspired and stimulated by the places I’ve lived and the people I’ve known and loved. But I’m not out to draw their portraits “from life.” Instead, I’m interested in drawing on the autobiography of the emotions I felt about them to create unique places and characters that I’m free to work with as I choose.
You use a lot of what used to be called “hard jokes” in your fiction. Are you concerned about offending your readers?
No. The Velvet Badge is a hard-edge black comedy/murder mystery set largely in the 1970s. Much of the book’s humor derives from its describing characters in two ways: first, as they’d be seen in the 1970s and then authorially commenting from the present day. There’s shock value in the first and, hopefully, laughter and healing balm in the second. If any of my readers are looking for hate speech, they should track down the TV channels and websites offering plenty of that these days.
The Velvet Badge seems to contain quite a few references to operas and old movies. Could you mention just a few?
Name-dropping like that isn’t surprising when you consider what was going on in New York back when I first knew it. Take the book’s Oscar Wilde/Richard Strauss “Salome” reference. Back in the day, standing room at the Met was three bucks–and didn’t come with subtitles! More importantly, you could get into any number of revival movie house double features up and down Broadway for only $2.50. There’s a big scene in “Badge” that riffs on “The Pride of The Yankees,” after the book previously sang the praises of the talented, ever-lovely Teresa Wright. Of course, a major plot point in “The Velvet Badge” is a direct homage to Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.” And the book closes with a bit of dialogue straight-up stolen from Alida Valli in Carol Reed’s “The Third Man.”
What’s your favorite book-movie adaptation?
I’d have to say it’s a three-way tie between Raymond Chandler and Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye,” Thomas Pynchon and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” and Larry McMurtry and Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show.” By the way, if anybody wants to buy “The Velvet Badge” movies rights, please give me a call. I’m in the book.
Extract from The Velvet Badge
Faced with life’s deep dish pie of pain, Donny Damon always ordered his slices á la mode. It was a habit he’d acquired from his old man Harry, who’d been born in a land where the streets were paved with gold, days before the Blizzard of ’88 paralyzed the East Coast, and who did little to hang his hat on until 1923, when Harding’s sudden death out west landed brine-faced Coolidge in the Oval Office.
Silent Cal’s pronouncement that “the chief business of the American people is business” was a turning point for Harry Damon, inspiring the colorless street pug to scrape together whatever cash he could, marry the first woman he could fast-talk in front of an altar and make a go of “Damon Truss & Convalescent Supply” on New York’s Lower East Side. The driving force behind this enterprise’s success was the 35-year-old’s decision to have his child bride strut her fine, precocious stuff behind the shop’s plate-glass window, wearing little beyond a leg cast, neck brace and strategically placed Ace bandages. Since such a display was an insult to community standards, it drew the smutty-minded, bogus lame and halt to his establishment from a twelve-block radius and kept its cash register ringing for as long as Olivia Damon continued her risqué showcase.
Harry’s missus gave the act the hook during FDR’s first administration and would eventually divorce her husband claiming alienation of affection. But by then the small business owner hardly even remembered being married and had gone all in on racketeering practices that expanded Damon Truss ten-fold during the Great Depression. By the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he was piloting a regional wheelchair powerhouse while also heading a body bag monopoly in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Damon’s stranglehold on these markets, however, couldn’t and didn’t last. America’s entry into World War II gave Feds the excuse they’d been waiting for to nationalize his enterprises rather than let Harry spend the next several years dodging profiteering charges.
Being put out to early pasture may have caught the wheelchair king off guard, but it couldn’t keep him and his enormous wad of buyout cash down for long. Within a few months, Mr. Damon was steering his Studebaker President north along the mighty Hudson to a sleepy river town founded by the Dutch and re-christened by the Brits to honor the neatly trimmed juniper bushes surrounding its village green. Or so the story went.
The actual name change to “Carvéd Hedge” dated only from the 1920s, when those eponymous hedges were first planted. Back then, local politicians and the chamber of commerce decided that a little fudged history would attract new business, along with a better class of people, and make the dusty old place a village to be proud of instead of the shoulder-shrug whistlestop it had been sliding into for decades. This effort hadn’t made much of a difference. But every once in a while, a resident would surprise the neighbors, show some talent or initiative and put the community’s general mediocrity to shame.
Sharpie Bev Boslegovich, for example, parleyed her ability to recognize a born patsy when she saw one into a thriving local real-estate business. So when Harry Damon turned his big sedan onto Main Street in 1942, he couldn’t even put the damn thing in park before “Hiya, handsome! Lookin’ to settle down?” came winging his way from under a mop of Shirley Temple curls.
Since sparkplug Bev believed in telling people what they wanted to hear, she gave a twist to her town’s Jazz Age creation myth that a mark like Damon would be powerless to resist. Namely (“Turn left at this corner!”) that an eyesore property, sitting idle on her books for months, had once been the home of a profligate Tory (“You know, before the Revolution.”) who spent the bulk of his fortune developing a topiary wonderland of trees, bushes and shrubs that a small army of gardeners had stripped, clipped, bent, and chiseled into a stunning array of geometric and animal-shaped confections.
Not a word of this was true, of course, but Bev understood Damon had journeyed to her little piece of heaven on earth because he was in the market for prestige as much as a home. To hear her tell it, the property she was hawking was the true inspiration behind the name of the village that tripped so lightly off her tongue. “Why else would they call it Carvéd Hedge?” Bev demanded as much as wondered.
Moved by the realtor’s aggressive eloquence, Damon’s gullibility made him believe wholeheartedly that the unruly mess he was looking at was precisely the spot where a vital, breathing, European artform had jumped species and taken root in Colonial America. This despite the fact that the “estate,” as Bev called it, was nothing more than a derelict saltbox with a sagging catslide roof, centered on a half-acre lot and thick with oversized, misfit verdure that, if you wanted to believe in it hard enough, at one time might conceivably have served some decorative function. Boslegovich sealed the deal when she told him, “There are some things you just can’t put a price on.” Damon barely flinched when she quoted a ridiculously high ask and bought the place for cash. “None of that buying-on-time crap for me,” he crowed. It was the maraschino cherry topping a forced retirement that had already started to melt.
My thoughts: this was a crazy, black humoured book taking in JFK’s assassination, a nightclub decorated in homage (?) to that event, a singer who might be amazing but who would ever know when she gets involved in the horrific murder of a lesbian TV producer, and turns to her ex – the Velvet Badge of the title – female chief of detectives, Ellia, who grew up in a house with Christmas obsessed parents and is still scarred by her younger brother’s death.
The murder seems fairly straightforward – the laundry delivery man fits the detective’s motive and suspicions very well, maybe a little too well. But as long as there’s no murder similar to this, he’ll do. There are other bodies, but if you can’t find them, are they there?
A local “businessman” has an interesting story to tell, tying up a few loose ends, but the damage is done and various people (like the mayor) just want this all to go away. A wandering, freewheeling format, slowly connecting the characters together is a bit confusing at first but then brings it all together at The Umbrella Man.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 