Category: reviews

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: 18 Tiny Deaths – Bruce Goldfarb*

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‘For most of human history, sudden and unexpected deaths of a suspicious nature, when they were investigated at all, were examined by lay persons without any formal training. People often got away with murder. Modern forensic investigation originates with Frances Glessner Lee – a pivotal figure in police science.’

18 Tiny Deaths is the remarkable story of how one woman changed the face of murder investigation forever.

Born in 1878, Frances Glessner Lee’s world was set to be confined to the domestic sphere. She was never expected to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity. Yet she was to become known as ‘the mother of forensic science’.

This is her story.

Frances Glessner Lee’s mission was simple: she wanted to train detectives to ‘convict the guilty, clear the innocent and find the truth in a nutshell’. This was a time of widespread corruption, amateur sleuthing and bungled cases.

With the help of her friend, the pioneering medical examiner George Magrath, Frances set out to revolutionise police investigation. Her relentless pursuit of justice led her to create ‘The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’, a series of dollhouse-sized crime scene dioramas depicting actual cases in exquisitely minute detail that Lee used to teach homicide investigators. They were first used in homicide seminars at Harvard Medical School in the 1930s, and then became part of the longest running and still the highest regarded police training seminar in America.

Celebrated the world over by scientists, artists and miniaturists, these macabre scenes helped to establish her legendary reputation as ‘the mother of modern forensics’, influencing people the world over, including Scotland Yard.Frances wanted justice for all. She became instrumental in elevating murder investigation to a scientific discipline.

Bruce Goldfarb is the executive assistant to the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland, US, where the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are housed. He gives conducted tours of the facility and is also a trained forensic investigator. He began his career as a paramedic before working as a journalist, reporting on medicine, science and health. He collaborated with Susan Marks – the documentary filmmaker who produced the 2012 film about Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshells titled Of Dolls and Murder.

My thoughts:

This was a really fascinating read, I’d come across the Nutshell models on a TV crime show, but had no idea they were real, and created by such an extraordinary woman. Frances Glessner Lee was so far ahead of her time, pushing forensic science into the modern age, creating some of the very techniques still used today in solving crime.

Obviously she had the benefit of being born into wealth and a social class that tolerated her “eccentric” interests.

But she was also incredibly determined and intelligent, if she had been male she would have been a doctor and probably have been the head of the department she funded at Harvard herself.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Virgin & Child – Maggie Hamand*

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Patrick, the first Irish Pope, discovers he is intersex and finds himself pregnant.

Maggie Hamand’s Virgin & Child grips onto this wild premise and runs from there. This isn’t a book about miracles.

Maggie is a journalist, has a science degree, and what happens in the novel is within the realm of the possible.

Virgin & Child is alternate history, that lets the reader expand their sense of what is credible. What gives this novel true bite is how real it feels.

Maggie grew up as what her era called a tomboy, and gave birth to three sons. She worked and campaigned for women’s fertility rights. She has also studied theology and this book began as a PhD in that subject, before she changed to creative writing. ‘I found the theology PhD too constricting, and felt that only by writing fiction could I fully explore the issues I wanted to tackle,’ says Hamand. ‘I felt that only through an imagined direct and bodily experience could a celibate Pope understand a woman’s experience. I hope that by reading the novel others will identify with the character and be shocked into a new understanding.”

Like works by Brian Moore, Graham Greene, Robert Harris and Piers Paul Reed, the novel reads as a gripping thriller while at the same time tackling questions of religion, faith and gender.

What makes Virgin & Child different is that it’s not written by a man. Did a mother conceive the notion of a virgin birth? Probably not. Mothers know the act of creation is all too human and messy. This novel takes a Pope, God’s elect on Earth who tradition says has to be a man, and feminizes the whole concept.

How would that alter a male worldview?

Virgin & Child gives an answer as an act of searing storytelling.

Maggie Hamand is a journalist, novelist, and creative writing lecturer. She was the first winner of the World One-Day Novel Cup and her novel, The Resurrection of the Body, was published by Penguin and has been optioned for film and television. She was founder and director of the award-winning independent publisher Maia Press. Maggie has a degree in biochemistry, a Masters in theology, and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Hull. She has taught in a range of institutions including Holloway Prison and is author of the best-selling Creative Writing For Dummies. She lives in East London.

My thoughts:

This is somewhat strange novel, with a pregnant, intersex Pope, trying to keep his secrets and somehow carry out his very public role.

Lyrical and full of philosophical questions which Pope Patrick struggles with along with his personal concerns.


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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Arrowood and the Thames Corpses – Mick Finley*

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South London, 1896.

William Arrowood, Victorian London’s less salubrious private detective, is paid a visit by Captain Moon, the owner of a pleasure steamer moored on the Thames. He complains that someone has been damaging his boat, putting his business in jeopardy.

Arrowood and his trusty sidekick Barnett suspect professional jealousy, but when a shocking discovery is pulled from the river, it seems like even fouler play is afoot.

It’s up to Arrowood and Barnett to solve the case, before any more corpses end up in the watery depths . . .

My thoughts:

This was a fun read, what with Arrowood railing against the better known Sherlock Holmes, and dealing with the women in his life, mostly by running away from them.

A clever, knowing Victorian murder mystery, replete with street urchins, Cockney thugs, rat catchers and hopeless coppers. Add a twisted plot involving revenge and a rather vile use of human remains and you have a gritty little thriller on your hands.

Considering how much Arthur Conan Doyle came to hate his creation, he might have been glad to hand the torch on and let another consulting detective take the limelight.

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Dark Corners – Darren O’Sullivan*

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You thought you’d escaped your past

It’s been twenty years since Neve’s best friend Chloe went missing. Neve has never recovered and promised herself she’d never go back to that place.

But secrets can come back to haunt you

When Neve receives news that her first boyfriend Jamie has gone missing, she’s forced to return. Jamie has vanished without a trace in a disappearance that echoes the events of all those years ago. Somebody is watching and will stop at nothing until the truth about what took place that night is revealed …

My thoughts:

This was a clever, creepy thriller. Neve is the ultimate unreliable narrator, holding things back from the reader all the way to the end.

The cold and depressed landscape of old mines and the dying village add to the atmosphere of menace and secrecy, everyone has their own agenda here.

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

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Blog Tour: Deep Dark Night – Steph Broadribb*

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Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection. An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city’s tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces, one by one. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare. When a power failure plunges the city into darkness, the building goes into lockdown. But this isn’t an ordinary blackout, and the men around the poker table aren’t all who they say they are. Hostages are taken, old scores resurface and the players start to die.

And that’s just the beginning…

Steph Broadribb was born in Birmingham and grew up in Buckinghamshire. Most of her working life has been spent between the UK and USA. As her alterego – Crime Thriller Girl – she indulges in her love of all things crime fiction by blogging at crimethrillergirl.com, where she interviews authors and reviews the latest releases. She is also a member of the crime-themed girl band The Splice Girls. Steph is an alumni of the MA Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at City University London, and she trained as a bounty hunter in California, which inspired her Lori Anderson thrilliers, She lives in Buckinghamshire surrounded by horses, cows and chickens. Her debut thriller, Deep Down Dead, was shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Awards in two categories, and hit number one on the UK and AU kindle charts. My Little Eye, her first novel under her pseudonym, Stephanie Marland was published by Trapeze Books in April 2018.

My thoughts:

Lori and JT basically walk into a pretty obvious trap, but the people in that room are in more trouble than the protagonists because everything has been engineered to get them there.

There’s a mysterious new power player in town and a recorded voice demands to know who in that room is Herron. Everyone denies it, bullets start flying and then the only thing left to do is escape.

This was a very clever book with a twist I didn’t see coming and some very untrustworthy “good guys”.

A strong plot and characters meant you get pulled right into all the action and you’re rooting for Lori and JT to get out and go home.

I read this in one sitting as it was so compelling.

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

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Book Review: The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart – Margarita Montimore

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A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart…

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.

My thoughts:

This is a really clever take on time travel, Oona wakes up each time at another point in her life, completely unaware of how old she is and what’s happened recently.

Clever, funny and well written, this romp through one woman’s life, completely out of order as she tries to find some.

The supporting characters of Oona’s mother and assistant are great too, as the holders of Oona’s secret they could be the villains but they choose instead to help her and fill in the blanks.

I was kindly sent a copy of this book by the publisher with no obligation to review.

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Book Review: The Sin Eater – Megan Campisi

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A Sin Eater’s duty is a necessary evil: she hears the final private confessions of the dying, eats their sins as a funeral rite, and so guarantees their souls access to heaven. It is always women who eat sins – since it was Eve who first ate the Forbidden Fruit – and every town has at least one, not that they are publicly acknowledged. Stained by the sins they are obliged to consume, the Sin Eater is shunned and silenced, doomed to live in exile at the edge of town.

Recently orphaned May Owens is just fourteen, and has never considered what it might be like to be so ostracized; she’s more concerned with where her next meal is coming from. When she’s arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, however, and subsequently sentenced to become a Sin Eater, finding food is suddenly the last of her worries.

It’s a devastating sentence, but May’s new invisibility opens new doors. And when first one then two of the Queen’s courtiers suddenly grow ill, May hears their deathbed confessions – and begins to investigate a terrible rumour that is only whispered of amid palace corridors.

Publishing: July 2020 Mantle Books

My thoughts:

This was a really interesting alternative history (Queen Bethany instead of Elizabeth I) and May is a brave and resourceful character.

Forced into the role of sin eater, she turns investigator, determined to solve a series of suspicious deaths at court.

The writing is confident and assured, the narrative flows and carries the reader into the squalor of the 16th Century, alive with stench and mud.

The imagery is vivid and you feel as though you’re at May’s shoulder as she roams through the corridors of power and the narrow slum streets.

I look forward to seeing what Campisi does next after such a strong first novel.

I was kindly gifted a copy of this book with no obligation to review and all opinions remain my own.

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Blog Tour: Mine – Clare Empson*

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‘Who am I? Why am I here? Why did my mother give me away?’

On the surface, Luke and his girlfriend Hannah seem to have a perfect life. He’s an A&R man, she’s an arts correspondent and they are devoted to their new-born son Samuel.

But beneath the gloss Luke has always felt like an outsider. So when he finds his birth mother Alice, the instant connection with her is a little like falling in love.

When Hannah goes back to work, Luke asks Alice to look after their son. But Alice – fuelled with grief from when her baby was taken from her 27 years ago – starts to fall in love with Samuel. And Luke won’t settle for his mother pushing him aside once again…

My thoughts:

The blurb (above) is a tiny bit off in terms of what happens in the novel – flipping back and forth between Luke as a baby with Alice and now, slowly the truth of what happened 27 years ago is revealed, and Alice’s tragic story is told.

However sometimes people become a little unhinged with grief and do things they know aren’t quite right, as happens here.

My mum is partly adopted (my Grandad isn’t her biological dad but in all other regards, including legally, is) so I sort of understand that adoption can be very painful for some people – both those who have been adopted and the parents, biological and adoptive.

And it is that pain that this story centres around, Luke’s joy at finding his birth mother, coupled with the fact he’s never felt close to the mother who raised him, means he perhaps embraces Alice too quickly and too deeply into his own small family; asking her to look after his infant son when his partner goes back to work.

Luckily it all more or less works out and it not quite as sinister as perhaps suggested by the cover and blurb.

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

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Blog Tour: Mexico Street – Simone Buchholz*

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Night after night, cars are set alight across the German city of Hamburg, with no obvious pattern, no explanation and no suspect. Until, one night, on Mexico Street, a ghetto of high-rise blocks in the north of the city, a Fiat is torched. Only this car isn’t empty. The body of Nouri Saroukhan – prodigal son of the Bremen clan – is soon discovered, and the case becomes a homicide. Public prosecutor Chastity Riley is handed the investigation, which takes her deep into a criminal underground that snakes beneath the whole of Germany. And as details of Nouri’s background, including an illicit relationship with the mysterious Aliza, emerge, it becomes clear that these are not random attacks, and there are more on the cards…

Simone Buchholz was born in Hanau in 1972. At university, she studied Philosophy and Literature, worked as a waitress and a columnist, and trained to be a journalist at the prestigious Henri-Nannen-School in Hamburg. In 2016, Simone Buchholz was awarded the Crime Cologne Award as well as runner-up in the German Crime Fiction Prize for Blue Night, which was number one on the KrimiZEIT Best of Crime List for months. She lives in Sankt Pauli, in the heart of Hamburg, with her husband and son.

My thoughts:

This was not what I expected at all. It seemed like a straightforward police procedural, then the protagonist’s apartment talked. There were strange length chapters that seemed to be about something else, bits of plot that didn’t connect to anything.

I haven’t read the previous books in this series, and as with most crime series’ it wasn’t necessary in order to follow the case, but maybe would explain some of these odd bits. Or maybe not.

Either way it’s an interesting case, and just when you think it’s been solved and is all about a feud in a minority ethnic community, it turns out to be about something else entirely.

Though I still don’t know who is setting all those cars on fire…

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

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Zodiac – Anamaria Ionescu*

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When investigator Sergiu Manta is handed the investigation into a series of bizarre murders, he can’t sure what he’s getting involved in as he has to work with regular detective Marius Stanescu, who has his own suspicions about the biker he has been told to work with, and wants to get to the truth. The twists and turns of their investigation takes them from the city of Bucharest to the mountains of rural Romania, and back.

Amazon

My thoughts:

This was a really interesting, twisty, clever thriller. I really enjoyed it. One of the joys of translated literature is getting to read more widely but also see how tropes translate in other cultures. I’d really like to read more from this author, with her great grasp of narrative and suspense. It also gave me a tour of parts of Romania, which was really interesting too.

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