ramblingmads

A divisive prime minister.

A long-buried body. A plot to bring him down…

The bigger the secret the more dangerous it is to lie…

On the morning of the Tory Party conference, the bones of a young woman’s hand are discovered in a London building site.

Jed Fowkes, Special Adviser at the Treasury, confronts Prime Minister Robin Sandford with a terrible accusation. He claims the hand belongs to someone they once knew well: a young woman whom Sandford murdered years ago.

With his career on the brink of ruin, the Prime Minister’s only hope is to enlist the unofficial help of MI5. A decision which leads him into a new world of espionage, illegal trafficking and murder.

And the deeper he goes, the more treacherous the game becomes. Because now it’s not just his life on the line; it’s the future of the state itself…

My thoughts:

A political thriller with a prime minister under threat, a journalist going on the hunt, a young MI5 agent undercover, dodgy dealings and possible murdered women in the past coming back from the dead.

There’s a lot going on here, including at least two different but intertwining conspiracies, both dating back twenty to thirty years, with innocent women suffering at the hands of cruel and manipulative men.

The only male character who doesn’t seem to be at least semi awful is ex-journalist Quine, the PM and SPADs, and other politicians are all as smarmy and ghastly as you’d imagine. The female characters fare better, MI5 agent Isla and her partner, Sophie, who happens to be Quine’s daughter, are both decent and intelligent people with their own agency. I felt sorry for the PM’s wife Carol, who seemed to have given up her own career to follow his, and that’s not even a requirement anymore. She’s asked to provide money and help him while knowing nothing. He should trust her more.

Then there’s the magnificent Mrs T, who deserves her own book about her exploits as I bet she was more than just a Cornish housewife when she was younger. Quine can join in her in one last adventure.

This was very clever and engrossing, but I really wanted to push Jed off a bridge just for being a creep, and have the PM resign and his clearly too good for him wife become leader, and then put things to rights.

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

MANCHESTER: Cain Bell thought he had closure over the hit and run death of his daughter. Ted Blake had confessed he was the behind the wheel just before he died.

Twenty years on and Cain’s world is thrown upside down when his fiancé claims the driver was lying. Before she says more, a savage attack leaves her in a coma fighting for her life. To find out why Cain must uncover why four friends swore blind to never tell the truth about his daughter’s death. Now, he must persuade Manchester’s most terrifying gangster to reveal the secrets that kept hidden for two decades. And Billy McGinty is in no mood to break his own wall of silence.
Unless Cain can persuade him to talk, even if it means putting his own life on the line.

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Andrew Field has spent most of his working life as a PR consultant raising the profiles of others. Now the roles are reversed as he steps into the spotlight with All Down The Line (published in 2020).

He handled Boddingtons Bitter during its “Cream of Manchester” heyday, developing innovative sports and cultural partnerships with TV and media platforms. Clients have also included a convicted armed bank robber and another who did eighteen months prison time for blackmail, although he didn’t know about their colourful backstories at the time. “I’d quizzed them more about their experiences. After all, hard-boiled grimness all adds to the mix, even if it is anecdotal.”

“Authors are by definition are relatively introverted. They work in isolation and inhabit imaginary world of their own creation. They can spend years staring at a computer screen bringing their characters to life. Then they have to become a different person to promote their work and market themselves.”

“Fiction is a great way to write about how you feel personally about this great thing we do called living. We disguise it by calling it crime fiction, but behind the genre there is a world view being expressed. In my eyes, the memorable books, films and music, good or bad, are the ones you’re still thinking about 24 or 48 hours after you finished reading, watching or listening.”

What can readers expect from Andrew’s work? “If you’re into noir from the likes of James Lee Burke, James Cain, James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, Elmore Leonard, Ted Lewis, Ed McBain and Jim Thompson, you’ll see where I am coming from.”

Andrew lives, works and plays in Northumberland, England, Europe, with his wife Catherine. A novella, Wicked Games was published in 2014. Without Rules in 2018 by Boomslang. All Down The Line will be published in December 2020.

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My thoughts:

Just as Cain Bell thinks his life is on the upswing, years after the tragic death of his young daughter, another terrible event places his fiancée in a coma, just as she was about to tell him the truth about the driver who killed Hannah in a hit and run.

Now he has to contend with his partner’s ex-husband and daughter he’s never met, some nasty thugs, detectives and a few other lowlifes making threats and demands, while he waits to see if the woman he loves will ever wake up, and with that time on his hands and his journalistic instincts awakened, he starts to dig.

Gripping and clever, as Cain digs into the past and the cast of characters around him all seem to somehow be involved. People keep telling him to back off, but he wants the truth and keeps trying to find it. He only seems to have a few people he can trust, and even then they’re not entirely much help.

A lot happens very quickly, and it all seems to spin a little out of control around Cain, to the point where he seems to decide to just give up. The ending was a bit less redemptive than I’d have liked, I think I read too many books where the bad guys all get their comeuppance and the good guy gets the girl, but this is more realistic than that, and Cain’s decisions are those of a man with little else to lose.

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