Tag: #teamorenda

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: Kill Them With Kindness – Will Carver

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The threat of nuclear war is no longer scary. This is much worse. It’s invisible. It works quickly. And it’s coming…

The scourge has already infected and killed half the population in China and it is heading towards the UK. There is no time to escape. The British government sees no way out other than to distribute ‘Dignity Pills’ to its citizens: One last night with family or loved ones before going to sleep forever … together.

Because the contagion will kill you and the horrifying news footage shows that it will be better to go quietly.

Dr Haruto Ikeda, a Japanese scientist working at a Chinese research facility, wants to save the world. He has discovered a way to mutate a virus. Instead of making people sick, instead of causing death, it’s going to make them… nice. Instead of attacking the lungs, it will work into the brain and increase the host’s ability to feel and show compassion. It will make people kind.

But governments don’t want a population in agreement. They want conflict and outrage and fear. Reasonable people are harder to control. Ikeda’s quest is thoughtful and noble, and it just might work. Maybe humanity can be saved. Maybe it doesn’t have to be the end. But kindness may also be the biggest killer of all…

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series, which includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press.

Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020 and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by the literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door, Suicide Thursday and Upstairs at the Beresford.

Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He and his partner run their own fitness and nutrition company, and live in Reading with five children and a tortoise.

My thoughts: This was suitably weird and intense for a Will Carver book. There’s a genius scientist in Dr Ikeda, who just wants people to be a bit nicer to each other, and a complete idiot in the British Prime Minister who cares more about getting away with all his indiscretions than the country.

Dr Ikeda finds a secret file that suggests someone, but not the Chinese government, plans to release a deadly virus, Tau, on the world. His team have developed a vaccine for this virus, but millions will still die. So being a brilliant scientist and a genuinely nice person, he engineers an alternative – a virus that behaves a bit like the flu but leaves the sufferer kinder, nicer, and hopefully makes the world a bit better.

He secretly releases his virus, watching it slowly spread from China to the rest of the world. Sadly there are some deaths, but nowhere near what Tau would have done.

Unfortunately for the British people, one of the people who was involved in the plot to release that virus was the PM. He’s a nasty, slimy man (I imagine him with a thatch of blonde hair that needs a good brush for some reason) who can’t seem to stop cheating on his wife and getting caught.

Despite being the perfect person for Ikeda’s virus, he doesn’t contract it, instead pretending he has been hospitalised. He really is the worst.

Then a deadly cloud of some sort is seen over China, it appears to be acidic in nature, melting flesh from bone and leaving behind millions of dead. Now it’s on a collision course for the UK. So of course the government issue suicide pills to the populace and tell everyone to say goodbye. As the world watches, what will happen to us?

I’m a bit torn as having lived through the delights of Covid-19, lockdown and the horrors of 2020, I don’t really like any sort of pandemic fiction, and there’s a lot of it about. But I really like Carver’s darkly funny, macabre and peculiar books. There were certainly bits of this book I enjoyed, and even found very funny, but I just don’t know if we need more books about pandemics and corrupt politicians doing dodgy deals behind our backs.

It wasn’t my favourite Will Carver book but it was enjoyable and clever, and I did really like Dr Ikeda and his wife, two truly good souls in a Sisyphean struggle. If you read it, let me know what you think, I’d love some different perspectives.

*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: Double Room – Anne Sénès, translated by Alice Banks

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London, late 1990s. Stan, a young and promising French composer, is invited to arrange the music for a theatrical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play will never be staged, but Stan meets Liv, the love of his life, and their harmonious duo soon becomes a trio with the birth of their beloved daughter, Lisa. Stan’s world is filled with vibrant colour and melodic music, and under his wife and daughter’s gaze, his piano comes to life. 

Paris, today. After Liv’s fatal accident, Stan returns to France surrounded by darkness, no longer able to compose, and living in the Rabbit Hole, a home left to him by an aunt. He shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a boy of Lisa’s age, and Laïvely, an AI machine of his own invention endowed with Liv’s voice, which he spent entire nights building after her death. But Stan remains haunted by his past. As the silence gradually gives way to noises, whistles and sighs – sometimes even a burst of laughter – and Laïvely seems to take on a life of its own, memories and reality fade and blur… And Stan’s new family implodes…

Anne Sénès was born in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, where she obtained a PhD in English studies. Her passion for Anglo-Saxon literature and culture has taken her all over the world, from London to Miami, passing through the south of France. She is currently based on the Mediterranean coast, where she works as a journalist and translator. Chambre Double (Double Room) is her first literary novel.

My thoughts: This is quite a bittersweet book, Stan is mourning his late wife, having left London with his young (and almost entirely silent) daughter for a house his aunt left him. He’s in a new relationship, with Babette, but he can’t stop thinking about Liv. He’s built an AI a bit like Alexa or Siri, that chirps and sings away to itself. He’s a bit obsessed with it, and treats it like it’s alive. Having given it Liv’s voice, it haunts him.

As he reflects on the before and after, dwelling on his happiest moments, struggling to compose any new music, barely bothering with the people in his life, he risks losing the lively Babette for good.

I don’t think Stan should have moved Babette and her strange son into his house, he’s not really ready for a new relationship and definitely hasn’t recovered from his loss. The book is melancholic and sad, and Babette is all life and vibrancy. It won’t end well.

*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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Cover Reveal: The Howling – Michael J Malone

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Annie and Lewis search for the son of an old enemy, who may hold the key to ending Annie’s curse. Their investigations lead back to the past, uncovering something that could destroy the most powerful people in the country. The compelling, chilling next instalment in the Annie Jackson Mysteries series…

Two men, centuries apart, dream of being a wolf.

One is burned at the stake.

Another is locked in a psychiatric hospital for most of his life.

And Annie Jackson is about to find out why…

Vowing once again to remove herself from society, Annie is back living alone in her little cottage by the shores of a loch. But when an old enemy – now locked up in a high security hospital – comes calling, begging her to find the son that she was forced to give up at the age of seventeen, Annie is tempted out of seclusion. The missing boy holds the key to ending Annie’s curse, and he may be the only chance that both she and Lewis have of real happiness.

Annie and Lewis begin an investigation that takes them back to the past, a time etched in Scottish folklore, a period of history that may just be repeating itself. And what they uncover could destroy not just some of the most powerful people in the country, who will stop at nothing to protect their wealth and their secrets, but also Annie’s life, and everything she holds dear…

Dark, immersive, and utterly compelling, The Howling is a story of deception, betrayal, and misplaced power, and a reminder that the most public of faces can hide the darkest of hearts…

Pre-order Publishing 11th September

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Cover Reveal: The Winter Warriors – Olivier Norek, translated by Nick Caistor

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“A single man can change the course of history. At the heart of the harshest of its winters, at the heart of the bloodiest war in its history, Finland saw the birth of a legend. The legend of Simo Häyhä, the White Death.”

Three months after the beginning of WWII, in November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded their tiny and relatively defenceless neighbour Finland. So began what is known as the Winter War. Against overwhelming odds the makeshift Finnish army not only resisted the Red Army, they forced it to offer terms for peace.

Olivier Norek’s breathtaking novel is the story of one company at the heart of the defence of its country in the face of a horrific invasion. The Russians so far outnumbered their enemy that but for the almost unimaginable folly of their commanders and but for the heroism of the Finnish Army their neighbours would have been overrun. Nor had they taken into account the spirit of the defenders.

There are countless stories of courage and some of unmatched heroism – among them the record of Simo Häyhä, who became known as the White Death and whose skill as a sniper will perhaps never be matched.

Pre-order Publishing 11th September

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Blog Tour: The Darkest Winter – Carlo Lucarelli, translated by Joseph Farrell

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In November 1944, in the worst winter ever known in Bologna, less than a year since the founding of the Republic of Salò, the bomb-scarred streets are filled with starving refugees who have fled the advancing Allies. The Fascist Black Brigades, the officers of the S.S. and the partisans of the Italian Resistance compete for control in bloody warfare.

Comandante De Luca, once “the most brilliant investigative officer in Bologna” and now working for the Political Police in a building that doubles as a torture facility, finds himself in over his head when three murders land on his desk: a professor shot through the eye, an engineer beaten to death, and a German corporal left to be gnawed on by rats in a flooded cellar.

Losing sleep and his peace of mind, De Luca must close all three cases with ten lives on the line: the Italian hostages who will face a Nazi firing squad if the corporal’s killing is not solved to their satisfaction. As he threads his way through a web of personal and political motivations, risking his life with every step, De Luca will uncover to his own cost the secrets awaiting him in the frozen heart of Bologna.

Carlo Lucarelli was born in Parma in 1960. While researching for his thesis on the history of Italian law enforcement, he became intrigued by the Italian police force’s role in the political upheavals of the 1940s during and after the Second World War. From this seed sprouted his De Luca trilogy, later to grow into an oeuvre of more than twenty crime novels focusing on various characters. Lucarelli hosted the popular late-night Italian television programme Blu notte misteri d’Italia, on unsolved crimes and mysteries, and he is the founder of the Italian crime-writing collective Gruppo 13. He is also a journalist and has worked for multiple Italian newspapers.

My thoughts: I found this very interesting, I don’t know much about Italy in WW2 apart from the fact that they eventually gave the fascists the boot and joined the Allies, so learning a bit about the history and specifically about Bologna, which had its own complicated situation in the 40s, was good.

I also liked De Luca, he doesn’t exactly relish certain aspects of his job at the political police, he doesn’t participate in torture and would probably prefer to just stay a detective, solving murders, much as he does here. He’s trying to solve several different crimes at once, one written off as a crime of passion, another of a rat chewed German soldier found in the water, a third of a man supposedly with connections to the partisans waging their own war on the occupying force.

There’s wheels within wheels, a spy in the department, a woman who may or may not be a killer, the lives of ten prisoners on the line, lies, half truths and the ever present threat of being arrested himself, just because.

He forms an odd sort of partnership with another officer from the passport office, who might be a member of the resistance, as well as a German lieutenant who wants to find out what the dead soldier did with a load of stolen goods, themselves taken from the people of the city.

There are refugees everywhere, living in strange places amongst the bombed out buildings, a whole community sheltering in a theatre, based on what really happened at the time.

The research that has gone into this book is fascinating, it really brings the past vividly to life, I could picture the streets and the soldiers, the air of menace and fear, the scurrying people trying to avoid notice.

De Luca is a brilliant detective, he slowly builds his cases, contending all the while with the complex and delicate political situation, with the genuine risks to his own life if someone isn’t happy with his answers.

If you like historic crime fiction, or any combination of those genres, this is definitely worth reading.

*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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Cover Reveal: Snowblind – Ragnar Jónasson 10th Anniversary Edition

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Snowblind – 10th Anniversary edition, including NEW Dark Iceland series prequel, Fadeout.

Siglufjörður: an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland, where no one locks their doors – accessible only via a small mountain tunnel. Ari Thór Arason: a rookie policeman on his first posting, far from his girlfriend in Reykjavik – with a past that he’s unable to leave behind. When a young woman is found lying half-naked in the snow, bleeding and unconscious, and a highly esteemed, elderly writer falls to his death in the local theatre, Ari is dragged straight into the heart of a community where he can trust no one, and secrets and lies are a way of life.

An avalanche and unremitting snowstorms close the mountain pass, and the 24-hour darkness threatens to push Ari over the edge, as curtains begin to twitch, and his investigation becomes increasingly complex, chilling and personal. Past plays tag with the present and the claustrophobic tension mounts, while Ari is thrust ever deeper into his own darkness – blinded by snow, and with a killer on the loose.

Taut and terrifying, Snowblind is a startling debut from an extraordinary new talent, taking Nordic Noir to soaring new heights.

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Cover Reveal: The Betrayal of Thomas True – A.J. West

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You may remember I reviewed the hardback version of this book a while ago, and now I am sharing the gorgeous paperback cover. Look at it! Isn’t it gorgeous. Order a copy at the link below.

The only sin is betrayal…

 
It is the year 1715, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London’s hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses.
 
Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the molly’s stoic guard. When a young man is found murdered, he realises there is a rat amongst them, betraying their secrets to a pair of murderous Justices.
 
Can Gabriel unmask the traitor before they hang? Can he save hapless Thomas from peril, and their own forbidden love?
 
Set amidst the buried streets of Georgian London, The Betrayal of Thomas True is a brutal and devastating thriller, where love must overcome evil, and the only true sin is betrayal…

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Blog Tour: Happy is the One – Katie Allen

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Imagine you knew exactly when you were going to die…

Robin Edmund Blake is halfway through his life. Born in 1986, when Halley’s Comet crossed the sky, he is destined to go out with it, when it returns in 2061. Until that day, he can’t die. He has proof. With his future mapped out in minute detail, a lucrative but increasingly dull job in the City of London, and Gemma to share his life with, Robin has a plan to be remembered forever.

But when Robin’s sick father has one accident too many, the plan starts to unravel. Robin must return home to the tiny seaside town of Eastgate, learn to care for the man who never really cared for him, and face the childhood ghosts he fled decades ago.

Desperate to get his life back on schedule, he connects with fellow outsider Astrid. Brutally direct, sharp-witted and a professor at a nearby university, she’s unlike anyone he’s ever met. But Astrid is hiding something and someone from Robin and he’s hiding even more from her.

Katie Allen was a journalist and columnist at Guardian and Observer, starting her career as a Reuters correspondent in Berlin and London. Her warmly funny, immensely moving literary debut novel, Everything Happens for a Reason, was based on her own devastating experience of stillbirth and was a number-one digital bestseller, with wide critical acclaim. Katie grew up in Warwickshire and now lives in South London with her family.

My thoughts: I am the same age as Robin, we’re both 1986 babies, but the comet didn’t cross the sky on my birthday. Robin believes he is destined to live until Halley’s Comet returns in 2061. It’s very specific, and Mark Twain-ish. He’s got spreadsheets and everything.

But then his plans are knocked off course by his father requiring more care than the local council can provide, and he returns home to the small town he couldn’t wait to leave. His best friend Danny is still there, and as the two men reconnect, Robin has a lot to think about.

He also meets Astrid, who teaches German literature at the university, and who he forms a connection with, from rude garden gnomes to Kafka. She’s got a few secrets and doesn’t believe in pre-destination. So it’s not all smooth sailing.

Robin starts asking people what they’d do if they knew exactly when they were going to die. The answers range from the obvious – holiday of a lifetime, splurge, quit my job, to the more insightful. As he explores ideas around death and living, Robin stops keeping his spreadsheets and perhaps finally starts living in the moment.

Moving (there are some very sad bits), thought provoking, challenging but also very readable and enjoyable, this was an interesting and engaging book.

*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: Dangerous – Essie Fox

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Fiction can be fatal…

Living in exile in Venice, the disgraced Lord Byron revels in the freedoms of the city. But when he is associated with the deaths of local women, found with wounds to their throats, and then a novel called The Vampyre is published under his name, rumours begin to spread that Byron may be the murderer…

As events escalate and tensions rise – and his own life is endangered, as well as those he holds most dear – Byron is forced to play detective, to discover who is really behind these heinous crimes. Meanwhile, the scandals of his own infamous past come back to haunt him…

Rich in gothic atmosphere and drawing on real events and characters from Byron’s life, Dangerous is a riveting, dazzling historical thriller, as decadent, dark and seductive as the poet himself…

Essie Fox was born and raised in rural Herefordshire, which inspires much of her writing. After studying English Literature at Sheffield University, she moved to London where she worked for the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, and then book publishers George Allen & Unwin, before becoming self-employed in the world of art and design.

Essie now spends her time writing historical gothic novels. Her debut, The Somnambulist, was shortlisted for the National Book Awards, and featured on Channel 4’s TV Book Club. The Last Days of Leda Grey, set in the early years of silent film, was selected as The Times Historical Book of the Month. Essie’s Victorian gothic novel, The Fascination, debuted at number 10 on the Sunday Times bestseller list, and was widely acclaimed.

Essie is also the creator of the popular blog: The Virtual Victorian. She has lectured on this era at the V&A, and the National Gallery in London. She lives in Windsor.

My thoughts: Growing up in Harrow, I developed a soft spot for Lord George Gordon Byron – who spent some of his happiest years at the eponymous school up on the Hill. His daughter, Allegra is buried there and there is a memorial plaque to him on the lookout point. He would have been buried there too, except the vicar at the time refused.

Essie Fox’s book explores some of his time in exile in Venice. Allegra was sent by her mother (Claire Claremont, Mary Shelley’s step-sister) to live with him, his servants and his collection of cantankerous pets (monkeys do not belong in palazzos). 

Byron is weary, jaded and working on Don Juan, which will only add to Lady Caroline Lamb’s (another former mistress) assessment of his as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”. 

Dr John Polidori, once Byron’s personal physician, has resurfaced, and a lot of people mistake him for the English poet, despite the lack of a limp (Byron’s club foot was pretty noticeable). His book The Vampyre, inspired by a scrap Byron wrote on the infamous Lake Geneva trip with the Shelleys, is also being touted as Byron’s. Which sends him into a fury. How can anyone compare the two?

Then a young woman is found murdered outside a salon Byron attended, there are claims that he is a vampire, that Polidori’s book is Byron’s autobiography in disguise. Especially after another young prostitute is killed, while Byron sleeps beside her, in a brothel.

Byron knows he is no killer, but someone is out to frame him. He is arrested, thrown in gaol, unable to prove his innocence. Thankfully his good friend Hobhouse has come to visit, and with Polidori’s help, he escapes and begins to investigate these claims against him. They seem to centre on two women – a Countess and a courtesan turned brothel keeper. With the help of those loyal to him, gondolier Tita, an orphan he has taken in, and even a former mistress, he resolves to expose his enemies, clear his name and rescue Allegra who has fallen into the clutches of his nemesis.

This is a very clever, very enjoyable book, making much of a short episode in Byron’s not very long, but very eventful life. It is only a few years before he will die in Greece, pursuing another adventure. He comes across much more sympathetically than he is often characterised. His biographers aren’t very fond of him, admittedly he was a terrible cad. But the Byron here is a loving father, a kind man, fond of children and animals, hopeless with women, loyal to his friends. It’s an interesting version of the infamous Lord. 

*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: The Cure – Eve Smith

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LIVING FOREVER CAN BE LETHAL…

Ruth is a law-abiding elder, working out her national service, but she has secrets. Her tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine against old age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeing a long, healthy life.

But Ruth’s cure was hijacked by her colleague, Erik Grundleger, who hungers for immortality, and the SuperJuve – a premium upgrade – was created, driving human lifespan to a new high. The wealthy elite who take it are dubbed Supers, and the population begins to skyrocket. Then, a perilous side-effect of the SuperJuve emerges, with catastrophic consequences, and as the planet is threatened, the population rebels, and laws are passed to restore order: life ends at 120. Supers are tracked down by Omnicide investigators like Mara … and executed…

Mara has her own reasons for hunting Supers, and she forms an unlikely alliance with Ruth to find Grundleger. But Grundleger has been working on something even more radical and is one step ahead, with a deadly surprise in store for them both…

Eve Smith writes speculative thrillers, mainly about the things that scare her.

Longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize and described by Waterstones as ‘an exciting new voice in crime fiction’, Eve’s debut novel, The Waiting Rooms, set in the aftermath of an antibiotic resistance crisis, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize First Novel Award and was a Book of the Month in the Guardian, who compared her writing to Michael Crichton’s.

It was followed by Off-Target, about a world where genetic engineering of children is routine, and ONE, about survival in a world ravaged by climate change.

Eve’s previous job at an environmental charity took her to research projects across Asia, Africa and the Americas, and she has an ongoing passion for wild creatures, wild science and far-flung places. She lives in Oxfordshire with her family.

My thoughts: Eve Smith likes to write books that give you the creeps, and this one is no different. Scientists have discovered a “cure” to ageing, essentially to death, but of course there’s an evil scientist and his billionaire backers who want to live forever – even if it does send you psychotic and mean you have to be put down by law enforcement like a rabid raccoon.

Ruth was one of those scientists, but she was searching for a cure for a rare disease, one that killed her own daughter, not eternal youth. A colleague took her formula and now chaos. Those who can afford it extend their lives, while those who can’t continue to die at the same rate. There is hatred from the have-nots that spills over into violence as poverty sky rockets, resources are stretched to their utter limits. New rules are introduced to manage resources and keep the world turning, but the rogue scientists are still out there and more dangerous than ever. 

Teaming up with an investigator, Mara, Ruth heads to Jamaica on the trail of her nemesis. He supposedly died with the rest of his team in an explosion, but they’ve recently learnt that’s not true, and a sighting of one of his associates, has them on the move.

They will learn the extreme lengths this dangerous man has gone to and fight for their lives, and the future of humanity.

And I will have nightmares. Because honestly, if this was a real thing, I can easily imagine certain individuals being very keen on this and wrecking utter havoc with it. More so than they already are.

It was a really good read, but not a particularly settling one. So be prepared.

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