Tag: British Crime novels

The Night In Question- Susan Fletcher (Bantam 2024)

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Cosy crime is a genre I dip my toe into occasionally.  I’ve not read the biggest hitter in this area, Richard Osman, but I would hazard a guess that this very healthy market is being aimed at with this, UK author Susan Fletcher’s ninth novel.  This Whitbread First novel award-winning author who made a big impact with her debut “Eve Green” back in 2004 should have good commercial success with this, especially when it arrives in paperback.

The setting is Babbington Hall Residential Home and Assisted Living and main character 87 year old Florrie is negotiating life in her wheelchair access apartment as a recent arrival after having to have part of her leg amputated.  She looks back on a life full of adventures and forward to more in her new home.  Throughout her life she lived with a dark secret, which no-one now living knows about.  Can she finally get to grips with this in what is likely to be her last place of residence?

Florrie is a sparky character with a strength and determination not apparent from her outer appearance and finds herself in the centre of things when a tragedy occurs at Babbington Hall.  She, alongside retired teacher Stanhope Jones start sleuthing to investigate events.  There’s a good set of characters including a couple of gossipy sisters-in-law, a Polish Goth carer, Magda, and an unconventional vicar all with their part to play.  I’m always a little resistant to being pulled into the fictional worlds in this type of crime novel but it did happen and the combination of potential crime at the Home alongside Florrie’s reviewing of her life up to that point is well balanced and works effectively.  Information is discovered at just the right pace to allow the characters, especially Florrie, who is very much the star of the piece to shine through.  I’d imagine this is different in tone and style to the type of novels the author has published before but she should certainly win converts to her writing.

The Night In Question is published in hardback by Bantam, an imprint of Transworld/Penguin Books on 18th April.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The List Of Suspicious Things – Jennie Godfrey (Hutchinson Heinemann 2024)

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Junior sleuths have always been a mainstay in children’s fiction, from the crime-busting gang in all-time German classic “Emil And The Detectives”(1929) to Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five” who are referenced in this novel.  They are also a significant force in adult fiction from Mark Haddon’s  modern classic “The Curious Incident Of The Dog At Nightime” (2003), Joanna Cannon’s “Trouble With Goats And Sheep” (2014), Alan Bradleys’ Flavia De Luce series, the impressive urban Indian tale “Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line” by Deepa Anaparra (2020) and certainly not forgetting Catherine O’Flynn’s ten year old detective Kate in the outstanding “What Was Lost” (2007) for me pretty much a benchmark for this type of novel. There’s countless others I could add to this list because there is much appeal in the adolescent viewpoint of the adult world and adding to that list meet Miv, the twelve year old main character in this solid debut novel.

This sparky heroine is pitched against real life crime, the Yorkshire Ripper, and it begins in 1979.  Seeing the concerns of adults and worried if the events will drive her family from her home environment and away from best friend Sharon the girls hatch a plan to discover the identity of the Yorkshire Ripper themselves and use a notebook to record individuals who arouse their suspicions in their neighbourhood.  This is a fascinating premise- the reader can see the potential in this plot immediately.

And it is done well.  Miv’s first person narrative is interspersed with third-person viewpoints of characters who at some point appear on Miv’s list.  I must admit these switches from first to third person jar a little but it gives a valuable perspective on the youngster’s misconstruing of events.  As a character, Miv is great, on the cusp of entry into the adult world of secrets and things that should not be talked about exemplified by the difficult situation within her own family.  Early on, there’s some incidental moments which really get the feel of the times, the school playground Kiss Chase is replaced by a dark playground chase game because of the Ripper killings.  For me, it is when the novel settles into the sleuthing that it comes to feel a little one-note and I’m not sure I totally bought into the Yorkshire depicted by the author and there were a couple of questionable motives behind actions.  The darker territory the novel hovers around -the Ripper’s crimes, racial tensions and mental health issues didn’t always meld smoothly with Miv’s tale and I am aware that we are seeing much from the child’s viewpoint but I think if the darkness was a little darker and the lightness lighter we would have had something outstanding.

I certainly enjoyed this and it will win many fans and I think it would be a splendid book group choice as the setting and premise of the novel will provide much discussion.  I’m not sure, despite twists towards the end which I certainly didn’t see coming if this will continue to resonate in the way that some of the young detective novels I mentioned at the top of this review do.

The List Of Suspicious  Things is published by Hutchinson Heinemann on 15th February 2024.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

To The Dogs – Louise Welsh (Canongate 2024)

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I haven’t read Louise Welsh before.  Her 2002 debut “The Cutting Room” made a big impact and won several awards and led to a sequel 20 years later.  In between there has been a trilogy (Plague Times 2014-17), story collections, a non-fiction work on Glasgow and stand-alone novels of which this is her fifth.

Main character Jim Brennan is a criminologist, and Vice Chancellor at the University where he is a professor.   We first meet him in 2017 jet-lagged from a flight after a visit to the sister university in Beijing in the waiting room of a Scottish police station where his son has been arrested on drug charges.  How much parents are prepared to do for their offspring is a central theme here and Jim finds himself getting deeper into difficult situations as he tries to protect his son.

Brennan is a man who needed to escape his past, academia has saved him from the violent law-breaking of his own father, now dead, but the past has a habit of creeping back and bringing a whole new set of challenges for the ambitious professor. 

Plot-wise it is involving enough but I think where it didn’t quite shine for me was because I couldn’t care for any of the characters, in fact, I almost got a sense of guilty pleasure when bad things happened, and that was right from the start.  I’m not convinced that was the author’s intention and it seems a bit of a risky strategy.  Nobody also had that obvious streak of villainy which can also appeal.  I think there’s potentially a point where readers might feel they don’t want to continue reading about these lives until the past and present slot more in synch and we get a more immediately involving situation as the dubious politics of institutions and global influences on cash-strapped educational establishments brings a whole new perspective.  This was a solid thriller which certainly has interested me in Louise Welsh’s backlist.

To The Dogs is published in the UK by Canongate on 18th January 2024.  Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Uncle Paul – Celia Fremlin (1959)

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I can’t remember being so seduced by a cover.  This book practically leapt off the table into my hands at Waterstones.  Faber’s 2023 republication of this 1959 novel looked stunning- the front cover with the idyllic seaside vista, the splashes of blood and the “Welcome To the Nightmare Summer Holiday” tagline, the equally attractive back cover without the expected information, I had to open to the flyleaf to see a synopsis and the Sunday Times’ claim that Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was “The grandmother of psycho-domestic noir”.  I didn’t even need to read what the book was about I was already reaching for my wallet.

I can now say that had this book not looked so good I probably would never have read it but is it a case of style over substance?  I’m actually tempted to say yes.  Not a lot happens in this tale of a summer holiday in the seaside town of Seacliffe.  Meg responds to a cry for help (there’s a surprising number of telegrams sent in this book) from her sister who is braving a caravan stay with her two young sons.  Also in the vicinity is the women’s half-sister Mildred renting a primitive cottage.  The tension ramps up very slowly concerning the whereabouts of the titular uncle (who was actually Mildred’s husband so not an uncle to Meg who refers to him as this).  There’s mysterious footsteps, a lot of misapprehensions (some of which seem inexplicable given the people concerned) which adds to an air of hysteria and paranoia which the author is happy to let simmer.

I did enjoy the depiction of seaside life- the only place that seems to have running water is the faded hotel some of the characters decamp to.  The importance of good weather to maintain sanity comes across well.  Character development is solid and I liked the interaction between them but I would have enjoyed a stronger plot more.

Celia Fremlin wrote 16 novels.  To date Faber have republished three, “The Hours Before Dawn” was a prize-winner at the time and a Christmas themed novella “The Long Shadow” reappeared in prominent positions in bookshops over the festive period and also looked lovely.  I would read other books by her now that I know more what to expect but I’m less likely to be buying them just because of the cover and Faber’s strong presentation of her work.

Uncle Paul was originally published in 1959.  I read the 2023 Faber & Faber paperback edition.

Firewatching- Russ Thomas (2020)

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This debut crime novel launched a series featuring DS Adam Tyler.  The 29 year old heads up a cold crime unit and when a body is found bricked up in a wall in an old vicarage in a village outside Sheffield he joins the investigation team and finds himself much more personally involved than he expected.

Tyler is a bit prickly and struggles with the overlap between personal life and work. A gay officer who followed his father into the force he is still at the end of snide comments from some of his colleagues and his responses to these potentially won’t help him in his career.  He does have the support of senior officer DCI Diane Jordan but in this case he certainly tests her patience.

 I don’t feel I’ve completely got the measure yet of Tyler as a character but there’s certainly potential here for the author to develop him in further instalments.  Style-wise, I think the novel also takes a little while to settle- the village setting gives it a traditional cosy-crime feel, at one point I think I forgot it was set in the present day but the characters and case reflect a darker edge and it takes a while for it all to meld together and not feel out of place.  There’s a mixture of police procedural, thriller and whodunnit which does settle in.

Unexplained fires are occurring around the murder scene which may or may not be related but the perpetrator is recording these events on a blog site.  Two elderly ladies are receiving disturbing letters and one of them has memory problems which gives an interesting perspective to the case.

Things tie up nicely in unforeseen ways.  There’s the odd high-tension scene which is overegged somewhat and Tyler finds himself in awkward situations more often than you might expect.  I did, however, find myself being drawn into this and the mixture of styles does end up giving it a richness which is highly satisfactory.

Since this 2020 publication the author has produced two more Adam Tyler novels (with another scheduled for April 2024) which I am certainly keen to read.  Now characters have been established I think there’s potential here for a really strong crime series.

Firewatching was published by Simon & Schuster in 2020.

Those People Next Door – Kia Abdullah (2023)

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Domestic Noir- it’s not a genre I particularly enjoy reading.  There’s something about nasty neighbours which triggers an anxiety in me.  I think it’s to do with home spaces being threatened by others close by- this kind of intensive no-escape situation chills me, and not in the stimulating way of a creepy horror story.  I can only think of a couple of irritations I’ve had with neighbours over the years in the various places I’ve lived so it ‘s not to do with that but I can sense how easily these can get out of hand.

I don’t think the reading public are in line with me here as these home-based thrillers tend to sell very well.  I must admit that here I was a little put off by the title wondering if Kia Abdullah had written a book which wasn’t for me and in the early stages this felt like this might have been confirmed but I was driven on by the cover also informing me that this was a legal thriller and I know this is what this author does so well.

This is the fourth Kia Abdullah novel and I’m pleased to say I’ve read them all and I’d have to think very hard to come up with an author who is better at plotting and building a novel to provide maximum thrills.  Her novels have tended to follow a formula -structure-wise and this works really very well.  Debut “Take It Back” I described as “really impressive”; “Truth Be Told” I said “I savoured every word “; of “Next Of Kin” I said “Also like last time I found myself covering the bottom half of pages as I didn’t want to know of various outcomes until the exact moment Kia Abdullah intended me to”.  This happened again with her latest book.

Salma and Bil Khatun move into a new neighbourhood with teenage son Zain and the thrill of the new move is tainted when their neighbour Tom takes offence at a “Black Lives Matter” banner Zain has put in a flower-pot. Nothing in a Kia Abdullah novel can be taken at face value.  Sometimes the motives are not the most obvious ones and there’s a level of complexity to issues which is intoxicating.

Relationships get further strained as incidents between the neighbours mount up (and I did find some of this difficult reading) until, we assume, because this has been the pattern of each of her novels so far, that something will occur which will end up in a court-room.

The legal proceedings feel slightly less prevalent than in some of its predecessors but with aspects of the case not fully revealed it makes for gripping reading, This feels her most commercial novel so far and I am not surprised it is doing so well for this author.  If this is your introduction to Kia Abdullah you are in for a treat but please discover her back catalogue so far as two of her novels have been outstanding.  This book will help to confirm her position as I said in my “Take It Back” review into “The Premier League of contemporary crime-writers”.

Those People Next Door was published by HQ in 2023.

Death Under A Little Sky – Stig Abell (Harper Collins 2023)

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Although I have never read either of Stig Abell’s non-fiction works and have seen him only briefly on TV I was actually quite excited to read his debut novel- a literary crime thriller.  Stig is without doubt a high achiever – a double first English degree from Cambridge led to him joining the Press Complaints Commission, which doesn’t seem the most natural route to the role of the managing editor of The Sun newspaper and from there he went on to become the editor of The Times Literary Supplement.  He has since been the Launch Director for Times Radio where he presents the Breakfast Show.  I was intrigued by this mixture of the literary and the mainstream – here is a man who is able to put his ideas across and he is equally at home with the academic as popular culture (he’s also quite easy on the eye) and here he is opting to write a novel within the crime genre because of his deep love of detective fiction.  Could this be where he falls flat on his face?  Not as far as I am concerned as this novel is very good indeed.

We meet main character Jake Jackson at the start of the novel getting out of a taxi in the middle of nowhere in an unspecified part of the English countryside.  He walks to a house he has inherited from an uncle where he intends to embrace a solitary, rural life, giving up his career in the police.  As much as it is a crime thriller this is a novel of escaping and of adapting to circumstances, all feeling rather relevant in this post-Covid 19 world.  Jack is going to wing it- he is happy to give up technology, has no transport and no real survival plan.  What he does have is his uncle’s impressive library of detective fiction which Jake believes initially will do.  I really like this man.

However, this is a crime novel and things will not stay quiet, even though for a considerable time the thriller aspect just simmers alongside Jake’s coming to grips with his new life but slowly the author ramps up the pressure and we get a highly satisfactory crime fiction set-up.

As you might expect it is well written and the grounding Jake has in police-work and detective fiction gives the novel a huge respect for the genre which elevates it onto a higher level.  Stig Abell knows exactly what he is doing here- his love and absorption of crime novels and his years of professional analysis of literary works is so evident and has resulted in this first-class example.  Is there anything this man does not excel in?

Death Under A Little Sky is published by Harper Collins on 13th April 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Mysterious Case Of The Alperton Angels – Janice Hallett (Viper 2023)

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Janice Hallett’s sparkling debut “The Appeal” ended up at number 4 in my current Books Of The Year.  I rarely go so overboard for a crime novel but I so loved its quirkiness, its characterisation and its misdirections which had me making the wrong assumptions all over the place within a work which felt both fresh and classic.  At the time I did wonder if the author would be able to achieve this again with a second novel which had a similar unusual narrative style.  “The Twyford Code” featured potential secret messages from an Enid Blytonesque writer which gave it great heart and although I felt it lacked a little bit in readability compared to the previous work, the cleverness of misdirections led to a highly satisfactory reading experience and a four star rating.  But would she pull it off a third time?  I really hoped so.

“The Mysterious Case Of The Alperton Angels” consists of research material for a true crime novel which is located in a safe.  The author Amanda Bailey was commissioned to write a new slant on a case of eighteen years previous of a cult ritual suicide/murder which almost led to a baby being sacrificed.  At the same time her one-time colleague and rival Oliver Menzies is commissioned to explore the same case for another publishing company.  Here we get their e-mails, research, found materials including associated fiction and transcripts of interviews around the case.  This is darker territory than the previous novels and I do like dark but I became less convinced as the book progressed that the theme suited this format as well as in the previous books.

The first half I was loving but then it felt like it was getting bogged down with too much material and I could feel my enthusiasm waning and the author’s extrication from this did not feel as impressive as it was in “The Twyford Code”.  I wasn’t surprised to read that one of the acknowledged inspirations was Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone In The Dark” a true account of how an American true crime writer became obsessed with her work and there were references to other UK crimes and real life figures which I actually felt a little unsettling on this occasion.

There is still humour and great relish in the writing but this is undeniably darker and I must admit to missing the effervescent feeling I got from “The Appeal”.

Janice Hallett is a clever crime writer and has been a real find for me and does deserve Richard Osman comparable sales with her cunning quirky take on British crime, but didn’t quite hit home with this book in the way I was hoping she would.  I’d be interested to see if she deviates from her format with her next book, I must admit to being a little nervous here about diminishing returns.

The Mysterious Case Of The Alperton Angels was published by Viper Books on 19th January 2023.  Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

The Twyford Code – Janice Hallett (2022)

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One of the great finds for me this year is Janice Hallett.  Expect “The Appeal” to feature in my Top 10 Books of the year.  I was a little behind only getting to this 2021 publication in January this year when I was fulsome in my praise. I said, “If we are considering this debut in the “cosy crime” genre then this is the best “cosy crime” book I have ever read.”  At the time this second novel was imminent and I did ponder “It will be interesting to see if she gets away with it twice or whether this book works so well as it is a fresh, original one-off.”

I decided, seeing this is now out in paperback that it was time to find out.  The bulk of the book is transcripts from audio tapes recorded by Steve Smith, an ex-prisoner whose literary skills demand this type of communication.  It is intended as a record for his probation officer and involves a teacher who inspired Steve as a youngster, Miss Isles, or missiles as the not always reliable transcript puts it, and her disappearance from his school.  Not long before Steve had found a copy of an Enid Blytonesque book by once popular author Edith Twyford on a bus and he, his teacher and school friends are drawn into a mystery of whether Twyford used her books to communicate in code.  A mystery which Steve aims to solve 40 years later.

That’s enough about plot but once again this is so tightly structured which is disguised by her gimmicky-appearing layouts.  Flicking through the book, as with “The Appeal” it looks like a quick read but it’s not because this reader in particular got really into it, looking back, referring to other places in the book, with plot and structure both much denser than they originally appear.  I think with this, compared to the debut, the readability is a little more compromised. In “The Appeal” we were drip-fed more clues which kept the interest up alongside its excellent characterisation.  Here, all the clues the reader might need are there but you might have to wait for them.  There was the odd moment when the image of Dusty Bin from the nonsensical 1970s game show “3-2-1” sprung into my mind (if you were around at the time you will see what I am getting at with references to clues within clues and misdirection which was the show’s ultimately very frustrating gimmick).  Also, it might seem that a glib statement of “Dan Brown meets Enid Blyton” might initially seem fitting but does a disservice to the sheer skill of this story-teller. 

I think a copy of “The Appeal” and this would make an ideal Christmas gift for crime/mystery fans as the puzzling, enigmatic style would be superb for the armchair detective in that period between Christmas and New Year.  It would also look very stylish (I love the UK cover art of both books).  It is like umpteen games of Cluedo, murder mysteries, classy seasonal TV crime adaptations and Christmas Cracker puzzles all rolled into literary joy.  Third book from Janice Hallett “The Case Of The Alperton Angels” is out in January and I can’t wait.

The Twyford Code was published by Viper in 2022.  The paperback edition is now available.  

The Secret Adversary – Agatha Christie (1922)

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Last year I took part in the Agatha Christie Challenge- twelve books in twelve months which put this most famous of British crime writers up to number 2 in my most read authors list (just behind Christopher Fowler).  I haven’t read anything by her up to this point in 2022 so I’ve put that right with an early title which is celebrating its centenary this year.

Two years after she introduced Hercule Poirot she began what became a five novel series featuring Tommy and Tuppence.  My only experience of these two to date had been a copy of “N or M?” which I had out from my secondary school library for months and months, just renewing it without reading it.  (I think this must have been because we were expected to have a book from the library whereas by this time I was reading more salacious fare- “Jaws”, “The Godfather” and James Herbert- none of which would have had a place on the school bookshelves).

Tommy and Tuppence are old chums who meet again towards the end of World War I, when Tommy has injuries and Tuppence is working in the hospital.   By the early 1920s they are both somewhat rootless and a chance meeting has them agreeing to set up “The Young Adventurers” to recapture some of the excitement of their pasts and to earn some money.  They are recruited by a shadowy government figure to discover what has happened to some shadowy documents which seem important to British security (although this is somewhat vague) which had disappeared following the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915.

Thrilled by a salary and expense account which leads them to booking rooms at The Ritz, Tommy and Tuppence begin investigating.  I like these two, especially Tuppence who is a vibrant creation and the will-they-won’t- they aspect of their relationship feels more modern than I was expecting.  For some reason I always associate Christie with being rather backward-looking but this would have felt contemporary on publication.  The political aspects seem a tad ludicrous and why these two inexperienced adventurers are trusted with matters of national security feels questionable but characterisation is stronger than in many later novels.

I don’t know why I’ve never read her Tommy and Tuppence novels before.  It was seven years (by which time Poirot had really taken off) before the author gave them their second outing in “Partners In Crime.”

 “The Secret Adversary” was first published in 1922.  I read it in the “Agatha Christie 1920’s Omnibus” published by Harper Collins in 2006 and which also includes “The Man In The Brown Suit”, “The Secret Of Chimneys” and “The Seven Dials Mystery” (that’s the first Colonel Race and the first two Superintendent Battle novels).