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About sandradan1

Novelist. I blog about writing, reading and everything to do with books and writing them at http://www.sandradanby.com/. Come and visit me!

#BookReview ‘Blood Atonement’ by Dan Waddell #genealogy #crime #mystery

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A fascinating mixture of modern crime novel and family history research, Blood Atonement by Dan Waddell takes Nigel Barnes from London to the USA as he races against time to find answers for Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster. Dan Waddell Foster’s first case after returning to work following injuries sustained in The Blood Detective [first in this genealogical crime series] is a dead actress and her missing daughter. Links to the actress’s past, mystery about her family and unanswered questions, lead Foster to call in the help of genealogist Nigel Barnes. Both men are strong characters who walk off the page, both loners of a kind, both lonely in love.
This is a fast-moving mystery revolving around what happened to Horton and Sarah Rowley, who we know from flashbacks were teenage sweethearts planning to run away, but who only appear in records in the UK from 1891. Before that, they cease to exist. Where did they come from, and why were they running? Simply because their parents disapproved of the marriage, or something more sinister? And what has this to do with the dead actress found lying face down on her lawn in London? As he searches for the missing 14-year old, Foster finds chilling parallels with Leonie, another 14-year old who disappeared three years earlier and has never been found. As links to a cult are uncovered, attention focuses back on Sarah and Horton.
A satisfying well-written plot which manages to slip in a little history too.

Here’s my review of the first book in this series by Dan Waddell:-
THE BLOOD DETECTIVE #1BLOODDETECTIVE

If you like this, try:-
‘Hiding the Past’ by Nathan Dylan Goodwin #1MortonFarrier
‘Blood-Tied’ by Wendy Percival #1EsmeQuentin
‘Deerleap’ by Sarah Walsh

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BLOOD ATONEMENT by Dan Waddell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ub via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Nutshell’ by Ian McEwan #crime

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I can see Nutshell by Ian McEwan occupying many inches of column space this autumn. Where to start? You must have heard by now that this is the one about the foetus who overhears his mother Trudy and her lover, her brother-in-law Claude, planning to murder Trudy’s husband and father of the narrator. Ian McEwanIt is both ingenious and awkward. At one moment I would chuckle at the audacity of the unborn narrator and his take on life, the next I was hit by a brick wall – how would a foetus know that? He is an incredibly sophisticated, philosophical, well-educated foetus. I’m sure I missed loads of literary references. McEwan covers this off very early by saying his mother, Trudy, listens to Radio 4 documentaries by day and mind-improving podcasts by night. I know the reader is expected to suspend disbelief, as we do in the theatre, the fourth wall and all that; but in Nutshell the fourth wall is more a flimsy partition.
Is it too clever? Perhaps. But the author is Ian McEwan whose books I love, so I was prepared to indulge him. At the back of my mind all the way through was, in this foetus an unreliable narrator? After all, he is blind, can’t touch or smell. He doesn’t know everything, although he talks as if he can. He can hear and taste – primarily his mother’s imbibing of red wine. But his take on life is limited and he is not privy to the workings of Trudy’s mind.
For many it will be a Marmite book, a love/hate thing. For me, the narrator’s voice got more sophisticated and all-seeing as the story went on and it began to grate. I read on because I wanted to know who died in the end.

Try these reviews of other McEwan novels:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
THE CHILDREN ACT

Read the first paragraph of these McEwan books:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CHILDREN ACT
THE CEMENT GARDEN

If you like this, try these:-
‘Elizabeth is Missing’ by Emma Healey
‘A Fatal Crossing’ by Tom Hindle
‘Butterfly on the Storm’ by Walter Lucius

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview NUTSHELL by Ian McEwan via @Sandra Danby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2aR

#BookReview ‘Himself’ by @JessKiddHerself #mystery #contemporary

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I loved Himself by Jess Kidd from the first page. It defies pigeonholing: at once a literary crime mystery, a fond comic tale of an Irish village, an investigation of long-buried secrets of murder and illegitimacy.Jess KiddJess Kidd is a refreshing new voice, I don’t remember enjoying a debut novel this much since Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites though the two books are completely different.
In 1976 Mahony walks into the village of Mulderrig, seeking the truth of his birth twenty-six years earlier. From the forest around the village, and the houses within it, the dead walk out to greet him. They are a silent cast throughout the book, do they hold the answer to the mystery?
Kidd has created a village which feels alive, filled by a cast of characters so clearly drawn, and which swirls between the horrific beating of a nurse, downright nastiness, belly laughs and hallucinogenic drugs. The cast includes a pinched, controlling priest; a wizened old actress who organizes the village play from her wheelchair; a bogeyman who reputedly lives in the forest; and a pub landlord who tries to court the Widow Farelly, a nurse who has the sourest disposition visible to everyone except him. Mahony grew up in a Dublin orphanage, knowing only that he was left there as a baby with a letter marked ‘For when the child is grown’. What he reads in this letter sends him to Mulderrig to find out what happened to his mother, Orla, in 1950.
Did she disappear, running away to a better life, as most of the villagers tell him; or was she murdered? And why was she so hated by her neighbours?
As Mahony, Bridget Doosey, Shauna Burke and the indefatigable Mrs Cauley investigate his origins, the true nastiness of the village emerges.

And see my reviews of these two other novels by Jess Kidd:-
THE HOARDER
THE NIGHT SHIP

If you like this, try:-
‘A History of Loneliness’ by John Boyne
‘Ghost Moth’ by Michele Forbes
‘After the End’ by Clare Mackintosh

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HIMSELF by @JessKiddHerself via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-23K

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Japanese Maple’

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Most of us came to Australian broadcaster Clive James via his witty television programmes and writings. In recent years he has turned again to poetry. It is four years now since he was diagnosed with ‘the lot’: with leukaemia, emphysema and kidney failure. Now his poetry is full of dying – reflections on life and death – and the poems are beautiful and incredibly moving.

poetry

[photo: Rex Features]

‘Japanese Maple’ is about a tree, given to him by his daughter, and how witnessing the tree change through autumn signals a change for him. I defy you to listen to this, and not have moist eyes.

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Japanese Maple’
Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Click here to listen to Clive James read ‘Japanese Maple’ for the BBC.
For recent poems by Clive James, visit his website here.
Listen here to Clive James talk about ‘taking life slowly’ [Interview: Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme]

poetry

 

‘Sentenced to Life’ by Clive James [UK: Picador]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney
‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
‘My Heart Leaps Up’ by William Wordsworth

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A poem to think about: JAPANESE MAPLE by Clive James #poetry http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Rp via @SandraDanby

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#BookReview ‘Beginnings’ by Helen J Christmas @SFDPBeginnings #thriller #romance

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A teenager abandoned and at the mercy of a 1970s London gang, Eleanor Chapman is the ‘same face’ in the romantic thriller series ‘Same Face Different Place’ by Helen J Christmas. London’s East End is the starting point for the first novel, Beginnings. Eleanor’s father must disappear from England after killing in a man in a gang war. Sixteen-year-old Eleanor is taken under the wing of her father’s boss, gang leader Sammie Maxwell. And from that point, her life spirals out of control. Helen J Christmas Forced to work in a brothel, she escapes and joins up with another teenager-on-the-run, Dutch musician Jake. Together they attract the attention of organised crime gangs and the police. Unsure who is really chasing them, they run from hiding place to hiding place and lose the ability to judge who is trustworthy. Sharing their fears, spending every minute together, Jake and Eleanor live on borrowed time. They fall in love. At times the story takes surprising twists, sometimes the outcomes are a little more predictable. I found it a little difficult to keep track of how time was passing, they seem to fall in love very quickly, and it will be interesting to see if Eleanor’s father re-emerges in the next book.
Inevitably in the first book of a series, there is lots of setting-up, character introduction and exposition. Christmas does a great job creating Seventies colour, the food, the fashions, the neighbourhoods. In a fast-moving story, Christmas writes well about a teenager lost in a large and unforgiving world.

Click the title to read my reviews of the next books in this series:-
VISIONS #2SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE
PLEASURES #3SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins
‘The Cheesemaker’s House’ by Jane Cable
‘The Seventh Miss Hatfield’ by Anna Caltabiano

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BEGINNINGS by Helen J Christmas @SFDPBeginnings via @Sandra Danby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-29V

My Porridge & Cream read: Rachel Dove

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Today I’m delighted to welcome romance novelist Rachel Dove.

Her ‘Porridge & Cream’ read is Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris which Rachel summarizes as ‘telepathic waitress meets vampires and shapeshifters in the deep south of Bon Temps, finds love and the answers to her very existence.’ Rachel Dove“It was 2009. My second baby in fourteen months had not long been born, and having two boys under two while my husband worked long hours was hard work. I was studying for a degree and writing in my spare time, with dreams of being an author and teacher when the children were older. My days consisted of looking after my children and the house, staying awake and reading to escape, to relax. I remember seeing an advert for the new HBO True Blood series, and seeing it was based on a book series. I immediately went online, newborn in one arm, and found the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. I immediately bought the full set of what she had written so far, and devoured them. They kept me sane for weeks, and made my world feel less small, more exciting than nappy changes and nipple cream. Night feeds meant pages of vampires and shape shifters while my son fed, and the love stories and loss in the books kept me engaged. Since then, I have read all of the books in the series, and watched the series several times, and the first book is my book of choice whenever I feel bored with the mundane part of motherhood. It was my companion in those first few precious months, and it’s like coming home when I reread them. They always pull me out of my reading slump, and Sookie Stackhouse is a perfect character to lose yourself in.”

Rachel Dove’s Bio
Rachel is a wife, mother of two boys, perpetual student, qualified adult education teacher, avid reader and writer of words. She sometimes sleeps, always has eye bags and dreams of retiring to a big white house in Cornwall with two shaggy dogs where she will drink wine on her seafront balcony whilst creating works of romantic fiction. All done with immaculate make up and floaty dresses. In the meantime she nearly always remembers to brush her hair, seldom has time to look in a mirror and writes many, many to-do lists.

Rachel Dove’s links
Facebook
Twitter
Blog

Rachel Dove’s books
Rachel DoveThe perfect escape to the country…
Recently single and tired of the London rat race Amanda is determined to make her dreams of setting up an idyllic countryside boutique come true, and the picturesque village of Westfield is the perfect place to make a fresh start.
Local vet Ben is the golden boy of Westfield, especially to resident gossip Agatha Mayweather, who is determined to help Ben get his life back together after his wife left.
When a chance encounter outside the ‘chic boutique’ sets sparks flying between Amanda and Ben, Agatha is itching to set them up. But are Amanda and Ben really ready for romance?
‘The Chic Boutique on Baker Street’ by Rachel Dove [UK: Mills and Boon] 

Porridge & Cream

 

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

 

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Rhoda Baxter
Shelley Weiner
JG Harlond

Rachel Dove

 

‘Dead Until Dark’ by Charlaine Harris [UK: Gollancz] 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Why does @WriterDove love DEAD UNTIL DARK by Charlaine Harris? http://wp.me/p5gEM4-24Q via @SandraDanby #reading

#BookReview ‘Orphans of the Carnival’ by @CarolBirch #historical

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What to say about this unusual novel by Carol Birch? First, I loved part of it. Second, I didn’t realize until I got to the end that it is loosely-based on a true story. If you loved Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie, try this. Carol BirchA young veiled woman travels by train from Mexico to New Orleans. She is disfigured but we don’t know the exact details until quite a way into the book: this is a novel which rewards patient reading. Julia Pastrana becomes a music hall attraction – singing, dancing, playing a guitar – while undergoing examinations by doctors who proclaim her part-human. Her successive managers make the most of the doctors’ pronouncements. This is a linear narrative, Julia’s life story, driven by her search for unconditional love.
The real Julia Pastrana had large ears and nose, irregular teeth and straight black hair all over her body. Despite her obvious intelligence – she spoke three languages – the myths continued until her death. It is an indictment of the way people not considered ‘normal’ were treated in the 19th century, seeing them as attractions rather than people with feelings.
The modern-day storyline of Rose, a young woman who collects unwanted items, was, for me, an unnecessary distraction from the main story. The obvious connection between the two women is their struggle to fit into society, though Rose is more of an emotional drifter.

Click the title for a brief taster of Carol Birch’s JAMRACH’S MENAGERIE.

If you like this, try:-
‘An Appetite for Violets’ by Martine Bailey
‘The Miniaturist’ by Jessie Burton
‘Frog Music’ by Emma Donoghue

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ORPHANS OF THE CARNIVAL by @CarolBirch via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-29G

Great Opening Paragraph 89… ‘The Children Act’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“London. Trinity term one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet towards the end of the room, towards a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centred on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black whine. On the floor by the chaise lounge, within her reach, the draft of a judgment. And Fiona was on her back, wishing all this stuff at the bottom of the sea.”
Ian McEwan From ‘The Children Act’ by Ian McEwan 

Here’s my review of THE CHILDREN ACT and these other McEwan novels:-
MACHINES LIKE ME
NUTSHELL

And try two more McEwan #FirstParas:-
ENDURING LOVE
THE CEMENT GARDEN

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Sea, The Sea’ by Iris Murdoch 
‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins 
‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE CHILDREN ACT by Ian McEwan http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Vp via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian #crime

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I found the first few chapters of The Secrets of Gaslight Lane confusing and was still confused at the end. This is partly because it is fourth in the The Gower Street Detective series by MRC Kasasian and I haven’t read the previous three, but partly because the author seems to confuse the reader on purpose. MRC KasasianTwo murders are to be solved, one new, one ten years earlier, involving the same family, in the same house. I got both events totally confused. March Middleton is the god-daughter of ‘personal detective’ Sidney Grice. It is London, 1883 and this series is billed as an alternative ‘Holmes and Watson’ detecting duo. Grice is a pedantic character, a bit like Sherlock Holmes but without the charm. I found his arrogance and language intensely irritating. March’s way of dealing with his rudeness is to plough her own furrow, defending herself and occasionally going her own way. I liked March, I kept reading because of her. We see the story from her point of view.
The duo is employed by Charity Goodsmile to investigate the murder of her father. Grice and Middleton visit the scene of the crime and what follows is told in minute detail, unlike any other detective novel I have read. Grice’s arrogant questioning of suspects is based on his super-human ability to analyse detail, but I wasn’t convinced. For example, when a suspect answers Grice’s question Grice says this answer is only one of the fourteen possible answers. He does not explain the other thirteen answers and I wonder if the author chose a number at random.
A little too pleased with its own cleverness and a little too long.
If you want to start at the beginning of the series, the first is The Mangle Street Murders.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘The Quick’ by Lauren Owen
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody
‘The Truth Will Out’ by Jane Isaac

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SECRETS OF GASLIGHT LANE by MRC Kasasian via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-25R

#BookReview ‘Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley’ by @mc_beaton #cosycrime

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Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so after a spell in London’s PR world Agatha Raisin is pleased to return to Carsley in Agatha Raisin and The Walkers of Dembley by MC Beaton. MC BeatonEverything seems the same, except she cannot shake her crush on neighbor – and detective buddy – James. James, however is concentrating on writing his history book and so in an effort to distract herself, Agatha takes up rambling. To cut a long story short, there is a murder, Agatha and James investigate, and all sorts of trouble ensues.
This series is a great example of the ‘cozy crime’ genre, involving a bitchy walking group, a miltant leader determined to challenge landowners who block access to their land, and lots of sexual crossed wires.
MC Beaton’s Agatha Raisin books are like that paint: they do what they say on the cover [or, it does what it says on the tin].

Read my reviews of other books in this series:-
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE QUICHE OF DEATH #1AGATHARAISIN
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE VICIOUS VET #2AGATHARAISIN
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE POTTED GARDENER #3AGATHARAISIN
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE MURDEROUS MARRIAGE #5AGATHARAISIN

If you like this, try:-
‘The Art of the Imperfect’ by Kate Evans
‘The Various Haunts of Men’ by Susan Hill
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WALKERS OF DEMBLEY by @mc_beaton http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1XH via @SandraDanby