Author Archives: sandradan1

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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 ‘Dead Simple’ by @PeterJamesUK #crime #Brighton

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A plot that twists and turns, a dramatic beginning, a likeable detective in Roy Grace and a cleverly-drawn setting. Brighton is full of potential for a crime writer looking for a setting and it is clear Peter James knows and loves the Sussex seaside city. Dead Simple is a page-turner with clever ideas and a couple of twists I didn’t see coming. Peter JamesThe story opens with a stag night which does not go to plan, a missing groom, a car crash, an absent best man and a frantic bride. As the horrible realities of the situation become clear, with no witnesses and no clues, the police struggle to find the missing groom before the wedding on Saturday. But a few things do not ring true and that, coupled with Detective Superintendent Roy Grace’s controversial use of a medium, bring fresh, if confusing, clues.
Peter James has created an authentic police community which feels real from page one, this is not the first in a series where the first novel is about setting the scene and the context. James hits the ground running with a believable detective. Roy Grace is a maverick, and I like him. James spends a day a week with the Sussex Police Force and this experience is evident on every page without shouting ‘research’.
I’ve found a new favourite crime writer. This is a long-running series.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

And here’s my review of THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL, also by Peter James.

If you like this, try:-
‘Nightfall’ by Steven Leather
‘Unnatural Causes’ by PD James
‘The Vows of Silence’ by Susan Hill

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEAD SIMPLE by @PeterJamesUK http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1QB via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Killing of Polly Carter’ by Robert Thorogood #crime

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The Killing of Polly Carter is second in the ‘Death in Paradise’ series by Robert Thorogood, and the first that I have read. I picked it up, unaware of the TV series of the same name, so I am playing catch-up. Robert Thorogood My first reaction was that it seemed lightweight, but the story and the characters pulled me in. This definitely fits into the comfort crime category so effectively occupied by MC Beaton. Detective Inspector Richard Poole is a man out of place. An English policeman on a tiny Caribbean island, he is a proper chap who persists in wearing leather shoes and woollen suits even at the height of the summer heat. His team is small and their resources are limited, which makes this more of an old-fashioned tale as they put together clue after clue. The setting is luscious.
Supermodel Polly Carter is dead, is it suicide or murder? In the true Agatha Christie fashion, of whom Thorogood is a childhood fan, this is a ‘closed room’ mystery where few people have the opportunity and motive. One by one, each of Polly’s family and friends are suspected, cleared then suspected again. In true Christie fashion, when the culprit is unveiled I thought ‘oh of course’ without actually guessing the identity correctly.
The book covers are beautiful.

Here’s my review of THE MARLOW MURDER CLUB #1MARLOWMURDERCLUB by the same author.

If you like this, try:-
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE KILLING OF POLLY CARTER by Robert Thorogood http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Tj via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Little Red Chairs’ by Edna O’Brien #war

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The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien is a fictional portrait, a ‘what if’ scenario: what if a war criminal, a Balkan war lord, was on the run and pitched up in a small town in the West of Ireland. What if the locals took him at face value. What if one woman saw him as a way to bring a child into her childless marriage. What if his true identity was revealed. What then… would happen to the woman. This is the story of Fidelma, to reveal more about her would be to giveaway the drama of the book. She is a sad character, unsatisfied with her lot, reaching for the unattainable and ultimately suffering for her need. Edna O’BrienThis book has attracted some outstanding reviews, but I hesitated. It sat for a while on my Kindle before I read it, I think because the subject matter is depressing and intimidating. O’Brien’s writing is at times flowing and lyrical especially when describing nature, at times her structure is a little wavy and the story a little flabby. Some passages are horrifying in their brutality, the war flashbacks are vivid. I find violence, when left to the imagination, more effective than violence written on the page or acted on stage.
I never really settled into reading this book. It is split into three parts, each with a different personality. The portrayal of small town life in Ireland in the first half was so full of sketchy characters I got confused. I longed for a simpler format to allow the moral dilemma to come through. In part two, Fidelma is in London, searching for healing, and for answers. She cleans a City tower block, and works in a kennel for abandoned greyhounds. At The Centre, where Fidelma goes for support, we hear the stories of abused refugees and asylum seekers, they are victims of war, genocide and physical assault and sexual abuse. For me, their stories sit uncomfortably alongside Fidelma’s own self-created dilemma and, I think because of this, I was left oddly untouched. In part three, Fidelma goes to see Vlad in The Hague at the war crimes tribunal. I admit to not understanding her motivation in going there, but it is a conversation in a bar with a victim of genocide which finally prompts Fidelma to complete the circle and return to Ireland to see the other victim in all this – her husband.
The power of O’Brien’s topic is undeniable. Is it a comment on our gullibility, how we can all be taken in by appearances; or a comment on how we avoid confrontation, not wanting to be the person to say the difficult thing, the one thing which afterwards people say ‘I thought that too.’ It is also a comment on a society which punishes and isolates the victim.

If you like this, try:-
‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘A Long Long Way’ by Sebastian Barry

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS by Edna O’Brien via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1TY

#BookReview ‘The Silent Twin’ by Caroline Mitchell @Caroline_writes #crime

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Blackwater Farm, an isolated farmhouse outside the town of Haven, is a creepy place: things move, are thrown and rattle, and not just because of the wind. In The Silent Twin by Caroline Mitchell, the new owners of the farm, a young couple with identical twin daughters, have plans to convert the place. But all is not well. Caroline MitchellWhen nine-year old Abigail goes missing, the cracks become ravines. Detective Constable Jennifer Knight is a policewoman, a Family Liaison Officer with an unusual skill. This is the third book in the Knight series by Caroline Mitchell and the first I have read, so it was a while before I realized she is a psychic. Jennifer is not an unreliable narrator as such, but her ‘take’ on things for me at times conflicted with what I expected from a police investigation. Is she a psychic first or a police officer?
Everyone has something to hide and at one point I suspected each member of the family and their inner circle as the murderer. The story is told from three main viewpoints – Joanna, the young mother; Jennifer, who seems rather mysterious; and diary entries by an unknown person – and so starts the guessing game. Whose diary is it, whose viewpoint can be trusted?
If you often read crime fiction, then Jennifer will not seem a reliable narrator of a murder investigation. She belongs to a specialist team often on the periphery of the main case. In The Silent Twin, her commanding officer often seems to be operating to another agenda. But it is an interesting premise, a detective story that is just a little bit different.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘Eeny Meeny’ by MJ Arlidge
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody
‘Business as Usual’ by EL Lindley

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SILENT TWIN by @Caroline_writes via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1WI

#BookReview ‘Death in Holy Orders’ by PD James #crime

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A sandy cliff collapses, a theology student dies and his father suspects foul play. And so Adam Dalgliesh returns to St Anselm’s, the theological college which he visited as a boy. And so Death in Holy Orders, eleventh in the detective series by PD James, is cut through with Dalgiesh’s memories. PD James“When secrets are unspoken and unwritten they are lodged safely in the mind, but writing them down seems to let them loose and give them the power to spread like pollen on the air and enter into other minds.” So writes college housekeeper Margaret Munroe in her diary. She found Ronald’s body and was advised by Father Martin, a priest at St Anselm’s, to write about her experience as a way of coming to terms with what happened. Does she know a secret and write it in her diary?
Ronald’s death is declared accidental, a second staff member dies naturally. But then there is a third death and Dalgliesh is put in charge of the case. His familiar team of Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant are accepted uneasily into this closed community which is secretly worried the building houses a murderer, but outwardly tries to behave as normal. Included in the mix of clergy, teachers and students are several guests including a convalescing detective, a researcher and a university lecturer. At the heart of the mystery is the future of St Anselm’s and, if it is to close, who will inherit the building and its riches.
The motives are various, the suspects numerous. PD James plots with skill to keep us guessing, whilst layering the story with poetry, nature, art, theology and her observations of human nature.
Excellent.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of the other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries:-
COVER HER FACE [#1 ADAM DALGLIESH]
A MIND TO MURDER [#2 ADAM DALGLIESH]
UNNATURAL CAUSES [#3 ADAM DALGLIESH]
SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE [#4 ADAM DALGLIESH]
THE BLACK TOWER [#5 ADAM DALGLIESH]
DEATH OF AN EXPERT WITNESS [#6 ADAM DALGLIESH]
A TASTE FOR DEATH [#7 ADAM DALGLIESH]
DEVICES AND DESIRES [#8 ADAM DALGLIESH]
ORIGINAL SIN [#9 ADAM DALGLIESH] … read the first paragraph HERE
A CERTAIN JUSTICE [#10 ADAM DALGLIESH]
THE MURDER ROOM [#12 ADAM DALGLIESH]… read the first paragraph HERE
THE LIGHTHOUSE [#13 ADAM DALGLIESH]
THE PRIVATE PATIENT [#14 ADAM DALGLIESH]

Here are my reviews of the two Cordelia Gray mysteries:-
AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN #CGRAY1
THE SKULL BENEATH THE SKIN #CGRAY2

And two other books by PD James:-
INNOCENT BLOOD
TIME TO BE IN EARNEST

If you like this, try:-
‘The Various Haunts of Men’ by Susan Hill
‘The Quarry’ by Iain Banks
‘Wilderness’ by Campbell Hart

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS by PD James http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1ND via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Freya’ by Anthony Quinn #historical

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When I finished reading Freya I wanted to shout out to everyone around me to read it. Why? It is a story of friendship and love, truth and honesty, loyalty and betrayal. Anthony Quinn captures Freya immaculately – he seems to intuit so much women’s stuff so well – so much better than other male novelists recently writing from a female point of view. It is such a refreshing read, I hope it sells loads and wins loads. It deserves it. If you can, read it next. Anthony QuinnFreya is the story of Freya Wyley from VE Day to the 1960s via Oxford, Nuremberg, Italy and mostly London. Recently demobbed from the Wrens, at which she achieved a senior position as bomb plotter in a world with few men, she goes up to Oxford unsure if she is too ‘old’ at the age of 21 to return to study. There she finds that pre-war expectations of women re-apply again and with her customary cussedness she fights against it. With the glimmer of an opportunity, she sets out to get a break as a journalist by interviewing a reclusive war reporter who will be attending the Nuremberg war trials. She calls in a favour from her father, lies, manipulates and bravely goes forth, setting foot into the ruins of the bombed city where she is later told she should not have ventured. But that is Freya: undaunted. She is strong, true, speaks without thinking and gets into trouble because of it. Of course it is the few times in which she is not honest, either with herself or with her best friend Nancy – who she met on the night of VE day when they got ‘stinko’ together – that make the most fascinating reading.
It is a joy to read a female character who is not nice all the time, who feels real, and who I can identify with more than some sugar-sweet modern protagonists. This book fairly fizzes along, read in two days on holiday, I found myself irritated when my Kindle’s battery died because I ignored the ‘battery low’ warning.
Quinn’s sense of time is perfect, he moves seamlessly from wartime to the Sixties. All his characters have depth, flaws and are believable, and his balance of action, contemplation and setting is exact. He covers a wide variety of subjects of the time – morality and art, homosexuality offences, celebrity, political rigour – by simply allowing Freya to investigate and report. The technique of covering Freya’s investigation of an article, followed by the published article, acts as a semi-colon before the next segment of her life.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Click the title below to read my reviews of other books by Anthony Quinn:-
CURTAIN CALL
HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE
MOLLY & THE CAPTAIN
OUR FRIENDS IN BERLIN
THE RESCUE MAN
THE STREETS

If you like this, try:-
‘Sweet Caress’ by William Boyd
‘The Secrets We Kept’ by Lara Prescott
‘Fatal inheritance’ by Rachel Rhys

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FREYA by Anthony Quinn https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-1TV via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 83… ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream, and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.”
Ernest Hemingway From ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway

And here are the #FirstParas from other novels by Hemingway:
A FAREWELL TO ARMS
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘I’ll Take You There’ by Joyce Carol Oates
‘The Impressionist’ by Hari Kunzru
‘That They May Face the Rising Sun’ by John McGahern

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Us via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘Pretty Baby’ by @MaryKubica #mystery #suspense

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Don’t be fooled by the cover photograph, this is not a thriller about trains. Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica is a psychological tale of parenting, grief, abuse, and husbands and wives who stop communicating and stop interacting. At times I had to take a gulp and accept some situations which seemed unrealistic to me, it was either that or put the book down. Mary KubicaHeidi and Chris live with their daughter Zoe in Chicago. One freezing wintery day, running for a train, Heidi spots a homeless girl with a baby. She hesitates, wondering whether to say something, and then the girl is gone. Wishing she had helped, Heidi looks out for the girl the next day… and takes her home. Zoe sees it as an invasion of her space, Chris worries about who the girl – Willow, with baby Ruby – really is, and whether she poses a threat to his family and property. Both are right to be worried.
At times I grew impatient with Heidi for indulging herself and impatient for Chris to show some intuition and see what was really going on. Unfortunately Chris is a bit of a stereotype, the hard-working banker husband who spends more time at work than home, fending off the glamorous co-worker. Zoe’s thoughts we do not hear. For me, Willow is the most interesting character and I would have liked to read more about her relationship with Matthew. Concentrating more on Willow’s story, rather than Heidi’s would make this a completely different book.
Unfairly, I think, the publisher compares Pretty Baby to Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins [in other words, to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, giants of their genre]. But they are page-turners whereas the pace of this story is slower, allowing the various threads to unfold. What kept me turning the page? What is Willow hiding? When will Chris or Zoe speak out? How far will Heidi go to help a stranger and why is she risking everything?
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

Read my reviews of two other novels by Mary Kubica:-
DON’T YOU CRY
THE GOOD GIRL

If you like this, try novels:-
‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins
‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PRETTY BABY by @MaryKubica via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1T5

#BookReview ‘Brooklyn’ by Colm Tóibín #historical #romance

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I absolutely love Brooklyn and give it 5*, which I rarely do. For me, 5* means true excellence. There is a spareness to the writing of Colm Tóibín which includes essential detail and excludes extraneous. I would not wish a single word to be changed or paragraph to be deleted, no passages seem surplus to requirement or confusing, no characters’ names are forgotten. Colm TóibínThere is no dramatic action, no mystery, no cliffhanger, simply the story of a young Irish girl who goes to Brooklyn and what happens to her there. Yes there is romance, but not in the commercial fiction sense of the term. Romance is just one element of the story.
It is 1950s rural Ireland. It is arranged by her elder sister and a family priest, that Eilish should go to America. It is deemed she has few prospects in Ireland. Brooklyn is a wonderful portrayal of 1950s Ireland and America, the attitudes, the social mores, the prejudices.
The drama comes from observing Eilish’s every step, her every thought, wondering what she will do next. The drama is in the small things. She feels so real. I wanted to say, ‘take a risk’ and ‘don’t’ and ‘go for it’. From the first few pages I was reeled in until I could not put the book down.
This is the sort of book which, having finished it, I almost wish I hadn’t read it; only so I can re-

Read my reviews of these other novels by Colm Tóibín:-
NORA WEBSTER
HOUSE OF NAMES

If you like this, try:-
‘Old God’s Time’ by Sebastian Barry
‘Water’ by John Boyne #1Elements
‘Shrines of Gaiety’ by Kate Atkinson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview BROOKLYN by Colm Tóibín http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1TQ via @SandraDanby 

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Happiness’

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Happiness is a state we all aspire to but today there are heightened expectations of happiness, more children are said to be unhappy, depressed, disappointed, disaffected. This poem by the American Stephen Dunn [below] suggests a pragmatic approach to life.

Stephen Dunn

[photo: stephendunnpoet.com]

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.

‘Happiness’
A state you must dare not enter
                  With hopes of staying,
Quicksand in the marshes, and all
 

The roads leading to a castle
That doesn’t exist.

For more about Stephen Dunn and his other poetry, click here for his website. His collection Different Hours won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2001.

Stephen Dunn

 

‘Different Hours’ by Stephen Dunn [WW Norton & Company] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Oxfam’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Mf via @SandraDanby

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