Tag Archives: books

#BookReview ‘While Paris Slept’ by Ruth Druart #WW2

While Paris Slept by Ruth Druart is a World War Two story with a difference. It focusses on the lives of two couples and how one incident, a decision made in seconds, challenges the four people involved to define their own perception of true, selfless love and the heart-wrenching sacrifices this may mean. This is a dual-timeline story. It starts in 1953, California. One morning the police call at the home of Jean-Luc Beauchamp and take him in for questioning. He is unsurprised. His wife Charlotte and son Sam do not know what is happening.
Interleaved with the story unfolding in 1953, we see Jean-Luc as a young man in occupied Paris, 1944. He is conscripted as a rail maintenance worker based at the Drancy station from where French Jews were transported to Auschwitz. At weekends he travels home to see his mother in Paris but does not admit the things he sees and suspects. Ashamed that people may think he is a collaborator, he determines to do his part. He is injured in an attempt to damage the rail track and is taken to the German hospital where he is nursed by a young French girl, Charlotte. Charlotte, who took the job at the urging of her mother to do something useful, also wants to fight back against the occupiers. Then one day at Drancy a young woman on her way to Auschwitz, suspecting the fate awaiting her and her husband, thrusts her newborn baby into Jean-Luc’s arms. She says his name is Samuel. What follows is an exploration of the lengths people will go to for the true love of defenceless child. And at the heart of it all, subjected to the decisions made by adults, is Samuel.
It is a detailed story, slow to build, as the early pages add to the definition of the later events. At times I wanted to stay in one timeline for longer, rather than swapping between 1953 and 1944, but this is a powerful emotional story that is worth sticking with.
A strong story that doesn’t turn away from difficult issues; the rights, the wrongs and the hazy bits in between.

Click the title to read my review of THE LAST HOURS IN PARIS, another World War Two story by Ruth Druart.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elizabeth Bowen
‘The Aftermath’ by Rhidian Brook
‘White Chrysanthemum’ by Mary Lynn Bracht

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#BookReview ‘The Lamplighters’ by @StonexEmma #suspense

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The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is a difficult story both to describe and to compartmentalise in genre. I, mistaken by the Author’s Note at the beginning which refers to a true incident in 1900, thought I would be reading a historical story. The action is set in 1972 and 1992. The genre is variously described as horror, ghost, thriller, suspense and mystery. I saw no evidence of ghosts and it doesn’t feel to me like a thriller. It is a story of human emotions and the consequences of actions, set against the atmospheric backdrop of the sea. Cornwall, 1972. The Maiden Rock, a lighthouse on a rock tower out at sea, is the scene of a mysterious disappearance. When the relief boat arrives, all three men who should have been on the rock have gone. Are they dead, kidnapped, drowned, or disappeared to start a new life? The story of principal keeper Arthur Black, assistant keeper Bill Walker, and supernumerary assistant keeper Vince Bourne is told in two timelines – the men’s stories in 1972 and that of their wives 20 years later when they answer the questions of a journalist researching a book about the disappearances. But why now? And what secrets does he think these women have hidden all these years?
Stonex writes beautifully about the sea, the rugged beauty, the loneliness it conjures in the minds of men alone, within sight of their loved ones on shore but a million miles from their touch. The men’s lives are driven by the sun and the moon, the regimen of keeping their light going. Arthur loves early morning the best; ‘The time I think of you the most is when the sun comes up. The moment before, the minute or two, when night yawns for morning and the sea starts to separate from the sky. Day after day the sun comes back. I don’t know why. I’ve had my light safe here, shining through the dark and I’ll keep it shining: the sun needn’t bother today. But still he comes and still come my thoughts of you.’
The three men are loners, they have to be to survive the rigours of their job and living conditions. Being a lighthouse keeper attracts a certain personality. Each man has his own way of coping with the empty time; Bill carves seashells, they all smoke constantly. They talk politics, the space race, the Cold War. Each man has his loves, regrets, secrets, guilts and griefs. Are these on-shore things irrelevant to life at the Maiden, or do real life events invade their isolated world-within-a-world? Each man dwells in his own mind and as the weather worsens, the mind begins to play tricks.
This is more a story about the three men on the Maiden and less a closed-room thriller, less a what-happened-here mystery. And I was drawn more to the characters of the three men – their life on the Maiden, the effect of their isolation surrounded by the might of the sea and weather – than on the three women ashore and the answer to the mystery.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

If you like this, try:-
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Eckback
‘Little Deaths’ by Emma Flint
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE LAMPLIGHTERS by @StonexEmma https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5cz via @SandraDanby

My Porridge & Cream read… @VMeadowsAuthor #books #romance

#BookReview ‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz @AnthonyHorowitz #crime

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In the tradition of the theatrical play-within-a-play, Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz is a detective-mystery-within-a-detective-mystery. First in the Susan Ryeland series, more of her later, Horowitz has written a page-turner laced intricately with clues, delivered by a fictional detective in the Poirot tradition. Susan Ryeland is head of fiction at Cloverleaf Books whose star writer is Alan Conway, author of the hugely successful Atticus Pünd crime series. Reading the manuscript of his latest submission, Magpie Murders, Susan is surprised to find the last chapters are missing. The murderer remains unnamed. Worse, Alan Conway has committed suicide. If Ryeland and her boss Charles Clover don’t find the missing chapters they can’t publish the book. And with no future books to come from Conway, the company may go bust.
The first half of the book is dedicated to Conway’s story of his fictional private detective, Pünd, who investigates one accidental death and one murder which take place in the same West Country village within days of each other. The victims knew each other. There must be a connection. In classic Agatha Christie style, the possibilities, lies and secrets are discovered by Pünd but he keeps his conclusions to himself.
The second half of the book tells how Ryeland first sets out to find the missing part of the manuscript. But increasingly puzzled by inconsistencies and lies in those surrounding Conway, she begins to suspect his death was not suicide. And that the answer lies in the manuscript of Magpie Murders. Did Conway fear for his life, and did he leave clues behind for his killer to be brought to justice.
This is such a clever beginning to what is a new detective series from Horowitz, who has written extensively for television including Midsomer Murders and Poirot. All the tropes of the classic detective novel are here – family arguments, a crook going straight, injustice, jealousy and rivalry, mixed up with the tensions of a local community where everyone knows everyone else’s secrets… or do they? Why is the vicar so hesitant when answering Pünd’s questions? Why did a son tell his mother he wished she were dead? Who stole a dangerous drug from the GP’s surgery and what did they do with it?
I’ve read some good books recently but none that kept me reading into the dark of the night until my eyes drooped. Oh, and I guessed wrong the wrong murderer.
Good fun.

Read my review of MOONFLOWER MURDERS, second in the Susan Ryeland crime series.

If you like this, try:-
‘A Death in the Dales’ by Frances Brody #7KATESHACKLETON
‘The Art of the Imperfect’ by Kate Evans #1SCARBOROUGHMYSTERIES
‘The Guest List’ by Lucy Foley

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#BookReview ‘Unsettled Ground’ by Claire Fuller #contemporary

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The title is well chosen. From the first page, Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller is unsettling. An eclectic mixture of setting and detail make the timeframe difficult to pin down, it seems other-worldly. An ordinary world, but not quite. This is a world of Google and internet banking, of smartphones and digital life. Fuller writes about twins Julius and Jeanie who, aged 51, still live with their mother in a remote rural cottage. They scratch a living, cash-in-hand earned from odd jobs, vegetables and eggs sold at the garden gate and the local deli, money kept in a tin rather than a bank account. Everything changes when their mother, Dot, dies suddenly and they realise how she protected them and kept them safe. But with Dot gone, their familiar world collapses. Their routines don’t work, the difficulties their mother smoothed are now rocky, and they are evicted from their home.
This is a novel about relationships – sibling, parental and with the local community – both supportive and dismissive. As the twins attempt to cope with the paperwork following their mother’s death, their isolation from modern society becomes evident to them. Many people step aside from their helplessness, finding them strange and ignorant, people make assumptions and take the easy option of turning away. Jeanie is mortified to find out that other people know more about her life and family history than she does, how neighbours silently colluded in a scenario either from a sense of helplessness, a misguided assumption they are helping, or malicious sniggering. Unsettled Ground is an uncomfortable but at the same time uplifting read.
As Julius and Jeanie confront each revelation about the life they have been living, they begin to question each other’s loyalty. Jeanie finds emotional strength she didn’t know she had, despite a heart complaint she’s had since childhood. She sneaks back home and finds solace in the abandoned garden, harvesting vegetables. This is an uncomfortable depiction of modern poverty in a society where money exchange is cashless and application for help depends on literacy. Both find a way to cope but inevitably they need each other despite their grumbles and disagreements. At times of stress, they pick up their guitars and sing folk songs as their parents taught them.
When the truth slowly emerges about their father’s accidental death and Dot’s subsequent struggle as a single mother, they realise that deep down they had always had suspicions. This is a powerful story about the strength of human nature and the bonds of family, about fighting back against bullies and finding light in the future.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig
‘In the Midst of Winter’ by Isabel Allende
‘The Lie of the Land’ by Amanda Craig

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#BookReview UNSETTLED GROUND by Claire Fuller https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5a0 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Fine Art of Invisible Detection’ by Robert Goddard #thriller

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I always look forward to a new Robert Goddard book but wasn’t sure what to expect from his latest, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection. Partly, I think, because the blurb seemed more a detective novel than a thriller. Actually, this is both. Goddard has creative a heart-warming, realistic new hero, Umiko Wada, known simply as Wada. I raced through this book, full of Goddard’s clever twisty plotting, emotional dilemmas, should-I-shouldn’t-I moments. Wada is a 47-year-old secretary at a detective agency in Tokyo, making tea, writing reports for her technology-incompetent boss Kodaka. Widowed after her husband was killed in the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Wada is quiet, efficient and invisible. But burning deep is a sense of righteousness. So when her boss asks for her help with a new case, she agrees to go to London to pose as the client who wants to find out if her father really committed suicide almost three decades earlier, or if he was murdered. From this point on, Wada’s life becomes unpredictable and her talent for being invisible becomes a lifesaver. Her boss dies in a car accident. The man she is due to meet in London has gone missing. Always logical, she follows the one clue she has.
Nick Miller is also due to meet the same man in London. Nick, a 41-year-old Londoner, is hoping to learn more about the father he has never met. Nick and Wada’s paths keep missing each other as they separately follow the trail of mystifying clues about the past. The action moves from Tokyo to London, Rekyjavik and the wilds of Iceland to Cornwall. There is a high-technology fraud, plus hints of terrorism and Japanese gang warfare, but this is not a violent read.
Wada is at the heart of this novel. Her logic and calm reasoning drive the narrative forward in that just-one-more-chapter way that makes this book a quick and fulfilling read. She is ordinary but extraordinary. I hope she returns in another novel.

Read my reviews of Goddard’s other books:-
PANIC ROOM
THE WAYS OF THE WORLD #1 THE WIDE WORLD TRILOGY
THE CORNERS OF THE GLOBE #2 THE WIDE WORLD TRILOGY
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH #3 THE WIDE WORLD TRILOGY
THIS IS THE NIGHT THEY COME FOR YOU #1SUPERINTENDENTTALEB

If you like this, try:-
‘Exposure’ by Helen Dunmore
‘The Accident’ by Chris Pavone
‘The Second Midnight’ by Andrew Taylor

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#BookReview THE FINE ART OF INVISIBLE DETECTION by Robert Goddard https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5as via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Evening and the Morning’ by @KMFollett #historical

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I absolutely loved The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett. It is thirty years since Follett published his monster hit The Pillars of the Earth and this novel is his prequel to what became the Kingsbridge series. Set in Southern England in the year 997 at the end of the Dark Ages – so called because the lack of historical documents and archaeological remains from the time means our knowledge of the era is thin – it was a period of unrest and war. Viking raids, skirmishes with the Welsh, the law allows violence against slaves while power-hungry local rulers disobey the rules of King Ethelred. The story is told by three principal characters – a French noblewoman, a young English boatbuilder and an English monk. Each is smart, ambitious and honest but they are confronted by violence, cruelty, law-breaking, jealousy and betrayal.
In the west country village of Combe, eighteen-year old boatbuilder Edgar waits on the beach for his true love. She is married and the pair are going to run away together. But as Edgar waits, he sees the arrival of a Viking ship and his life changes. The town is destroyed. Three powerful brothers arrive to examine the damage – Wilwulf, ealdorman of local region Shiring; Bishop Wynstan of Shiring; and Wilgelm, thane of Combe – each will lose income because of the raid. It is decided a visit to Normandy is necessary to ask for support from Count Hubert, a Norman lord in Cherbourg who has influence with the Vikings.
In Normandy, Hubert receives two English visitors, a monk and a priest. The monk, Brother Aldred, has a chest of books he has bought in a French abbey. His plan is to create a library, a scriptorium, at Shiring Abbey. Hubert’s daughter Ragna is under pressure from her parents to marry a local lord she dislikes. She wishes Guillaume was educated like Aldred who, being a monk, is celibate. But when English lord Wilwulf arrives, she quickly falls in love.
Ragna travels to England where she will marry Wilfulf. En route she arrives at Dreng’s Ferry and meets Edgar. His family now lives on a farm at this, a poor, lawless place where the local dean and clergy live life to their own rules. This is the beginning of a long friendship that will last many years. Though life as the wife of an English ealdorman is not what she expected, Ragna is supported by the presence in Shiring of Aldred who also becomes a friend.
This is an endlessly fascinating story, with so many twists and turns, achievements and horrific setbacks for the three friends that it’s easy to get lost in the ups and downs of their lives. The structure of the story may be predictable at times but the characters are strongly written, the historical setting is believable and the themes of friendship and perseverance are uplifting.
As soon as I finished reading it – and it’s a long book, 832 pages – I wanted to start at the beginning again. The last time I felt like that was when I finished The Pillars of the Earth.

Click the titles to read my reviews of other Follett novels:-
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH #1KINGSBRIDGE
WORLD WITHOUT END #2KINGSBRIDGE
A COLUMN OF FIRE #3KINGSBRIDGE
THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT #4KINGSBRIDGE
NEVER

If you like this, try:-
‘The Almanack’ by Martine Bailey
‘Days Without End’ by Sebastian Barry
‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert

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Great Opening Paragraph 132 ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love. Dr Juvenal Urbino noticed it as soon as he entered the still darkened house where he had hurried on an urgent call to attend a case that for him had lost all urgency many years before. The Antillean refugee Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, disabled war veteran, photographer of children, and his most sympathetic opponent in chess, had escaped the torments of memory with the aromatic fumes of gold cyanide.”
From ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Pursuit of Love’ by Nancy Mitford
‘A Good Man in Africa‘ by William Boyd
‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson

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#BookReview ‘Yield’ by @ClaireDyer1 #poetry #gender

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Yield is the third poetry collection by poet and novelist Claire Dyer. An essentially personal examination of a mother and son as the son becomes a daughter. Incredibly honest, Dyer conjures up scenes of private moments from birth to clinic visits, sorting clothes, tea at the Ritz, the parental pain of feeling unable to help, the parental pride in a child’s courage and honesty. The word honest is key to this experience, shared with us by poet and mother. When I finished reading this slim collection I was left with a sense of the overwhelming love of a family and individuals where gender at the same time matters totally, and not at all. What matters are child and parent.
My favourite three poems? For exuberance, ‘Doing Cartwheels at the Ritz’. For heart-rending practicality, ‘Wardrobe’. For the goblin, ‘Body Clock III’.
And the line that stayed with me for days afterwards… ‘If I’d been braver, wiser, kinder…’ which features in the series of ‘Clinic’ poems. Isn’t that the best of poetry, when it echoes in our thoughts, when it brings previously undiscovered perspectives on life, when it puts us into someone else’s shoes for just a moment.
A powerful, moving, sometimes startling collection which opens a privileged window for us into the world of a private transformation. Joyous, difficult, full of love.

Read my reviews of Claire Dyer’s novels, THE PERFECT AFFAIR and THE LAST DAY.

If you like this, try:-
‘Sentenced to Life’ by Clive James
‘Ghost Pot’ by John Wedgwood Clarke
‘Hold Your Own’ by Kate Tempest

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#BookReview YIELD by @ClaireDyer1 https://wp.me/p5gEM4-58l via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Killings at Kingfisher Hill’ by @sophiehannahCB1 #crime

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Red herrings, twists and turns, lots of lies, confusing motivations and a long list of characters make The Killings at Kingfisher Hill by crime writer Sophie Hannah the type of book you need to read when fully alert. Fourth in Hannah’s series of continuation Hercule Poirot mysteries, I finished it with mixed feelings. Direct comparisons of Hannah and Christie seem unfair as these are continuation novels. Christie was a highly accomplished author who balanced likeable characters with dense but ultimately solveable crimes, while at the same time making the novels appealingly comfortable to read. If The Killings at Kingfisher Hill were a standalone novel featuring an unknown detective, it would be free of these comparisons. I enjoyed The Mystery of Three Quarters, third of Hannah’s Poirot novels, and will continue to read this series. It has also given me renewed impetus to re-read the Christie originals.
The complications start at the beginning. Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are about to board a char-a-banc for Surrey and the exclusive Kingfisher Hill development, when they encounter not one but two women passengers behave strangely. One fears she is about to be murdered on the bus if she sits in a specific seat. The second woman confesses she has killed someone. Christie’s novels always have options – for victim, and murderer – but the options here did seem rather full-on with numerous characters introduced or mentioned in quick succession with none fully-formed in my mind. At one point I felt as Inspector Catchpool does, ‘My mind blurred, then went blank.’ So many possibilities in quick succession made me long for Christie’s more leisurely pace. True to character, Poirot is totally in charge of his investigation. He tells Catchpool, ‘Once one has a point of focus, all of the other details start to arrange themselves around it.’
Throughout I felt two steps away from the action because the murder has happened before the book begins. We are told the story of Poirot’s investigation by Catchpool and hear much of the necessary information as told to Poirot by third parties. Hearsay. I longed to be in the moment as it actually happened, or at the very least immediately afterwards – I think here of Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile.
The Killings at Kingfisher Hill wasn’t quite what I expected.

And here’s my review of another Sophie Hannah Poirot book:-
THE MYSTERY OF THREE QUARTERS #3POIROT

If you like this, try:-
‘No Other Darkness’ by Sarah Hilary
‘Cover Her Face’ by PD James
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian

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SANDRA DANBY'S BOOK REVIEWS

Sharing thoughts on the books I read, new authors, favourite authors, classics re-visisted

Tag Archives: books

#BookReview ‘While Paris Slept’ by Ruth Druart #WW2

#BookReview ‘The Lamplighters’ by @StonexEmma #suspense

My Porridge & Cream read… @VMeadowsAuthor #books #romance

#BookReview ‘Magpie Murders’ by Anthony Horowitz @AnthonyHorowitz #crime

#BookReview ‘Unsettled Ground’ by Claire Fuller #contemporary

#BookReview ‘The Fine Art of Invisible Detection’ by Robert Goddard #thriller

#BookReview ‘The Evening and the Morning’ by @KMFollett #historical

Great Opening Paragraph 132 ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ #amreading #FirstPara

#BookReview ‘Yield’ by @ClaireDyer1 #poetry #gender

#BookReview ‘The Killings at Kingfisher Hill’ by @sophiehannahCB1 #crime

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