Tag Archives: suspense fiction

#BookReview ‘Pretty Is’ by Maggie Mitchell #mystery #suspense

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This is not your ordinary abduction tale. The truth mingles with re-invention and obfuscation. Pretty Is is a promising debut by Maggie Mitchell, a study in memory, an examination of our ability to move on from difficult experiences, and how today’s celebrity culture makes it impossible to avoid the past. Maggie MitchellTwo 12-year old girls – Louis and Carly May – go missing in separate incidents, they are assumed dead. This is the story of their abduction, their life with their abductor Zed, and more importantly their life afterwards. But is what we are reading the true story, a lie, an embroidered version of what happened, or total fiction?
The story of the girls is told in tandem with what is happening to the adult women today. Both girls tried to move on but inevitably they felt cut off from everyone else so, as adults, they re-invented their pasts, their names, their identities. And so, page by page, the true story of what happened to Lois and Carly May is told. Or is it? Which of the girls is the most reliable story-teller?
Carly May becomes actress Chloe Savage, Lois is a university lecturer but also writes novels under a pseudonym. Both are hiding from the cult of celebrity enabled by the internet’s ability to archive old news, true news, mis-reported news.
Things hot-up when Lois writes a thinly-veiled fictionalised account of their abduction. The novel is made into a film, inevitably Carly May is cast as a detective. The film brings the two women together for the first time andmystery, as well as facing the after effects of their abduction, they must deal with a stalker, Sean, a student too interested in Lois’s background.
Some questions are left unanswered. The motivations of Zed in particular are sketchy. And although there is no doubting the connection forged between the two 12-year old girls, they do seem to accept their abduction rather apathetically.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you like this, try:-
‘Reservoir 13’ by Jon McGregor
‘The Good Girl’ by Mary Kubica
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PRETTY IS by Maggie Mitchell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1U8 via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘The Girl on the Train’ by Paula Hawkins #mystery #suspense

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This book has been hyped much in the pre-publicity and I can understand why. After a slowish start, I finished it at a sprint and rarely put it down. The girl on the train in The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins, is a voyeur, she watches people in their houses. On her morning commute, her train regularly stops at a red light and she looks at a house and ponders the perfect life of the people who live there. She is fantasising, you think, and then you realise she isn’t. She knows the people. Or does she? Paula HawkinsYou never know where you are with Rachel’s account of what happens, she is the ultimate unreliable narrator. The problem is she is a drunk, a falling-over, hungover woman who swigs alcohol on the train and suffers memory blackouts. At no point do you know whether to believe her version of the truth. She says, “I wonder where it started, my decline; I wonder at what point I could have halted it.”
In contrast to Rachel, there is Megan, the woman who lives in the house by the railway. She seems a more reliable source of information, or is she? She is unhappy too and we are uncertain why. Dissatisfied – with her marriage, her life? – she goes to see a counsellor. She hints about ‘betrayals’.
For the first half of the book I got the two women slightly confused, not their current life but their back stories. Then a third female voice is added, Anna. Anna was clear to me from the beginning, and her viewpoint adds clarity to the wider picture.
This is a thriller about men, as seen by women; about relationships, as seen by women; about truth and lies, and our ability to recognise one from the other.
A great debut.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘Foxlowe’ by Eleanor Wasserberg
‘All the Birds, Singing’ by Evie Wyld

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1rA via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Good Girl’ by @MaryKubica #suspense

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The Good Girl by Mary Kubica starts with a missing girl, woman really, though we first hear the news of the disappearance of Mia Dennett from her mother’s point of view. And to her mother, Mia is still a girl though she is a schoolteacher. Detective Gabe Hoffman is bemused that Mia’s parents don’t seem to visit their daughter’s apartment. And then, the time shifts and it is after Mia’s return and we are with Mia and her parents on the way to psychiatrist. Amnesia. Mia cannot remember what happened. Mary KubicaAnd so the story is pieced together. Mia’s kidnap is told from multiple viewpoints; before, during and after the event over a winter in Chicago. Everyone in this dysfunctional family seems to have their own agenda. But Mia cannot remember what happened in that cabin where she was held captive by a man called Owen for three months.
The setting of the Minnesota cabin in winter is so clearly drawn I could be there, a mixture of beautiful, intimidating and claustrophobic. The eerie quiet, the ice fishing, the extreme cold. The feeling of being trapped, in more ways than one. Mary Kubica handles the transition of the kidnap relationship so well, two people sharing an intimate space for so long, and how the emotions and stresses play out.
Kubica has plotted a page-turning story, sort of a kidnap version of Gone Girl, though she may hate the comparison.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of two other novels by Mary Kubica:-
DON’T YOU CRY
PRETTY BABY

If you like this, try:-
‘An Uncertain Place’ by Fred Vargas
‘The Blood Detective’ by Dan Waddell
‘The Accident’ by CL Taylor

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE GOOD GIRL by @MaryKubica via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1a6

#BookReview ‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch #mystery #suspense

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In Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch, Dr Marc Schlosser is popular with his patients because he doesn’t tell them they smoke too much or drink too much, he doesn’t tell them to lose weight, he doesn’t lecture them. So he becomes a popular general practitioner amongst the arty set. They invite him to their premieres, he doesn’t want to go. Herman KochBasically, he takes the easy way out; if a patient presents with a symptom he doesn’t recognise or is disgusting, he refers the patient to a specialist. Except Ralph Meier, the famous actor. Although Marc doesn’t like Ralph, he is sucked into the actor’s entourage.
This is the story of one summer when Marc’s family stays at the summer villa rented by Ralph. Throw their wives into the mix, two teenage Meier sons and two teenage Schlosser daughters, plus a film director and his decorative girlfriend, summer heat, a swimming pool and a beach, and you can see trouble looming. It’s how Marc reacts to that trouble that makes the story. I found myself thinking ‘he’s not really going to do that is he? Oh, he has.’
Marc is a very unreliable narrator, skilfully handled by Koch. I didn’t trust him, I didn’t like him, but he made me laugh. His intolerances and lack of patience struck a chord with me [which should get me worried!]. Is it a story of medical incompetence or murder, I will let you decide. It is certainly a story of misunderstandings. The people are unlikeable, but the story draws you on. It is an excellent book to throw into the discussion about why all characters in fiction must be nice: we are not all nice, we all have light and dark in us, we all have habits we would rather keep to ourselves. So fiction should be populated by realistic characters.
But I am pleased Dr Marc Schlosser is not my doctor.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Bear’ by Claire Cameron
‘Stolen Child’ by Laura Elliot
‘Whistle in the Dark’ by Emma Healey

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview SUMMER HOUSE WITH SWIMMING POOL by Herman Koch via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-11c

#BookReview ‘The Accident’ by CL Taylor @callytaylor #thriller

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The Accident by CL Taylor is the story of an abusive relationship, an accident and a mental breakdown. The action takes place in 1990-1992 and the present day. The tension winds up in both strands so you don’t want to put down the book. I found myself picking up my Kindle every spare five minutes, just to read a few more pages. There is a sense of expectant horror: ‘surely that’s not going to happen,’ ‘surely she’s not going to do this, or that.’ CL TaylorCharlotte, the fifteen year old daughter of Sue and Brian Jackson, is in a coma. Apparently she stepped off the pavement in front of a bus. As Sue and Brian sit by their daughter’s hospital bed, they disagree about what happened. Brian thinks it’s an accident, Sue worries Charlotte had some sort of problem she couldn’t discuss with her parents. And so begins the re-telling of Sue’s dark past, about the demons she struggles with, and the determination she has to fight the past interfering with her present life. The unravelling of the truth puts pressure on the Jacksons’ marriage and Sue’s sanity. The two parents deal with the tragedy in their own way and Sue, emotionally vulnerable, starts to imagine all sorts of scenarios.
From the first page, the pace is fast. “Coma. There’s something innocuous about the word, soothing almost in the way it conjures up the image of a dreamless sleep. Only Charlotte doesn’t look as though she’s sleeping to me.” It is every parent’s nightmare: an accident, a coma. But Sue must unravel the mystery without any help from Charlotte.

Read my reviews of these other thrillers by CL Taylor:-
THE ESCAPE
THE LIE

If you like this, try:-
‘The Lamplighters’ by Emma Stonex
‘The Bone Church’ by Victoria Dougherty
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Ekback

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE ACCIDENT by CL Taylor @callytaylor http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Wj via @SandraDanby 

#BookReview ‘All the Birds, Singing’ by Evie Wyld #mystery

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All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld is about secrets, now, in the past, in Australia, in England. The opening is shocking, a mutilated sheep, no description spared. Jack Whyte, a man’s name but a female character, feels threatened, fears the attack on the sheep is meant as a message for her. Evie Wyld And from here the rollercoaster starts, as we follow Jack’s current grey existence with her sheep, somewhere anonymous in England, and a dog called Dog. This story is told in alternating chapters, switching between England now, and Australia then. The story in the present goes forward, in linear time, normal time. Jack’s back story in Australia, the reasons she is where she is, is told backwards. This seemed strange to start with, but the author handles this structure elegantly and it suits the sinister tone. I didn’t guess Jack’s secret, didn’t know how it would all end.
There is a deep sense of foreboding throughout this book. Something happened: Jack is running from something, from someone, but what?  Are local children in England attacking her sheep, or is there a huge animal which roams at night? Why does she shun the locals? Why is she in England, so far from home? And is it all in her head? Should we believe her fears?
She has come from a hard world in Australia, a man’s world of sheep stations, sheep shearing, where she is the only woman, she does press-ups and has biceps to rival the men she works alongside. It feels as if she is trapped by her situation, by her life, by the sinister men which she seems to attract. At one point in Australia she moves the animals’ pen onto some thin grass so the pathetic sheep can eat “but they just stand there, a silent little group, I try to move them about, but they’re not scared of me. Resigned is what they are, and I tell them, ‘You can move around if you want to,’ waving my arms and jumping about, but they just sway a little in the hot fly air.” For a while, Jake acts like these sheep; staying where she is, swaying in the heat. But the reader knows she is in England now, so she must have run: when, where, why?
In England a neighbour advises her to go to the pub once in a while, get to know the other farmers. Don says:  “Some things you just can’t do on your own… That’s why farmers need to know each other, you help them, they help you, that’s just how it goes… because sooner or later I’m going to hit the post and be dead and then what’ll you do? Starve to death I suppose.” Yes, I believed she would rather starve.

If you like this, try:-
‘Restless Dolly Maunder’ by Kate Grenville
‘The Bear’ by Claire Cameron
‘Summer House with Swimming Pool’ by Herman Koch

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview ALL THE BIRDS, SINGING by Evie Wyld http://wp.me/p5gEM4-MK via @SandraDanby