Tag Archives: thriller

#Bookreview ‘Hitler’s Secret’ by Rory Clements #thriller #WW2

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Fourth in the Tom Wilde World War Two spy mysteries, Hitler’s Secret by Rory Clements hits the ground running and keeps the pages turning. The secret in question is a ten-year old girl who may or may not be the love child of Hitler. Klara has a false identity and is hidden but is now in imminent danger of exposure and murder. Rory ClementsWilde travels to Berlin disguised as a German-American motorcycle manufacturer in search of a business deal. His cover enables him to meet allies and search for Klara. Unsure of his mission from the beginning, Wilde imagines that everyone can see through his false identity, everyone is planning to kill him. Clements tells the story at breakneck speed, flicking from viewpoint to viewpoint. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s gatekeeper wants Klara dead and despatches a henchman, Otto Kalt. But it seems everyone touched by Klara’s story is at risk of death. As Wilde closes in on Klara’s hiding place, so do her killers. What ensues is a tense chase north across Germany towards the promised sanctuary of Sweden. And at all times it is assumed Hitler is unaware of the girl’s existence. But who else knows the secret?
At the heart of this story is trust. Believing loyalty expressed at time of war can be a treacherous decision and at times Tom feels everyone has an agenda except him. Even his allies have their own motivations, their own friends and loyalties. Expecting to collect a ‘package’ in Berlin, he is horrified to find he is collecting a girl; he feels duped and used by his spy chiefs. And as Tom runs, it is impossible for him to identify his pursuers. His judgement is seriously challenged and he trusts no-one. What is on the surface a matter of shaming the perfect Adolf Hitler, so popular with his German female citizens, is at the same time a fight between the most elite of German officials.
Familiar characters from earlier books in the series recur: Tom’s partner Lydia, American diplomat Jim Vandenberg and Wilde’s contact at British intelligence, Philip Eaton. History professor Wilde is an affecting amateur spy, diligently learning the role he is assigned but relying on his instincts to get him out of trouble. Of course, the best laid plan can go wrong but this time the plan is not organised in advance and Tom is on his own. He will sink or swim and the few he trusts do not know if he is alive or dead.

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in the Tom Wilde series:-
CORPUS #1TOMWILDE
NUCLEUS #2TOMWILDE
NEMESIS #3TOMWILDE
A PRINCE AND A SPY #5TOMWILDE
THE MAN IN THE BUNKER #6TOMWILDE
THE ENGLISH FUHRER #7TOMWILDE

And from the Sebastian Wolff series:-
MUNICH WOLF #1SEBASTIANWOLFF

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard
‘Munich’ by Robert Harris
‘Five Days of Fog’ by Anna Freeman

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HITLER’S SECRET by Rory Clements https://wp.me/p5gEM4-47r via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Museum of Broken Promises’ by @elizabethbuchan #thriller #spy

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The Museum of Broken Promises by Elizabeth Buchan is a disjointed story of Cold War romance and its lingering after-effects decades later. Promises are made and broken, by everyone. The title is misleading, as the sections at the museum in present day in Paris act as bookends to the crucial story in Eighties story in Czechoslovakia. Elizabeth BuchanIt is 1985, Prague. After the death of her father, student Laure takes a job as an au pair in Paris moving to Prague with her employers. It is the Cold War and the once beautiful city is shabby and grey, an unsettling place to live where the threat of imprisonment or violence always lingers. Laure cares for two small children while their father Petr works, he is an official at a pharmaceuticals company and in a privileged position enabling him to bring a foreigner to work in the country, and their mother Eva is ill. Gradually Laure explores the streets and finds a marionette theatre. There she is enchanted by the folklore tales of the puppets; and she meets Tomas, lead singer in a rock band.
Resistance against the repressive regime in Czechoslovakia is low key, expressed through the arts. In this way, the book reminded me of Tom Stoppard’s play Rock and Roll which tells the story of rock band The Plastic People of the Universe. The Museum of Broken Promises is a story of a young student who falls in love with a bad boy who describes himself as a ‘rock soldier making war on the party’. But these words – soldier, war – are used in a student resistance sense, not actual war. This is quiet resistance rather than terrorism, but is none the weaker for this. Songs and marionettes can spread important messages of defiance, as Laure finds  when she goes to a rock concert. Singing and dancing can be subversive. As someone says, it is ‘giving into forbidden yearning and loyalties. Tasting resistance like wine on the tongue’. Laure’s time in Prague echoes throughout her later life and leads her to open her museum in Paris, inviting mementoes from strangers, objects that represent broken promises.
The Museum of Broken Promises is a slow moving contemplative story, without the pace of a thriller despite its Cold War setting and the constant threat to anyone who speaks or behaves out of turn. This lack of propulsion makes it seem a longer book than it is and I wanted it to have some bite. The story moves back and forth from Prague to Paris and more than once I wasn’t sure where Laure was. This adds to the sense that nothing is what it seems.
Laure is an innocent who is sometimes stupidly naïve, unknowingly putting other people in danger. It is an example of the idealism and irreverence of youth ignoring advice. As she is warned on her arrival in Prague, don’t ask questions, don’t answer questions.

If you like this, try:-
‘If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go’ by Judy Chicurel
‘The Bone Church’ by Victoria Dougherty
‘Hangover Square’ by Patrick Hamilton

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN PROMISES by @elizabethbuchan https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4sA via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Second Midnight’ by @AndrewJRTaylor #WW2

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In The Second Midnight, Andrew Taylor unpicks the connections between a group of people – a dysfunctional family, spies, ordinary people – before, during and after World War Two in England and Czechoslovakia. Essentially it is a novel of relationships wrapped up in the parcel of wartime spying, lies and romance. In its scope it reminds me of Robert Goddard’s Wide World trilogy, except Taylor covers the subject in one book rather than three. Andrew TaylorIt is 1939 and twelve year old Hugh Kendall is bullied by his father, sighed over by his harried mother, ignored by his older brother and manipulated by his older sister. Hugh retreats into imaginative games with his toy soldiers. His father, failing glass importer Alfred Kendall, is recruited by the Secret Services as a courier on a glass-buying trip to Czechoslovakia. In tow is Hugh, recently expelled from school, a nuisance to his father. Alfred is not a natural spy, though he thinks he is. When things get sticky and Alfred must return to England, the Czech Resistance keeps Hugh as collateral to ensure his father’s quick return. But Hugh finds himself alone in Prague after the German invasion, unsure who to trust, unsure if he will be rescued. He quickly learns to live on his wits. This for me was the best section of the book.
The thing that makes this story stand apart for me is Hugh. He makes an uncanny narrator, giving us a view of life in an occupied country, stranded from everything that is safe and familiar. Adept at languages, Hugh quickly becomes familiar with Czech and German allowing him to assume a false identity as Rudi Messner, a Czech-Hungarian boy.  Cared for by a German officer, Colonel Helmut Scholl, Hugh works as the gardener’s boy at Scholl’s mansion in Prague and meets the colonel’s children, Heinz and Magda. These relationships weave across the years and the pages into the post-war years and the fight against communism.
The significance of the title left me wondering if I had missed something. It is set up with an intriguing connection between two characters, then abandoned. The connection with the Prologue was also lost on me as it is only mentioned again at the end and I had forgotten what happened; ends neatly tied without adding understanding. Taylor knows how to tell a page turning story, I read this quickly. This is a fascinating read over a complex time period, but an enormous subject; I wish it had been given the space of three books to explore fully.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

Read my reviews of Andrew Taylor’s ‘Marwood & Lovett’ series that starts on the night of the Great Fire of London:-
THE ASHES OF LONDON #FIREOFLONDON1… and read the first paragraph of THE ASHES OF LONDON.
THE FIRE COURT #FIREOFLONDON2
THE KING’S EVIL #FIREOFLONDON3
THE LAST PROTECTOR #FIREOFLONDON4
THE ROYAL SECRET #FIREOFLONDON5
THE SHADOWS OF LONDON #FIREOFLONDON6

If you like this, try:-
‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard
‘Five Days of Fog’ by Anna Freeman

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SECOND MIDNIGHT by @AndrewJRTaylor https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4gC via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph 117… ‘Personal’ #amreading #FirstPara

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‘Eight days ago my life was an up and down affair. Some of it good. Some of it not so good. Most of it uneventful. Long slow periods of nothing much, with occasional bursts of something. Like the army itself. Which is how they found me. You can leave the army, but the army doesn’t leave you. Not always. Not completely.’
Lee ChildFrom ‘Personal’ by Lee Child

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Sea Glass’ by Anita Shreve
‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ by Mark Haddon
‘American Psycho’ by Brett Easton Ellis

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara PERSONAL by @LeeChildReacher https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3gI via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Munich’ by @Robert___Harris #spies #WW2 #thriller

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Robert Harris is a classy thriller writer at the top of his game. Munich is his re-telling of the September 1938 meetings between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. Both had public, and private, objectives. Chamberlain was a pragmatist; though he sought peace, he was prepared to accept a delay of war to enable our woefully-equipped armed forces to prepare. Hitler wanted all of Europe for Aryans, which meant war. All of this is well-documented. But Harris takes two fictional characters and places them into this real history, splicing their personal stories into the political drama. Robert HarrisHugh Legat and Paul von Hartmann met at Oxford in the early Thirties. In 1938, Legat is a junior private secretary to Chamberlain. Hartmann holds a similar position in the German government; he is also part of the anti-Hitler movement. They two men have not spoken or seen each other since a holiday in Munich with a girlfriend. We do not know why. Everyone in this story faces a personal decision of conscience: whether to be loyal to country, self, and family, or betray them. The costs are different for each person. For some; death. For others; isolation, loss of job, loss of family, loss of self-respect.
Chamberlain and Hitler meet in Munich with Mussolini and Daladier to settle the fate of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. We are party to a fascinating game of chess as the diplomats and civil servants behind each of the leaders struggle to find a way through the opposition’s refusals and disagreements. The subtle tensions and pettiness within the teams, the one-upmanship, the jealousies, the cliques – which anyone who has worked in management will recognise – remind us that these politicians are ordinary people with an extra-ordinary job to do. If they fail, millions will die. Chamberlain is portrayed as a dedicated, workaholic who is desperate to avoid another war less than twenty years after the end of the Great War.
I read this over a weekend, the last pages flew by as Legat and Hartmann sneak around Munich, hiding secret documents and running from the Gestapo. This is a meticulously-researched literary thriller where the tension comes partly from our own knowledge of the outcome and our understanding that, whatever words the British present, Hitler’s mind is made up. Chamberlain will give his ‘peace in our time’ speech. But to find out what happens to the fictional Hugh and Paul, we must read to the end.

Read my reviews of these other thrillers, also by Robert Harris:-
AN OFFICER AND A SPY
V2

If you like this, try:-
‘The Travelers’ by Chris Pavone
‘Darktown’ by Thomas Mullen
‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview MUNICH by @Robert___Harris https://wp.me/p5gEM4-357 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Five Days of Fog’ by Anna Freeman #thriller #crime

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Five Days of Fog by Anna Freeman about the queen of a female crime syndicate coming out of prison reminds me of Martina Cole’s books. It is 1952 and as Florrie Palmer waits for her mother Ruby to return home, she must make a decision about the direction of her own life. Anna FreemanLondon remains in the grip of ruins from the war and Florrie is firmly embedded in the family gang, donning disguises to steal, feeling secure in the circle of women who support each other. But she also applies for a job as a telephonist, carefully practising her accent.
The action is framed by five days of fog, both physical and perceived. So dense is visibility that cars crash, chemicals cause lung infections and people are coughing up dirt. The fog offers opportunities for thieves but it also disguises the truth and lies told to each other by the gang as they face a turning point. Old lies are perpetuated, new lies told with a smile, some members are out for their own benefit; others are tired of the secrets and politicking, and just want to get back to what they do best. Freeman’s fog is based on the real Great Smog of 1952 when an anticyclone pushed down all the filth in the air from industry, motor vehicle fumes and smoke from coal fires; it was followed in 1956 by the Clean Air Act.
The Palmer women form the Cutters, a fictional women’s gang named for The New Cut, a London market where the first group of women, tired of poverty and scrubbing floors, started shoplifting. When queen Ruby comes out of jail on early release, she has TB. As jostling begins in anticipation of the crowning of a new queen, there is a potentially bigger problem risking the survival of the Cutters and the male gang, the Goddens [the Palmer girls marry Godden boys, keeping the two gangs linked by DNA]; someone is grassing them up to the police. Trust is fractured, suspicious run rife, knives are carried, somewhere there is a gun. The story is told from multiple viewpoints – Florrie, Ruby, Nell, Ted – possibly too many. Is Florrie the grass? After all, she has dreams of going straight and marrying Nell’s son Ted, her quiet second cousin. If Ruby dies, Florrie will be in line to take over as queen. Or will Ruby’s blustering be-ringed sister Maggie take over? What about Ada, Ruby’s elderly aunt? Or is Harry Godden the queenmaker? Florrie and Ted are drawn into the gang by the family’s tentacles that keep the gang strong, safe and in the family.
I finished this book with mixed feelings. I admire the writing but don’t like any of the women and don’t feel convinced by the world created, though I can’t pin down why. I continued reading through the jumble of family background and names in the first half because I was curious about the identity of the grass. For me, the book took off in the second half as Nell’s story ignites. But the star of this book for me is Freeman’s masterful use of the fog.
If you are a fan of Freeman’s debut, The Fair Fight, be prepared for something completely different.

Read my review of THE FAIR FIGHT, also by Anna Freeman.

If you like this, try:-
‘Beginnings’ by Helen Christmas #1SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE
‘Hangover Square’ by Patrick Hamilton
‘Never’ by Ken Follett

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview FIVE DAYS OF FOG by Anna Freeman https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3U7 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Nemesis’ by Rory Clements #thriller #WW2

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Nemesis by Rory Clements is the third in his Tom Wilde series which sees the American-born Cambridge professor tangle with more spies as Britain enters the Second World War. It is a page-turning read that I galloped through despite a few moments of confusion about who was double-crossing who; to the point where I started to distrust everyone except Tom. Rory ClementsIt is September 1939 and a strange time, the pause before war starts when sandbags are filled and the propaganda starts. Wilde, on holiday in southern France with girlfriend Lydia, negotiates the release of a former student, a brilliant chorister, from an internment camp. Marcus Marfield fought for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War and seems to be suffering from PTSD. Wilde returns him to Cambridge though feeling uneasy about the circumstances of Marcus’s release. Marcus’s behaviour is worrying. Clements includes many of the characters featured in the earlier two books, including British spy Philip Eaton, doctor Rupert Weir and fellow don Horace Dill.
Critical at this stage of the war was America joining the Allies but two unrelated incidents spread bad PR in the US; the ambassador in Paris escapes assassination and a British ship The Athenia, carrying American civilians, is sunk. On board are the wife and children of Jim Vandenberg, Tom’s contact at the US Embassy. As Jim waits for news of his wife and sons, strange things start to happen around Marcus Marfield and Tom is pulled into the investigation. Though unqualified, he has a skill for spying and takes to it eagerly, always riding his distinctive Rudge motorcycle.
This is a fun, gripping series set at a fascinating time in Britain’s history when each side was plotting to win the propaganda war and influence America. It tempts me to start reading Clements’ Elizabethan spy novels.

Click the title to read my reviews of the other books in the Tom Wilde series:-
CORPUS #1TOMWILDE
NUCLEUS #2TOMWILDE
HITLER’S SECRET #4TOMWILDE
A PRINCE AND A SPY #5TOMWILDE
THE MAN IN THE BUNKER #6TOMWILDE
THE ENGLISH FUHRER #7TOMWILDE

And from the Sebastian Wolff series:-
MUNICH WOLF #1SEBASTIANWOLFF

If you like this, try:-
‘A Hero in France’ by Alan Furst
‘An Officer and a Spy’ by Robert Harris
‘Day’ by AL Kennedy

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview NEMESIS by Rory Clements https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3PU via @SandraDanby

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

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Part three of a London-based thriller series, Pleasures by Helen J Christmas takes up immediately where books one and two left off. The ‘Same Place Different Place’ series ticks all the thriller boxes. Chases, disguises, London gangsters, phone tapping, dodgy politicians and policemen, threats, kidnapping, lovable victims and baddies to hate. Helen J ChristmasBook two ends in 1987, Pleasures picks up the story in the same year. Do not read Pleasures without having read books two and three first as you will miss so many references. In a nutshell, in Beginnings Eleanor Chapman is on the run with her son Eli after Eli’s father was murdered after witnessing the killing of a politician. In Visions, Eleanor and Eli have settled in the quiet village of Aldwyk, hopeful of remaining under the radar from the gang who see her as a dangerous witness. But a bitter property deal brings an old enemy to the village.
The handling of the backstory in Pleasures is at times repetitive, exacerbated perhaps by the fact that this book starts immediately after the previous story finished. The old enemy is back in another controversial property deal in the town where Eleanor now lives. The heavies are brought in to threaten Eleanor Bailey, now married to Charlie, and their family. There is a 12 year gap between books one and two, adding fresh air to the plot and enabling the cast of children to grow into early teens. Only months pass before the ending of book two and start of book three. The children are embarking on girlfriend/boyfriend angst, all of which Christmas blends naturally into the story. The Eighties setting is done particularly well, not just random details but made relevant to the plot. There is also the return of an old adversary who adds spice to the mix as he goes straight; but has he really become a responsible businessman, or is it just a front. Eleanor, understandably, is haunted by past threats and is over-protective of son Eli.
At 556 pages this is a long book, very long for a thriller. The first, Beginnings, 314 pages. The second, Visions, 486 pages. There is a fair amount of summarising what has happened and repeating of the threats faced. The story really starts moving as the midway point is neared and the second half is a page-turner as threat after threat, hinted at for so long, begins to happen and Eleanor’s carefully constructed world begins to unravel.
The teenagers are growing up, there’s lots of adolescent angst, snogging and groping. Avalon and William are my favourite characters and I enjoyed the late Eighties references. I wished for a new threat, or a twist on the old one, and admit to expecting a significant death. But perhaps that will come in book four.

Click the title to read my reviews of the first two books in this series:-
BEGINNINGS #1SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE
VISIONS #2SAMEFACEDIFFERENTPLACE

If you like this, try:-
‘Corpus’ by Rory Clements
‘The Accident’ by CL Taylor
‘The Blood Detective’ by Dan Waddell

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PLEASURES by Helen J Christmas @SFDPBeginnings https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3ym via @Sandra Danby

#BookReview ‘Panic Room’ by Robert Goddard #thriller

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Panic Room by Robert Goddard starts in the voice of someone unnamed, someone who feels safe in a beautiful, calm place, who wants to stay there forever but who knows that is unrealistic. It made me ask so many questions: who is the speaker, where is this safe place and why isn’t it forever? Robert GoddardIt’s a while before we learn the identity of the first speaker. We are next introduced to Don Challenor, an ordinary middle-aged bloke, an estate agent who has been sacked, who is given a temporary job by his ex- wife Fran. To prepare for sale a multi-million property, Wortalleth West in Cornwall, for a client of Fran’s. Don jumps in his vintage MG to drive west, not realising how his life will change.
In the house he sets about his job, taking photos and measurements in order to prepare the sales brochure. Except the dimensions of one room don’t make sense. There is a mystery void. A steel door which cannot be opened. Is it a panic room? Why is it there? What’s in it? Is it dangerous? Could someone be inside, watching? Or are they trapped? Why not simply ask the owner of the house? Of course, nothing is that straightforward. And so the search to solve the riddle begins.
This is a cracking thriller which starts slowly and winds up and winds up as all the disparate threads of story begin to fall into place. It is an old-fashioned thriller with a conflicted but strong heroine, a disillusioned male hero who rediscovers his strength and guile, an arch villain who cannot be fathomed because he seems too nice and reasonable, and a couple of thugs who don’t worry about the trail they leave. Add in a Cornish witch, a kidnapping and a disappearing teenager, and you begin to wonder how on earth it will all make sense.
Goddard draws a beautiful picture of the Cornish coastline, it will make you want to go there… just not to Wortalleth West. You don’t have to work hard, just sit back and let this master thriller writer take you on a journey of family lies and disappearance, manipulation and fraud, big finance, global warming and cutting edge science. It will not be what you expected.

Read my reviews of Goddard’s other books:-
THE FINE ART OF INVISIBLE DETECTION #1UMIKOWADA
THE WAYS OF THE WORLD #1WIDEWORLDTRILOGY
THE CORNERS OF THE GLOBE #2WIDEWORLDTRILOGY
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH #3 WIDEWORLDTRILOGY
THIS IS THE NIGHT THEY COME FOR YOU #1SUPERINTENDENTTALEB

If you like this, try:-
‘An Officer and a Spy’ by Robert Harris
‘The Travelers’ by Chris Pavone
‘Purity’ by Jonathan Franzen

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview PANIC ROOM by Robert Goddard https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3iz via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton #crime #thriller

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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton is a whodunnit version of Groundhog Day set at a country house party. There is a twist: the Bill Murray character must live each day in a different body, a host, and solve a murder or never escape back to his normal life. I found this to be a tortuous, convoluted and mystifying plot, impossible to review without giving away clues (intentionally or not), but I will have a go. Stuart TurtonIf you like conventional detective stories which follow the rules of crime fiction, presenting a challenge to be solved, this may not be for you. If you like going on a mystery journey where nothing is as it seems, you will like it. Mysteries work when the reader has something to cling onto, to make them identify with a character, to make them care, to give them someone to root for. This story has so many unknowns I spent most of the story in a state of confusion. Like Coco Chanel dressing for the evening and then removing two elements to ensure she wasn’t over-dressed, I finished this book wishing the author had undertaken a similar cutting exercise. The solution to the murder, and the fate of the protagonist were not the elements I found most fascinating; I enjoyed the challenge faced by Aiden – if that is his true name – when he inhabits the body of a host, a stranger. The obese body but sharp mind of Lord Ravencourt; the over-excited Jonathan Derby who acts without thinking and molests the chambermaids; the beaten-up butler who knows a lot but lays in bed drifting in and out of consciousness.
The list of characters is so long – with too many similar names, Millicent/Madeline, Daniel/Donald – plus others who are simply unnamed background extras, I couldn’t remember which each one was. This is complicated by the fact that the hero – whose name might be Aiden Bishop – doesn’t know who is who either. He doesn’t know who can he trust, who has he already met at Blackheath House, and who he knew before arriving at the party – as he also has amnesia about his real identity and previous life. Two/three other people are also experiencing this mobile bodied state, and Aiden is competing with them to solve the crime. Because only one, he is told by the mysterious fancy dress Plague Doctor, will survive. Oh and there’s a mysterious footman too who may or may not be trying to kill Aiden. Oddly, none of the other time-trapped people appear in Aiden’s body.
By a quarter through I was seriously confused and becoming seriously irritated. Is this a story best read in one sitting, so you are better able to remember all the twists and obfuscations? But the book is not short, 528 pages. Or could it be that there is just too much going on? A closed room mystery, each day repeating itself, a hero with amnesia who must relive each day in a different host body and be influenced by the stranger’s body and personality, a murder that happens every night meaning the victim cannot be rescued, a competition to solve the murder in order to survive, obtuse threats from sinister unidentifiable figures, key characters introduced rather late in the game. There is no doubting the planning skills of the author but at times I did suspect he set out to wilfully confuse rather than tease the reader. I ran through various scenarios: is it a game show, is it a wind-up like Candid Camera, is Aiden the murderer and doesn’t know it, is Aiden the murderer and cleverly duping everyone?
Ambitious, overwhelming, fantastical, mysterious, I can’t help but admire the ambition of the author and the scope of his story. Hidden beneath the machinations are two serious questions: how far will a person go in order to escape an intolerable situation, and is it ever possible to escape your own past? A Marmite book: love it or hate it.

If you like this, try these:-
‘Himself’ by Jess Kidd
‘The Last of Us’ by Rob Ewing
‘Curtain Call’ by Anthony Quinn

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE SEVEN DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE by Stuart Turton https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3kf via @SandraDanby