Tag Archives: thriller

#BookReview ‘The Accident’ by @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.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK AT AMAZON

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

If you like this, try:-
‘Jellyfish’ by Lev D Lewis
‘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:
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#BookReview ‘The Accident’ by Chris Pavone #thriller

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The Accident by Chris Pavone is a fast-moving thriller with so many questions. To start with, we have the Prologue about an unidentified man writing a book. This is his third draft of a manuscript called ‘The Accident.’ An excerpt from his m/s finishes: “…if what you are reading is a finished book, printed and bound and distributed into the world, I am, almost certainly, dead.” I was hooked. The Accident is Pavone’s second novel, his favourite thriller writer is John Le Carré and he certainly paces his storytelling the same way. Chris PavoneThe second person we meet is Isabel Reed, a New York literary agent. It is dawn and she has just finished reading a manuscript: ‘The Accident by Anonymous.’ She is astounded at the enormity of the story, the revelations and accusations. As well as being a page-turning thriller, this novel is also an insight of the publishing world in New York and how the connections of power function in the USA: media, publishing, Government, CIA, black-ops. Isabel was once a top literary agent, now she is desperate for the last big m/s. Is this it? She stands under the shower: “It all beats down on her, the shower stream and the manuscript and the boy and the past, and the old guilt plus the new guilt, and the new earth-shattering truths, and fear for her career and maybe, now, fear for her life.” There is a lot we don’t know about Isabel: how come she has this m/s; she thinks about a husband, where is he; she thinks about a child, Tommy, also absent. But the story moves so quickly, I put those questions aside and continued reading.
I admit that at the beginning, I lost track of who was where; so many characters are introduced with anonymous snapshots that I got a bit irritated. Which ‘he’ was this? But I stuck with it and the characters assumed names. The thing that kept me reading was the excerpts from the m/s – as Anonymous tells the story, bit-by-bit we learn more about the secret, the bombshell. So when the murders start to happen, I was expecting death. I was soon picking up my Kindle to grab two minutes reading on the run. Who is doing the killing? Who is the author? Is the m/s true, or revenge?
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS BOOK

And here’s my review of another thriller by Chris Pavone:-
THE TRAVELERS

If you like this, try:-
‘Purity’ by Jonathan Franzen
‘A Hero in France’ by Alan Furst
‘Wolf’ by Mo Hayder

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#BookReview ‘An Officer and a Spy’ by @Robert_Harris #thriller

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Robert Harris is a master storyteller. Whether he turns his attention to a volcano exploding, ghost writing the memoirs of a questionable politician, the deathly politics of Rome’s Senate, or the Nazis winning the Second World War, you know you can rely on him to tell a rollicking tale based on sound handling of the historical facts. An Officer and a Spy has so many echoes of today it is uncanny. Robert HarrisThe true story on which this novel is based too place in 1895. Don’t let the historical basis of the story deter you; this is a good old-fashioned spy story complete with forgeries, eavesdropping, surveillance and murder.The spy of the title is Captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted as a military spy and sent to Devil’s Island. The captain is Georges Picquart, who witnesses the humiliation of Dreyfus in front of a baying mob. Picquart, who after this opening scene is promoted to run the Statistical Section of France’s Ministry of War, discovers evidence that puts Dreyfus’ conviction in doubt. His superiors dismiss his concerns and tell him to forget them. He doesn’t forget, instead undertaking his own investigations which uncover evidence of a new spy. His efforts lead him to a prison cell.
Aghast at the army’s willingness to accept a miscarriage of justice rather than the upset of a retrial, Dreyfus doesn’t stop fighting for justice. “For the first time in my life I carry hatred inside me. It is an almost physical thing, like a concealed knife. Sometimes, when I am alone, I like to take it out and run my thumb along its cold, sharp blade.”
Underlying the spy story is the fact that Dreyfus is a Jew. The anti-semitism in the French army portrayed by Harris is deeply disturbing in the light of rising right-wing extremism in Europe today against minorities.
The cause of Dreyfus is taken up by luminaries of the time, including the novelist Emile Zola, who uses the power of the press in the fight to bring Dreyfus home for re-trial. To Picquart , the army’s refusal to admit its mistake “really, it is beyond hypocrisy; it is beyond even lying; it has become a psychosis.”

Read my reviews of these other thrillers, also by Robert Harris:-
MUNICH
V2

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis
‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom

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#BookReview ‘The Little House’ by Philippa Gregory #thriller #mystery

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In The Little House by Philippa Gregory, Ruth’s story starts with Sunday lunch at the in-laws and builds slowly, pulling you in relentlessly until you can’t put the book down. Tension between Ruth and her mother-in-law, a newborn baby, a chilling tale of tension within a familyPhilippa GregoryIt is deceptive in its simplicity, at various points in the story I found myself thinking ‘but they couldn’t do that’ or ‘that would never happen.’ But it does and you believe it. The denouement is startling.
The Little House is very different from the historical novels by Philippa Gregory but shares the same aspects of a pageturner: you simply want to know what happens next.

Read my reviews of these two Tudor novels by Philippa Gregory:-
THE LADY OF THE RIVERS
THREE SISTERS THREE QUEENS

Read the #FirstPara of THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL, also by Philippa Gregory.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Past’ by Tessa Hadley
‘Lord John and the Private Matter’ by Diana Gabaldon
‘The Knife with the Ivory Handle’ by Cynthia Bruchman

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