Review: CROSS FINGERS, Paddy Richardson

• this edition published by Hachette New Zealand 2013
• 286 pages
• ISBN 978-1-96971-307-2
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Booktopia)

Television journalist Rebecca Thorne is working on a documentary project exposing a crooked ex-cop property developer. Much to her chagrin she is removed from the project to work on another documentary about the notorious 1981 South African rugby team's tour of New Zealand.

At the same, Rebecca breaks up with boyfriend Rolly. Strange things start to happen: is someone stalking her, breaking into her house and moving things? Or is she just being paranoid?

As she learns more about the '81 tour, Rebecca becomes fascinated by the Lambs, two anonymous protesters who mocked the police and entertained the crowds, and by the disappearance of one of them on the night of the Wellington test.

As sinister events in Rebecca's life increase, she gets closer and closer to finding out what happened to the Black Lamb...

My Take

As well as being a murder mystery, this story is a study of how the government of New Zealand became almost indistinguishable from a totalitarian regime as it saw to it that the Springbok tour of New Zealand went ahead. How a sport divided the people along political lines and brought confrontation to the streets of New Zealand cities where Springbok rugby matches were held.

Most of the novel takes the form of scripts of video interviews that Rebecca Thorne conducts with people from both sides, the rugby supporters and the police, and those protesting against the tour. Despite the violence perpetrated in the name of crowd control many of the police saw the protesters as dangerous and subversive, while the protesters saw the police as turning into faceless Gestapo-like troops. There are certainly political overtones running through the novel.

Thorne is seeking to give the television documentary, due to screen for the 30 year anniversary of the tour, a different twist to those that were produced for previous anniversaries. And she thinks she has found the slant she needs with the Lambs, two anonymous protesters disguised in woolly costumes,detested by the police and by some of the protesters too. On the night of the Wellington test one of them is murdered, and the other disappears.

But then Thorne becomes the target of heavy breathing on the phone, and she feels stalked, so convinced that someone has broken into her house that she has the locks changed.

A well constructed and engrossing story. And you will learn a lot about the Springbok Tour of 1981.

My rating:4.5

I've also reviewed
5.0, TRACES OF RED
5.0, SWIMMING IN THE DARK 

Review: WINTER SIEGE, Ariana Franklin & Samantha Norman

• first published in 2104 by Bantam Press
  
• ISBN 978-0593-07061-1
• 356 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

A powerful historical novel by the late Ariana Franklin and her daughter Samantha Norman, The Siege Winter is a tour de force mystery and murder, adventure and intrigue, a battle for a crown, told by two courageous young women whose fates are intertwined in twelfth century England's devastating civil war.

1141. England is engulfed in war as King Stephen and his cousin, the Empress Matilda, vie for the crown. In this dangerous world, not even Emma, an eleven-year-old peasant, is safe. A depraved monk obsessed with redheads kidnaps the ginger-haired girl from her village and leaves her for dead. When an archer for hire named Gwyl finds her, she has no memory of her previous life. Unable to abandon her, Gwyl takes the girl with him, dressing her as a boy, giving her a new name - Penda - and teaching her to use a bow. But Gwyn knows that the man who hurt Penda roams free, and that a scrap of evidence she possesses could be very valuable.

Gwyl and Penda make their way to Kenilworth [Kenniford], a small but strategically important fortress that belongs to fifteen-year-old Maud. Newly wedded to a boorish and much older husband after her father's death, the fierce and determined young chatelaine tempts fate and Stephen's murderous wrath when she gives shelter to the empress.

Aided by a garrison of mercenaries, including Gwyl and his odd red-headed apprentice, Maud will stave off Stephen's siege for a long, brutal winter that will bring a host of visitors to Kenilworth [Kenniford] - kings, soldiers . . . and a sinister monk with deadly business to finish.
My Take

After the synopsis above, there is not a lot left to tell you about the plot of this novel. To my mind it is much more a historical novel than a crime fiction one, although certainly it does have mysteries. It is set in a fascinating period of English history when the country is torn apart by civil war, King Stephen vs his cousin the Empress Matilda. And the portrayal of this period has a real feeling of authenticity to it. It was a brutal time when nobility seem to have swapped sides readily, once they could see which way the wind was blowing.

The structure of the novel is interesting: at Perton Abbey the abbot is dying.
He has something important to do. he has to record a tale of treachery and murder, also a story of courage and love, before he too twirls off life's tree; yet he is too ill, too weak to write it himself.

And so he is assigned a young scribe to write it for him.

Samantha Norman completed this novel in tribute to her mother Ariana Franklin who unfortunately died in 2011.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed
4.6, RELICS OF THE DEAD

Review: DEAD RECKONING, Michael W. Smart

• File Size: 914 KB
• Print Length: 342 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00IY2U966
• source: review copy from author 
• #1 in the Bequia mystery series.

Synopsis (Amazon)

MYSTERY AND ROMANCE SET IN THE CARIBBEAN ISLANDS OF ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES.

Gage didn't have friends. He'd led an emotionally isolated life, avoiding personal attachments, a mantra for survival. And the last thing he needed was disruption and exposure of the quiet retirement he'd settled into on Bequia, living aboard his schooner Wherever. He'd buried his past. Forged a new life.

And in doing so broke his cardinal rule, he'd formed attachments. A burgeoning romantic relationship with the island's police Superintendent Jolene Johanssen, whose love awakens dormant emotions and reconnects him to the world. A relationship he's unsure he's emotionally equipped to handle. And a close friendship with the discerning Commissioner of Police Mike Daniels, who perceives more regarding Gage's past than Gage is comfortable with. And who lies in a coma, fighting for his life.

In pursuing his friend's shooter Gage becomes embroiled in the vicious world of narco traffickers, money laundering, and a possible nemesis from his past, threatening to upend his new life, resurrect his inner demons, and put the people he's come to care about in the cross-hairs.

My take

At first there are two mysteries to solve: the attempted assassination of the Commissioner of Police, and the disappearance of a tourist, Natalie Holmes. Nicholas Gage feels that the two may be connected although he has no proof.

Mike Daniels' condition is critical, far more serious than the medical facilities on the island of Becquia can cope with. So Gage calls in some favors to get Daniels airlifted urgently to Miami. But that very act exposes Gage to threat, to exposure of what he retired from before he came to Becquia. And it exposes his friends to real danger.

On his return to the island Gage realises that he is being watched, and he sets up his own surveillance systems to protect his friends and loved ones, particularly his lover police Superintendent Jolene Johanssen.

Slowly bits of what Gage is hiding are revealed. The story is action packed, set against the beguiling waters of the Caribbean. There is a strong sense of place, a setting at once enchanting but also a cover to lethal activities including drug running.

My rating: 3.6

Review: THE KIZUNA COAST, Sujata Massey

• first published 2014
  
• e-book review copy kindly supplied by the author
• available for Kindle from Amazon
• #11 in the Rei Shimura series
• author website

Synopsis (author website)

When a devastating earthquake rocks Japan’s northeast coast, a tsunami follows and Rei Shimura is swept into her most rugged adventure yet.

The mystery begins with an SOS from Rei’s friend, the antiques dealer Mr. Ishida, trapped among thousands of displaced and dead on the Tohoku coast. Rei rushes to Tokyo, where she discovers Ishida Antiques may have been burglarized. Rei takes Mr. Ishida’s abandoned dog, Hachiko, on a volunteer bus to the ravaged town of Sugihama.

But Mr. Ishida’s got more work for her, since he lost contact with his antiques apprentice Mayumi and is frantic with worry. He won’t leave Sugihama without knowing the fate of the troubled 19-year-old girl from a famous lacquer-making family.

My take

Sujata Massey says

Because of the real framework of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, this book could probably qualify as a modern historical novel within the Rei mystery series.

As Rei Shimura ventures to the Tohoju coast in search of her mentor Ishida-san as a Helping Hand volunteer vivid description builds of the impact of the tsunami on coastal towns and villages, and of the way the Japanese community works together to rebuild lives. There is an authentic feel to the narrative which told me things about the tsunami that I had no way of knowing: the pervading smell of the rotting fish left behind as the water retreated, the stories of people who survived while those with them were washed away, the after shocks that continued for days, and so on.

Against this background Massey has woven the story of the search for Mayumi who disappeared after the earthquake, and then of Rei's search for justice.

It is always a delight to discover an author and enjoy your first read so much. It is like making a new friend.

My rating: 4.5

About the author

Sujata Massey was born in England to parents from India and Germany and grew up mostly in St. Paul, Minnesota. She holds a BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and started her working life as a features reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun. After leaving the newspaper, she moved to Japan, where she studied Japanese, taught English and began writing her first novel, The Salaryman’s Wife. This novel became the first of many in the Rei Shimura mystery series, which has won Agatha and Macavity awards and been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark awards. Her August 2013 release, The Sleeping Dictionary, is a trade paperback with Simon & Schuster’s Gallery line, and also an audiobook published by Dreamscape. It’s the first in a series of historical suspense novels featuring Bengali women who each play a role in making modern India.
Sujata’s books have been published in more than 18 countries, and if she could redo her youth, she would have double-majored in history and a foreign language and spent a gap year (or two) abroad. Currently, she’s based near Washington, D.C. and can be contacted through these Internet sites: Facebook, Togather, and sujatamassey.com.

Review: THE BRONZE HORSEMAN, Paullina Simons

• published by Harper Collins 2011
  
  
• ISBN 978-0-00-790467-9
• 637 pages
• from my local library

Synopsis (author website)

Leningrad 1941: the white nights of summer illuminate a city of fallen grandeur whose beautiful palaces and stately avenues speak of a different age, when Leningrad was known as St Petersburg.

Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. It is a hard, impoverished life, yet the Metanovs know many who are not as fortunate as they.

The family routine is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. For the Metanovs, for Leningrad and for Tatiana, life will never be the same again. On the fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young officer named Alexander.

Tatiana and her family suffer as Hitler’s army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love. It is a love that could tear Tatiana’s family apart, a love that carries a secret that could mean death for anyone who hears it.

Confronted on the one hand by Hitler’s unstoppable war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world.

Mesmerizing from the very first page to the final, breathtaking end, The Bronze Horseman brings alive the story of two indomitable, heroic spirits and their great love that triumphs over the devastation of a country at war.

My Take

Do you feel obliged to finish a book, once started? One of the hardest things I find is to stop reading a book when I am not finding it a satisfying read.

Had THE BRONZE HORSEMAN been shorter (I got to page 187), or had it had more mystery about its plot, or had I been younger, I might have finished it. I am more than willing to believe that it may well be another's cup of tea, just not mine.

The Metanov family are in Leningrad, fighting in their own way for Mother Russia as Hitler's forces advance steadily towards the city. Pasha, the 17 year old son, and Tatiana's twin, disappears from a boy's holiday camp near Novgorod where his father has sent him. The family are living in squalid conditions when a Red Army officer Alexander enters their lives. Tatiana's older sister appropriates him, and so a love triangle develops.

And that's where I stopped. I have no doubt that the historical detail is what will attract some readers, while the romance will captivate others. Just not me. It was part of an attempt to read a book that is NOT crime fiction.

My Rating: 2.0

Review: MURDER ONE, Robert Dugoni

• First published by Touchstone, 2011
  
• #4 in the David Sloane series
• ISBN 978-1-4516-0669-0
• 374 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis (author website)

A year after tragedy, attorney David Sloane has returned to work full time. At a black-tie dinner he reconnects with Barclay Reid, opposing counsel in Sloane's most prominent case. Barclay is suffering from her own personal tragedy after the death of her teenage daughter from a drug overdose. In the aftermath, Barclay has begun an intense crusade against the Russian drug traffickers she holds responsible for her daughter s death, pursuing them with a righteousness that matches Sloane's own zeal for justice. Sloane finds himself drawn to this woman, despite their adversarial past.

When Barclay's crusade stalls and the Russian drug dealer turns up dead, she stands accused of murder and Sloane is her chosen defender. Amidst the swirling media frenzy, in his first criminal case, Sloane finds himself once again in harm s way, while mounting evidence suggests Barclay is a woman with many secrets. And may not be quite as innocent or as in love with Sloane as she purports to be.

With his signature fast-paced, page-turning action, and exhilarating plot twists, Robert Dugoni once again proves why he' s so often been named as the heir to Grisham's literary throne.

My take

David Sloane, who normally takes on civil cases, agrees to defend Barclay Reid when she is accused of murder despite a clear conflict of interest and the fact that he does not usually take on murder cases. Barclay Reid says she wants him in court for her as he is known never to lose a case.

There's plenty of tension in this thriller as the court case proceeds, and just little inklings of what the truth might be. I found it also gave me a view of the American trial system, and the roles taken by prosecutor and defense, which differ quite markedly it seems from both British and Australian systems. The setting is Seattle. The "American-ness" of the novel obviously annoyed a previous borrower of this library book who had assiduously marked out differences in spelling and colloquial expression.

Recommended.

My rating: 4.5

Review: BEAST IN VIEW, Margaret Millar

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 313 KB
• Print Length: 176 pages
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (August 18, 2011) - originally published 1955
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B005IYIAJG

Synopsis (Amazon)

At thirty, Helen Clarvoe is alone: her only visitors are the staff at the hotel where she lives, and her only phone calls come from a stranger.

Until that stranger, with a quiet, compelling voice, lures the aloof and financially secure Miss Clarvoe into a world of extortion, pornography, vengeance, madness and murder.
But who is the hunter and who is the victim...?

A gothic chiller which still feels incredibly modern, BEAST IN VIEW is a true classic of the crime fiction genre.

My Take

As others have commented, this has a staggeringly modern feel to it. It also feels as if it has cinematographic qualities. There is an incredible twist in the tail which apparently is a characteristic of most of Margaret Millar's novels.

Since her father's death, Helen Clarvoe has been estranged from her mother and brother who live in increasing poverty in the family home. Helen apparently inherited all her father's money but lives the life of a wealthy recluse although she is only thirty.  When Helen is contacted by a voice from the past she becomes scared and implores a friend of her father's to track Evelyn Merrick down. Then begins a breathtaking spiral of events, eventually ending in three deaths.

Published in 1955 BEAST IN VIEW won the  Edgar Award in 1956 and was later adapted for an episode of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1964.
 It also made the list of The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time that was issued in 1995 by the Mystery Writers of America.

I've read this novel as my contribution to Past Offences #1955book meme of February this year.
Fellow blogger Jose Ignacio at The Game's Afoot is also reading it.

My rating: 4.6

About the Author
Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was born in Ontario, Canada and was educated at Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate Institute and the University of Toronto, majoring in classics. In 1938 she married Kenneth Millar (who wrote under the name Ross Macdonald). She published her first novel, The Invisible Worm, in 1941 and she worked as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers. She was active in the conservation movement in California in the 1960s and was named a Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1965, and in 1982 she became a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.

Review: THE ART OF KILLING WELL, Marco Malvaldi

• first published in Italian in 2011
  
• this edition published by Maclehose Press in 2014
• translated from Italian into english by Howard Curtis
• ISBN 987-0-85705-294-0
• 189 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

Nothing could please a chef more than a chance to learn the secrets of a Baron’s castle kitchen. Having travelled the length and breadth of the country compiling his masterpiece, The Science of Cooking and The Art of Eating Well, Pellegrino Artusi relishes the prospect of a few quiet days and a boar hunt in the Tuscan hills.

But his peace is short-lived. A body is found in the castle cellar, and the local inspector finds himself baffled by an eccentric array of aristocratic suspects. When the baron himself becomes the target of a second murder attempt, Artusi realises he may need to follow his infallible nose to help find the culprit.

Marco Malvaldi serves up an irresistible dish spiced with mischief and intrigue, and sweetened with classical elegance and wit. His stroke of genius is to bring Italy’s first cookery writer to life in this most entertaining of murder mysteries.

My Take

This is a delightful book, both for its murder mystery and for its insight into Italian society in 1895, after unification. Here we have a Baron and his extended family living in castle splendour, with his heirs unaccustomed to doing anything for themselves. The first death is that of the young butler, poisoned by a glass of wine intended, it seems, for the Baron himself. The Baron is then peppered in the back with a shotgun, confirming that he was the intended victim of the poisoned wine.

Meanwhile Pellegrino Artusi is befriended by the daughter of the family who has the habit of reading private diaries, and he overhears the housemaid sobbing in great distress. Artusi has come to the castle to advise the Baron whether he could turn his home into a hotel to keep himself financially afloat, but he is a little distracted when one of the maiden aunts comes to believe he is a potential suitor.

This is a novel written with great humour, with the author breaking in occasionally to apologise for his departure from 19th century language. And at the back are some mouth watering recipes from the historical Artusi's cookery book published in 1895.

For The Art of Killing Well, for Marco Malvaldi was awarded both the Isola d'Elba Award and the Castiglioncello Prize.

I loved it.

My rating: 4.5

I have also reviewed
4.3, GAME FOR FIVE

Review: HADES, Candice Fox

• first published by Bantam (Random House Australia) 2014
• source: my local library
• ISBN  978-0-85798-117-2
• 308 pages
• winner Best First Fiction, Ned Kelly Award, 2014

Synopsis (Random House Australia)

A dark, compelling and original thriller that will have you spellbound from its atmospheric opening pages to its shocking climax.

Hades Archer surrounds himself with the things others leave behind. Their trash becomes the twisted sculptures that line his junkyard. The bodies they want disposed of become his problem – for a fee.

Then one night a man arrives on his doorstep, clutching a small bundle that he wants ‘lost'. And Hades makes a decision that will change everything...

Twenty years later, homicide detective Frank Bennett feels like the luckiest man on the force when he meets his new partner, the dark and beautiful Eden Archer. But there's something strange about Eden and her brother, Eric. Something he can't quite put his finger on.

At first, as they race to catch a very different kind of serial killer, his partner's sharp instincts come in handy. But soon Frank's wondering if she's as dangerous as the man they hunt. -

My Take

This is a cleverly layered novel, superbly written, that flits between the past and the present, between the serial killer case the Sydney based police are currently focussing on, and Eden Archer's story.

Eden Archer and her brother have a secondary agenda, one which Hades, their adoptive father, has trained them for all their life. Those who get in the way, those who want to know too much and to get too close, are putting their own lives on the line.

My rating: 5.0

About the author
(from Random House Australia)
Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney's western suburbs composed of half-, adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.

As a cynical and trouble-making teenager, her crime and gothic fiction writing was an escape from the calamity of her home life. She was constantly in trouble for reading Anne Rice in church and scaring her friends with tales from Australia's wealth of true crime writers.

Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy at age eighteen. At twenty, she turned her hand to academia, and taught high school through two undergraduate and two postgraduate degrees. Candice lectures in writing at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney, while undertaking a PhD in literary censorship and terrorism.

Hades is her first novel, and won the Ned Kelly Award for best debut in 2014. Eden, its sequel, is published in December.

See another review at AustCrime.

Review: THIN AIR, Ann Cleeves - audio book

• source: Unabridged Audiobook from Audible.com (I bought it)
• Narrated by: Kenny Blyth
• Length: 10 hrs 
• Series: Shetland Island, Book 6
• original published 2014

 Synopsis (Audible.com)

A group of old university friends travel to Unst to celebrate the marriage of one of their friends to a Shetlander. But late on the night of the wedding party, one of them, Eleanor, disappears. The following day, Eleanor's friend Polly receives an email. It appears to be a suicide note. And then Eleanor's body is discovered, lying in a small loch close to the cliff edge. 

Detectives Jimmy Perez and Willow Reeves are dispatched to investigate. 

Before she went missing, Eleanor claimed to have seen a ghost. Her interest in a ghost had seemed unhealthy to her friends. But Jimmy and Willow are convinced that there is more to Eleanor's death than they first thought. 

My take

As you'll see from the list below, I love catching up with the Shetland series. There's plenty of mystery in THIN AIR, as well as human interest as Jimmy Perez tries to re-establish his life as a detective in the islands. We learn too a little more about Jimmy's personal life.

In addition, with its island setting THIN AIR is really a variant of locked room mystery, with limited access to the island, and also a limited number of murder suspects: one of the members of the wedding party, or a local resident? And for what motive? Ann Cleeves does a good job with tantalising red herrings.

When a second person is murdered the investigators are convinced there must be a connection between the two murders but who of the incomers knew the second victim or had a reason to kill him? And why would a resident kill both? And is there a connection with "Peerie Lizzie", the little girl from the "big house" drowned decades before by the incoming tide? Jimmy Perez is coming around to the idea that that might have been a murder too, although the nanny was always blamed for neglect, and seemed to take the blame when she committed suicide.

In the long run, the final solution was something that I did not forsee at all.

Kenny Blyth does an excellent job of the narration, enhancing the setting by using a Scottish accent.

My rating: 4.6

I've also reviewed
mini-review RAVEN BLACK - Shetland #1
WHITE NIGHTS - Shetland#2
RED BONES - Shetland #3
5.0, BLUE LIGHTNING - Shetland#4
5.0, DEAD WATER  - Shetland#5
4.3, MURDER IN PARADISE - Palmer-Jones series #3
TELLING TALES (Vera Stanhope) #2
4.8, SILENT VOICES, (Vera Stanhope) #4
5.0, THE GLASS ROOM (Vera Stanhope) #5
4.9, HARBOUR STREET, Ann Cleeves (Vera Stanhope) #6
 4.5, BURIAL OF GHOSTS - stand-alone

 The Shetland Series (as listed on Fantastic Fiction)
1. Raven Black (2006)
2. White Nights (2008)
3. Red Bones (2007)
4. Blue Lightning (2010)
5. Dead Water (2013)
6. Thin Air (2014)

Review: THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE TRAINS GO BY, Georges Simenon

• first published in French 1938
  
• this edition published by Penguin as a Red Classic 2006
• translated by Stuart Gilbert with revisions by David Watson
• ISBN 0-141-02587-5
• 211 pages
• source: my local library
• #7 from Simenon

Synopsis (Amazon)

Of Simenon's many novels, certain titles stand out as classics. This terrifying reconstruction of a madman's mind is one of them.

Known in the little Dutch town of Groningen as a respectable family man, Kees Popinga is the managing clerk of a reputed shipping firm. But when the company collapses under dubious circumstances just before Christmas, taking all his money with it, something snaps in Popinga's mind. From the shell of this model citizen emerges a calculating paranoiac, capable of random acts of violence - even murder. The fugitive Popinga makes his way to Paris, playing a bizarre game of cat and mouse with the police - determined to force a hostile world to recognize his newfound criminal genius ...


In The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By, Simenon created a compelling portrait of a man pushed too far, vividly reconstructing the effect on a mind in the spiralling grip of madness.

My Take

THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE TRAINS GO BY is one of Simenon's "psychological novels". At first Kees Popinga seems absolutely normal but something snaps when he finds out that his boss is going to fake suicide and that the company he works for is going under, taking his life savings with it. It now seems that he has worked all his life for nothing and he feels released to explore his "other self". There have been signs of mental inbalance that have emerged before, but they have been kept tightly reined in by other people's expectations, and Popinga's own concepts of right and wrong.

Now the inhibitions have gone and he deserts his family and takes himself to Amsterdam to visit a woman of ill-repute, Pamela, who dies as a result of his visit. From there Popinga goes to Paris where he becomes involved in a car heist and is constantly preoccupied with reports about himself in the newspapers.

This is not a Maigret novel although the policeman in charge of looking for Popinga is Superintendent Lucas who of course in the Maigret novels is Maigret's lieutenant. Popinga wants newspaper readers to have an accurate version of his achievements and so he writes to newspaper editors and then to Lucas himself to correct details that he thinks have been inaccurately reported. He is insulted when a French professor of psychiatry says he is paranoic, although he is not quite sure what that means.

As the plot progresses Popinga becomes increasingly detached from normality, not really understanding the hole he is digging for himself.

My Rating: 4.2

About the film:
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952) is a crime drama film, released in the United Kingdom with an all-European cast, including Claude Rains in the lead role. Rains plays the role of Kees Popinga, who is infatuated with Michele Rozier (Märta Torén). The film was released in the United States in 1953 under the title The Paris Express. It was directed by Harold French and based on the novel by Georges Simenon.

I've also reviewed
4.4, MAIGRET & the MAN on the BOULEVARD
4.5, MAIGRET & THE HEADLESS CORPSE
4.3, PIETR THE LATVIAN
THE LATE MONSIEUR GALLET
4.4, THE RULES OF THE GAME

Review: ENTRY ISLAND, Peter May

• source: my local library
  
• this edition published by Quercus 2014
• ISBN 978-1-78206-220-2
• 534 pages

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times raved: "Peter May is a writer I'd follow to the ends of the earth." Now Peter May takes us to a small island off the coast of Quebec with an emotionally charged new thriller, Entry Island.

When Detective Sime Mackenzie boards a light aircraft at Montreal's St. Hubert airfield, he does so without looking back. For Sime, the 850-mile journey ahead represents an opportunity to escape the bitter blend of loneliness and regret that has come to characterize his life in the city.

Traveling as part of an eight-officer investigation team, Sime's destination lies in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Only two kilometers wide and three long, Entry Island is home to a population of around 130 inhabitants--the wealthiest of which has just been discovered murdered in his home.

The investigation itself appears little more than a formality. The evidence points to a crime of passion: the victim's wife the vengeful culprit. But for Sime the investigation is turned on its head when he comes face to face with the prime suspect, and is convinced that he knows her - even though they have never met.

Haunted by this certainty his insomnia becomes punctuated by dreams of a distant past on a Scottish island 3,000 miles away. Dreams in which the widow plays a leading role. Sime's conviction becomes an obsession. And in spite of mounting evidence of her guilt he finds himself convinced of her innocence, leading to a conflict between the professional duty he must fulfill, and the personal destiny that awaits him.

My Take

There is a fascinating touch of the paranormal as Sime McKenzie brings to life, in his dreams, stories that his grandmother told him that had been recorded in his great-great-great-great grandfather's diaries.  There is a lot of Scottish history, particularly that related to the Highland clearances, the potato famine in the Hebrides and Ireland, and Canadian migration history, told as background to the main investigation. Sime's link to the past is a signet ring with a distinctive crest.

It is a challenging read as the reader has to be alert to the change of voice from Sime's modern voice and the voice of his ancestor nearly one hundred and fifty years before. The author has not used any of the conventions like italics to indicate the second voice, but the clues to the voice come from the setting.

ENTRY ISLAND  is a variant on the "locked room" mystery as the main access to the island is by ferry and dependant on the weather, and it is possible to use a private boat. The residents of the island choose to speak English which is why Sime is chosen to be part of the investigation, despite the fact that it is being led by his French-speaking ex-wife, and the rest of the team are all French speakers. To some extent this makes his fellow investigators, largely not English speakers, likely to see Kirsty Cowell as "weird" and to regard her as guilty of her husband's murder, while Sime is more prone to see her as innocent. Kirsty owns a pendant with a family crest that matches Sime's ring, and he has an uncanny feeling that he has met her before.

One thing I like about Peter May's books is the depth of research evident in the stories.  ENTRY ISLAND is a particularly interesting read because of the way it slips so easily between time frames and cultures.
It is going to be hard for any novel I read this year to top this one.

My rating: 5.0

I've also reviewed
THE RUNNER
VIRTUALLY DEAD
FREEZE FRAME
4.7, THE BLACKHOUSE
5.0, THE LEWIS MAN
4.5, EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE

Global Reading Challenge 2015 launched

Today I have launched the 2015 Global Reading Challenge on its own website.

GRC2015 has three levels of challenge, so you can choose to read 7, 14, or 21  fiction titles.

It asks readers to diversify their choices by reading books from Africa, Asia, Australasia & Oceania, Europe, North America, South America, and then a "wild card" Seventh Continent of their own choice.