Review: THE CHIMES, Charles Dickens - audio book

• format: audio book from audible.com
  
• Narrated by: Richard Armitage
  
• Length: 3 hrs and 40 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 12-11-15
• Language: English
• Publisher: Audible Studios
• originally written in 1844
• aka A Goblin Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In

Synopsis (Audible)

The magnificent Richard Armitage (Hamlet: King of Denmark: A Novel) performs The Chimes by Charles Dickens.

This classic story is the second in a series of five Christmas books Dickens was commissioned to write - beginning with A Christmas Carol. A haunting tale set on New Year's Eve, The Chimes tells the story of a poor porter named Trotty Veck who has become disheartened by the state of the world - until he is shown a series of fantastical visions that convince him of the good of humanity. Though much different from and certainly a bit darker than A Christmas Carol, the moral message of The Chimes is equally poignant - touting the importance of compassion, goodwill, and the love of friends and family. 

My Take

This is really not crime fiction at all, but rather a moralistic tale along the lines of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, where ghosts tell us how we should live. Trotty Veck is convinced that the cathedral bells are talking to him and on New Year's Eve, unable to sleep, goes up into the bell tower where they point out the faults of the way he lives.  It is actually a very sombre tale, not the least aspect of which is the squalid nature of daily life for those in England's poorer classes.

I think it is a reminder too of how fiction writing has changed. I can't imagine a novella like this being written today.

My rating: 4.3

I've also read A CHRISTMAS CAROL among many other Dickens titles

Review: THE SILENCE, Susan Allott

• 
  e-book made available through Libby through my local library
• Publisher : The Borough Press (1 May 2020)
• ASIN : B07ZG7ZT2V
• Language: : English
• Print length : 304 pages 

Synopsis 

It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father, Joe, phoning from Sydney.  

30 years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens’ next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared. Joe claims he thought she had gone to start a new life; but now Mandy’s family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Isla’s father was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and he’s under suspicion of murder.

Back home in Sydney, Isla's search for the truth takes her back to 1967, when two couples lived side by side on a quiet street by the sea. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia’s colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?

Deftly exploring the deterioration of relationships and the devastating truths we keep from those we love, The Silence is a stunning debut from a rising literary star.

My Take

It is very rare for me to read a book within 24 hours. But I have, so let that fact be testament to how much I enjoyed this book.

On the surface this mystery is about the disappearance of a young woman, essentially a cold case that a police officer hushed up, brought on by the nature of her husband's shameful job.  

This book is one of those rare combinations: crime fiction and a poke at Australia's history.  I'd love to be able to claim Susan Allott as an Australian writer, but she is British. But she has been able to bring to this novel a very significant understanding of something in Australian history that for decades people tried to gloss over.

My rating: 4.8 

About the author

Susan Allott is from the UK but spent part of her twenties in Australia, desperately homesick but trying to make Sydney her home. In 2016 she completed the Faber Academy course, during which she started writing this novel. She now lives in south London with her two children and her very Australian husband.

Review: A ROOM MADE OF LEAVES, Kate Grenville

• 
  this edition published by textpublishing 2020
  
• 322 pages
• ISBN 9781922330024
• source: my local library

Synopsis (textpublishing)

What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it? That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.

Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none: this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear—at last!—what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.

At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age: the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality.

Kate Grenville’s return to the territory of The Secret River is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers.

My Take

It is very tempting to regard this book as definitive history of life in the early colony of New SouthWales, but both the author and the narrator remind us that it is "faction", a fiction that is a possible interpretation of the rather skimpy evidence available. However it serves to remind us of us difficult life in those times was, nothing like the life we live now. How did women like Elizabeth Macarthur survive and how much of the male legacy from those times is actually due to the women who accompanied them?

A very good read, with a touch of mystery and a little spice to keep the interest level up.

My Rating: 4.8

I've also read

4.8, THE SECRET RIVER
5.0, THE WRITING BOOK

Review: THE SECOND SLEEP, Robert Harris - audio book

• 
  format: audiobook from Audible
• Narrated by: Roy McMillan
  
• Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
• Release date: 08-22-19 
• Publisher: Penguin Audio
• Language: English
• Unabridged Audiobook

Synopsis:

The latest novel from Robert Harris: chosen as a Book of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Mail on Sunday, and Express.

What if your future lies in the past?

Dusk is gathering as a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, rides across a silent land.

It’s a crime to be out after dark and Fairfax knows he must arrive at his destination – a remote village in the wilds of Exmoor – before night falls and curfew is imposed.

He’s lost and he’s becoming anxious as he slowly picks his way across a countryside strewn with the ancient artefacts of a civilisation that seems to have ended in cataclysm.

What Fairfax cannot know is that, in the days and weeks to come, everything he believes in will be tested to destruction, as he uncovers a secret that is as dangerous as it is terrifying....

My Take

You might want to challenge some of my categories for this book. I've said it is not crime fiction although crimes have been committed. And I've said it is historical although it is set in the future.

The first challenge for the reader is to work when this novel is actually set. Dates are given that challenge our ideas of chronology.  How can a book that is set in future feel so much like it is set in medieval times? What has happened to "our world"?

I saw some reviews that said this book went nowhere - that the initial idea was good but the result was disappointing. I actually thought it gave us a lot to think about.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read

5.0, CONCLAVE
4.8, IMPERIUM
4.6, LUSTRUM
4.5, DICTATOR
4.8, THE GHOST
4.5, FATHERLAND

Review: THE BRISBANE LINE, J.P. Powell

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• Print Length : 242 pages
• Language: : English
• ASIN : B086HL63Y8
• Word Wise : Enabled
• Publisher : Xoum (27 March 2020)
• File Size : 1358 KB

Synopsis  (Amazon)

As WWII ravages the world and the Japanese Empire has set its sights on Australia, the Americans have come to save us. But not all soldiers are heroes and not all heroes are soldiers.

Sergeant Joe Washington, a US Military Police, loves music and photography but spends his days delving into the sordid and petty crimes committed by the thousands of American troops passing through town.

While trying to find stolen gasoline stores, he is sent to investigate the body of an American soldier found dumped in a cemetery. Suddenly Joe is up against notorious detective Frank Bischof.

Although ordered to leave the investigation alone, Joe fears that Bischof is protecting the most likely suspect while trying to pin the crime on an innocent – and intriguing – young woman, Rose. A woman who seems to walk between the parallel worlds of black market deals and Brisbane’s high society.

My Take

This novel gives readers a snapshot of life in Brisbane in a period of approximately 10 days (Friday 8 October 1943 - Sunday 17 October 1943.) Brisbane is home to thousands of American soldiers, committing the usual range of crimes found in Western society, complicated by crimes, corruption,  and conventions typical of Brisbane itself. The book is populated with real life characters as well as fictional one.

While there are a range of crimes committed, I felt that the novel is historical "faction" rather than crime fiction. Two murders have been committed, the investigation shared uncomfortably by an American MP and a detective from the Brisbane police force.

My rating: 4.4

About the Author
JP Powell is an archaeologist and historian with a passion for bringing the past to life. She has worked as a high school teacher, an academic, a National Parks officer, a museum administrator and has excavated in Jordan, Cyprus and Greece as well as leading historical archaeology projects in Australia. Her previous writing includes school textbooks, academic publications, government reports and a biography of the first person to teach archaeology in Australia (Love’s Obsession. The lives and archaeology of Jim and Eve Stewart. Wakefield Press. 2013). In 2017 she was awarded a QANZAC Fellowship by the State Library of Queensland to pursue research into, and writing of, a series of crime novels set in Brisbane during World War II. She lives outside Brisbane

Review: THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT, Hilary Mantel - audio book

• audio book from Audible
• Narrated by: Ben Miles
• Series: The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3
• Length: 38 hrs and 11 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 03-05-20
• Language: English
• Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
• Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
  Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020

Synopsis (Audible)

The long-awaited sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning Thomas Cromwell trilogy.

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

My take

We listened to this in the car over a number of weekends (38 hours of it) and were very regretful when it finished, not just because the recording came to an end, but because it was almost as if a well-known friend had died.

The story of Henry VIII and his six wives is one that all history lovers are familiar with, and so we have a broad idea of the content of this book. Where THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT excels is in bringing the times, characters and issues to light both through the text and the excellent verbal rendition.

An excellent series.

My rating: 5.0

I've also read 4.7, BRING UP THE BODIES

Review: BRING UP THE BODIES, Hilary Mantel - audio book

• format: an audible book 
• Narrated by: Simon Vance
• Series: Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 2
• Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
• Unabridged Audiobook
• Release date: 05-21-12
• Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks 
• Costa Book of the Year, 2012
• UK Author of the Year - Specsavers National Book Awards, 2012
• Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 2012

Synopsis (publisher)

By 1535 Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son, is far from his humble origins. Chief Minister to Henry VIII, his fortunes have risen with those of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, for whose sake Henry has broken with Rome and created his own church.

In Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn. This new novel is an audacious vision of Tudor England that sheds its light on the modern world.

My Take

This really is one of those books you could read again and again (as I have done) because there is always something "new" to absorb.

Henry VIII has an almost insurmountable problem: he is aging, and he does not have a legitimate male heir. Most of us know this story well but probably haven't realised that it played out over such a long period of time. Henry ruled England from 1509 to 1547. He was married to Katherine of Aragon for 20 years and Mary was their only legitimate child. By 1533, after 24 years of marriage, Katherine was unlikely to produce any more surviving children, so Henry had their marriage annulled, so he could marry Anne Boleyn. He married Anne in 1533 and had her beheaded for adultery and treason in 1536 after she had produced just one surviving child, a female, Elizabeth.

This book is the story of Anne's struggle for survival and the steps Henry took to secure a male heir.

My rating: 4.7

 I had reviewed this previously: 4.7, BRING UP THE BODIES

Thomas Cromwell Trilogy
   1. Wolf Hall (2009)
   2. Bring up the Bodies (2012)
   3. The Mirror And The Light (2020)

Review: TRUE WEST, David Whish Wilson

• format: e-book source through my local library (Libby)
• ISBN     9781925815702 (Paperback)
• Publisher     Fremantle Press
• Publication Year     2019
• Pages     264

Synopsis (publisher)

Western Australia, 1988. After betraying the Knights bikie gang, 17-year-old Lee Southern flees to the city with nothing left to lose.

Working as a rogue tow truck driver in Perth, he is captured by right-wing extremists whose combination of seduction and blackmail keeps him on the wrong side of the law and under their control.

As the true nature of what drives his captors unfolds, Lee becomes an unwilling participant in a breathtakingly ambitious plot – and a cold-blooded crime that will show just how much he, and everyone else, still has to lose.

My Take

Lee Southern has fled north west Western Australia after the disappearance of his father, the first president of the Knights bikie gang. Lee believes that the new Knights president has killed his father Jack Southern, and as a parting gesture Lee has burnt their latest plantation. So he is fully expecting the Knights to come after him.

The reader is introduced to a tough world that he/she is probably not familiar with: violent, racist, drug-taking, extremist. Lee imagines he will be able to earn money as a tow truck driver and does not realise the monopoly that a local group has on the trade. His involvement eventually leads to him being used in various "jobs" which give the gang a further hold over him. In addition Lee has contacted Emma, his girlfriend from Geraldton and this eventually puts her in jeopardy.

After the gang helps Lee locate his father the action ramps up even further.
 
The publisher's page contains a pdf for book clubs.

My rating: 4.4

About the author
David Whish-Wilson was born in Newcastle, NSW, but grew up in Singapore, Victoria and WA. He left Australia aged eighteen to live for a decade in Europe, Africa and Asia. He is the author of The Summons, The Coves and three crime novels in the Frank Swann series: Line of Sight, Zero at the Bone and Old Scores. His non-fiction book, Perth, part of the NewSouth Books city series, was shortlisted for a WA Premier’s Book Award. David lives in Fremantle and coordinates the creative writing program at Curtin University.

Review: THE PORTRAIT OF MOLLY DEAN, Katherine Kovacic

• this edition published by echo (Bonnier Publishing Australia) 2018
• ISBN 978-1-76040-978-4
• 273 pages
• source: my local library
• #1 in the Alex Clayton & John Porter series

Synopsis

An unsolved murder comes to light after almost seventy years…

In 1999, art dealer Alex Clayton stumbles across a lost portrait of Molly Dean, an artist’s muse brutally slain in Melbourne in 1930. Alex buys the painting and sets out to uncover more details, but finds there are strange inconsistencies: Molly’s mother seemed unconcerned by her daughter’s violent death, the main suspect was never brought to trial despite compelling evidence, and vital records are missing.

Alex enlists the help of her close friend, art conservator John Porter, and together they sift through the clues and deceptions that swirl around the last days of Molly Dean.

My Take

The author tells us in notes at the back of the book that "The events in this novel are based on the 1930 murder of Mary 'Molly' Winifred Dean... While Alex Clayton and her contemporaries were all entirely fictitious, most of Molly's close associates were real people."

So I guess you would label this as "faction" - a true crime, a real setting, but many fictitious characters, and action, and an imagined resolution.

I initially found the book slow reading - I attributed that to a style that made you want to ensure that you understood everything. We knew from the very beginning that Molly had been murdered.

The action comes in two time frames: 1999 when Alex Clayton buys a painting and decides to find out more about the subject Molly Dean; and 1930 before Molly died. The text switches back and forth as we weigh the evidence that Alex gives us.

Here is chance to get in on the ground floor of a new Australian series with an intriguing pair of investigators. Two more titles have been published to date, and I shall certainly be following them up.

My rating: 4.5

About the author
Katherine Kovacic is a former veterinarian turned art historian who works with a wide variety of museums, galleries and historic houses. She lives in Melbourne with a Borzoi and a Scottish Deerhound. The Portrait of Molly Dean was her debut novel and the first Alex Clayton art mystery.

Review: THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, Heather Morris

• Originally published in Australia by 2018
• ISBN 978-0-06-279715-5
• 262 pages

Synopsis (Good Reads)

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.

Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.

One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.

A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.

My Take

A departure from my usual fare of Crime Fiction (although crimes have definitely been committed)
A book I bought in LA at the airport when my electronic devices were running low in battery life.
It was billed in the book store as #1 and I had had it recommended in the last year by several people.

It was a very compelling read, an opportunity to read at first hand an inside story about the events of the Holocaust.
Lale Sokolov spent 3 years of his life as a prisoner in Auschwitz/Birkenau tattooing numbers on the arms of new inmates, taking the opportunity to undertake some black market trading exchanging jewels for food and helping keep fellow prisoners alive. Some saw Lale as a collaborator and occasionally reported his activities. Several times he nearly lost his life.

My guess is that there are some too who would see Lale as a lower level war criminal, but his experiences were harrowing.

My rating: 4.5

About the author
A native of New Zealand now resident in Australia, working in a large public hospital in Melbourne. For several years I studied and wrote screenplays, one of which was optioned by an academy award winning Screenwriter in the U.S. In 2003, I was introduced to an elderly gentleman "who might just have a story worth telling". The day I met Lale Sokolov changed my life, as our friendship grew and he embarked on a journey of self scrutiny, entrusting the inner most details of his life during the Holocaust. I originally wrote Lale's story as a screenplay - which ranked high in international competitions - before reshaping it into my debut novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. 

Review: DEAD MAN SWITCH, Tara Moss

• this edition published by Harper Collins Publishers 2019
• ISBN 978-0-7322-9063-8
• 361 pages
• source: my local library
• author website
• Booktopia Best Books of 2019 – Crime Fiction and Thriller

Synopsis (publisher)

She's a woman in a man's world ...

Sydney, 1946. Billie Walker is living life on her own terms. World War II has left her bereaved, her photojournalist husband missing and presumed dead. Determined not to rely on any man for her future, she re-opens her late father's detective agency.

Billie's bread and butter is tailing cheating spouses - it's easy, pays the bills and she has a knack for it. But her latest case, the disappearance of a young man, is not proving straightforward ...

Soon Billie is up to her stylish collar in bad men, and not just the unfaithful kind - these are the murdering kind. Smugglers. Players. Gangsters. Billie and her loyal assistant must pit their wits against Sydney's ruthless underworld and find the young man before it's too late.

My take


Here we have what appears to be the beginning of a new series, a female investigator in Sydney, and ex-soldier as her associate, and a historical setting to boot.

Billie is asked to look for a young 17 year old man, who disappears after visiting a Sydney night club to talk to a well known wealthy auctioneer.

The novel opens with a Prologue which appears to be an account of what has happened to the young man.

As befits the first novel in a series readers are given a lot of background about Billie and Sam, her associate, and the background material continues throughout the novel. The year is 1946 and Australia is beginning to recover from the aftermath of World War II, but there is a lot of opposition to Billie taking on what is seen as men's work.

A well told tale with strong adherence to historical setting if not strictly factual.

My rating: 4.5


About the author

She is a mother, a wife and a dual Canadian/Australian citizen, and currently resides with her family in Vancouver, BC.
Moss is an outspoken advocate for human rights and the rights of women and children, has been a UNICEF Australia Goodwill Ambassador since 2007 and since 2013 has been UNICEF Australia’s National Ambassador for Child Survival, and has visited Australian hospitals, maternity wards, refuges and schools as well as Syrian refugee camps in her UNICEF role. In 2014 she was recognised for Outstanding Advocacy for her blog Manus Island: An insider’s report, which helped to break information to the public about the events surrounding the alleged murder of Reza Barati inside the Australian-run Manus Island Immigration Detention Centre.

In 2015 Moss received an Edna Ryan Award for her significant contribution to feminist debate, speaking out for women and children and inspiring others to challenge the status quo, and in 2017 she was recognised as one of the Global Top 50 Diversity Figures in Public Life, for using her position in public life to make a positive impact in diversity, alongside Malala Yousufzai, Angelina Jolie, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet and more.