Review: NOWHERE TO GO, Iain Rowan

• Kindle (Amazon)
• Print Length: 124 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: infinity plus (March 23, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004TNHGFG
• Source: I bought it

Synopsis (Amazon)

Shortlisted for Spinetingler magazine's award for Best Short Story Collection of 2011.

An ordinary man who finds himself caught up in a bank raid gone wrong. A murder caught on security camera where the victim doesn't exist. A man with just months to live, who is already living in hell but decides to take on the devil. A mob accountant babysitting a hired killer on a trip to the countryside, and a burglar on an easy job who finds it might not be so easy after all. A con-artist conned, and what a man will do when in the grip of an obsession more important to him than his own life.

Eleven crime stories first published in Alfred Hitchcock's, Ellery Queen's, and elsewhere by award-winning writer Iain Rowan. Eleven stories of what people do when there is nowhere left to go.

Iain's short fiction has been reprinted in Year's Best anthologies, won a Derringer Award, and been the basis for a novel shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers' Association's Debut Dagger award.

My Take

This certainly is a very readable collection of short stories, each with a twist that I didn't see coming. 

What I mainly like about short stories is the completeness of their plots and Iain Rowan is certainly a master of that.

My rating: 4.4

About the author

I've written both novels and short stories, mostly crime fiction.
ONE OF US is my debut crime novel. It started as a short story published in Hitchcock's Magazine, became a novel, and ended up being shortlisted for the UK Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger award for best unpublished novel.
I've also had over thirty short stories published. Some of those stories have been reprinted in Year's Best anthologies, won a Derringer Award, been voted into readers' top ten of the year, or been in anthologies nominated for awards..
NOWHERE TO GO is a collection of eleven of my previously published crime stories, many of which appeared first in print in magazines like Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's.
ICE AGE is a collection of eight stories of the strange and the chilling that have been published in various places over the last few years.
And last, but not least, SEA CHANGE is something different again: a young adult novel like those I loved as a child by writers like Alan Garner and Susan Cooper, about haunted, folklore-ridden England.

Review: WHERE MEMORIES LIE, Deborah Crombie

Publisher: Harper Collins 2008
ISBN 978-0-06-128751-0
295 pages
Source: Local Library
#12 in the Duncan Kincaid /Gemma James series.

Reviews of previous titles:
4.8 WATER LIKE A STONE #11
4.6, NECESSARY AS BLOOD #13
see below also for some mini-reviews.

Blurb: (from author's website where an extract is available)

Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James find themselves drawn into a web of deceit and treachery that has its roots in the turmoil of 1939, as England and Germany hover on the brink of war. Gemma learns that her friend Erika Rosenthal lost a valuable brooch during her escape from Berlin, a piece made by her father, a noted Art Deco jeweler.

Now that heirloom has turned up for sale at a venerable London auction house, and Erika asks Gemma’s help in discovering its whereabouts for the last fifty years. But the past bleeds into the future when those connected with the brooch begin to die, and Gemma and Duncan learn that the long-ago unsolved murder of Erika’s husband has deadly repercussions in the present.

My take:
WHERE MEMORIES LIE lived up to my expectations of a good read. I confused myself just a little by having read a later title last year. If you are starting out, then do read some of the earlier titles in order. I don't think you necessarily have to read hem all  (I don't think I have) but certainly part of the pleasure is the ongoing story of Duncan and Gemma's family life.

I was struck also by the serendipity of the fact that I had so recently finished listening to SARAH'S KEY, which was also related to the persecution of the Jews during World War II.

Gemma James, perhaps more so than Duncan Kincaid, is a very believable character, and I identify with many of her concerns as she tries to maintain a career in the face of family responsibilities. In WHERE MEMORIES LIE her mother is admitted to hospital with a serious illness and her father takes his frustrations out on Gemma.

As I said earlier, a good read. One of the things that strikes me is how Deborah Crombie, an American author who admittedly spends a lot of of time in the UK, can write what feels such an authentically British crime novel. It is on the basis of that that I am counting the book in my list for the British Books Challenge.

My rating: 4.7

Duncan Kincaid / Gemma James (from Fantastic Fiction)
1. A Share in Death (1993)
2. All Shall Be Well (1994)
3. Leave the Grave Green (1995)
4. Mourn Not Your Dead (1996)
5. Dreaming of the Bones (1997)
6. Kissed A Sad Goodbye (1999)
7. A Finer End (2001)
8. And Justice There Is None (2002)
9. Now May You Weep (2003)
10. In a Dark House (2004)
11. Water Like a Stone (2006)
12. Where Memories Lie (2008)
13. Necessary as Blood (2009)
14. No Mark Upon Her (2011)

Mini-reviews

A FINER END, #7, my rating 4.3
Jack Montfort is an architect living in Glastonbury, England. He has struck up a friendship with Winnie Catesby, the vicar of an outlying church. Jack has become a conduit for ""automated writing"" - someone, a dead priest called Edmund, is using Jack to convey to the present a story from the past to do with the Abbey at Glastonbury.  It is not the first example of automated writing linked to the old Abbey. It happened to a 19th century historian too and he was totally discredited. But now those associated with Jack are in danger. Winnie is struck by a car and lies in hospital in a coma. Jack doesn't believe it was an accident and contacts his cousin Scotland Yard's Duncan Kincaid. Duncan and his partner Gemma James decide to spend a few days in Glastonbury and the action accelerates. I wasn't prepared for the woo-woo nature of the first part of this book but really enjoyed it after Kincaid and James make their appearance. The presentation of Glastonbury as a gateway to the next world and a portal to old religions is also interesting. This is #7 in the series.

NOW MAY YOU WEEP, #9, my rating 4.4
DI Inspector Gemma James is taking a trip to the Highlands with her friend Hazel. The purpose is a relaxing weekend at a Scottish B& B that offers cooking classes. The trip is not what Gemma thinks it is. Hazel says that it is to give Gemma a rest, but Hazel has another agenda: to meet up with Donald brodie, a lover whom she nearly married over a decade ago, and the manager of a whisky distillery. This is another book that has two stories told in parallel. There is one in italics that is placed in Carnmore, November 1898 and the present day one involving the current generation of the same family,  Hazel's family, the Urqharts. This is the 9th in Kincaid & James series and the book explores the relationships in Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid's personal life as well as unravelling the mystery revealed by the murder of Donald Brodie, finally uncovering a secret hidden for over a century.

IN A DARK HOUSE, #10, my rating 4.8
An abandoned warehouse burns next door to a women's shelter for victims of spousal abuse, an apparent case of arson. But it is the charred corpse within -- a female body burned beyond all recognition -- combined with the political sensitivity of the case, that entangles Superintendent Duncan Kincaid in its twisted skein.
At the same time, Kincaid's lover and former partner, Gemma James, is coping with twin crises of her own, one personal and the other professional. Gemma must put her private concerns aside to investigate the disappearance of a hospital administrator, a beautiful, emotionally fragile young woman who vanished without a trace. Yet neither Gemma nor Kincaid realizes how closely their cases are connected -- or how important the resolutions will be for a young child who was a victim of parental abduction.
In an old, dark, rambling house, nine-year-old Harriet worries about her feuding mum and dad, her friends, her schoolwork. Most of all, she worries about the strange woman who is her only companion in this scary, unfamiliar place. The events that led her there happened too quickly and are too complicated for a child to fully comprehend. But despite her youth and innocence, Harriet's awful fears will not be silenced: that she may never see her parents again ... and that her own life is in serious peril.
I liked the way you get an in depth view of characters other than Kincaid and James - Rose the firefighter, Kincaid's sergeant Cullen, the locum priest Winnie, Fanny the young Asian woman fighting a debilitating disease. Lots of lovely strands all meshed together in  a plausible yarn. 

Typically British Reading Challenge - Cream Crackered achieved.- updated post

Perhaps if you need some encouragement to read British crime fiction, this challenge hosted at Book Chick City, will be the challenge for you.

Timeline: 1st Jan 2010~ 31st Dec 2010.
Only books started on January 1st count towards this challenge.
You may already have read some eligible books

Details:
1. Anyone can join. You don't need a blog to participate.

2. There are four levels:

• "Put The Kettle On" – Read 2 Typically British novels.
• "Gordon Bennett" – Read 4 Typically British novels.
• "Bob's Your Uncle" – Read 6 Typically British novels.
• "Cream Crackered" – Read 8 Typically British novels.

3. Any book format counts. Must be fiction not non-fiction.
4. You don't have to select your books ahead of time, you can just add them as you go. Also if you do list them upfront then you can change them, nothing is set in stone!
5. The books you choose can crossover into other challenges.

I've excluded my Agatha Christie reading from the list below:, but as you can see, I've already completed the challenge.
To qualify, the titles I chose had to be written by British writers, set in Britain, crime fiction, and read this year. I'm sure I'll read more during the remainder of the year.

1. 5.0, SKELETON HILL, Peter Lovesey
2. 4.7, DANCING FOR THE HANGMAN, Martin Edwards
3. 4.7, THE MONSTER IN THE BOX, Ruth Rendell
4. 4.6, THE SUFFOCATING SEA, Pauline Rowson 
5. 4.5, THE SPY'S WIFE, Reginald Hill
6. 4.4, COFFIN SCARCELY USED, Colin Watson
7. 4.1, DEATH OF A GLUTTON, M. C. Beaton
8. 3.9, THE CHORISTER AT THE ABBEY, Lis Howell

The 2 Irish novels I originally counted:
4.7, THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, Stuart Neville
4.6, THE WHITE GALLOWS, Rob Kitchin