Review: AUNT BESSIE BELIEVES, Diana Xarissa

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 791 KB
• Print Length: 234 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publication Date: July 24, 2014
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00M3KKBPE
• #2 in the Isle of Man Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis (Amazon)

Aunt Bessie believes that Moirrey Teare is just about the most disagreeable woman she's ever had the misfortune to meet.

Elizabeth Cubbon, (Aunt Bessie to nearly everyone), is somewhere past sixty, and old enough to ignore the rude woman that does her best to ruin the first session of the beginning Manx language class they are both taking. Moirrey's sudden death is harder to ignore.

Aunt Bessie believes that Moirrey's death was the result of the heart condition that Moirrey always complained about.
The police investigation, however, suggests that someone switched some of the dead woman's essential medications for something far more deadly.
Aunt Bessie believes that she and her friends can find the killer.

But with Doona suspended from work and spending all of her time with the dead woman's long-lost brother, with Hugh caught up in a brand new romance and with Inspector Rockwell chasing after a man that might not even exist, Bessie finds herself believing that someone might just get away with murder. 

My Take

Feel like a bit of light reading? This gentle cozy may be just what you are looking for.

The setting is the Isle of Man, the narrator Aunt Bessie Cubbon. Aunt Bessie has been a refuge for the island's youth for decades, a place where they can go to stay when they have had enough of their parents. And so Bessie has her finger on the pulse of most happenings on the island, and lots of people trust her and owe her favours. She is also part of the island's "skeet" network, a group of friends who are quick to update each by telephone on the latest news and gossip. The local police find her an invaluable source of information and tips.

The author encourages the reader right at the beginning to read these books in order. She explains the origins of the series, which now numbers 7 titles (see Amazon) and the connection of the series to an earlier Romance series. Apparently some of the characters in the Romance series, including Aunt Bessie, have made their way across into the mystery series.The language is British English with some Manx words and terminology interspersed. A glossary is provided in the final pages.

 A delightful read.

My rating: 4.2

About the author
Diana has lived in several US states, the north of England and the Isle of Man. While she is currently in the US, she still misses the stunning scenery, wonderful people and fascinating history that make the Isle of Man so unique.

Michael Robotham wins CWA Gold Dagger

What lovely news to wake up to this morning!

My favourite author Michael Robotham has won the very prestigious British Crime Writer's Association Gold Dagger for best crime fiction of the year with LIFE OR DEATH.

The competition was fierce.

My review is here.

Read the news report at Sydney Morning Herald
See the blog report by Craig Sisterson at Crime Watch.

Meet Michael on his website.

Awards
Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing, Best Novel, 2005: winner for Lost
Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing, Best Novel, 2007: shortlisted for The Night Ferry
Crime Writers' Association (UK), The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, 2007: shortlisted for The Night Ferry
Ned Kelly Awards for Crime Writing, Best Novel, 2008: winner for Shatter
Crime Writers' Association (UK), The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, Best Thriller, 2008: shortlisted for Shatter
ITV Thriller Awards (UK), Breakthrough Novelist 2008: shortlisted for Shatter
Crime Writers' Association (UK), The CWA Gold Dagger, Best Crime Novel, 2013: shortlisted for Say You're Sorry
Crime Writers' Association (UK), The CWA Gold Dagger, Best Crime Novel, 2015: shortlisted for Life or Death

My reviews

BOMBPROOF
SHATTER #3
SHATTER (audio)
BLEED FOR ME #4
5.0, THE WRECKAGE #5
4.8, SAY YOU'RE SORRY #6
5.0, WATCHING YOU #7
4.8, IF I TELL YOU... I'LL HAVE TO KILL YOU (edit)
5.0, LIFE OR DEATH
4.8, CLOSE YOUR EYES

Review: THE GHOSTS OF ALTONA, Craig Russell

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 1033 KB
• Print Length: 432 pages
• Publisher: Quercus (June 4, 2015)
• Publication Date: June 4, 2015
• Sold by: Hachette Book Group
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00TOOS2D0

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

Jan Fabel is a haunted man.

Head of the Polizei Hamburg's Murder Commission, Fabel has dealt with the dead for nearly two decades, but when a routine enquiry becomes a life-threatening - and life-changing - experience, he finds himself on much closer terms with death than ever before.

Two years later, Fabel's first case at the Murder Commission comes back to haunt him: Monika Krone's body is found at last, fifteen years after she went missing. Monika - ethereally beautiful, intelligent, cruel - was the centre of a group of students obsessed with the gothic. Fabel re-opens the case. What happened that night, when Monika left a party and disappeared into thin air?

When men involved with Monika start turning up dead, Fabel realizes he is looking for a killer with both a hunger for revenge and a taste for the gothic. What he doesn't know is that someone has been aiding and grooming a deranged escapee as his own, personal tool for revenge.

A truly gothic monster to be let loose on the world.

Winner of the Scottish Crime Novel of the Year 2015
Read a free chapter here

My Take

The announcement on Crime Watch that this novel is the winner of the Scottish Crime Novel of the Year 2015 reminded me that Craig Russell is an author that I was taken with nearly a decade ago, but I have read only the first two in the Jan Fabel series, and none since I began this blog.  I know I have some hard back copies of at least one or two novels on my shelves somewhere.

So this seemed an opportune moment to do some catching up with Jan Fabel.

What THE GHOSTS OF ALTONA did is convince me that I must read some of the novels I have missed in the intervening years. Jan Fabel has come a long way since the novel I read nearly ten years ago. Two years ago (in "novel time") he nearly died, and his near death experience (NDE) changed his whole approach to life. Not only is he now a member of the Club of the Living Dead, people who have experienced similar NDEs, he is participating in group research into what actually happens as people experience death.

There is a remarkable depth to this novel, a feeling of good research, as the reader meets others who have also had NDEs and reacted quite differently to Fabel. There is also an exploration of Fabel's leadership style, the way he feels as if he is a fatherly figure for his hand-picked colleagues in Hamburg's Murder Commission.

And this is a novel where cold case meets the present day. The discovery of Monika Krone's skeleton under the asphalt of a car park, a murder unsolved for fifteen years, seems to trigger a number of deaths, seemingly unrelated.

Excellent story telling.

I was however struck by plot similarities with a novel I completed last week, SILENT SCREAM by Angela Marsons: where the discovery of a skeleton in wasteland next to an orphanage triggers murders. But in reality the two novels take entirely different paths. THE GHOSTS OF ALTONA features a seasoned investigator, while in SILENT SCREAM we see a career just beginning.

My rating: 5.0

About the author (Fantastic Fiction)
Craig Russell is a British-born novelist and short story writer. His Hamburg-set thriller series featuring detective Jan Fabel has been translated into 23 languages. Russell speaks fluent German and has a special interest in post-war German history. His books, particularly the Fabel series, tend to include historical or mythological themes.
Author's web site:  http://www.craigrussell.com/

In February 2007, Russell was awarded the Polizeistern (Police Star) by the Hamburg Police, the only non-German ever to have received this accolade. In June 2007, Russell was shortlisted for the £20,000 CWA Duncan Lawrie Gold Dagger, the world's largest literary prize for crime fiction. He was the winner of the 2008 CWA Dagger in the Library. Russell was a finalist for the 2013 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger for Dead Men and Broken Hearts.

Mini review of BROTHER GRIMM published 2006 (My rating: 4.6)
A girl's body has turned up on a Hamburg beach with a note concealed in her hand. The note gives her name, that of a 13 year old who went missing on her way home from school 3 years earlier. But it is not the same girl. Fabel has worked this out even before her parents come to identify the body and confirm his suspicions. Then two more bodies turn up, posed at a picnic table in the woods, also with notes concealed in their hands. The notes say Hansel and Gretel, in the same tiny, obsessively neat writing.

Jan Fabel series (list from Fantastic Fiction)
1. Blood Eagle (2005)
2. Brother Grimm (2006)
3. Eternal (2007)
4. The Carnival Master (2008)
5. The Valkyrie Song (2009)
6. A Fear of Dark Water (2010)
7. The Ghosts of Altona (2015)

Review: SILENT SCREAM, Angela Marsons

• format : Kindle (Amazon)
• Series: Detective Kim Stone crime thriller series
• Paperback: 388 pages
• Publisher: Bookouture; 1 edition (February 20, 2015)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190949092X
• ISBN-13: 978-1909490925

Synopsis (Amazon)

Even the darkest secrets can’t stay buried forever…
Five figures gather round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood …

Years later, a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders which shock the Black Country. But when human remains are discovered at a former children’s home, disturbing secrets are also unearthed.

D.I. Kim Stone fast realises she’s on the hunt for a twisted individual whose killing spree spans decades. As the body count rises, Kim needs to stop the murderer before they strike again. But to catch the killer, can Kim confront the demons of her own past before it’s too late?

My Take

I was reminded in reading this novel of the discoveries that have been made by recent government authorities, in this country and elsewhere, of the dreadful way children have been treated by those who were entrusted to their care. In Australia it has resulted in Royal Commissions exposing, among other things, systematic abuse.

D.I. Kim Stone has more understanding than most of how children have been treated in foster homes and orphanages because she has been there. She has a past that her colleagues are not aware of.

In this novel the institution where unspeakable things have occurred is Crestwood in the Black Country. The institution itself has gone, destroyed by fire, but some of the perpetrators of at least one crime live on, some of them waiting in fear for the truth to out. The pact they had made ten years earlier has held strong but is about to crack open. The death of first one then another will ensure that their connection to Crestwood will be seen, what they did exposed.

For the land next to Crestwood is about to become an archeological dig, despite efforts to prevent that happening.

I had read in other reviews that this is a remarkable first novel and I have to agree. Some elements of the plot are a bit standard: a female D.I. who is hard to control, a loose cannon who is too impatient to wait for the paperwork to be approved, a boss who threatens to stand her down but who is also prepared to defend her because she gets results. The superb creation of Kim Stone's character, and the way she interacts with her team, ensures that this is not a pedestrian novel. Far from it. It has a good level of tension that rachets up as the investigation progresses, and there is a lovely twist at the end. I'll be reading the next in the series: EVIL GAMES.

My rating: 4.7

About the author

Angela Marsons is the author of Amazon UK #1 Bestseller SILENT SCREAM.
She lives in the Black Country with her partner, their bouncy Labrador and a swearing parrot.
She first discovered her love of writing at Junior School when actual lessons came second to watching other people and quietly making up her own stories about them. Her report card invariably read "Angela would do well if she minded her own business as well as she minds other people's".

After years of writing relationship based stories (My Name Is and The Middle Child) Angela turned to Crime, fictionally speaking of course, and developed a character that refused to go away.
She is signed to Bookouture.com in an 8 book deal. The second book in the Kim Stone series, EVIL GAMES, is released 29th May 2015. 

Review: GIVE A CORPSE A BAD NAME, Elizabeth Ferrars

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 387 KB
• Print Length: 164 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1780020279
• Publication Date: December 1, 2010
  First published 1940
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004GXA5WU

Synopsis (Amazon)

On a cold winter’s night, a man is run over while lying drunk in the middle of a Devon lane. Driving the car is local resident Anna Milne, an attractive widow from South Africa. It could be an unfortunate accident, but strange coincidence hints at more. For the dead man also comes from South Africa. And he has Anna Milne's address in his pocket… In conjunction with the police, it is Toby Dyke, ex-reporter and man of no fixed occupation, who investigates the curious circumstance of the stranger’s death. 

My Take

This is a relatively short Golden Age novel that I've had sitting on my Kindle TBR for some time. I hadn't realised it was the debut title in a series of 6 novels. An interesting feature of the list is that the final title was published over 50 years after the fifth, and only a couple of years before the author's death. Not only that but it appears to have been the first of Elizabeth Ferrars' published work.

The plot is a complex one which poses some intriguing questions. Why does the local lord of the manor claim the dead body is his son whom he hasn't seen for some fifteen years, while Lady Maxwell says that it isn't. And who is sending anonymous letters to Toby Dyke to spur on his investigation?

And does Toby Dyke get it right or wrong at the end? Is he too clever for his own good?

This is a novel that has weathered the test of time quite well.

My rating: 4.4

About the author

Elizabeth Ferrars (1907-1995) was one of the most distinguished crime writers of her generation. She was described by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as 'The writer who may be the closest of all to Christie in style, plotting and general milieu'. Born in 1907 in Rangoon, Burma, the author grew up in Hampshire, England, before studying journalism in London. Her first crime novel, Give a Corpse a Bad Name, was published in 1940. During her career, she wrote more than seventy novels and became immensely popular in America, where she was published as E.X. Ferrars. In 1953, she became a founding member of the British Crime Writers' Association and, in the early 1980s, was awarded its Silver Dagger for a lifetime's achievement. She died in 1995.

Toby Dyke
Give a Corpse a Bad Name (1940)
Remove the Bodies (1940)
     aka Rehearsals for Murder
Death in Botanist's Bay (1941)
     aka Murder of a Suicide
Don't Monkey with Murder (1942)
     aka The Shape of a Stain
Your Neck in a Noose (1942)
Neck in a Noose (1993)

Marking 100 books read in 2015

Every year I keep track of the books I am reading.




This year I am aiming for 140 titles and earlier this week I reached 100.

Good Reads tells me that I am "ahead of  schedule" but I can tell even now that it will be a close thing.

But the stats are interesting (to me anyway)

• over one third of the titles (37) are e-books read on my Kindle or iPad (which I synchronise)
• over one third (39) are British crime fiction
• nearly one half (48)  are library books

I am really not doing all that well on some of my reading challenges but I guess I still have over three months to complete them.

If  you'd like to see a further breakdown go to my 2015 Reading Challenges Update.

Review: WYCLIFFE AND THE DUNES MYSTERY, W.J. Burley

• this edition published 1995 by Corgi
• Originally published 1992
• #19 in the Wycliffe series
• ISBN 0-552-14221-2
• 220 pages
• source: My Mount TBR

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

The body of Cochran Wilder had lain buried in the sand dunes for 15 years. Inspector Wycliffe suspects the involvement of six people, now well-established figures in the Cornish community. All are disturbed by his questioning, and a second murder seems to confirm his suspicions.

My Take

I was familiar with the Wycliffe television series and picked this novel up from a second hand book stall a few years back but have never read it. The title is #19 in the Wycliffe series which eventually had 22 titles, none of which I have read.

Wycliffe, now a Detective Chief Superintendent, is approaching the end of his career, and is finding that it takes a lot to get him enthusiastic. He rarely gets to participate hands on in an investigation but there is something about this case that he finds interesting, especially as it will require a few nights away from home. It is an attractive alternative too to his bending his mind to the exigencies of an imminent restructuring of his section.

When a second murder occurs, Wycliffe has to decide whether the two are connected. He knows there are six people who have lived with the secret surrounding the death of the body found in the dunes for fifteen years. Just the fact that they all see each other frequently is a constant reminder of what they did. And one of them at least is at breaking point.

A very readable but pretty standard police procedural.

My rating: 4.4

About the author

W.J. Burley (1914-2002) started life as an engineer, and later went to Balliol to read zoology as a mature student. On leaving Oxford he went into teaching and, until his retirement, was senior biology master in a large mixed grammar school in Newquay. He created Inspector Wycliffe in 1966 and the series was  televised with Jack Shepherd starring in the title role.