31 December 2019
Review: DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, Jo Spain
- this edition published by Quercus 2019
- ISBN 978-1-78747-431-4
- 406 pages
- source: my local library
Six neighbours, six secrets, six reasons to want Olive Collins dead.
In the exclusive gated community of Withered Vale, people's lives appear as perfect as their beautifully manicured lawns. Money, success, privilege - the residents have it all. Life is good.
There's just one problem.
Olive Collins' dead body has been rotting inside number four for the last three months. Her neighbours say they're shocked at the discovery but nobody thought to check on her when she vanished from sight.
The police start to ask questions and the seemingly flawless facade begins to crack. Because, when it comes to Olive's neighbours, it seems each of them has something to hide, something to lose and everything to gain from her death.
My Take
When it was discovered that Olive Collins had died 3 months earlier, the investigating police wanted to know why no-one had missed her.
This is a fabulously constructed novel, narrated by each of Olive's neighbours in the gated community of Withered Vale. Olive herself chips in occasionally too with accounts of the quarrels that she had with each of her neighbours.
Very enjoyable, and highly recommended.
My rating: 4.8
I've also read 4.7, THE DARKEST PLACE
30 December 2019
Review: THE MOTHER-IN-LAW, Sally Hepworth
- this edition published by Pan Macmillan Australia 2019
- ISBN 978-1-70655-218-3
- 346 pages
- source: my local library
Someone once told me that you have two families in your life - the one you are born into and the one you choose. Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don't choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.
From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite, but Lucy knew, even after marrying Oliver, that they'd never have the closeness she'd been hoping for.
But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.
That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something...
From the bestselling author of The Family Next Door comes a new page-turner about that trickiest of relationships.
My take
Police don't arrive on your doorstep at dinnertime unless something is wrong.
Diana's death was not unexpected - she had after all told her family that she had breast cancer but she hadn't seemed seriously ill, unless you counted the depression that she had suffered from after her husband Tom had died from MND two years earlier. So it is hard to understand why the police want to question her family so often.
Lucy's relationship with her mother-in-law has not been a comfortable one. Diana believed that her family needed to work hard for what they wanted and she was likely to refuse to give them help unless it suited her. Wealthy at the end of her life, she has worked hard herself and lived through difficult times.
The novel covers the period of about 10 years leading up to her death with glimpses into the past. There are little mysteries cleverly woven into the fabric of the story and it is really not until the end that we have the full story.
This novel is certainly enough to send me looking for another by this author. This one was on the very edge of crime fiction. The crime that has been committed takes a back seat to the issues of the relationships between Diana and her friends and family members. It seems that her other books are mainly about family issues and family ties.
My rating: 4.5
About the author
Sally Hepworth has lived around the world, spending extended periods in Singapore, the UK and Canada, where she worked in event management and human resources. She is the author of The Secrets of Midwives, The Things We Keep, The Mother's Promise and The Family Next Door.
Sally lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and children.
29 December 2019
Review: THE JEWEL THAT WAS OURS, Colin Dexter - audio book
- format: audio book from Audible
- Narrated by: Samuel West
- Series: Inspector Morse Mysteries, Book 9
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Release date: 12-14-17
- Language: English
- Publisher: Macmillan Digital Audio
- Book originally published 1991
He looked overweight around the midriff, though nowhere else, and she wondered whether perhaps he drank too much. He looked weary, as if he had been up most of the night conducting his investigations....
For Oxford, the arrival of 27 American tourists is nothing out of the ordinary...until one of their number is found dead in Room 310 at the Randolph Hotel.
It looks like a sudden - and tragic - accident. Only Chief Inspector Morse appears not to overlook the simultaneous theft of a jewel-encrusted antique from the victim's handbag....
Then, two days later, a naked and battered corpse is dragged from the River Cherwell. A coincidence? Maybe. But this time Morse is determined to prove the link....
My take
Morse doesn't always get it right. Sometimes he gets to the point of actually charging a suspect before he realises that he's got it wrong. In fact Lewis thinks that Morse creates scenarios before he looks at the facts. But somehow he gets some elements right and then he plucks something else out of left field, and somehow it all fits.
We listen carefully, just as Lewis does, and eventually Morse persuades us.
We have really been enjoying this set of audio books narrated superbly by Samuel West.
My rating: 4.6
I've also "read"
4.3, INSPECTOR MORSE: BBB Radio Collection
4.5, THE SECRET OF ANNEXE THREE -audio book
4.6, THE WENCH IS DEAD- audio book
4.3, SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD - audio book
4.4, LAST SEEN WEARING - audio book
4.6, THE RIDDLE OF THE THIRD MILE - audio book
28 December 2019
Review: THE NANNY, Gilly Macmillan
- this edition published by Century 2019
- ISBN 978-1-780-89984-8
- 423 pages
- source: my local library
When her beloved nanny, Hannah, left without a trace in the summer of 1988, seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt was devastated. Haunted by the loss, Jo grew up bitter and distant, and eventually left her parents and Lake Hall, their faded aristocratic home, behind.
Thirty years later, Jo returns to the house and is forced to confront her troubled relationship with her mother. But when human remains are accidentally uncovered in a lake on the estate, Jo begins to question everything she thought she knew.
Then an unexpected visitor knocks on the door and Jo’s world is destroyed again. Desperate to piece together the gaping holes in her memory, Jo must uncover who her nanny really was, why she left, and if she can trust her own mother…
In this compulsively readable tale of secrets, lies, and deception, Gilly Macmillan explores the darkest impulses and desires of the human heart. Diabolically clever, The Nanny reminds us that sometimes the truth hurts so much you’d rather hear the lie.
My Take
A very cleverly written novel with a number of narrators: Virginia, the matriarch of the family; Jo, the daughter; and then a third person who gives us the background to Hannah becoming a nanny.
The setting jumps back and forth over a period of more than three decades. There are plenty of clues about where we are in time. The result is a complicated intertwining of plot threads. There is an almost Gothic feel to the plot.
In the long run I found the ending a bit unsatisfactory, but I will let you read it so that you can decide for yourself. It probably should have affected my rating.
My rating: 4.8
I've also read
4.5, ODD CHILD OUT
Review: THE SILENT PATIENT, Alex Michaelides
- this edition (large print) published by Thorndike Press 2019
- ISBN -13: 978-1-4328-5864-3
- 483 pages
- source: my local library
- Amazon best book February 2019
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband―and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations―a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
My Take
One of the narrators in this novel is Alicia Berenson herself, with a diary that predates her husband's murder.
Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband.
They had been married for seven years. They were both artists - Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer.
The second narrator is criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber, who gets a job in the Grove, the criminal forensic unit in London where Alicia has been detained. Alicia has not spoken since Gabriel's death and Theo works on strategies to get Alicia to talk.
The novel has a most unexpected twist in the final pages, when we realise that it not only a lesson in unreliable narration, but that the author has also manipulated the time frame of the various chains of events.
My rating: 4.5
About the author
Alex Michaelides was born in Cyprus to a Greek-Cypriot father and English mother. He has a MA in English Literature from Cambridge University and a MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The Silent Patient is his first novel.
24 December 2019
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