Facebook: the platform where many of us embrace contact with “friends” we would never embrace in Real Life. Maybe we knew them, once. Maybe they attended our school. Maybe they’re a friend of a friend you keep meeting. These “friends” could become Real Friends, they could become the main source of irritating cat memes in […]
‘She saw the portrait quite by chance, or so she thought.’ Openings can be crucial in capturing a reader’s attention, especially if the reader in question is choosing what to read next from a wobbling stack of ARCs! The sly mystery, the sense of fate, lurking in this ambiguous opening statement intrigued me and I […]
A mother knows her daughter. Doesn’t she? Obviously, Hanna knows her youngest daughter, Dawn, isn’t perfect, but who is? Hanna is determined to give her the benefit of the doubt, even when no-one else will – even when everyone else believes Dawn was involved in a plot to murder Hanna and her husband, Joe. Let’s […]
Ah, small towns. Everyone knows everything about everybody. Except when they don’t. Murder in Dulwich means secrets in Dulwich and secrets mean that someone needs to investigate. In Alice Castle’s new London Murder Mystery series, that someone is Beth, mother, journalist, odd-jobber and, suddenly, amateur investigator. What’s it about? Meet Beth Haldane, thirty-something single mum. […]
Expectations are everything. This book looks like a psychological thriller. There’s something about the title and strapline, even the cover art, that leads you to expect dark twists involving significant emotional trauma and, ultimately, some kind of investigable crime. But that’s not what it is. Read this expecting to uncover a killer or a demented […]
I enjoy books about books so I was delighted to receive this for my birthday. A book about libraries had to be about books, right? There are lots of books on the front cover and the author’s a novelist. Well, not quite. This book is more about people, hence the subtitle, ‘true stories and curious […]
The role of social media in publishing continues to fascinate me. Take Sergeant Colin Taylor. He was detective constable on the beautiful Isles of Scilly for around seven years. Scilly has approximately 2,600 inhabitants, yet Colin’s humorous Facebook and Twitter posts from his social media accounts amassed 60,000 followers. This level of demand for his […]
Ah, the Carribean. Sun, sea and, erm, dead bodies. Calling all Agatha Christie fans: this is a classic locked room mystery in which all the protagonists are gathered together at the end for the big reveal. Can the reader solve the mystery before the detective? Mmm, possibly. (I didn’t.) If not you’ll be sure to […]
Sometimes writers use two stories when one would do. As much as I enjoyed reading Sara Alexander’s debut novel, ‘Under a Sardinian Sky’, it definitely feels like a book with one story to tell – and with a largely irrelevant second story tacked onto the beginning and end. What’s it about? In 1952, Carmela Chirigorni, […]
How far would you go to protect your family? Could you forgive those who have wronged you? And even if you could, can you ever truly go home? Billed as a novel for those who enjoy books by Raymond Chandler and John Grisham, John Hart’s second book, ‘Down River’, is a dark and atmospheric trip […]