Category: Reviews

Murder Like Clockwork by Nicola Whyte

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This is the second in a series featuring the amateur detective duo Audrey Brooks and Lewis McLennon. I haven’t read the first, 10 Marchfield Square, but I enjoyed this one so much I’m planning to go back and read it, as well as looking out for any future books in the series.

Murder Like Clockwork is set in London and begins with cleaner Audrey Brooks arriving at the house she cleans every Thursday afternoon. She got the job through an agency and has never met the owner of the house, a Russian financier who is rarely in the country but wants someone to wind his collection of clocks and dust his antiques and expensive furniture. On this particular Thursday, Audrey arrives earlier than her usual time but it’s so cold she enters the house anyway and prepares to start work – only to find that she’s not alone. There’s a dead body in one of the bedrooms…with splashes of blood all over the walls and floor, showing that it wasn’t a natural death.

Audrey runs outside to call the police, who arrive twenty minutes later. To her shock, however, she finds herself accused of wasting police time, because there’s no dead body or blood to be seen. Audrey can’t believe it; how can an entire crime scene completely vanish in only twenty minutes? Convinced that she wasn’t imagining things, she contacts her friend, Lewis McLennon, who recently helped her solve another mystery. Lewis is excited to have a second crime to investigate, but how can they even prove that a crime has been committed when the victim and the evidence have disappeared?

I picked up this book after starting and temporarily abandoning two other books that didn’t immediately draw me in. I hoped this would be the quick, entertaining read I needed to help avoid a reading slump – and it was! The characters are well drawn and quirky, the mystery is cleverly plotted without being too difficult to follow and the overall tone is light and humorous. It didn’t really matter that I hadn’t read the previous book as this one works well as a standalone, but I did feel that I didn’t fully understand the role of one of the characters, Celeste, the owner of Marchfield Square, the residential complex where Lewis and Audrey both live. I’m sure I’ll get to know her better when I read the first book.

The novel is written from the points of view of Audrey, Lewis and occasionally Celeste, giving different perspectives on different aspects of the mystery. I found Lewis a particularly interesting character. As a struggling crime writer, he’s enthusiastic about having a real life crime to solve in the hope that it will give him inspiration for his books, but this often leads him to speak without thinking and many people find him annoying. He has a job at a recruitment agency, which he resents because he would rather spend his time writing, and is genuinely surprised when he discovers that other people also have lives outside work and are finding ways to balance their day jobs with pursuing their own dreams. Audrey is a very different personality – she’s warm, friendly and sociable and is happy with her cleaning jobs (although she wishes they were better paid). She and Lewis complement each other perfectly and form a good team.

Although Audrey and Lewis do most of the investigating, I loved the way the other residents of Marchfield Square also get involved. Somehow they all seem to know exactly what’s going on and everyone has an opinion to give or a piece of advice to offer. If you’ve ever watched Only Murders in the Building, that’s what this book reminded me of! I found it very entertaining overall and am looking forward to meeting Lewis and Audrey again.

Thanks to Raven Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Night Hag by Hester Musson

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Have you ever suffered from sleep paralysis – the feeling that you’re awake but can’t move your body? Maybe it’s accompanied by a sensation of pressure on your chest, as if something is pinning you to the bed, or the impression that someone is in your room. It’s more common than you may think – many people will experience it at least once or twice in their life – and it inspired the famous painting, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. In fact, the word ‘nightmare’ itself (originally hyphenated as night-mare) comes from the idea of a mythological female demon (a ‘mare’ or ‘hag’) sitting on the chest of a sleeping person. Someone who has had a lot of experience of these terrifying night-mares is Lil Vincent in Hester Musson’s new novel, The Night Hag.

It’s 1886 and Lil Vincent has been free of the night-mares, as she calls them, for many years, but recently they have started again and are becoming increasingly intense. Frightened and desperate, Lil writes a letter to the renowned Edinburgh doctor, Dr Lachlan. Relieved to be able to open her heart to somebody at last, even somebody she’s never met, she finds herself telling him all about her childhood, growing up as the daughter of a medium who forced her to participate in fraudulent séances.

Her childhood has left scars that still persist, even today as she tries to build a new life for herself as an archaeologist. Lil is assisting Nils and Effie Jensen with a dig on what they believe is a Bronze Age burial mound in the fictional Scottish village of Pitcarden. When they come across two cinerary urns and a bronze knife, Lil thinks they are on the verge of a significant discovery, but it seems that the villagers are unhappy with their presence and they may not be allowed to complete their excavations.

This is the second novel I’ve read by Hester Musson, the first being The Beholders. Although I found this one a more original and intriguing story, I did have some of the same problems I had with the other book – mainly that the first half is very slow and it took me a long time to become immersed in it. It didn’t help that there are several different threads to the story – Lil’s sleep disturbances, the séances and the archaeological dig – and they all feel very separate, never really coming together until the end.

Once I did get into the story, I found it interesting. There’s a good sense of time and place, with the community of rural Pitcarden steeped in superstition and folklore. The second half of the book drew me in much more than the first half did, and I began to have a lot of sympathy for Lil as she discovers that almost everyone in her life has been lying to her or deceiving her in one way or another. The way one particular character betrays her trust is quite shocking and Lil is deeply affected by it all. But although it’s a dark book, there are some glimmers of hope in the final chapters and the ending is satisfying, so I’m glad I persevered with it.

If you read this book and enjoy it, I would also recommend reading The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson, another book about archaeology and superstition in a rural setting. It has a similar tone and atmosphere and I think it may appeal to the same readers.

Thanks to 4th Estate and William Collins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton

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It’s February 1952 and journalist Henry Aldridge is planning an article on the recent death of King George VI when his editor approaches him with a completely different assignment. He wants Henry to report on the restoration of Montagu Manor, a country house near Oxford that was partially destroyed by fire in the summer of 1938 and later requisitioned by the army after the outbreak of war. Henry reluctantly accepts the job, but doesn’t admit that he himself had been a guest at the house during that fateful summer.

In 1938, Montagu Manor was home to Sir Philip Kerrigan, his wife and four children. It was the son, Anthony, who invited Henry to spend the summer with them, relaxing, fishing in the river and contemplating their next steps, having both recently graduated from Oxford University. Henry, the son of a factory owner, is expected to go into the family business, but what he really wants to do is become a newspaper reporter, something he knows his father will never agree to. When he meets Anthony’s sister, Camilla, he discovers that she is in a similar position – she desperately wants to attend Oxford and study for a degree like her brother, but Sir Philip has refused, believing a woman’s duty is to marry and have children. Camilla is determined that she will never marry, but when she and Henry fall in love she begins to reconsider.

The 1952 thread of the novel tells us that something went wrong between Henry and Camilla and they haven’t seen each other since the year of the fire, but we won’t find out what happened until much later in the book. And there are other questions to be answered too. What caused the fire and what was the significance of the unfinished painting that went missing during it? Who exactly were the Kensington Circle, the group of artists staying at the house at the same time as Henry? By moving backwards and forwards between 1952 and 1938, the answers begin to emerge.

I really enjoyed The Strawberry House. I seem to have read a lot of historical novels about English country houses with secrets and at first I thought this one was going to be very similar. What set it apart, though, is how much I liked and cared about the characters, particularly Henry, who seemed like a genuinely nice person torn between following his own heart and trying to keep everyone else happy. I was also fond of his photographer friend, Frank, and Camilla’s little sister, Cassie, who has a talent for writing. Because I was so invested in the characters and their lives, it made me more eager to see how everything would unfold as the truth about the summer of 1938 started to become clear.

In case you’re wondering, the title of the book is inspired by Strawberry Thief, a beautiful design by William Morris. Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement are referenced throughout the book and the fictional Montagu Manor is located close to Morris’s home, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. Although this is the first Rachel Burton novel I’ve read, many of her others seem to have a house at the heart of the story and I’ll look forward to exploring more of them.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

All the Fear of the Fair: Uncanny Tales of Circus and Sideshow edited by Edward Parnell

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This is the third short story collection I’ve read from the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series and probably my favourite so far. Deadly Dolls was also excellent, but let down by two or three weaker stories, whereas this one is strong throughout, with only one story that I didn’t like very much. As the title suggests, this anthology is themed around fairgrounds, circuses, carnivals and sideshows, all of which provide perfect settings for tales that are creepy, supernatural or in some way ‘weird’.

There are only a few authors in the book whose work I’m already familiar with. One is Edgar Allan Poe, whose story Hop-Frog opens the collection. I have Poe’s complete works and first read Hop-Frog years ago, but couldn’t remember it very well. It’s about a court jester with dwarfism who takes brutal revenge on the king and ministers who have mocked and taunted him. It doesn’t immediately seem to fit the fair and circus theme, but Parnell includes a short introduction to each story explaining why he chose it and for this one he points out that the character of Hop-Frog is probably the earliest example of the ‘evil clown’ trope in horror fiction.

I think my favourite story was possibly Satan’s Circus by Lady Eleanor Smith, an author completely new to me whose other work now sadly seems to be entirely out of print. Smith was one of the group of 1920s socialites known as the Bright Young Things and claimed to have Romani heritage which inspired her interest in circus life. This story involves a travelling circus which has gained a dubious reputation due to the sinister behaviour of the couple who run it. Another one I enjoyed was The Black Ferris by Ray Bradbury; having read his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, it was fascinating to see how this story (published fourteen years earlier) introduces some of the ideas Bradbury would later develop in the novel, including a carnival and a ride that goes backwards with startling results!

I also loved Freak Show by Robert Silverberg. The idea of the freak show is obviously very outdated and problematic now, due to the exploitation of the people involved, but this particular story is not at all what you might expect. It features visitors from outer space and makes us question which of us really are the ‘freaks’. I thought it was very cleverly done and I would be happy to try more by Silverberg, an author I hadn’t really considered reading before. Charles Birkin’s The Harlem Horror is on a similar subject and was very well written but reminded me of HG Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau and was a bit too disturbing for me!

Circus Child by Margery Lawrence was another highlight. I’ve never come across Lawrence before, but apparently she wrote several stories featuring paranormal detective Miles Pennoyer and this is one of them. The story follows Pennoyer as he investigates the case of a young woman who has fallen under the spell of a circus hypnotist. One of the creepiest stories in the collection is Waxworks by W. L. George, in which a young couple out walking in the rain take shelter in an abandoned waxworks. I love the atmosphere the author creates in this one. There are also two stories about magicians making people disappear; my favourite was Charles Davy’s The Vanishing Trick, where a man in the audience offers to replace the magician’s assistant – and disappears for real!

Finally, I want to mention The Little Town by JD Beresford (father of Elisabeth Beresford, who created The Wombles). This unusual and eerie story begins with our narrator walking the streets of a small town late at night and finding himself entering a theatre where a puppet show is taking place. The question is – who is pulling the strings? The conclusion to this story has a very obvious interpretation, but when I read Parnell’s introduction I found that the author himself denied that this was what he intended. If any of you have read it, let me know what you think!

The anthology also includes stories by Richard Middleton, LP Hartley, Tod Robbins, Gerald Kersh, Frederick Cowles, Robert Aickman and an author known only as Simplex, who was published anonymously. The most recent story is from 1975, with the majority being from the first half of the 20th century. I couldn’t help noticing that nearly all of the authors featured in this book, apart from Smith and Lawrence, are white men, which surprised me as the other two collections I’ve read in this series have been quite diverse. Still, it was good to have the opportunity to try so many authors who were new to me and to find a few that I would like to explore further.

The Three Witches by Elena Collins

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I’ve read other novels inspired by Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but this is the first one that has focused specifically on the characters of the three witches. Although Shakespeare’s witches aren’t thought to have been based on any individual people (he took the idea from Holinshed’s Chronicles which refers to the ‘Weird Sisters’ or ‘nymphs or fairies’), Elena Collins imagines them here as three young women growing up in 11th century Scotland. They are the daughters of Sidheag, a wise woman or healer, and their names are Isobel, Ysenda and Merraid.

In modern day Bristol, Ruthie Reed is attending an audition for a new documentary about Macbeth and the historical Mac Bethad mac Findláech, King of Alba (Scotland), on whom the play is based. Acting is all Ruthie has ever wanted to do, but her career seems to be going nowhere and she’s desperate for a decent role. When she’s offered the part of one of the three witches in the documentary, she hopes this is the opportunity she’s been waiting for and will lead to bigger things. On arriving at Forres in the north of Scotland, however, things don’t go quite according to plan. The cast and crew are plagued with bad luck and disaster – and then Ruthie herself starts to catch glimpses of a mysterious young woman who seems to provide a link between past and present.

Ruthie’s story alternates with the story of Isobel and her sisters, left alone in the world after their mother’s death. Isobel, the youngest, has inherited her skills with herbs and potions, as well as her ability to see the future in the flames of the fire, but in a world where women who are different are viewed with suspicion, these talents could be a curse rather than a blessing. When Isobel falls in love with Lulach, Mac Bethad’s stepson, she believes she has found the security she needs, but Lulach’s mother, Gruoch, has other ideas…

As with most dual time period novels, there was one narrative that I enjoyed more than the other, and in this case it was the historical one. I liked the way the focus was on the fictional characters of Isobel, Ysenda and Merraid and their daily lives in the village rather than on the real historical figures such as Mac Bethad and Gruoch, who appear only occasionally. It was easy to see where Isobel’s story was heading, particularly as we get a hint of it in the prologue, but that didn’t make it any less impactful. Although widespread witch trials and burnings peaked in Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries, women were obviously being accused of witchcraft much earlier than that, so it’s not impossible that the historical Macbeth could have met women like Isobel and her two sisters – and this is something Ruthie and her friends in the modern day narrative begin to research, believing that the witches (both in the play and in history) deserve to be given more attention after centuries of being interpreted through the lens of misogyny.

I liked Ruthie and enjoyed following the filming of the documentary, but it did feel that her storyline was there mainly to add more context to the historical one and I didn’t become quite as invested in her chapters as I did in Isobel’s. The supernatural element of the book is well done – although it’s not a time travel or timeslip novel, there are moments where past and present seem to merge – but I wasn’t convinced that everyone else would have been so ready to believe Ruthie when she told them what she’d been experiencing! There’s also a romance for Ruthie which seemed to happen very suddenly and not with the person I’d expected it would be with.

Overall, I found this an interesting, engaging read. It’s the first I’ve read by Elena Collins, so I’m looking forward to reading some of her other books.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Astral Library by Kate Quinn

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Life has never been easy for Alix Watson. Passed around from one foster home to another, her childhood lacked love and security, and now that she’s an adult she’s living in poverty, juggling three part-time jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. But today has been the worst day of all: she’s lost one of her jobs – the highest paying one; her roommate has thrown her out of their shared apartment because his girlfriend is jealous; and she only has a few dollars left in the world, which she can’t even access because her card has been declined. Homeless and alone, Alix takes refuge in the reading room of Boston Public Library, the only place that has ever felt like home. Stumbling through an open door, she finds herself emerging into the Astral Library – a place where time stands still and where the desperate, the lonely and the abused can find sanctuary, literally, inside a book.

Many of us have probably wondered what it would be like to live in one of the fictional worlds described in our favourite books, but in the Astral Library people get the chance to really do exactly that. Alix just needs to decide which literary world to choose – Austen’s Regency? Dickens’ London? The possibilities are endless (as long as the book is in the public domain). Eventually Alix makes her decision, but before she can step inside her book and begin her new life, an urgent message arrives. Someone already within another book is in danger and it seems the future of the Astral Library itself could be under threat.

The Astral Library is a change of direction for Kate Quinn as she has previously only written historical novels, some of which I’ve read and enjoyed. I don’t read a lot of modern fantasy, but was curious to see how Quinn would handle such a completely different genre. First of all, I loved the concept of people being able to enter a book and make it their new home, interacting with the characters and watching the well known storylines play out. I was looking forward to seeing which book Alix would choose and what would happen to her once she’d entered it. However, the novel goes in a direction I wasn’t expecting and instead of Alix becoming immersed in one fictional setting, she jumps constantly from one to another as she and the Librarian are called on to rescue other library users. We only get brief glimpses of most of these books, which is a shame as a lot of them are books I’ve read and enjoyed – such as Jane Eyre, Dracula and The Three Musketeers – and it would have been nice to have spent longer exploring them!

There’s some interesting worldbuilding in terms of the Astral Library itself and the many rules that govern it – rules on who can and can’t enter, which books you can live inside and what you’re allowed to do once there, what to do about suitable clothing, the different privileges granted to the Librarian and her assistants, and much more. The Librarian is a great character; Alix finds her a bit unwelcoming at first, but gradually gains respect for her when she discovers what lengths the Librarian will go to in protecting those who have sought sanctuary in the library and how valiantly she’s been battling the bureaucracy of the Library Board who disagree with the way the library is being run. I was intrigued by the addition of two more characters, the Gallerist and the Programmer, but I won’t say any more about those!

I found The Astral Library mostly entertaining, although not quite what I’d wanted and expected it to be. Later in the book, though, it becomes clear that it’s a novel with a message – a message about the many threats facing libraries today. Libraries all over the world are at risk of closure, in need of more funding and increasingly focusing on offering other things rather than just books. Quinn also explores the topics of book banning and censorship. Towards the end of the book, it did seem that these messages were starting to dominate and become more important than the plot and the characters, but still, I enjoyed the book overall. I would prefer Kate Quinn to go back to writing historical fiction, which I think she does better, but it’s always interesting to see authors trying something different.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Embers by Sándor Márai

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Translated by Carol Brown Janeway

When I saw that Stu at Winstonsdad’s Blog was hosting Hungarian Lit Month this February, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find anything I wanted to read. Of course, I came up with a whole list of titles that interested me, but knew I’d only have time for one this month and decided on Embers by Sándor Márai.

The book was first published in Hungarian in 1942 as A gyertyák csonkig égnek, which means ‘candles burn until the end’. The English translation is by Carol Brown Janeway, who translated it from a German version, Die Glut. Although I’m not able to read it in its original Hungarian, this translation seems to have captured all of the elegance and beauty of the writing.

The story takes place in a castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, home to Henrik, who was once a general in the Austro-Hungarian army and continues to be referred to as the General for most of the book. As the novel opens, he is preparing for a visit from an old friend, Konrad, whom he hasn’t seen for more than forty years. Before Konrad arrives at the castle, we are taken back to the early days of their friendship when they meet as boys attending a prestigious military school together. Although the two are inseparable, Konrad in particular is always conscious of the differences between them – Henrik comes from a wealthy, privileged background whereas Konrad’s parents have had to make huge sacrifices for their son’s military training. And unlike Henrik, Konrad doesn’t really even want a military career – he would rather be a musician.

By the time Konrad arrives for the candlelit dinner the General has prepared, we’ve learned a lot about their friendship, but there’s one thing we still don’t know and that’s the reason why it ended. We know that something bad must have happened, bad enough to keep them apart for forty-one years, but we don’t find out what it was until the General sits down at the table and lays out what he knows, or thinks he knows, about the events leading to Konrad’s disappearance. Although we do get some answers, there are still some questions remaining at the end of the novel; it’s not a book with a tidy conclusion or a happy ending, but maybe that’s the point. It doesn’t really matter whether the General’s questions (or ours) are answered – the most important thing is what he’s always believed and how it has affected the way he’s chosen to live his life.

Embers is a short novel, but as there’s very little actual plot, I don’t think it really needed to be much longer. The whole second half consists of the General delivering a monologue about Konrad’s character and his betrayal of their friendship, during which Konrad is barely given a chance to speak or explain himself. This feels unnatural and I think if it had gone on for much longer or been less well written I would have lost interest. However, Márai managed to hold my attention until the end and although I didn’t particularly love the book, I did find it fascinating.

Although the General’s late wife Krisztina plays an important part in the story, she never appears directly and the novel focuses almost entirely on the two main characters. It’s interesting to see how the author writes about the topic of male friendship and whether such a close bond formed in youth can ever truly be broken. He also explores and contrasts the differences between the two and the General can be seen as representing the final days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which ended in 1918. While Konrad is the one who left and tried to build a new life for himself, the General became a recluse, rarely leaving his castle and clinging to a world and a way of life that has gone. This interpretation gives extra meaning to the title, with the candles burning out as the General talks, leaving embers behind at the end.

I see some of Sándor Márai’s other books are also available in English; if you’ve read any of them, let me know which you would recommend.