Category: Reviews

The Lost Passenger by Frances Quinn

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Frances Quinn’s That Bonesetter Woman was one of my books of the year in 2022 and I didn’t really expect her new one, The Lost Passenger, to live up to it. Well, I’m pleased to say that I thought it was even better!

The novel begins in England in 1910. Nineteen-year-old Elinor Hayward is the daughter of a wealthy Manchester mill owner known as ‘the cotton king’, but when she marries Frederick Coombes, the son and heir of Lord and Lady Storton, she finds herself being looked down upon by her aristocratic in-laws. It seems that nothing she says or does is good enough for them and although Frederick himself is not unkind, it quickly becomes obvious that he doesn’t love her and it’s not going to be the happy marriage she had dreamed about. Worse still, when their first child, Teddy, is born, he is immediately taken away to be raised by a nanny and it is made clear to Elinor that she’s to have very little involvement in his upbringing.

After two unhappy years, Elinor is thrilled when her father buys tickets for the Titanic and invites her to join him on the ship’s maiden voyage, along with Frederick and Teddy. It’s a chance to see more of the world, but also to finally spend some precious time with her little boy. Of course, the voyage ends in tragedy but Elinor and Teddy are lucky enough to be rescued after the ship goes down. When asked for her name so a list of survivors can be compiled, it occurs to Elinor that this is the only opportunity she’s ever going to have to escape from her old life. Before she has time to really think about the consequences, she finds herself giving another woman’s name and taking on a fake identity. But will she be able to avoid being caught – and will the new life she builds for herself in New York be worth the deception?

Frances Quinn has a real gift for creating characters the reader can get behind and root for. I liked Elinor from the beginning and she had my full sympathy in having to deal with the vicious snobbery of Lady Storton and the disappointment of a loveless marriage. Her life with Frederick and his family is so stifling and unhappy that even though the decision she makes after the sinking of the Titanic is questionable, it’s also very understandable. Although this first section of the novel is quite slow, I think it was necessary for Quinn to spend plenty of time showing us how trapped Elinor felt and how desperate she had become.

Many books have been written about the Titanic, but this one is different. The Titanic is not the main focus of the story but is a starting point to explore how Elinor makes the most of the second chance she has been given. However, I still felt that Quinn handles the disaster sensitively and with respect for the victims. She writes about the failings of the evacuation process, the conditions experienced by those who make it into a lifeboat and the realisation that there’s no hope for the hundreds left on board, but she doesn’t go into too much detail on any of these things. Instead of concentrating on the disaster itself, she focuses more on the survivors and how they try to cope with the trauma they’ve suffered and move forward with their lives.

The second half of the book is devoted to Elinor’s arrival in New York and how she goes about trying to build a happier future for herself and Teddy. I’m deliberately not saying much more because I want you to enjoy discovering the rest of Elinor’s story for yourself (everything else I’ve talked about so far is already touched on in the publisher’s blurb for the book). It’s both fascinating and inspirational to see how Elinor is able to create a whole new life out of the ruins of her old one, but at the same time there’s always the risk that someone who knew her before could see her and give her away her secret.

I loved this book and as I haven’t read her first one, The Smallest Man, yet, I still have something to look forward to!

Thanks to Simon and Schuster UK for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Four Days’ Wonder by A.A. Milne

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A.A. Milne is, of course, best known for his Winnie the Pooh stories, but he also wrote a wide variety of works aimed at adults, ranging from novels and plays to essays and poetry. I read and loved his detective novel, The Red House Mystery, a few years ago and was disappointed that he hadn’t written more of them, so when I came across Four Days’ Wonder, described as a ‘spoof on the detective novel’, I thought it might be the next best thing.

Eighteen-year-old Jenny Windell has been raised by her Aunt Caroline at Auburn Lodge, having been orphaned as a child. Now Caroline has died as well and Jenny has moved in with another guardian, the family lawyer, so that Auburn Lodge can be rented out. However, she still has a key and absentmindedly lets herself into the house one day, forgetting that she no longer lives there. To her surprise, she is confronted by the body of her other aunt, Jane Latour, an actress whom she hasn’t seen for several years, lying dead on the drawing room floor.

It seems obvious that Aunt Jane has slipped on the polished floor and hit her head on a brass door stop, but when Jenny hears the new tenants returning to the house, she panics and escapes through a window. It immediately occurs to her that she has left her monogrammed handkerchief beside the body and that her footprints are now visible under the window. Worse still, she had wiped the blood off the door stop (with the handkerchief) and placed it on top of the piano, thereby concealing the evidence. Jenny, who has read a lot of murder mysteries and has an active imagination, is convinced that she has made herself the number one suspect. Her solution is to go on the run, disappearing into the countryside and sleeping on haystacks. What could go wrong?

Four Days’ Wonder is not a book you can take too seriously and Milne clearly didn’t intend it to be. It’s a comic novel, with a similar kind of humour to P.G. Wodehouse or Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence series, where the characters keep getting themselves into ridiculous, farcical situations. The book was published in 1933 and you can see that Milne is parodying various tropes of the Golden Age crime novels that were so popular at that time – dead bodies found in drawing rooms, mistaken identities, messages written in code, and so on. What you won’t find is any real detective work or, in fact, any real mystery. There are policeman (who, naturally, get everything wrong) but as we know from the beginning that Jenny didn’t kill Aunt Jane and that it was almost certainly an accident, there’s not much suspense in terms of wondering what the solution will be.

Jenny is a very likeable heroine, as is her friend Nancy Fairbrother, whom she enlists to help her with her escape. There’s also a love interest for Jenny in the form of Derek Fenton, a young man she meets while on the run, who just happens to be the brother of the crime writer Archibald Fenton, Nancy’s employer. This leads to yet more misunderstandings and comedy moments – such as when, unaware of who Archibald is, Jenny shoots him with her trusty Watson Combination Watch Dog and Water Pistol! Four Days’ Wonder is a lot of fun and I kept thinking that it would make an entertaining adaptation for TV or film – so I wasn’t entirely surprised to find that there is already one, from 1936, although it doesn’t seem to stick very closely to the book and I can’t find it available anywhere either to buy or stream.

My edition of this book is published by Farrago, an imprint of independent publisher Duckworth Books. It’s one of five Milne books for adults available to buy through Farrago’s website, the others being Mr Pim, Two People, Chloe Marr and The Rabbits. I must try more of them at some point!

The Morrigan by Kim Curran – #ReadingIrelandMonth25

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Trying to tell my story is like trying to hold the smoke of a forest fire in your hands or force an ocean into a cup. I resist. I re-form. How could they succeed when even I didn’t know who I was from one moment to another?

There have been so many Greek mythology retellings recently, it came as a nice surprise to see that this new novel by Kim Curran takes as its subject not another Greek goddess, but an Irish one. In Irish mythology, the Morrigan is known as the goddess of war and fate, a fierce, shapeshifting figure who leads warriors into battle and can foretell whether they will live or die. She is sometimes known as Badb, sometimes as Macha and sometimes as Nemain and often believed to be all three. In The Morrigan, Kim Curran sets out to tell her story.

The novel begins with the Tuatha Dé Danann, the supernatural race to which the Morrigan belongs, returning to Ireland having spent many generations ‘in the north of the world learning arts and magic’. Soon after their arrival, they defeat the Fir Bolg in battle to reclaim Ireland for themselves, only to be defeated in turn by the invading Milesians, who drive them underground. Rather than stay beneath the earth with her own people, the Morrigan goes out into the world where she discovers that even the power of a goddess is limited in a land ruled by men.

The Morrigan is beautifully written and as a debut novel, I thought it was very impressive. Having very little knowledge of Irish mythology, I found it fascinating and particularly enjoyed the first section about the Tuatha Dé Danann, where the writing style, together with the shapeshifting, magical beings and epic battles, makes it feel like a high fantasy novel. The later stages of the book are based on the Ulster Cycle – with the Morrigan crossing paths with Medb, Queen of Connacht; Conchobar, King of Ulaid; and the legendary warrior Cúchulainn – and feel slightly more grounded in reality, but less captivating for me personally. I did love the way Curran incorporates all of the Morrigan’s three parts into the novel, moving seamlessly from Badb to Macha to Nemain, showing how her personality and actions change as she takes on each persona, while at the same time retaining memories of her previous lives and experiences.

However, there was so much happening in this book that I started to feel overwhelmed. There seemed to be no real direction to the plot and it felt like a string of short stories and separate episodes rather than one cohesive narrative. I think there was easily enough material here for a trilogy, rather than trying to pack everything into a single book. Maybe readers more familiar with Irish myth and legend would have found it all easier to follow than I did, but as a newcomer it was just too much for me to process all at once.

I would still highly recommend this book to anyone interested in sampling some Irish mythology – or anyone with existing knowledge who wants to see how Kim Curran approaches the subject. It has certainly left me wanting to look into some of the stories and characters in more depth and wishing more authors would move away from Greek mythology to explore other parts of the world!

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

As this book is set in ancient Ireland and the author Kim Curran was born in Dublin, I am contributing this review to #ReadingIrelandMonth25 hosted by Cathy of 746 Books.

Britain’s Greatest Private Detective by Nell Darby

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As someone who enjoys detective novels, I was naturally drawn to this non-fiction book about a real life private detective who achieved fame and success in the late Victorian era. His name (at least the one by which he was best known) was Henry Slater and he was the owner of Britain’s leading detective agency. This new book by Nell Darby explores Henry Slater’s life and career and looks at the world of the early private detective in general – the backgrounds they came from, the type of cases they dealt with, the methods they used and the problems that could arise from those methods.

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 is one of the key factors that gave rise to the private detective in the second half of the 19th century. This made it possible for people to request a divorce through the law courts (rather than through a private Act of Parliament as previously) as long as they could prove their spouse had committed adultery. Women would also need to prove one other offence, such as desertion or cruelty. But how could people obtain evidence to show that their partner had been unfaithful? By employing a private detective, of course, and asking them to shadow their husband or wife and look for proof of infidelities. And what do you think happened if the detective couldn’t find any proof – and their client was paying them to deliver results?

Slater’s Detective Agency, who operated from offices in London’s Basinghall Street, advertised all sorts of detective work, but most of their business relied on divorce cases. It was one case in particular that brought about their downfall. Having been hired on behalf of a Mrs Kate Pollard to help her divorce her husband, the agency resorted to underhand methods to get the evidence they needed and were betrayed by a former employee with a personal grudge against Henry Slater. This led to a trial which damaged Slater’s business and exposed his true identity. The Pollard case and the trial which followed form a large part of the book, although Darby moves back and forth between that story, a personal biography of Henry Slater himself and a general history of private detective agencies.

This is a fascinating book and has clearly been very well researched (there’s a long bibliography and an extensive section of notes), but it wasn’t quite what I expected. I thought there would be details of more of Slater’s cases than just the Pollard one and more discussion of the other types of work the agency carried out as well as divorces, but maybe there just wasn’t enough information available to do that. I can’t agree with other reviews saying the book reads like a detective novel as there’s very little actual ‘detecting’ being done and certainly not much similarity between Henry Slater and Sherlock Holmes, whose adventures were appearing in print during the same period that Slater was operating. The jumping around from one topic to another also disrupts the flow of the book and meant I couldn’t become as immersed in it as I would have liked.

Still, I enjoyed learning about Henry Slater and how he established his agency, how he found work first through advertising and then through the strength of his fame and reputation, and how he faced challenges from rival companies. It seems that although Slater can be admired for what he achieved in building his business up from nothing and reaching the very top in his chosen profession, he was less skilled in handling his personal relationships with friends and employees – and this, together with his determination to keep his perfect record in winning divorce cases, is what led to his demise.

I was intrigued by the occasional mentions of the women detectives Slater employed, particularly the ones described as ‘cyclist detectives’ who followed their suspects by bicycle. I’ve discovered that Nell Darby has written another book, Sister Sleuths: Female Detectives in Britain, which sounds like a good companion to this one and I’m sure it would be an interesting read as well.

Thanks to Pen & Sword for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer

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I loved this! I remember enjoying Belinda Bauer’s first two books, Blacklands and Darkside, around the time they were published in 2009 and 2011 respectively, but I seemed to lose track of her work after that. When this one caught my eye, I decided to give it a try and I’m very pleased that I did. The plot is completely different from any other crime novel I’ve read.

The Impossible Thing is a novel set in two different periods almost one hundred years apart and linked by the same crime – the theft and illegal trading of wild birds’ eggs. In 1926, gangs of ‘egg-climmers’ gather on the Yorkshire coast and lower each other from ropes over the cliffs to steal eggs from the seabirds nesting there. Traders and collectors are willing to hand over large sums of money for the most rare and beautiful eggs, so when little Celie Sheppard from Metland Farm makes the dangerous descent through a crack in a ledge of rock and obtains a perfect red guillemot egg, it creates a sensation.

In the present day, in rural Wales, Patrick Fort decides to visit his friend, Nick, and arrives just in time to discover that both Nick and his mother have been tied up and robbed. The only thing stolen is an old wooden box containing a red egg. Nick had found the egg in the attic and put it on eBay, only for it to be taken down almost immediately for breaching eBay’s policy on selling illegal items. It seems that, even in the short space of time it was advertised, someone saw it, tracked it down to Nick’s address and decided they must have it no matter what. Although Nick had no idea that owning birds’ eggs was illegal, he is afraid to admit to the police that he had one, so he and Patrick set out to find the thief themselves.

This is definitely the first book I’ve read about egg trafficking! It’s an unusual subject for a crime novel, but Bauer builds a story around it that I found completely fascinating and unexpectedly exciting. I assumed that everything in the book was fictional, so I was interested to learn that the red Metland Egg really existed – or to be more accurate, Metland Eggs, as one was collected every year for over twenty years from the same location on the Bempton Cliffs near Bridlington. Something I learned from the novel is that female guillemots lay only one egg a year and if it is stolen, they will return to the same spot the following year to lay an almost identical egg. It made me feel sad to think of the bird that laid the red eggs never actually getting to see one hatch and I’m so glad that the Protection of Birds Act 1954 made egg theft illegal in the UK – even though it hasn’t stopped it completely, it’s a big step in the right direction.

Patrick Fort, the main character in the present day sections of the novel, was apparently introduced in a previous Belinda Bauer novel, Rubbernecker, which I haven’t read. I can see why she decided to bring him back for a second book, because he’s a very engaging, intelligent and likeable character. Patrick has a form of autism which affects his social interactions, but he has a good friend in Nick, who understands why he sometimes behaves the way he does. I loved seeing them work together to hunt down the egg thieves and I must go back and read about their earlier adventures in Rubbernecker!

The historical sections are also very well done and the scenes where young Celie Sheppard is dangled over the cliff in search of the eggs are very dramatic; I can’t imagine how dangerous and terrifying that would be, yet Celie did it year after year from such an early age. At least she was rewarded financially for her efforts, at a time of poverty when her family desperately needed the money. It was interesting to see how big and well organised the egg trafficking industry was in those days, with collectors and traders prepared to go to great lengths – and great expense – to obtain the rarest and most unusual eggs.

I picked a great book for my return to Belinda Bauer after such a long time and am looking forward to reading the others that I’ve missed.

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

Island Song by Pepsi Demacque-Crockett

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Pepsi Demacque-Crockett has had a successful career in music as a backing singer for Wham! and then as a member of the duo Pepsi and Shirlie. Although she was born in London, her parents came to England from St Lucia in the Caribbean, and this forms the inspiration for Island Song, her debut novel.

Island Song is set in the 1950s. Agnes Deterville and her sister, Ella, who live in the village of Canaries on the island of St Lucia, are two very different people. As the quiet, cautious older sister, Ella can’t imagine leaving her island home and knows that she’ll never want to live anywhere else. Agnes is bolder and more adventurous, ready to follow her dreams and seize new opportunities. Working as a housekeeper for an English family, the Chesters, Agnes is captivated by Mrs Chester’s descriptions of her home country and longs to see it for herself. Hearing that people from the Caribbean have been invited to help rebuild post-war Britain, she decides to use her savings to travel to London.

Agnes has two young children from a failed relationship, whom she leaves behind with Ella, and her intention is to return to St Lucia as soon as she’s made enough money to improve the lives of the whole family. However, everything changes when, soon after arriving in England, she falls in love with another new immigrant, Raphael Toussaint. Agnes and Raphael come from the same village and she knows him by his bad reputation, but meeting him again in London he seems to be a different person and assures her that he has changed. Agnes wants to believe him, but how can she know he’s telling the truth?

Island Song is a fascinating exploration of the experiences of immigrants and the way in which people often build up an image of something in their mind that isn’t matched by reality. Having listened to Mrs Chester’s idyllic tales of her life in Dorset, Agnes expects something similar when she arrives in London and is shocked to find that this isn’t the case. Rather than sipping tea in elegant drawing rooms, she’s working in a kitchen making tea for other people, while being bullied by her boss. Similarly, Raphael comes to London hoping to make a fortune, but instead spends several months unemployed before eventually finding a lowly job painting walls for a construction company. They – like the rest of the Caribbean community – face racism, discrimination and even violence, but also make new friends amongst both immigrants and white British people who give them the confidence that not everyone in their new country wants them to leave.

Agnes is a strong character and I did like her, but I found Raphael more interesting because he goes through more growth and development throughout the novel. He has a drinking problem and is easily influenced by his friends, but he also has a kind heart and does genuinely seem to want to change and be a good partner to Agnes. I really wanted them to find happiness, both in their relationship and in their working lives. Ella is another character who grows as a person as the book progresses. Although most of the focus is on the characters who have left the island, we do catch up with Ella now and then and see how she’s gradually able to move on from some bad experiences in her past and gain the confidence to take control of her own life.

Demacque-Crockett writes beautifully about St Lucia and her love for her own heritage shines through in the London sections of the novel as well. The English spoken by her St Lucian characters is peppered with Kwéyòl, a French-based Creole language, and we see the immigrants trying to adapt to British culture while at the same time trying to retain parts of their own culture, such as their favourite foods and music. I really enjoyed this book and I hope Demacque-Crockett will write another one!

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

Woman in Blue by Douglas Bruton – #ReadIndies

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There’s clearly something about the paintings of Johannes Vermeer that inspires novelists; first, Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and now Douglas Bruton’s excellent Woman in Blue, which is published today. This is the second of Bruton’s books I’ve read, the first being 2021’s Blue Postcards and apart from the shared word in the title (Bruton certainly seems to like the colour blue!) and the shared theme of art and artists, I found this one very different in style and structure.

The novel begins in the present day with our unnamed narrator, referred to only as ‘a man in Amsterdam’, visiting the Rijksmuseum to look at a painting. Just one painting, which he has become so obsessed with that he barely notices any of the others. The painting is Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and the narrator returns to the museum day after day to study the colours and the composition, but most of all just to spend time in the woman in blue’s company and to imagine the human being who inspired the picture. He’s transfixed by this particular painting for its own sake, but also because the woman reminds him in subtle ways of both his wife and another woman he once loved.

In 17th century Delft, we meet the woman in blue herself – or rather, the young woman who sits for Vermeer as he paints her portrait. Her chapters alternate with the present day ones, slowly building up a history of the woman in blue, her life in Delft and her relationship with the artist. In reality, the true identity of the sitter has never been confirmed (Vermeer’s wife, Catharina Bolnes, has been suggested as a likely candidate, but it seems there’s no actual evidence to prove it), so Bruton has the freedom to create his own fictional story for the woman, whom he names Angelieke.

Although the book is set in two different time periods and narrated by two different characters, the lines dividing the two are blurred. Angelieke is a real woman in 1663, but in the modern day sections, she’s aware that she is a painting in a museum and that the male narrator comes to see her every day. She looks forward to his visits and feels a connection with him, just as he feels one with her. This is not the first novel to give a painting a mind of its own (I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons does the same and I’m sure there must be others) but I really liked the way Bruton handles that element of the story, giving it a dreamlike feel and merging the two narratives so that they don’t feel too separate or disconnected.

With it being a real painting rather than a fictional one, it’s easy to google it so you can refer to the picture itself as you read. The narrator’s observations, made during his repeated viewings, helped me to see things in the painting that I probably wouldn’t have noticed for myself. With each chapter, he finds new details to study and focus on – the map on the wall, the letter in the woman’s hand, the blue bed jacket she’s wearing and the question of whether or not she could be pregnant. At times, Bruton returns to a theme he also touched on in Blue Postcards: the idea that a painting offers something different to each individual who views it and that the viewers themselves can almost ‘become’ part of the painting:

What I like about the painting – one of the many things I like – is how cleverly the artist has included me in it and made me complicit in the looking. It is an intimate and private moment and Vermeer intrudes on it without at all breaking it, and we – Vermeer and me – stand silent, breath held, just looking at this young woman turned in on herself.

For a short book – a novella at 144 pages – there’s so much packed into it that I’ve probably only scratched the surface in this review. I would recommend Woman in Blue to anyone who loves art, but even if you don’t, there’s still a lot here to enjoy.

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

As this is an independent publisher, I am counting Woman in Blue towards this year’s #ReadIndies event hosted by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Lizzy’s Literary Life. You can find out more about Fairlight Books by visiting their website here.