Category: Reviews

The Fake Wife by Sharon Bolton

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I very rarely choose to pick up a contemporary crime novel, but I’m always happy to make an exception for Sharon Bolton. I think I’ve read all of her novels but one and have loved nearly all of them, so I had high hopes for her newest book, The Fake Wife, published last month.

The novel begins on a snowy evening just before Christmas when Olive Anderson, on her way home from a business trip, is staying at a hotel in Hexham, Northumberland. She has managed to get a table in the busy hotel restaurant, but when she enters the dining room she is surprised to see another woman sitting in her place. With no other tables available, Olive agrees to dine with the stranger, but is even more surprised when the woman tells the waiter that she and Olive are a married couple. For some reason even Olive can’t explain, she finds herself going along with the story and accompanying her ‘wife’ back to her hotel room after the meal.

PC Garry Mizon has twice tried and failed to qualify as a detective and has had to settle for a job with the traffic police, patrolling the roads at night and in bad weather. When politician Michael Anderson reports his wife, Olive, missing, Garry is ordered to accompany DS Lexy Thomas to interview him. Believing Olive may have had an accident on the country roads after leaving her hotel, Garry and Lexy head out into the snow to see if they can track her down. Olive, however, isn’t the first woman connected with Michael Anderson who has gone missing and to get to the truth behind her disappearance, Garry and Lexy will need to delve into the politician’s past and the story of his first wife, Eloise.

When I first started to read The Fake Wife, I wasn’t at all sure that I was going to like this particular Bolton novel. Those opening scenes in the hotel seemed ridiculously contrived – Olive’s reaction to having a strange woman stealing her table then pretending to be her wife certainly wasn’t the way I would have reacted! – and as I read on, other parts of the plot felt very implausible as well. It was also clear from early on that there was going to be a lot more sexual content in this book than you normally get from Bolton, something which I don’t really enjoy. Somewhere after the first few chapters, however, I became immersed in the story and then it didn’t really matter how far-fetched the beginning had been. I’m glad I didn’t abandon it, because otherwise I would have missed out on all the twists and turns of the plot as the novel headed towards its conclusion – and I wouldn’t have got to know Garry Mizon.

Garry is a wonderfully endearing character, one of my favourites in all of Sharon Bolton’s books. He’s one of those people who always try their best, yet nothing ever seems to go right for them, as we see at the beginning of the book when he makes a catastrophic and embarrassing mistake during a raid. Having proved yet again his unsuitableness for detective work, he is only asked to drive Lexy to the Andersons’ because nobody else is available, but as the investigation begins to unfold, we quickly discover that he is much more intelligent and resourceful than his superiors think he is – as well as being a genuinely nice person. He and Lexy make a great team and I would love to meet them again in a future book, although I suspect this is probably just going to be a standalone.

This book isn’t a favourite by Bolton, then, but the characters made it worthwhile. It’s also the perfect novel to read at this time of year, as so much of it is set outdoors in the snow. I’ll look forward to her next book, but meanwhile I really need to find time to go back and read Blood Harvest, which I think is the only one I still haven’t read!

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

A Footman for the Peacock by Rachel Ferguson

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This month, Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home is hosting another Dean Street Press December. I hope I’ll manage to read more than one book for this, but I decided to start with one that was sent to me for review by Dean Street Press back in 2016. I do feel guilty about not reading it sooner, but had been put off by some mixed reviews, as well as that ongoing problem shared by all readers – too many books and too little time!

A Footman for the Peacock (first published in 1940) is a strange novel, nothing at all like the only other Rachel Ferguson book I’ve read, Alas, Poor Lady. It’s going to be a difficult book to describe, but I’ll do my best! On the surface, it’s the story of the Roundelay family who live at Delaye, a large country house in the fictional English county of Normanshire. In 1939, when the novel begins, the household consists of Sir Edmund, the head of the family, (who isn’t quite sure why he has been knighted – maybe it was a mistake), his wife Lady Evelyn and their two daughters, practical, down-to-earth Margaret and the more sensitive Angela. There are also three elderly aunts, two of whom haven’t spoken to each other for many years and go to great lengths to continue their silent feud, a cousin and an assortment of servants, including ninety-year-old Nursie, who is suffering from dementia.

Like many aristocratic families in the years between the wars, the Roundelays are finding that money is becoming a problem and the upkeep of such a large estate is much more difficult than it used to be. The house is falling into disrepair, they have no car and Lady Evelyn does the food shopping herself by bus. Despite this, the Roundelays still have the views and attitudes of their class and when it is eventually announced that Britain is at war with Germany, they display a shocking lack of interest in how it will affect anyone other than themselves.

The whole of the first half of the book is devoted to introducing the various members of the household, with some amusing anecdotes about their lives, and describing the history of the house and its surrounding towns and villages. Nothing much actually happens at all until the war breaks out – and even then, there’s not really any plot to speak of, just a series of episodes in which the family prepare their gas masks, cover their doors and windows for the blackout, and use any excuse they can think of to refuse to take in even a single evacuee. Their total selfishness and lack of compassion for those less privileged than themselves makes uncomfortable reading, but Ferguson doesn’t really make it clear whether she expects the reader to feel angry with them, to have sympathy for them or just to experience a feeling of recognition that, unfortunately, the way the Roundelays react to the evacuee situation is probably the way many people reacted and still would today.

Also in the second half of the book, the peacock of the title is brought to the forefront of the story – and yes, it’s a real peacock, who wanders the grounds of Delaye, bad-tempered, noisy and prone to attack anyone other than Sue Privett, the maid. There is an unusual connection between the peacock and the words inscribed on the window of a disused bedroom: “Heryn I dye. Thomas Picocke 1792”. Thomas Picocke, we soon discover, was a ‘running footman’ at Delaye in the 18th century – a servant who would literally run ahead of his employer’s carriage to smooth their journey and prepare for their arrival at their destination. Not a nice job and Picocke’s story, when it begins to unfold, is quite sad, as well as merging with the story of the Delaye peacock in a bizarre and unexpected way.

There are lots of great ideas in this book, then, but the lack of any overarching plot means the separate parts of the novel don’t work together as well as they should. It feels like a rambling, directionless mess, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it at all. Ferguson’s portrayal of an upper-class family’s attitude to war is fascinating (and apparently caused some controversy when the book was first published), the eccentric characters are entertaining to read about, and I was intrigued by the little touches of the supernatural in the peacock storyline. I would be happy to try the other two Rachel Ferguson books currently available from Dean Street Press, Evenfield and A Harp in Lowndes Square, but maybe not immediately!

The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights

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The Winter Spirits: Ghostly Tales for Frosty Nights is a collection of twelve new ghost stories written by popular authors of historical and Gothic fiction, all with a Christmas or Advent theme. It’s a follow-up to The Haunting Season, which I haven’t read but which includes eight of the same authors. This is the perfect time of year for ghost stories, so maybe I’ll look for the previous book next winter.

Back to The Winter Spirits and most of the stories are set in the 19th or early 20th centuries, giving them a traditional feel. More variety would have been nice – not just in the time periods, but also in the geographical settings, as the majority take place in Britain, with one or two in America or elsewhere in Europe – but otherwise I really enjoyed this collection. I’ve previously read full-length novels by most of the featured authors, but three of them were new to me: Andrew Michael Hurley, Catriona Ward and Susan Stokes-Chapman. I felt that Hurley’s The Old Play and Stokes-Chapman’s Widow’s Walk were two of the weaker stories, but looking at other reviews, some readers have singled them out as favourites, so I think it’s just a case of different stories appealing to different people! Ward’s contribution, Jenkin, was completely bizarre but added some diversity as it felt quite unlike any of the others.

The biggest surprise, for me, was Natasha Pulley’s The Salt Miracles; I really didn’t get on with her writing style in her novel The Bedlam Stacks, so I wasn’t expecting too much from this tale of disappearing pilgrims on a remote Scottish island (based on St Kilda). However, I ended up loving it – it’s such an unusual and chilling story! Inferno by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, one of my current favourite historical fiction authors, is another I particularly enjoyed – a wonderfully eerie story set in 18th century Italy, where a man is forced to confront his sins. Even better than both of these is Stuart Turton’s creepy and imaginative The Master of the House, in which a young boy who is being neglected by his father makes a deal with the devil. This one feels almost like a very dark fairytale and is one of the highlights of the book.

Of the twelve authors, Laura Purcell is probably the most well established as a writer of horror fiction and she doesn’t disappoint here with Carol of the Bells and Chains, in which a governess trying to deal with two unruly children tells them the story of the Krampus, with unintended consequences. Imogen Hermes Gowar’s A Double Thread, where a woman gets her comeuppance after badly treating her hardworking seamstress, is another I really enjoyed – it made me long for another novel by Gowar, as it’s been a few years since The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock!

The remaining stories are by Elizabeth Macneal, Bridget Collins, Jess Kidd and Kiran Millwood Hargrave. With a range of different styles and subjects, unless you just don’t like ghost stories I think this collection should contain something to please almost every reader.

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

The Black Crescent by Jane Johnson

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Jane Johnson is a British author who has set several of her novels in Morocco, her husband’s country, with each book exploring a different period in Morocco’s history. The Black Crescent is set in the 1950s, during the time of the French protectorate, when support for Moroccan independence was building momentum.

Our narrator, Hamou Badi, grows up in the remote mountain village of Tiziane, a place where the people still cling to ancient traditions and superstitions. Due to the lines on his hands, Hamou himself is said to be a ‘zouhry’, a legendary figure blessed by a djinn and capable of locating treasure and detecting sources of water. However, it is not treasure that eleven-year-old Hamou finds one day in 1939, but the body of a woman, hidden amongst the palm trees by a dried up riverbed. The lack of interest shown by the French authorities in trying to solve this murder leads to Hamou’s decision to become a police officer and ensure that future victims of crime are given the justice they deserve.

Several years later, in 1955, we rejoin Hamou in Casablanca, where he is now working for the Sûreté, the police force of the French colonialists who are still ruling the country. Hamou takes his job seriously, trying to maintain law and order on the streets of Casablanca, but he quickly discovers that many of his fellow Moroccans see him as a traitor and someone not to be trusted. As the independence movement continues to gather force, Hamou finds himself caught between the two sides and must decide which is most important to him – loyalty to his country or to the employer who pays his wages.

The Black Crescent is a fascinating novel, particularly as I previously had such limited knowledge of French-ruled Morocco. I knew nothing about the work of the Istiqlal (independence) Party or the tensions and unrest following France’s exile of Sultan Mohammed V in 1953. Hamou is the perfect choice of narrator, with one foot in both worlds, showing us that there are good and bad people on both sides. Johnson has clearly researched this period thoroughly (she provides a list of her sources in her author’s note) and writes with an understanding and sympathy for the aims of the Moroccans in attempting to overthrow their French occupiers, but without condoning the violence used by some groups such as the ‘Black Crescent’ of the title.

Hamou is portrayed as an honourable, kind-hearted man trying to navigate his way through a difficult situation and I found him easy to like. He also has a love interest – a young woman he meets in Casablanca – but it only plays a small part in the book and I was just as captivated by the relationship he forms with Madani, the little black cat he rescues and adopts. The book did feel very slow-paced and took much longer to read than I’d expected based on the length, but it held my interest throughout and I learned a lot from it. I wish I’d known there was a glossary at the end of the book, but I was able to understand most of the Moroccan terms from the context anyway, so that wasn’t too much of a problem!

I think The Sultan’s Wife, set in 17th century Morocco, is still my favourite Jane Johnson book so far, but there are three of her earlier novels I haven’t read yet, so that could change!

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

This is book 49/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

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The title of Ann Patchett’s latest novel, Tom Lake, doesn’t refer to a person, as I’d assumed before I started reading, but to a place – a town in Michigan with a theatre overlooking the lake. One summer in the 1980s, a theatrical group gather at Tom Lake to rehearse the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town. The role of Emily has gone to Lara, a young woman who previously played that same part in a high school production. Here at Tom Lake, Lara meets and falls in love with the charismatic Peter Duke, the actor who plays her father in Our Town and who goes on to become a famous Hollywood star.

Many years later, in 2020, Lara and her husband, Joe, are living on a Michigan farm with their three adult daughters, Emily, Maisie and Nell, who have all come home to be with their parents as the Covid pandemic sweeps across the world. While they help to harvest cherries from the family orchard, the girls ask Lara to tell them about her relationship with Duke. As they listen to her story unfold, they discover things about their mother’s past that makes them reassess everything they thought they knew about her and about themselves.

I loved Ann Patchett’s last novel, The Dutch House, so I was hoping for a similar experience with this book. Sadly, that didn’t happen, although I did still find a lot to like. It’s certainly a beautifully written novel, but I just found it a bit too quiet and gentle and I never felt fully engaged with the characters the way I did with the characters in The Dutch House. I know I’m in a tiny minority, though, and I expect to see Tom Lake on many people’s ‘books of the year’ lists in December.

Although the present day sections of the book are set during the pandemic, Covid is barely mentioned at all and it’s really just a plot device to explain why the family are all together on the farm with such little contact with the outside world. This provides the perfect environment for the three daughters to pass the time listening to their mother’s story without too many distractions – and a cherry orchard does sound like a lovely place to spend the pandemic. Something else which plays a much bigger part in the novel is Thornton Wilder’s Our Town; clearly the play and, in particular, the role of Emily are very important to Lara, but as I’ve neither read nor seen it I didn’t really understand the significance. It seems to be a play that is much better known and more widely studied in America than it is here in the UK and I wish I’d had at least some familiarity with it before I started this book. That’s possibly one of the things that prevented me from enjoying it as much as I’d hoped.

I do like Patchett’s writing, so even though this particular book wasn’t a huge success with me, I’m still looking forward to trying some of her earlier work.

Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

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There are still a few weeks left in this year’s Read Christie 2023 challenge, but plans for Read Christie 2024 have already been announced! You can find out more and register for full details on the Agatha Christie website here. You don’t need to commit to reading a book every month – I just join in with any that appeal to me or that I haven’t read before.

Back to the 2023 challenge and the prompt for November is a motive: greed. Endless Night, the suggested title for this month, was first published in 1967 and is a standalone novel, not featuring Poirot, Miss Marple or any of Christie’s other famous detectives. It’s also one of only a small number of her novels to be written in the first person (apart from some of the Poirots, which are narrated by Captain Hastings). In fact, it’s really not a typical Christie novel in any way, but I still enjoyed it and apparently it was one of Agatha’s own favourites.

Many of Christie’s novels have titles inspired by nursery rhymes, poems or other works of literature. This one is taken from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence:

“Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are born to Sweet Delight.
Some are born to Sweet Delight,
Some are born to Endless Night.”

Michael Rogers, our narrator, is an attractive, charming young man but one who has been jumping from one job to another with no real aim in life. When he stumbles upon an old house called The Towers – or ‘Gipsy’s Acre’ as it is known locally – and sees that it’s for sale, he dreams of buying it and settling down there, if only he could afford it. As luck would have it, he meets and falls in love with Ellie, a young American heiress, and soon the two are married and have bought the property, knocking down the old house to build a new one designed by their architect friend, Rudolf Santonix.

Unfortunately, it seems that Michael and Ellie are not destined to be happy in their new home. Gipsy’s Acre has a bad reputation and they are told by an old fortune teller, Esther Lee, that the land is cursed. As Mrs Lee continues to appear, issuing more warnings, Michael wonders whether there really is a curse or if the old woman is trying to drive them away. Then there’s Ellie’s friend and companion, Greta Andersen, who moves in with them when Ellie injures her ankle. Ellie is very close to Greta, but Michael complains that she’s too controlling and has too much influence over his wife.

Christie continues to build tension and suspense in this way until a murder eventually takes place, late in the book. With no detective to investigate the crime and with only Michael’s impression of the other characters to base our opinions on, it’s a difficult mystery to solve. I was convinced I knew who the murderer was, but I wasn’t even close and was completely taken by surprise when the truth was revealed. Although I’m not planning to do it at the moment, I think it would be fascinating to read it again and see how I managed to miss the clues entirely.

I don’t think this ranks as one of my absolute favourites by Christie because I did find it a bit slow in the middle, but that unexpected ending made up for it. I also think it’s one of the most atmospheric of her books, with a real sense of unease and foreboding. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to fit next month’s Read Christie book into my December reading, but I’m definitely signing up again for 2024!

The Murder Wheel by Tom Mead

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This is the second book in Tom Mead’s Joseph Spector mystery series, following last year’s wonderful Death and the Conjuror. If you haven’t read the first book yet and want to start with this one it won’t be a problem as the two deal with standalone mysteries.

The Murder Wheel begins in London in 1938 with lawyer Edmund Ibbs visiting a client, Carla Dean, in Holloway Prison. Carla is awaiting trial for the murder of her husband while they were riding on a Ferris Wheel together at the fair. As the only other person in the carriage when a shot was fired at close range – and with her fingerprints all over the alleged murder weapon – suspicion has naturally fallen on Carla. Ibbs’ job is to prove that she is innocent, but it’s going to be a difficult task!

When he’s not investigating crimes, Edmund Ibbs is pursuing a secondary career as an amateur magician and has just received a copy of a highly controversial new book, The Master of Manipulation, which promises to give away all the secrets of the art of magic. After his visit to Carla in prison, Ibbs heads for the Pomegranate Theatre to watch a performance by the great illusionist, Professor Paolini. When another suspicious death occurs during the magic show, Ibbs finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and discovers that he is now a suspect in another murder case! Are the crimes connected? Luckily, retired magician Joseph Spector is on hand to solve the mystery.

The Murder Wheel is another entertaining novel, but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the first book, mainly because I found it so complicated. There are eventually three separate seemingly impossible crimes to solve and I struggled to keep track of all the different threads of the story. There’s a lot of focus on the murder methods and the intricacies of how each one was committed, and although the solutions do all make sense, I could never have worked them out; I completely failed Mead’s ‘challenge to the reader’ near the end of the book, even though we’re told that the clues have all been provided in the text (and when the solutions are finally revealed, there are footnotes linking back to where each clue first appears).

I do love the partnership between Joseph Spector and Inspector Flint of Scotland Yard; they work together so well because one of them is using traditional methods of detecting such as questioning suspects and searching for evidence, while the other is more concerned with how his knowledge of illusions and sleight of hand can show how the crime was carried out. Magic plays a bigger part in this book than it did in the first one and I enjoyed that aspect of the story; it was interesting to get some insights into the backstage preparations for a magic show and how some of the tricks are performed, although I can see why some of the characters were unhappy with the author of The Master of Manipulation revealing all their secrets!

Tom Mead is a fan of Golden Age detective novels, particularly of the ‘locked room’ or ‘impossible crime’ types, and I think he does a good job overall of capturing the feel of a 1930s mystery – although with this book, I never felt that I really was reading a 1930s mystery, the way I did with the first one. I’m not sure exactly what was different, but that’s another reason why I preferred Death and the Conjuror. Still, I will probably read the third book in this series, assuming there’s going to be one!

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

This is book 48/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.