Tag: Belinda Bauer

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.

Darkside by Belinda Bauer

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When an elderly woman is found murdered in her own home in the sleepy village of Shipcott, local policeman Jonas Holly begins to investigate. A team of detectives soon arrive to take over the case, however, and Jonas finds himself pushed into the background. As the snow falls in Shipcott and tension builds in the village, the killer strikes again and again. Then Jonas himself starts to receive anonymous notes taunting him for his incompetence and he begins to grow concerned that his wife, Lucy, could be in danger…

Darkside is the second novel by crime writer Belinda Bauer. After finding her first book, Blacklands, so impressive when I read it last year I was looking forward to reading this one – and I wasn’t disappointed. But this is a different type of crime novel – while Blacklands featured a highly original plot involving a child killer communicating with a young boy from his prison cell, Darkside is more of a traditional murder mystery.

I hadn’t realised that this book was going to be set in the same village as the previous novel so it was a nice surprise to see one or two old friends making a brief reappearance. However, both books do stand alone and Darkside is not really a sequel. It’s set four years later, the plot is entirely different and the focus is on a new group of characters. The only thing the two novels really have in common is the setting. And the setting, by the way, is one of the strong points of both books. Shipcott feels like a real English village and its inhabitants are so realistic they feel like they really could be the people you live or work with. I love the world Belinda Bauer has created and I’m glad she decided to revisit it.

Jonas Holly was an interesting character. We are told that as a young police officer he had once been very ambitious, but had given up his hopes of career advancement to care for his beloved wife, Lucy, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I thought Bauer’s portrayal of their relationship, with both husband and wife trying to come to terms with Lucy’s diagnosis, was very moving and believable. The other person with whom we spend a lot of time is the head of the murder investigation, DCI Marvel, one of those obnoxious characters who, despite being completely unlikeable, is great to read about.

The only slight problem I had with this book was that the ending felt very dramatic and didn’t really match the tone of the rest of the story. But I didn’t guess who the murderer was until near the end, so it worked in that respect. Looking back the clues were there, but I didn’t pick up on them straight away as I had expected the killer to be someone entirely different to who it actually turned out to be! I loved this gripping novel and can’t wait to see what Belinda Bauer’s next book is like.

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

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Twelve year-old Steven Lamb’s family has never recovered from the disappearance of his Uncle Billy almost two decades ago. Billy, who went missing aged eleven, was thought to have been murdered by the serial killer Arnold Avery. However, although six of Avery’s other victims were found buried on Exmoor, Billy’s body was never found.

Steven’s grandmother still can’t accept that her son is dead and stands at the window every day watching for him coming home. In an attempt to set his Nan’s mind at rest and restore some peace to his family by finding out where Billy is buried, Steven decides to write a letter to Arnold Avery in prison – but what he doesn’t realise is that by doing so he could be putting his own life in danger.

Blacklands is a dark and atmospheric psychological thriller, but due to the subject matter it won’t appeal to everyone. Although there’s nothing very gory or graphic, the book does takes us right inside the head of Arnold Avery, getting much closer to the mind of a serial killer than I was comfortable with. Of course, this type of thing should be disturbing and chilling, so I think the author has done a great job of creating a character who is genuinely frightening to read about.

Belinda Bauer said in her author’s note that this was originally intended to be a story about a boy and his grandmother and not a crime novel at all, which I thought was interesting because the family scenes were the aspect of the book that I really liked, rather than the crime plot. I was impressed with the way Bauer portrayed twelve-year-old Steven’s sad, lonely life and showed us the long term effects one tragic incident can have on future generations of a family.

The book explores Steven’s relationships with each member of his family. His Nan, still grieving for her lost son, is distant and detached, unable to move on with her life. His mother, a stressed single parent finding it difficult to cope in the aftermath of Billy’s murder, doesn’t have much time for Steven and lavishes most of her attention on his younger brother, five-year-old Davey. To make things even worse, Steven is being bullied and doesn’t feel he can tell anyone about it. His only moments of happiness come when he’s working in the garden with Uncle Jude, one of the many boyfriends who pass in and out of his mother’s life. Although he sometimes seems older than twelve, I found him a very believable character and it’s sad to think that all over the world there are real-life Stevens.

I can’t say that I ‘enjoyed’ this book, because how can you really enjoy reading about a child killer? But I did find it very gripping and didn’t want to put it down until I was finished. This was an impressive debut novel and although I don’t usually read a lot of crime fiction, I’ll look forward to reading more of Belinda Bauer’s books.

I received a review copy of this book from Transworld