With the unsolved murder of a homeless boy still preying on his mind, DI Gus McGuire is confronted with a similar murder, a missing teen and no clues.
Does the answer lie with an illegal dark web site where ‘slaves’ are auctioned off? Or with an online forum for teens?
How can Gus keep people safe when unjust bias rears its head and being different could cost you your life…?
I’ve only been to Bradford once. I was about eight years old and it was the sort of Keystone Cops holidays my parents specialised in: we travelled to Bradford from some god-forsaken location, the car got a puncture, my Dad’s tooth fell out when biting into a flowery bap twinned with a concrete breezeblock, we couldn’t the KwikFit which had the car.
My overwhelming memory, however, was the Film and Television Museum. It had, what was then, the only IMAX cinema in the UK and a chance to try and be a newsreader, reading an autocue. I couldn’t do it. I cried.
They also had a gigantic copy of that famous mugshot photo of Myra Hindley. After getting my mum to explain who she was, I tootled off but that night, I came down in floods of tears, scared that this real life monster was going to get me.
‘Unjust Bias’ clearly shares DNA with this earlier novel. Mistry’s hard-bitten representation of the city is here. Her predilection for shifting narrative stances from first to third and back again depending upon the character focus of the chapter is there and her obvious interest in the on-going psychological effects of the world upon these people is baked through the stories like logos through a stick of rock.
These are not happy-go-lucky, easy readers with a cozy element. These are dark and realistic depictions of a hard world and bad things happening to people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But Mistry is a very fine writer and her Bradford is becoming a character in the way that Rankin’s Edinburgh is central to understanding the events.
Born in Scotland, Made in Bradford sums up Liz Mistry’s life. Over thirty years ago she moved from a small village in West Lothian to Yorkshire to get her teaching degree. Once here, Liz fell in love with three things; curries, the rich cultural diversity of the city … and her Indian husband (not necessarily in this order). Now thirty years, three children, two cats and a huge extended family later, Liz uses her experiences of living and working in the inner city to flavour her writing. Her gritty crime fiction police procedural novels set in Bradford embrace the city she describes as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’ whilst exploring the darkness that lurks beneath.
Struggling with severe clinical depression and anxiety for a large number of years, Liz often includes mental health themes in her writing. She credits the MA in Creative Writing she took at Leeds Trinity University with helping her find a way of using her writing to navigate her ongoing mental health struggles. Being a debut novelist in her fifties was something Liz had only dreamed of and she counts herself lucky, whilst pinching herself regularly to make sure it’s all real. One of the nicest things about being a published author is chatting with and responding to readers’ feedback and Liz regularly does events at local libraries, universities, literature festivals and open mics. She also teaches creative writing too. Liz has completed a PhD in Creative Writing on Diverse voices in crime fiction.
In her spare time, Liz loves pub quizzes (although she admits to being rubbish at them), dancing (she does a mean jig to Proud Mary – her opinion, not ratified by her family), visiting the varied Yorkshire landscape, with Robin Hoods Bay being one of her favourite coastal destinations, listening to music, reading and blogging about all things crime fiction on her blog, The Crime Warp.
167 men died on the Piper Alpha oil platform in 1988. In The Shadow of Piper Alpha is the first novel to explore the devastating aftermath of the disaster.
Marcus is on Piper Alpha that night. His daughter, Carrie, waits at the hospital as helicopters start bringing in survivors, never knowing if her father will be on the next one. Marcus survives, but his post-traumatic stress disorder develops into often violent alcoholism. As the story moves between Marcus and Carrie, between the past and present, their trauma grows and deepens, driving them ever further apart.
After decades living abroad, Carrie, now a respected volcanologist, returns to the University of Aberdeen to deliver a controversial academic paper with Marcus in attendance. Will a reconciliation be possible, or has too much time passed? (Synopsis courtesy of Tippermuir Books ) https://tippermuirbooks.co.uk/product/in-search-of-piper-alpha/
Confession time first: I’m not a huge Aberdeen fan. My first exposure to “the Granite City” were as a coach leading student athletes to brutal defeats while the rain sheeted in, consistently pishing it down horizontally. It was always dark. It was always wet. The opponents were horrid.
“Europe’s Oil Capital. Honestly. The first time he heard the expression, he’d assumed it was a bit of self-deprecatory humour. That was before he learned that there was no such thing as self-deprecatory humour in Aberdeen…
‘Scotland’s Fourth City’ wasn’t exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzyingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee. The also self-conferred nickname ‘Silver City’ was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey.”
In the intervening years I’ve been back and, Escher-nightmare road network aside, I’ve softened my views on a place which can look really quite nice when it’s dry. The place is packed with good people.
And it is the people who come through in Iain Maloney’s ‘In the Shadow of Piper Alpha‘. The book focuses on the impact of that famous North Sea platform collapse which cost the lives of 167 men upon one family as the ripples of trauma and community grief seep like magma under the earth merely looking for a place to erupt.
Magma erupting is a metaphor which is also at the core of this novel which manages the rare trick of being sumptuously written, moving and heart felt as well as warm and – most often missing from “literary” fiction – really funny.
Maloney is a writer who can have characters describe themselves as having, “Eyes like an owl, pallor of pizza dough,” or describe their peely-wally complexion when the sun comes out in Aberdeen as “even fake tan somehow didn’t work and I ended up looking like an Oompa-Loompa with a liver complaint.”
This lends, what is after all, a novel predicated on sadness a lightness of touch and humour which is very Scottish but also adds a poignancy to the coping strategies and escapes used by the characters, no matter how damaging to them they may be in the short or long run.
Maloney is obviously a craftsman who thinks deeply about how best to convey the meaning of his work. Here he shifts between first and third person narration, moves the split narratives in time in order to show you the evolution of the way events far away geographically and chronologically can bubble to the surface at any time.
In the Shadow of Piper Alpha is the sort of novel which leaves you longing to meet up with the characters again whilst simultaneously feeling like you’ve been on an emotionally bruising journey with them. Beautifully written, intelligently structured and a triumph deserving of widespread acclaim.
Iain Maloney is the author of seven books, including the critically acclaimed ‘The Only Gaijin in the Village’ (Birlinn, 2020), a memoir about his life in rural Japan.
He is also a freelance editor and journalist, mainly for The Japan Times.
He was born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland and he currently lives in Japan. He studied English at the University of Aberdeen, graduated from the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing Masters in 2004, and holds a PhD from the University of Sunderland. (Biography courtesy of https://iainmaloney.com/)
PAJNewman (PAJN):Threaded throughout this book is, obviously, the rippling effects of the tragedy on Piper Alpha. It clearly alters Marcus’ life forever but I thought you kept the focus on the characters rather than straying too far towards the official reports and accident enquiries. Was it a temptation to want to write more about the sense of injustice that these sort of disasters have on the communities or was the plan always to see it through the characters’ eyes?
Iain Maloney (IM): In the early stages of planning I thought that would be a bigger part of it – while many people remember Piper Alpha and know what happened, there are many others around the world who don’t so I thought I would have to provide some explanation or context. However my focus quickly shifted to the characters and it became clear that I was telling the story of the family, not the story of Piper Alpha. Non-fiction books like Stephen McGinty’s ‘Fire in the Night‘ tell the facts about the disaster better than I ever could. Fiction’s strengths aren’t documentarian, they lie in exploring how something feels, the personal and social experience. I hoped, the way all historical fiction writers do, I guess, that if people didn’t know about Piper Alpha then my book would encourage them to learn more and so it has proved. We live in a time when all the information is a few seconds away from us so writers no longer have to include the full context and background the way Tolstoy or Melville used to. Readers today can look up references they don’t know, new words, and unfamiliar locations and get back to the story in a few seconds. It’s very liberating, I think.
PAJN: The novel is clearly very carefully structured. We have shifts in time, shifts in narrative stance depending upon which strand of the story we are with at any particular time. How late in the writing process did you come to these choices?
IM: Very early on. This was the third novel I published, the fourth I’d written (there’s an unpublished first novel that no one will ever see) so I was a bit more confident and experimental. My first two novels, ‘First Time Solo‘ and ‘Silma Hill’ are told chronologically start to finish so I was ready for something new.
The whole crux of the story is how the past and the present interact with each other in ways the characters don’t even realise. Every decision Carrie makes about her relationships and career, for example, can be traced back to events in her childhood – Piper Alpha and her father’s trauma, obviously, but other, smaller things that seem trivial at the time but leave their scars. In order to show that I needed to bring the past and present literally closer together on the page, to show the event in the past, then its consequence in the present. If there’s two hundred pages between those moments, it weakens the impact. It’s also a key part of representing trauma on the page.
“For sufferers of PTSD, during a flashback or during a dream, the brain is literally reliving the experience not rerunning a memory”
For sufferers of PTSD, during a flashback or during a dream, the brain is literally reliving the experience not rerunning a memory so in a sense the distinction between past and present collapse in that moment. At a fundamental level in trauma, time is not linear so in a sense the structure of the book also mirrors Marcus’s journey – when all the disparate parts of the storyline meet up at the end, then it’s possible to say that Marcus is in a sense “cured” – although speaking about a cure for PTSD is misleading. I’ll stop there – this was the subject of my PhD so I could literally go on for hundreds of thousands of words.
PAJN: Similarly, there are geological metaphors used throughout the story. Was that always baked into the idea or is it something you found in the editing process?
IM: I knew geology would be a part of it – with Marcus working in the oil industry it had to be – and having Carrie follow him into the field felt right. I knew from the start I wanted to write about a father-daughter relationship. It’s perhaps the least-written about familial relationship in literature – mothers/sons, fathers/sons, mothers/daughter, these are much more common – and I wanted them to begin from a good, close place, so having them share interests was a simple way of showing that. I needed Carrie’s specialty to be something that enabled her to move around the world, so earthquakes and volcanoes were an obvious choice and then the symbolic possibilities of volcanology become clear. The first title of the book in draft stage was ‘Caldera’ – the crater left in the aftermath of an eruption. I struggled more with the specific allusions in the book – I didn’t want to hit the reader with too much obvious symbolism. I really tried not to use phrases like “she erupted in anger” or “he blew his top” because it felt, well, hack. I allowed some when it felt right but I held back. Some snuck in though. When I named Carrie’s partner Ash, I didn’t immediately realise the symbolism, I just chose it based on rhythm and sound. I guess by that point my brain was in a volcanology groove.
PAJN: There appear to be some superficial biographical similarities between the character of Carrie and yourself. How much did you draw on growing up in Aberdeen and then working internationally when writing the novel?
IM: This is always a curious question because I’m not sure which similarities you mean. Readers often notice things that weren’t intentional or read things that aren’t there (that usually happens with friends who say “this is clearly you” and I think “but that character is a bit of a dick – is that how you see me?”).
I’m from Aberdeen and the story is set there, so there are some unavoidable crossovers but Carrie is 8 years older than me so her Aberdeen and mine are different, certainly from a cultural angle. Other crossovers are just for convenience – she goes into academia and so did I, so that means I had less research to do. She visits Sakurajima in Japan and so have I because, again, research.
In other ways she’s the complete antithesis of me. She has no interest in music, for example, while music is a huge part of my life. I mention that because it was an important realisation when I was learning about her personality. I find people who don’t care about music, who are just happy to listen to whatever is on the radio without curiosity, odd, and when I realised Carrie was one of those people it unlocked her for me. If anything, there are more similarities between Marcus and me – he drinks in the pub I was bar manager of, he likes bands I like, he likes hiking and camping on the west coast of Scotland.
Writers can’t avoid putting bits of themselves in their characters but it tends to lessen with each book. The debut is usually hugely autobiographic and by the tenth you’ve got a handle on how to do it, when to borrow and when to invent. A more revealing question is “which of your friends/family is this character based on?” I think few authors would be happy answering that honestly!
PAJN: Do you find it easier to write about Scotland from the other side of the world? Does distance give perspective for you?
IM: I think so, yes. Like Joyce writing about Dublin, distance gives both objectivity and nostalgia. Living in another culture, one that’s very different (I live in Japan) enables you to make comparisons and evaluate things – X is better in Scotland but the Japanese do Y better – in a way that when you’re surrounded by the day-to-day realities can be harder, for me anyway.
Writing this book was emotionally very difficult. But perhaps without the deadline I’d never have finished it. It meant I couldn’t wallow, I couldn’t take a break, I couldn’t kick decisions down the road, I had to plough on and hit my word count every day.
However the longer I’m away (17 years at this point) the harder it becomes. I don’t think I could set a story in Scotland in 2022 because I’d get so many little details wrong. Pop culture references, the price of things, how technology has changed, those kinds of things. For me as a writer, in a sense, Scotland is frozen in an earlier time. It’s much easier these days to set stories in Japan or somewhere totally invented, like in sci-fi.
PAJN: How long did ‘In the Shadow of Piper Alpha’ take from beginning to end to write?
IM: A little under a year. I had a two-book deal and this was book two so I had a deadline 12 months after delivering ‘Silma Hill‘. I still can’t quite believe I managed it but it was hard – given the subject matter and the stress of going from no idea to finished manuscript in that time, writing this book was emotionally very difficult. But perhaps without the deadline I’d never have finished it. It meant I couldn’t wallow, I couldn’t take a break, I couldn’t kick decisions down the road, I had to plough on and hit my word count every day.
PAJN: Do you think the ending is an optimistic, pessimistic or neither ending?
IM: (SPOILERS!) I think it’s optimistic. As I said earlier if you think of the journey and the structure as one from trauma through treatment then it has to be optimistic, certainly for Marcus. He and Carrie aren’t reunited at the end but the first step has been taken. It might go wrong but it might not. It’s not a happy ending. There’s no closure. She’s still not talking to her mother – she’s not even mentioned. Marcus is still drinking. She’s made no real effort to deal with her own trauma the way Marcus has. But yes, I think for Ash and Isobel, if they were watching the final scene from the trees, they’d think this was a positive moment.
PAJN: Do you ever find Carrie and Marcus coming back to? Would you ever consider bringing them back for a further novel?
IM: The characters never leave me, especially ones where there was such an emotional investment in telling their story, but in terms of bringing them back… it’s honestly never even crossed my mind! I could imagine fleshing it out, adding scenes – it covers 33 years of their lives so obviously it skips a lot – but a whole new story? Probably not.
PAJN: Books change over time. I know that ‘In the Shadow…’ was originally released as ‘The Waves Burn Bright’. How do you feel about it now? Does the title change and the continued passage of time alter how both yourself as author and readers are reacting to the work?
IM: It’s my favourite of my novels, I think it’s the most accomplished (as it should be – we should get better with each book) but until Tippermuir expressed an interested in republishing it, I hadn’t opened it or read a line since the final book event of the original launch. In that time the weaknesses multiplied in my imagination and the strengths receded. I expected to have to do a huge rewrite and I struggled over whether I should or not – is it better to be faithful to the original or to improve it with skills I’ve learned since (the old George Lucas conundrum)? But when I read it back I was pleasantly surprised. I had to make a few changes but nothing major, just tightening the prose and changing a few words here and there.
Now I’m further removed from the emotion of writing it, I can be more objective, like a proud parent with an adult child who is off making their own way in the world. I’m mostly just really happy that it’s in print again. I should say, actually, that it went out of print because the original publisher went out of business (and not because of my book!). I always felt it never got a fair crack at finding an audience so this second chance just makes me so happy.
PAJN: Who are your biggest influences as a writer?
IM: Originally and generally: James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ali Smith, David Mitchell, Iain Banks, Margaret Atwood. But I never stop being influenced so recently I’ve found my writing energised by discovering Per Olov Enquist, Porochista Khakpour, Furukawa Hideo, Elin Willows. Some writers have had a specific impact on aspects of my writing such as David Mitchell (dialogue), Roddy Doyle (description), David Peace (narration), Ali Smith (respecting your readers).
PAJN: What is a typical writing day for you?
IM: I begin early, roll out of bed, kettle on, start writing. I never write until I know what I’m going to say – I believe writer’s block just means you’ve sat at your desk too early. So much of writing takes place in your head – imagining scenes, creating characters, working out plot points – and you don’t need to do those at a desk, you can do that while driving to work, doing the dishes, cutting the grass.
So when I sit down I already know where I am and where I’m going. Then I’ll either write until the piece is finished (short story, chapter, article) or until I get interrupted. I find I can zone out completely, especially when writing fiction, and snap out of it and find six hours have passed. It doesn’t happen often (I have the day job so that kind of free writing time is limited) but I love it when it does. I wrote my novella ‘Life is Elsewhere/Burn Your Flags\’ in two days doing that. 10,000 words a day over a weekend.
PAJN: What is next for you in terms of writing? Will you return to fiction writing?
IM: I’m not sure what’s next specifically. I never stopped writing fiction; I published my novella in 2021, but I’ve also done a memoir and a poetry collection. I tend to work on a few books at a time, partly as my interests shift but also because publishing is so volatile that you’re never sure what is going to be popular a year or two ahead.
So I have a travel book at the publisher’s now, two finished novels looking for a publisher, and a collection of poetry in the pipeline. I’ve also got a science fiction novel I’ve been working on for years that I hope to get finished this summer. I’m also regularly publishing short stories and poems on my Substack page (iainmaloney.substack.com). Corona hit the publishing industry hard, with lay-offs, furloughs, supply chain problems and a general lack of cash flow, so everything is a bit tighter, a bit more difficult, a bit more risk-averse. We’ll see what comes over the horizon.
PAJN: What is the question you wish interviewers and readers would ask but never do?
IM: I’ve never really thought about it. I think I’m pretty good at twisting questions to suit what I want to talk about! One thing I’ve never really had is the experience of readers asking specific questions about the books. All my public events have been launches, where basically no one in the audience has had a chance to read the book yet so all the questions are quite general. Interviewers like yourself who have read the book are also aware that many readers haven’t and want to avoid spoilers (rightly!).
But when I listen to much more successful writers talking about their classic books where everyone in the audience has read it, maybe more than once, and can ask specific detailed questions about something that happens on page 72, or have developed their own theories about motivation, intention, or something that happens offstage, I think that must be so much fun for the author. The only time we really get to dig into that kind of detail with our creations is during the editing process and that’s usually justifying yourself or fighting to save something from the cutting room floor. I’d love to do more book club events, for example, but being in Japan the time differences make it difficult.
Iain Maloney is the author of seven books, including the critically acclaimed ‘The Only Gaijin in the Village’ (Birlinn, 2020), a memoir about his life in rural Japan.
He is also a freelance editor and journalist, mainly for The Japan Times.
He was born and raised in Aberdeen, Scotland and he currently lives in Japan. He studied English at the University of Aberdeen, graduated from the University of Glasgow’s Creative Writing Masters in 2004, and holds a PhD from the University of Sunderland. (Biography courtesy of https://iainmaloney.com/)
Best friends since childhood, Fern Chambers and Stella Shaw have been through everything together and are at a crossroads in their lives.
Carefree Stella has a monumental secret and put upon Fern’s happy life is not all it seems.
With their 40th birthdays approaching, a luxury holiday to the island of Capri is a chance for them to reconnect, let their hair down and celebrate in style. But untold truths and frustration bubble beneath the surface, turning what should be a holiday of a lifetime into an opportunity to make life-changing decisions.
Far from home, where anything feels possible, secrets are revealed, heartache is shared, love discovered and new friendships forged.
Will their Italian dream turn into a nightmare or lead to newfound happiness?
Like the characters of Fern and Stella in Kate Frost’s enjoyable romp, ‘An Italian Dream’, I also turned 40 this year.
Sadly, unlike Stella (and by extension Fern), I did not arrive at this milestone with the unexpected good fortune of a bonus cash top up which allowed me to travel to exotic places and reconsider what a birthday with a zero at the end of it meant for my career and future happiness.
But, thems the breaks, as a now widely discredited, floppy-haired fop with the impulse control of a toddler recently said.
An ‘Italian Dream‘ is exactly that: an opportunity to dream away the ugly reality of modern Britain and immerse yourself in the sun-baked warmth and evolving friendship of these two lifelong friends.
This is a novel which will charm and entertain in equal measure, as well as encourage to gaze out at the weather and remember days in sunnier places and it is all the better for that.
Author Bio –
Kate Frost is the author of several bestselling romantic escape novels including The Greek Heart, and The Love Island Bookshop. She lives in Bristol and is the Director of Storytale Festival, a book festival for children and teens she co-founded in 2019.
Layla is calm, in control and is definitely not about to lose her serenity for the man next door! Surely it can’t be hard to stay peaceful at one of the oldest yoga and mindfulness retreats in the Algarve, surrounded by sea, sun and serenity? Mostly, owner Layla Garcia manages it – with the help of meditation and plenty of camomile tea, of course. But keeping her grandparents’ legacy alive is stressful, and Layla has become so shackled to the work that, for her, The House on the Hill is fast becoming ‘The Fortress on the Hill’. Then writer Luke Mackie moves to the villa next door, bringing with him a healthy dose of chaos to disrupt Layla’s plans, plus a painful reminder of a time when she was less-than-serene. But could his influence be just what Layla needs to ‘dance like no-one’s watching’ and have the fun she’s been missing?
In November 2020 I reviewed Chris Penhall’s novel, ‘New Beginnings at the Little House on the Hill’. In that piece, I mentioned that it was Cascais (the novel’s setting) which had inspired a love affair with Portugal which persists to this day.
What I left out, is that the love affair is not with Cascais itself. For me, the beating heart of Portugal is towards the south.
Penhall’s latest novel, ‘The House on the Hill’ – despite having a title which might front a horror movie – is as delightfully sun drenched and light touch as her previous outing.
Layla Garcia is the sort of person who has it all – a beautiful house, a business which is successful(ish) and a boyfriend – but who can’t get through the day without mindfulness and meditation – but meditation which she falls asleep during.
Like so many people, the character is using the trappings of “wellness” and “self-care” to cover up deeper problems which can only be addressed by looking outside you.
Penhall is a writer of charming, sun soaked romances. The characters are realistic, the plots trip along and you can practically smell the scent of Portugal in your nostrils while our heroine learns important life lessons.
I’m not able to get away to my beloved regions of Portugal this year – I shall just have to image myself visiting the House on the Hill instead.
Chris Penhall won the 2019 Choc-Lit Search for a Star competition, sponsored by Your Cat Magazine, for her debut novel, ‘The House That Alice Built’. The sequel, ‘New Beginnings at the Little House in the Sun’ was published in August 2020. Both are available in paperback, e-book and audio and are part of the Portuguese Paradise series. ‘Finding Summer Happiness’, which is set in Pembrokeshire in South West Wales is available in e-book, audio and paperback, and ‘The House on the Hill – A Summer in the Algarve’, the third novel in the Portuguese Paradise series, is published in e-book on 28th June 2022.
Chris is an author and freelance radio producer for BBC Local Radio.
She also has her own podcast – ‘The Talking to My Friends About Book Podcasts’ in which she chats to her friends about books. Good title!
Born in Neath in South Wales, she has also lived in London and in Portugal, which is where ‘The House That Alice Built’ is set. It was whilst living in Cascais near Lisbon that she began to dabble in writing fiction, but it was many years later that she was confident enough to start writing her first novel, and many years after that she finally finished it!
A lover of books, music and cats, she is also an enthusiastic salsa dancer, a keen cook, and loves to travel. She is never happier than when she is gazing at the sea.
‘There were many moments where I can honestly say ‘I did not see that coming’’ – Tina Simpson Ellis Neill wakes up next to his family one morning, just as he had done for the last ten years, unaware that it would be his last taste of freedom.
His life soon spirals out of control and he is cast into a remote prison in the Arctic wilderness where nothing is as it seems, the inmates rule and a sinister figure wants him and his family dead.
Resulting from carefully laid plans he is plunged into a fight for survival, sanity and saving those he loves.
Early on in Louis van Schalkwyk’s debut, ‘The Discarded’, there is a fleeting reference to ‘Rambo: First Blood’. Now, while I don’t know whether children’s toy manufacturers are really referencing 40 year old movies to market their products but I also thought it set an interesting tone to van Schalkwyk’s piece.
This is Rambo crossed with Kafka – a man caught up in mystery he doesn’t really understand while all around him the world appears to have gone mad.
What ‘The Discarded’ (and Rambo in fairness) have but Kafka and ‘The Trial’ most certainly do not, is action packed fight scenes with crunching bones and the smell of blood and leather as faces are struck.
Central protagonist Ellis is forced out into the wilds and has to survive in extreme scenarios all the while looking to clear his name and ensure the safety of his family.
An exciting, action packed novel with a fast pace and a debutant writer demonstrating a clear grasp of how to thrill readers and keep the narrative moving.
‘A masterpiece of a story with thrills and twists!’ – Laura, reviewer
Louis van Schalkwyk was born in South Africa and currently resides in Hong Kong. “The Discarded” is his debut novel, inspired by years honing his writing skills and drawing influence from his favorite authors. When Louis isn’t writing he enjoys reading and sampling various cuisines with his wife, Courtney.
Theo Duncan is just an ordinary student. Except he also happens to be the son of the Prime Minister, Will Duncan.
When the parliamentary mace is stolen from inside the Houses of Parliament, Theo is determined to help his dad get it back. But he can’t do it alone. And when help is offered, there’s a problem. It comes from the new girl at school, Sammy Jhor, who’s a supporter of the opposition party.
Theo and Sammy form an unlikely team to spy on government officials, sneak through the corridors of Downing Street and pursue the thief through the Palace of Westminster.
But when the evidence points to suspects at the highest levels of government, finding the thief could threaten Will Duncan’s leadership.
Can Theo and Sammy put aside their differences to find the mace – and the thief – before the government is brought to its knees?
As always with anything which touches on politics in literature, there is the difficulty of life colliding with fiction.
For example, reading this frightfully nice book aimed at children/young adults, the thing which most stands out for a reader in the contemporary age is exactly this collision.
Also unbelievable in the modern age – a PM in any way interested in things “like recovering the parliamentary mace and by extension the legitimacy of the government.’ Our glorious leader prefer proroguing.
None of this is the fault of Sarah Lustig who has written a nice, old fashioned novel set around the aforementioned recovery of the mace of state.
Poor 14 – nearly 15, mind – Theo has to contend with the usual embarrassing parents, except his father is flanked by armed personal protection officers and he can’t open his front door without cameras clicking and journalists shouting questions.
On the bright side, Samira (Sammy ) Jhor has just joined his school, and now his heart is aflutter while they set off on a quest to help his father.
I enjoy these sort of young adult(ish) novels when they come across the review queue. A criticism might be that they central protagonists always seem very young – I work in high schools. 15 year olds aren’t this nice. There’s lot more single entendre and vaping.
However, in a world where the Home Secretary would no doubt be deporting Samira unless her parents donated a tennis game’s worth of cash in a suitcase to prove she wasn’t the wrong kind of immigrant and the Prime Minister is trying to spend his time crowbarring his partner into six figure government careers whilst simultaneously turning the heart of government into the last days of Nero’s Rome, it is nice to read a novel as well written, pure hearted and entertaining as ‘Mystery in the Palace of Westminster’.
I sincerely wish that those at the top in the real world has as much civic responsibility and interest in doing what is right for the country as 14 year old Theo.
This is as assured a debut as I have read by an author working in this genre and I look forward to Book Two immensely.
Sarah Lustig grew up in London and went to school in Westminster, with politicians’ children. Her experiences at school and interest in politics inspired the idea for the Westminster Mysteries series. Mystery in the Palace of Westminster is her debut novel. She has been a book editor for nearly 15 years and now lives in Buckinghamshire, where she spends her time reading, writing and pottering on her balcony garden.
Death is the rule, survival the exception in 1960s Soho bridge circles
When the SeeMs Agency detectives play bridge online in 2020, they don’t expect their opponent to die during the game and yet a post-mortem the next day proves Brian Deliverer was dead halfway through the night. Can a dead man play bridge?
Employed by Brian’s daughter Karen to investigate his death, the team are led back to a notorious 1920s murder and to a missing teenager from a Sussex village in the 1960s.
Should they tell his daughter the terrible truth behind her father’s death even if it costs her everything?
That initial novel in the sequence had a lovely, quite charm to it. The establishment of the detective agency, the gentle concept of the SeeMs Dog Detective Agency all whispered cosy crime and we know what to expect.
Now at novel three, Cheyne is expanding her work to feature aspects of structure – a duel timeline narrative mixing events in the sixties with lockdown fever for Miranda in the 2020s. She’s also using a specific vernacular in the 1960s setting – that of Polari, a secret language of the gay community in use at the time. Obviously, this adds a lovely period detail and authenticity but also achieves that thing which really good crime fiction can do: educate and entertain together.
With further complications linking even further back to the 1920s, this is a novel which will keep you guessing till the end and when and if we discover whether Miranda and the team can come up trumps.
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Author Bio –
Gina has worked as a physiotherapist, a pilot, freelance writer and a dog breeder.
As a child, Gina’s parents hated travelling and never went further than Jersey. As a result she became travel-addicted and spent the year after university bumming around SE Asia, China and Australia, where she worked in a racing stables in Pinjarra, South of Perth. After getting stuck in black sand in the Ute one time too many (and getting a tractor and trailer caught in a tree) she was relegated to horse-riding work only. After her horse bolted down the sand, straining a fetlock and falling in the sea, she was further relegated to swimming the horses only in the pool. It was with some relief the racehorse stables posted her off on the train into eastern Australia to work in a vineyard… after all what could go wrong there?
In the north of Thailand, she took a boat into the Golden Triangle and got shot at by bandits. Her group escaped into the undergrowth and hid in a hill tribe whisky still where they shared the ‘bathroom’ with a group of pigs. Getting a lift on a motorbike they hurried back to Chiang Rai, where life seemed calmer.
After nearly being downed in a fiesta in Ko Pha Ngan, and cursed by a witch in Malaysia, she decided to go to Singapore and then to China where she only had to battle with the language and regulations.
Since marrying the first time, she has lived and worked in many countries including Spain and the USA.
For a few years Gina was a Wingwalking pilot, flying, amongst others, her 64-year-old mother standing on the wing to raise money for a cancer charity. She was also a helicopter instructor and examiner and took part in the World Helicopter Championships in Russia and the USA.
She became a writer because her first love was always telling a good yarn!
Under the name Georgina Hunter-Jones she has written illustrated children’s books such as The Twerple who had Too Many Brains, and Nola the Rhinoceros loves Mathematics.
She now lives in Sussex with her husband and dogs, one of who inspired the Biscuit and Pugwash Detective Series about naughty dogs who solve crimes.
‘Murder in the Cards’ is the second in the SeeMS Detective Agency series
NYPD officer Callum Burke is on a routine drugs raid when he bursts in on a scene of unimaginable horror – and two killers about to get away.
The men are caught but they won’t talk. All the cops know is that they’re Russian and extremely dangerous which means this could be the start of a savage new gang war.
Callum Burke is tasked with finding out what is going on. It’s Manhattan in 1997 and the city is being cleaned up. The pressure is on.
But when Callum discovers there might be more to the Russian involvement than just criminal gangs, he finds himself in deeper trouble than he’s ever known…
‘Hard and intriguing. Callum Burke is a cop on the edge’ David Albertyn
‘The Sky Turned Black will make your head spin’ T. J. English
‘The Sky Turned Black is a crime saga that combines gritty detail with a global scope’ Thomas Mullen
John Steele’s last novel, 2021’s ‘Rat Island’ was a heavyweight tome which attracted praise from the some heavyweight names (Tony Parson, Claire McGowan) and drew comparisons with the undisputed heavyweight of the American crime saga, Don Winslow. So, pretty good company then.
My own review, described the first in this series of novels as, “a tautly atmospheric portrait of New York at that tipping point in its history as it moved from pimps and hoes, No-Go Zone to the sanitised tourist trap it was to become.”
Here, Steele – and what a great name for a writer of hard-boiled detective fiction that is – picks up the character in 1997 as that move towards tourist friendly city is underway.
The arrival of the post-Perestroika Russians adds a further element to the sprawling city which Steele is working to render like a 3D map of the evolution of New York as well as adding a contemporary resonance.
As well as working picture of a city becoming aware of its new identity, Steele writes action with an adrenaline-fuelled punch.
If you like your thrillers sophisticated, thoroughly rooted in the real world and sprinkled with the verisimilitude of a period piece, then ‘The Sky Turned Black’ will brighten your day.
John Steele was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1995, at the age of twenty-two he travelled to the United States and has since lived and worked on three continents, including a thirteen-year spell in Japan. Among past jobs he has been a drummer in a rock band, an illustrator, a truck driver and a teacher of English. He now lives in England with his wife and daughter.
He began writing short stories, selling them to North American magazines and fiction digests. He has published four previous novels: Ravenhill, Seven Skins, Dry River and Rat Island, the first of which was longlisted for a CWA Debut Dagger award. John’s books have been described as ‘remarkable’ by the Sunday Times, ‘dark and thrilling’ by Claire McGowan, and ‘spectacular’ by Tony Parsons. The Irish Independent called John ‘a writer of huge promise’ and Gary Donnelly appointed him ‘the undisputed champion of the modern metropolitan thriller’.
Giveaway to Win 5 x PB copies of The Sky Turned Black (Open to UK Only)
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
When the bodies of five men are discovered in a secret vault at the villa Belle Époque, suspicion falls upon the villa’s former owner, enigmatic Pascal Deveraux.
Actor, gambler, general good-for-nothing – Pascal has lived a life of privilege and excess. But with no evidence to implicate him in murder, the case goes unsolved.
Called in to investigate the cold case, it’s not long before Margot’s enquiries re-open old wounds. Aided by policière municipale, Alia Leon, the investigation moves swiftly from the smugglers’ trails of the Pyrenees to the cannabis clubs of Barcelona. And it’s there, in the dark medieval streets of the city’s Gothic Quarter, that someone finds a reason to silence her.
This sense very clearly continues as the widowed investigator returns for her second outing. Green is – in a similar way to the work of Martin Walker which I praised so highly last week building a milieu and cast of characters which are becoming like familiar friends.
Also like Walker, Green has a nicely sparse style which makes these investigations easy to read and a pleasure to spend time with. Renard is a charming character – still somewhat mourning her husband, relaxing into her changing body and enjoying trainers rather than high heels these days, frustrated by her limited painting skills.
An additional similarity to the work of Walker is that Green packs a much starker picture than people will expect. These are not ‘Rosemary and Thyme’ en Francais. There’s a down to earth quality which makes the charming setting and likeable lead character undergirded by steel.
Overall, a worthy addition to the series and another accomplished performance from Rachel Green.
Author Bio
Rachel Green is the pen name of a writer from the UK. Rachel has twice been longlisted for both the Bath Novel Award and the BPA First Novel Award, as well as being on the shortlist for the Capital Crime New Voices Award. Rachel lives in a tiny village in England, but travels frequently to the south of France where the stories from the Madame Renard Investigates series are set
PAJ Newman 