The cover of Fiona Sherlock’s latest novel ‘Preserved’
She’s stuck in the past, the killer wants to immortalise his future. When a local farmer announces on social media that he has discovered a bog body in Ardee, the world’s historians are keen to explore the secrets of the life and grisly death of the victim. Antique journalist January Quail is fighting to keep her newspaper job and uncovers far more than she bargained for.
The victim is actually a recent murder, and January uses her nose for the truth to investigate the County Louth town. From shopkeeper to the publican, everyone is a suspect, but when the Gardai can’t find the killer, can January?
Once she sets down the liqueur glass, January gains the confidence of the lead garda investigator. Within days, the case unravels into a much more dangerous situation with a killer on the loose.
Despite the risk, January is electrified that this newest discovery has come at the perfect time to inject some colour into her flailing career. January relinquishes her old ways to fight for survival, abandoning her antiques column and vintage corsets to solve a cryptic crime that has the experts puzzled. This woman who longs to lives in the past must now fight for her life in the present.
Fiona Sherlock is a crime writer from Bective, in Ireland. Her murder mystery games are played across the world. She also writes poetry and prose but cannot stay away from a good murder. After spending a decade in Dublin working in public relations and journalism, she moved to the country for mid-day fires and elderflower champagne.
The cover of ‘The Invisible Case’ by Isabella Muir
‘The Invisible Case’ by Isabella Muir
Narrator: Bridget Eaton
Heartbreaking tragedy or cold-blooded murder…?
An Italian stranger arrives in Tamarisk Bay and brings with him mystery and intrigue….
It’s Easter 1970 in the seaside town of Tamarisk Bay. Amateur sleuth and professional librarian, Janie Juke, is settling into motherhood and some quality time with her family. When her Aunt Jessica is due back from Rome after nine years travelling around Europe, she arrives back in town with a new Italian friend, Luigi, and the whole family soon get embroiled in a tangle of mystery and suspicion, with death and passion at the heart of the story.
As time runs out on Luigi as prime suspect for murder, Janie has to use all of her powers of deduction in the footsteps of her hero, Hercule Poirot, to uncover the facts. Why did Luigi come to Tamarisk Bay? What is the truth about his family?
As Luigi’s story unfolds, tragedy seems to haunt the past, present and unless Janie acts fast, possibly what is yet to come.
If you love Agatha Christie style twists and turns, or are a fan of Call the Midwife, Endeavour, Inspector George Gently and all those great 60s characters, then you will love this Sussex Crime series.
The third of Isabella Muir’s Janie Juke mysteries is ‘The Invisible Case’. Set in the fictional Sussex seaside town of Tamarisk Bay, this novel begins with the return from Italy of Janie’s aunt, Jessica, with her young Italian travelling companion, Luigi.
Janie Juke is a charming protagonist. A part time librarian and full time busy body, Janie is building up a reputation in Tamarisk Bay as the go-to person when people need a little help.
Ably supported by her lovely young husban1d, her blind father and, this time, her aunt, Janie has a supportive home environment for sniffing out clues and plenty of time to indulge her hero worship of Hercule Poirot.
So far so good. For me, however, the biggest plus of the novel is Jessica. The free spirited aunty who helped raise Janie, her return from nearly a decade travelling offers another element to the story and is a live wire character who Janie can investigate alongside and spark off.
The biggest negative of the novel is Luigi. Whilst it is always interesting to have an unsympathetic character, Luigi is such a whiny, despicable man/child that you not only don’t care if Janie clears his name, you absolutely long for her to have him go to the gallows – abolition of hanging not withstanding.
‘The Invisible Case’ is a quick read, cheerful in aspect and faithful to its cosy crime heritage and wearing its love for Agatha Christie and Golden Age of crime fiction lightly.
Isabella is never happier than when she is immersing herself in the sights, sounds and experiences of the 1960s. Researching all aspects of family life back then formed the perfect launch pad for her works of fiction. Isabella rediscovered her love of writing fiction during two happy years working on and completing her MA in Professional Writing and since then has gone to publish five novels, two novellas and a short story collection.
The Invisible Case is the third book in her Sussex Crime Mystery series, featuring young librarian and amateur sleuth, Janie Juke. Set in the late 1960s, in the fictional seaside town of Tamarisk Bay, we meet Janie, who looks after the mobile library. She is an avid lover of Agatha Christie stories – in particular Hercule Poirot – using all she has learned from the Queen of Crime to help solve crimes and mysteries. All three novels are now available as audiobooks.
As well as three novels, there are three novellas in the series, which explore some of the back story to the Tamarisk Bay characters.
Her latest novel, Crossing the Line, is the first of a new series of Sussex Crimes, featuring retired Italian detective, Giuseppe Bianchi who arrives in the quiet seaside town of Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, to find a dead body on the beach and so the story begins…
Isabella’s standalone novel, The Forgotten Children, deals with the emotive subject of the child migrants who were sent to Australia – again focusing on family life in the 1960s, when the child migrant policy was still in force.
Moneymakers are king, no matter their methods. When an honest man stumbles into their world of deceit, will they drag him down to destruction?
London, 1986. Rupert Brett is eager to make his mark. But even though he’s newly qualified to tackle jobs within the cutthroat property brokering industry, his ambitions are blunted when he must face off against ruthless competitors. And with his career on the line, he finds himself adrift in the murky waters of insider trading where knowledge is the real currency.
Clinging to his ideals but beginning to realize how deep the corruption goes, Rupert’s unprepared when a group of hard-nosed developers frame him for murder. With few friends and the law on his tail, his only way out may be a bargain with the devil.
Can the young surveyor thwart his enemies’ plans in time to save his reputation and his life?
‘A Deadly Deal’ is the immersive first book in the Deal Series of historical crime thrillers. If you like conflicted characters, rich period details, and complex plotting, then you’ll love Simon Fairfax’s gritty page-turner.
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The cover of ‘A Deadly Deal’ The first novel in the Rupert Brett series from Simon Fairfax
A Deadly Deal’ is quite a high wire act by Simon Fairfax. Selling Chartered Surveying as a potentially exciting, high octane route for an international man of mystery sounds like a tougher sell than a “cosy” cupboard in Zone 5 with subsidence.
Add in a setting in the 80s, complete with all the chrome, coke and boisterous sexism inherent to our memories of the decade, the brash barrow boys getting rich quick and the crass fixation on money for money’s sake and that’s going to repel some readers and finally, select a hero called “Rupert” with his public school vowels.
There are going to be readers who don’t want to give this a chance.
And yet, they are wrong. Fairfax writes well. The novel opens with a sudden twist of violence in a Bristolian night and he does manage to keep the pace up.
Those City Boy clichés of their setting don’t detract from the novel and it was refreshing to revisit a time when property in the capital was not solely owned by money laundering kleptocrats.
For anyone looking for a commercially minded, rip roaring read of a man forced to use his skills in a high octane race against time, Simon Fairfax may just have the goods to seal the deal.
Author Bio – As a lover of crime thrillers and mystery, I turned what is seen by others as a dull 9 – 5 job into something that is exciting, as close to real life as possible, with Rupert Brett, my international man of mystery whose day job is that of a Chartered Surveyor.
Rupert is an ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances who uses his wit, guile and training to survive.
Each book is written from my own experiences, as close to the truth as possible, set against world events that really happened. I go out and experience all the weapons, visit the places Rupert travels to, speak to the technical experts and ensure that it as realistic, as possible allowing you to delve deep in to the mystery, losing yourself in it for a few hours.
Still spinning from the hustle and bustle of city life, Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker is glad to be back in the Cornish village she calls home. Having quit the Met Police in search of something less dangerous, the change of pace means she can finally start her dream catering company and raise her daughter, Daisy, somewhere safer.
But there’s nothing like having your first job back at home to be catering an ex-boyfriend’s wedding to remind you of just how small your village is. And when the bride, Cheryl, vanishes Jodie is drawn into the investigation, realising that life in the countryside might not be as quaint as she remembers…
With a missing bride on their hands, there is murder and mayhem around every corner but surely saving the day will be a piece of cake for this not-so-amateur sleuth?
The first book in the Murder on the Menu cosy mystery series. Can be read as a standalone. A humorous cosy mystery with a British female sleuth in a small village. Includes one of Jodie’s Tried and Tested Recipes! Written in British English. Mild profanity and peril.
The cover of Fiona Leitch’s first book in the new Nosey Parker series, ‘Murder on the Menu’
Here Fiona Leitch has managed to create another version of a frightfully nice world – except for the corpses, naturally.
Moving back down to Cornwall after having left the Met, Jodie ‘Nosey’ Parker is greeted by a place which has not changed much since she grew up there. Ex-boyfriends are still there, mothers hover with tea on offer and people’s the ex-wives of characters’ drive HGVs up and down the country “with just [a] dog – a Pomeranian called Germaine – for company”. It’s adorable.
It doesn’t take long for the bodies to begin piling up, a man who Jodie used to care about is accused and this catering investigator is putting her skills to good use clearing his name.
If you are looking for an enjoyable romp, this is a nippy, zippy tale with a talented writer with a nose (geddit?) for characters in search of some TLC.
Come back next week for a review of Nosey Parker Book 2: A Brush with Death
Author Bio – Fiona Leitch is a writer with a chequered past. She’s written for football and motoring magazines, DJ’ed at illegal raves and is a stalwart of the low budget TV commercial, even appearing as the Australasian face of a cleaning product called ‘Sod Off’. Her debut novel ‘Dead in Venice’ was published by Audible in 2018 as one of their Crime Grant finalists. After living in London, Hastings and Cornwall she’s finally settled in sunny New Zealand, where she enjoys scaring her cats by trying out dialogue on them. She spends her days dreaming of retiring to a crumbling Venetian palazzo, walking on the windswept beaches of West Auckland, and writing funny, flawed but awesome female characters.
Three letters. Three murders. The clock is ticking…
When the body of a homeless woman is found under Bradford’s railway arches, DS Nikki Parekh and her trusty partner DC Sajid Malik are on the case.
With little evidence, it’s impossible to make a breakthrough, and when Nikki receives a newspaper clipping taunting her about her lack of progress in catching the killer, she wonders if she has a personal link to the case.
When another seemingly unrelated body is discovered, Nikki receives another note. Someone is clearly trying to send her clues… but who?
And then a third body is found.
This time on Nikki’s old street, opposite the house she used to live in as a child. And there’s another message… underneath the victim’s body.
With nothing but the notes to connect the murders, Nikki must revisit the traumatic events of her childhood to work out her connection to the investigation.
But some memories are best left forgotten, and it’s going to take all Nikki’s inner strength to catch the killer…
Before they strike again.
The cover of Liz Mistry’s ‘Dark Memories’
Liz Mistry has made a career out of her Bradford-based detective stories. It is fair to say that cheerful, they are not. This is crime fiction as gutter-level grime with drug addicted prostitutes with blackened stumps for teeth.
If you’re looking for “cosy” crime, then Mistry probably isn’t for you. However, if you want well plotted, sparsely written, taut thrillers with some truly nasty villains, then Mistry is for you.
DS Nikki Parekh is a very grounded guide to the investigation, a woman of complex emotions – Mistry is a top notch writer of anxiety and the need to escape from pressurised situations.
As a novelist she is also constantly growing in confidence. Here, we slalom between narrators, first person and third person to entice, excite and conceal the motivations of the protagonists.
And, it is fair to say, Parekh and her partner DC Sajid Malik, do have a lot on their plates. They are still processing the trauma of the trafficking case which comes in the book which precedes this one, as well as tackling a killer who is picking the victims off and experiencing an unnatural gratification – blood spattering on their lips described as “erotic” at one stage a particularly effective way of unsettling the reader.
This novel is sure to be a firm favourite with anyone who wants to go down, down to the neglected areas of Bradford, down to the seedy underworld in which Parekh and Malik ply their trade, down into the well-crafted, excitingly well-plotted, hard bitten novels of Liz Mistry.
Author Bio – 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 (Winky and Scumpy) 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. Now, having nearly completed a PhD in Creative Writing focussing on ‘the absence of the teen voice in adult crime fiction’ and ‘why expansive narratives matter’, Liz is chock full of ideas to continue writing.
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.
The cover of Ashleigh Nugnet’s novel blurring fact and fiction, ‘Locks’
‘LOCKS: A Story Based on True Events’ by Ashleigh Nugent
“1993 was the year that Stephen Lawrence got murdered by racists, and I became an angry Black lad with a ‘chip on his shoulder’.”
Aeon is a mixed-race teenager from an English suburb. He is desperate to be understand the Black identity foisted on him by racist police, teachers, and ‘friends’. For want of Black role models, Aeon has immersed himself in gangsta rap, he’s trying to grow dreadlocks, and he’s bought himself some big red boots.
And now he’s in Jamaica.
Within days of being in Jamaica, Aeon has been mugged and stabbed, arrested and banged up.
Aeon has to fight for survival, fight for respect, and fight for his big red boots. And he has to fight for his identity because, here, Aeon is the White boy.
In some ways, it can be difficult for a privileged, white, liberal, middle class man to review a novel like this, (not that it’s ever stopped those of us from that category sharing our tuppence’s worth, it has to be said).
Presumably, the starting point is to acknowledge that I have never shared the awful experiences of racism which are shown in this wonderful novel by Ashleigh Nugent. You find yourself saying, “It wasn’t that bad then was it?” and, one suspects that the answer is, “Yeap! And worse…” To not know that is to come face to face with privilege, race and class in the UK of the 90s.
For those of us who have that good fortune, it is the Liverpool-based reminiscences which punch hardest. Nugent has crafted a narrative which jumps between his memory of growing up as a mixed race boy in Liverpool and the disorientating “foreignness” of his trip to Jamaica.
The division for our lead character, Aeon, between being the “white” man in his father’s homeland and the “black” man in his own homeland.
There are also some rather charming narrative passages where Aeon narrates his own Joseph Campbell ‘Hero’s Journey’ as taught to him by a primary teacher.
This novel enjoys blurring fact and fiction, memoir and fable. It is a sensory journey through a vividly reproduced Caribbean experience filled with the shockingly mundane reality of violence, the paranoia of mixing drugs and alcohol and the stress which comes with trying to find an identity – something which all teenagers remember.
I must be of a similar age to the character of Aeon (and, by extension, Nugent), perhaps a few years younger. But I remember that explosion of gangsta rap, the visceral thrill of hearing oppression articulated and a lid being lifted on a life you didn’t know existed.
Aeon is captivated and tries to live the life. It is well worth your time finding out whether he makes it out the other side.
Author, playwright and campaigner, Ashleigh Nugent
Ashleigh Nugent has been published in academic journals, poetry anthologies, and magazines. His latest work, ‘LOCKS’, is based on a true story: the time he spent his 17th birthday in a Jamaican detention centre.
‘LOCKS’ won the 2013 Commonword Memoir Competition and has had excerpts published by Writing on the Wall and in bido lito magazine.
Ashleigh’s one-man-show, based on ‘LOCKS’, has won support from SLATE / Eclipse Theatre, and won a bursary from Live Theatre, Newcastle. The show has received rave audience reviews following showings in theatres and prisons throughout the UK.
Ashleigh is also a director at RiseUp CiC, where he uses his own life experience, writing, and performance to support prisoners and inspire change.
The daylight is ending as I return to the shop, the dregs of the sun in the top windows of the taller building opposite. I let myself in with the key handed back to me with my personal belongings yesterday. A brown-box time capsule, too big for my belongings. My watch, the keys, and a couple of pounds in loose change. I have the clothes I’m standing in, and my life in my pocket.
I’m surprised the key fits. My life had changed so little in prison, it left me imagining the rest of the world spinning away from me. In reality, not much has altered here either.
I expect an empty shop; the rolls of cloth sold, the buttons lost, the shop fittings looted. Brace myself for dust and dirt and the death of this place an equivalence of my mother. Instead, it manages to rescue what little light is hanging around at this hour to shine with the electric rainbow of brilliant material stacked with clashing disregard. From floor to ceiling, the shelves hold the history of her life here. She floated around the rest of the building like she didn’t quite fit, yet her feet anchored themselves here. She had lifted the rolls deftly without concern for their bulk, rolled and worked on the cutting table with swift confidence. When I was small, I liked to come here and sit on the stool behind the counter while the shop lived its life. Or I had until the teenage world called and I ceded the seat to Sam.
The wooden till drawer under the counter is empty.
The kitchen in the ground floor wing on the back of the building is small and basic. It exists behind the curtain of the shop theatre, and has therefore been accorded less attention. It had once been my favourite space, so much had gone on here. Long talks and raucous laughter. The cold, damp bathroom beyond the kitchen remains my least favourite place.
The cream enamel oven is a freestanding unit she bought on tick, cheerfully tripping to the Gas office once a month to make the hire purchase payment and get her book stamped. A rectangle of fifteen red quarry tiles is set on the floor in front of it. I’m better able to imagine the glass dish she once dropped and smashed than to picture her kneeling on the floor with her head inside trying to bring her life to an end. Any image of her refuses to form.
I fill the steel kettle from the cold tap hanging from the wall above the square sink and plug it in. The cutlery, crockery, and the coffee are in their place. There’s little in the fridge, and what’s there has turned. I empty the milk into the sink and the food into the bin.
I go upstairs to the other place we congregated, the small corner on the first-floor landing with the ragged sofa in front of the spindly-legged television. I recall her watching the old black and white whilst sitting amongst a mound of sewing. A newer colour television sits outside of her room in front of the now more-ragged sofa.
We had come and gone from here as a family, while the layout prevented us living as such.
Her bedroom is shadowed yellow from a sun at dusk sky, and I turn on the weak ceiling bulb. The room is unchanged. The familiar big flowered wallpaper, and the vaguely complementary pulled taut orange candlewick bedspread. The faded-lime carpet had been old when I was a child. A dress and a coat on hangars are hooked over the wardrobe door, open because it’s overfull. An emerald green dress lies across the foot of the bed, as if she selected it for her own laying out. The dressing table is as cluttered as I remembered. The room as if she stepped out moments ago.
The suitcase on top of her wardrobe contains the clothes I left behind. Only clothes. I told her to get rid of everything else. Fresh starts demand such decisions, and she promised. She understood my life hadn’t been one of sentiment.
Lara’s bedroom on the back of the house overlooks the neighbours’ shadowed rear yards. What’s left of the daylight helps make out the neat flower borders of the wool shop, and the stacked marble and granite of the Stonemason’s. Beyond, is an enclosed wasteland of tufted grass, mounded mud, and broken concrete. A dangerous playground, or potential money-spinner? The reason Freeman wants the shop.
On her bedside table an open book lies face down. Crossing the Water. On the plain white wall above the bed is pinned a film poster of The Exorcist. On the adjacent inner wall an Aladdin Sane poster partially covers a Bay City Rollers one. The shift from unembarrassed child to self-conscious teen. The single wardrobe holds some clothes. This room is less occupied than the other.
Her record player is on the floor beneath the window. Half a dozen albums lean against the wall, kept in place by a small tower of 45’s. On the turntable is a warped and dusty Chi-Lites single. I close the lid to prevent more dust spoiling the machine.
I don’t go into the windowless attic room, taking it all in from the doorway. I try not to see the small access door to the eaves, but I can’t not. It’s occupied my mind for too many years.
It’s Sam’s room now. With the ceiling too steeply pitched for a wardrobe, the furniture is a chest of drawers poorly painted in purple, and an unmade mattress on the floor. Above the dresser are a few ragged images badly torn from magazines; A Clockwork Orange, Slade, Roxy Music. The walls are time-spoiled white, the inner wall half painted in a deep red gloss. The manic brushstrokes peter out halfway to the door, as if whoever has ill-preparedly run out of paint, or grown bored with the effort. Either likely with Sam.
I choose Lara’s bed. The least poor choice. I like the block of darkness of the huge furniture store in the street beyond the open land. A high plain wall not unlike the outer bulwark of a prison. I appreciate the absence of noise. Freedom has vanquished the night shouts and the background hysterics of incensed men.
I leave the curtains, allowing the poor light from a small-town to channel across the backyards and into the room. I open the window onto the sultry night. The heady build of heat through a long dry summer has made rain a stranger, and I long for its return, ache for a refreshing downpour.
The empty drawers in Sam’s room, and the missing clothes from this one, suggests they’ve moved out. I presume the absence of life means they’re with their father.
I’d spent nine years among the vilest of men. Yet I’d never experienced the level of terror in prison that had been generated by the man I’d grown up with. A man worse than any of them. Coming home means facing him. I’ll go in the morning.
You can read a review of SR Wilsher’s novel ‘Mint’ here
Thanks so much to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for her help as ever with this blog tour and please check out the sterling efforts of WhatCathyReadNext and Lisa at Coffee, Dogs & Books
‘MINT’ by SR Wilsher
This may change with so far to go!
It’s the summer of 1976, and after nine years in prison, James Minter is home to bury his mother.
A history of depression and a series of personal issues has seen her death ruled as suicide.
His refusal to accept that conclusion means he must confront his violent stepfather, deal with the gangster who wants his mother’s shop and, of course, face the family of the boy he killed.
But will his search for the truth in the claustrophobic atmosphere of a small seaside town, and the unpicking of the peculiar relationship his mother had with the Stonemason next door, put his own life in danger.
SR Wilsher launces ‘Mint’ onto an unsuspecting public. It is interesting to me that Wilsher talks about how he will “never see any of his books on the shelves of bookshops” but, with writing of this quality, I’m surprised at his lack of optimism.
From the blurb and synopsis, you might be tempted to think that this is going to be a rough and tumble gangster epic. However, it is a much more subtle piece than that.
This is a tale of toxic masculinity and its consequences. It’s a tale of broken families and the impact that one punch can have on a life no matter how well meaning.
It is a very well put together tale with a narrative which skips between decades and narrators. This works very well and each character has a clearly differentiated voice of their own. However, this may be the factor which turns some readers off – you can’t relax with this spiralling story as old enmities bubble up and we learn what motives even the most unpleasant of people.
I tend to divide my life in two. Prior to 2009, I did the long hours and the commitment to paying the mortgage, studying, and finishing the house, whilst trying to write in a way that didn’t impact too much on family and career. The reality was work affected my writing, and my writing prevented me ever committing to my job wholeheartedly.
In 2009, I had a kidney transplant. It took a while to undo the way I had lived before, my life still involved work, children, coffee and chocolate. But slowly I’ve stepped back from work and now spend much more of my time pleasing myself; writing, making furniture and creating art. I’m no better off financially, but I have been much more productive with my writing.
There was a time when I was rewriting the same book over and over in some attempt to second guess the rejections I received. Self-publishing has freed me to move on. Now I usually have two books on the go, one in development and one on its way to completion. 2020, however, being the year that it was, means I’ve been working on three.
I continue to be disappointed that I’ll never see any of my books on the shelves of any bookshop. But I console myself with the fact I’ll never see any of them in a charity shop either.
Carla Sullivan’s 50th birthday is fast approaching when her whole world is turned upside down. Discovering her feckless husband is having yet another affair and following her mother’s death, she is in need of an escape. Finding an envelope addressed to her mother’s estranged sister Josette in the South of France gives Carla the perfect plan.
Seizing the moment, she packs her bags and heads to Antibes to seek out the enigma known as Tante Josette. But as the two women begin to forge a tentative relationship, family secrets start to unravel, forcing Carla to question her life as she has always known it.
A heart-warming tale on the beautiful French Riviera, which will keep you guessing.
The charming cover of Jennifer Bohnet’s novel ‘The Villa of Sun and Secrets’
People who don’t know me that well are sometimes surprised that I’ve always been a sucker for a nice romantic story, especially one set in a hot place.
I’ve written reviews on the genre here before (and sometimes I feel like I’m the last Peter Mayle fan out there.) After all, this is classed as “women’s fiction” so a man can’t enjoy it. But, you know, I like what I like.
This one, though, caught me by surpise.
To be honest, this was not really the novel I had expected it to be. I was expecting some comic misadventures and a women recovering from the swings and arrows of ill fortune with a glass of rose in her hand and a bevy of swarthy Frenchmen sniffing around rejuvenating her dormant passion.
While readers do get almost all of that, what they are also treated to is a much more serious, much better written and much more engaging story than that style of synopsis would suggest.
Carla’s appalling treatment at the hands of her bone headed philandering husband almost had me punching the air with joy when she tells him, “No, I deserve better.” It leaves one quietly grieving for the years of suffering which people have had to put up with without the courage to escape and find their own happy endings.
After all, don’t we all deserve to be the lead characters in our stories?
Additionally, the story which reveals itself may not be startlingly innovative – I think most readers will have sussed where it is going by about a third of the way through, Jennifer Bohnet does a wonderful job of peeling away the layers and explaining why these sort of revelations hit so hard and take so much time to heal.
Bohnet also does a fine job of reminding us that the mores of the sixties were not quite the free flowing, free love bonanza people have been retroactively allowed to believe.
‘The Villa of Sun and Secrets’ is a lovely read for a pandemic. Layered, unexpectedly moving, narrated with wit and charm by the talented Julia Franklin, this does offer the escape and the dream of villas with swimming pools and a cool glass of nice French wine so tantalisingly out of reach to us in our rather sombre modern age. A lovely audiobook.
Author Jennifer Bohnet, now living her own good life in rural Brittany.
Author Bio –
Jennifer Bohnet is the bestselling author of over 14 women’s fiction titles, including ‘Villa of Sun and Secrets’ and ‘A Riviera Retreat. She is originally from the West Country but now lives in the wilds of rural Brittany, France.
The Glass family business is crime, and they’re good at what they do. Vengeance took Luke Glass behind bars – but now he’s free and he’s never going back. Luke wants out of the gangster life – all he has to do is convince his family to let him go.
His brother holds the reins of the South London underworld in his brutal hands – nobody tells Danny Glass no and expects to live – not even DCI Oliver Stanford, bent copper and one of the Met’s rising stars. The way Danny sees it, his younger brother and sister Nina owe him everything. The price he demands is loyalty, and a war with their arch enemy gives him the leverage he needs to tie Luke to the family once more.
Luke can’t see a way out, until Danny commits a crime so terrible it can’t be forgiven. Love turns to hate when secrets are unearthed which pit brother against brother. Left with no choice but to choose a side, Nina holds the fate of the family in her hands.
In the Glass family, Owen Mullen has created a crime dynasty to rival the Richardsons and the Krays. Heart-pounding, jaw-dropping with non-stop action, Family is perfect for fans of Martina Cole, Kimberley Chambers and Mandasue Heller.
The blog tour banner for Owen Mullen’s novel ‘Family’
“Family” is my first exposure to the work of Owen Mullen and, on this evidence, it won’t be my last trip to the world of the Glass family.
I’ve written elsewhere (and here) of how impressed I am by the work Boldwood Books are producing in the crime genre and Mullen is a very worthy addition to their stable of writers.
Here we have the crime family dynamic coming under strain as newly released Luke strains against the ties of his increasingly psychotic brother Danny while his Machiavellian sister Nina cooks up her own schemes.
So far, so ‘Lock Stock’. But what elevates this above the routine is the quality of the turns. It was Raymond Chandler who advised writers, “When in doubt, have a man with a gun come through the door (‘Trouble is My Business’) Mullen certainly likes to take advantage of this handy aphorism and there are geezers puffing into pubs with gats clapping like no ones business.
Author Owen Mullen
The real strength, however, lies in Mullen’s careful doling out of excitement. His protagonist, Luke, is an intelligent observer. His first person narration contrasts with the third person accounts throughout the rest of the tale. So we hear Luke’s thoughts, we hear his doubts, his fears, his rationalisations.
When the action explodes, it is over in seconds and gives a wide berth to the sort of sadistic, voyeurism of violence we experience in lesser writers.
Mullen is also no stranger to the odd Chandlerism. “I’d met him for less than thirty seconds and already would’ve liked to put his face up against a brick and throw a wall at it,” is Luke’s verdict on one shady character and this is worth the price of the novel alone.
We all know you can pick your friends, but not your family: however, I’d advise getting to know the Glass family very well and let Mullen propel you with his propulsive prose through the south London underworld.
When he was ten years old, Owen Mullen won a primary schools short story competition and didn’t write another word for four decades. One morning he announced he was going to write a book. He did. Since then he has written seven. Owen was born in Coatbridge, a few miles from Glasgow, where the Charlie Cameron stories take place, and where he ran a successful design and marketing business.
A late developer, he has a Masters degree from Strathclyde University which he got in his forties. In his earlier life he lived in London and worked as a musician and session singer. People tell him he enjoyed himself and he has no reason to doubt them.
The journey from rocker to writer has been a fascinating experience and the similarities between the music and book industries, never cease to amaze him. His passions are travel, food and Arsenal Football Club.
A gregarious recluse, he now splits his time between Scotland and the island of Crete, along with his wife, Christine.
PAJ Newman 