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‘Our deal is over.’
That’s what reluctant author Anthony Horowitz tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne in an awkward meeting. The truth is that Anthony has other things on his mind.
His new play, ‘Mindgame’, is about to open in London’s Vaudeville theatre. Not surprisingly Hawthorne declines a ticket.
On opening night, ‘Sunday Times’ critic Harriet Throsby gives the play a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next morning she is found dead, stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which, it turns out, belongs to Anthony and which has his finger prints all over it.
Anthony is arrested, charged with Throsby’s murder, thrown into prison and interrogated.
Alone and increasingly desperate, he realises only one man can help him.
Everyone is always so grouchy about targeted advertising. Big companies like Amazon and Apple mining your online behaviour to sell you products people like you have already bought, their algorithms churning away in the background to manipulate you into parting with your hard earned cash.
I get it. It’s never nice to feel like a sheep, manipulated and herded. Netflix’s documentary, ‘The Social Dilemma‘ does an excellent job of exploring the dystopian overtones of how we live now.
But, here’s the thing – sometimes, it’s quite nice to be offered products people like you would like. Those algorithms are really just the video rental clerks of the 80s, but with about the same level of interaction skills and better personal hygiene.
So, I suspect I was the proverbial fish in a barrel when Audible told me the daily deal was Anthony Horowitz’s ‘A Line to Kill’.
Secondly, I had just finished reading his second James bond continuation novel, ‘Forever and a Day’, the single best continuation of that franchise in literary form since Kingsley Amis’ ‘Colonel Sun’ written under the pseudonym Robert Markham .
Finally, there was the setting. Alderney is the only Channel Island I have been to – as a child no less – but even as a teen I could see its potential as a locked room murder mystery setting. Throw in a literary festival – very much my “thang” and I was in.
Well, hooked does not do justice. I’ve now read – or more accurately had read to me by the superb Rory Kinnear – all of the novels in the series. Kinnear is – somewhat confusingly – the voice of Anthony Horowitz. Because what this series needed was more meta-overtones.
The latest novel in the series, Book 4, ‘The Twist of a Knife’, continues the conceit of having Horowitz as his own Watson, trailing along behind enigmatic private detective Hawthorne as he strides out in front.
Horowitz clearly has some fun depicting himself as vain and whiny in a way which must have been delightful to write but is also quite cruel and he continues to let Hawthorne get away with all the best lines.
At the opening of the novel, narrator Anthony has to grapple with the reluctance to write any more books in this series and the indisputable fact that the reader is holding/listening to the book he is refusing to write. A deliciously meta conundrum if you like that sort of thing: I do.
The US cover of ‘A Twist of the Knife‘
As well as being one of the most successful and clearly the hardest working writers in the UK today, Horowitz is a master craftsman. And in these novels, he deploys all of his well-honed talents to best effect.
Suspects are introduced, dismissed and re-interviewed. The theatre is also a motif in another excellent novel of this year, ‘Bad Actors’ by Mick Herron. However, Horowitz does not succumb to the temptation of making theatre related pun after pun. But, Hawthorne can’t resist an Agatha Christie dénouement and it arrives with a welcome theatrical flourish.
Narrator Anthony is worried that the books have run out of steam – after all, he’s even run out of writing allusions after ‘A Line to Kill’ (probably best he didn’t go with ‘The Pun-ishment is Death’ for this one in fairness). He’s damned if he’s going have them named Hawthorne Investigates as well: but, as a reader, I don’t think he need worry.
This is a series with plenty more puff in the tank and for anyone who likes classic murder mystery fiction, crafted by a professional at the top of their game, this is for them.
Bestselling author Anthony Horowitz has written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, ‘The House of Silk’ and ‘Moriarty’; three James Bond novels, ‘Trigger Mortis’, ‘Forever and a Day’ and ‘With a Mind to Kill‘; the acclaimed bestselling mystery novels ‘Magpie Murders’ and ‘Moonflower Murders’ and the Detective Hawthorne novels, ‘The Word is Murder’, ‘The Sentence is Death‘, ‘A Line To Kill’, and the latest ‘A Twist of Knife’ is out in August 2022.
He is also the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, and responsible for creating and writing some of the UK’s most loved and successful TV series, including ‘Midsomer Murders’ and ‘Foyle’s War’. In January 2022 he was awarded a CBE for his services to literature. (Biography courtesy of https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/185113/anthony-horowitz?tab=penguin-biography)
‘Isaac Egg’ by Bobby Palmer, narrated by Johnny Flynn
Isaac stands alone on a bridge and screams.
Something screams back.
And that, like everything which follows, is unforgettable.
This is a book about a lot of things – grief, hope, friendship, love. It’s also about what you’d do if you stumbled into the woods at dawn, found something extraordinary there, and decided to take it home.
It’s a tale that might seem familiar. But how it speaks to you will depend on how you’ve lived until now.
You don’t think about eggs very often, do you? At least, I don’t.
They are fragile: they are robust. Hard, soft, boiled, fried. They can represent stones rolled away from tombs, they can be balanced on their ends during the Vernal equinox. Allegedly. In evolutionary philosophy, they pose quite the conundrum – they are symbols of fertility: they are Schrodinger’s foodstuff.
And, in Bobby Palmer’s quirkily idiosyncratic debut, they may be a metaphor for the scrambled brain fog the eponymous Isaac is experiencing as his world disintegrates through loss and grief and everyone’s favourite river in Africa, denial.
‘Isaac and the Egg‘ is not hard boiled fiction (see what I did there?) But Palmer is a writer who blends the easy prose of a man who has worked damn hard to make it look this easy with the emotional depth charge that someone like Nick Hornby provides when dealing with men old enough to be better, but too immature to do better.
Narrator Johnny Flynn does an exceptional job. His voice has the honeyed tones of Matthew Goode – until the becalmed peace of my garden was shattered by the dog-whimpering quality of the scream used to replicate the voice of the egg. It was a shock. Almost as much as when I googled him and discovered he was the geezer from Lovesick! Either way, he is a phenomenal audiobook narrator.
‘Isaac and the Egg’ is a startling assured debut. It has a ‘Life of Pi’, ‘ET’, ‘Alien’ crossed with ‘High Fidelity’ atmosphere which marks Palmer out as a talent to watch. Moving, funny, melancholic, quirky and fast paced, this may be the late summer read we all need right now and is the sort of novel which resonates and vibrate through you as a reader long after it is finished.
Purchase Links
You can pre-order – and support this blog into the bargain – from Bookshop.org here: https://t.co/8ml3fNrc6B
Bobby Palmer is a freelance journalist who writes for publications including Time Out, GQ, Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan. Isaac and the Egg is his debut novel. (Biography courtesy of https://www.hachette.co.uk/contributor/bobby-palmer)
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.
Julian Finch, widower and fisherman, awakes to learn that the bodies of two colleagues have washed up on the beach of Drake Cove. The close-knit community is under fierce public scrutiny due to a long-standing tradition called “The Culling”, the annual slaughter of pilot whales for consumption. An act which divides the nation.
The suspects are the extreme animal rights group, the Fighters Against Animal Cruelty (FAAC) who go wherever the politics is trending. They’ve been harassing the small fishing town for many years, smashing up their boats and sending vicious hate mail.
Tensions mount after a viral video, uploaded by the FAAC of Julian killing a pregnant whale, causes uproar online and in real life. In the aftermath, Julian becomes the victim of hate crime. In order to avoid further life-threatening attacks, Julian and his daughter take refuge in the home of Frank Blothio: ex-fisherman turned writer and political activist who does not have the best history with the animal rights movement, or Drake Cove as a whole.
As Julian integrates into the Blothio way of life, he discovers heinous secrets and disturbing truths lurking beneath the skin of his hometown that will change his life forever.
One of the most shocking scenes ‘Seaspiracy’ , a documentary which clearly had an impact upon attitudes towards the fishing industry, was the slaughter of the whales in the Faroe Islands which arrives at the culmination of the movie.
Kateri Stanley’s novel, ‘From the Deep’ reimagines these sort of events in the small village of Drake Cove. As with most small places in literature, characters have secret pasts and long-standing enmities which only emerge as the modern world of technology sees traditions emerge on social media and all hell break lose.
There’s a whiff of a fictionalised version of Jon Ronson’s ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’ in Stanley’s work. What would it actually be like for a community to be subjected to the sort of scrutiny which few of us are pure enough to survive unscathed.
Kateri Stanley is a pseudonym for a multi-genre fiction writer and this shows in her writing. She is comfortable switching between and first and third person voices and has a commanding, authoritative authorial voice.
‘From the Deep’ is a novel which rips along and will make perfect summer holiday reading – for those prepared to deal with the plotting of a thriller and the ethics of animal rights and the modern age.
Kateri Stanley is a pseudonym for the multi-genre fiction writer. Since being a child, Kateri has been inspired by the wondrous mediums of books, music, TV and film. After working in the healthcare industry for eight years and studying for an Arts and Humanities degree, she made the decision to move cities in the West Midlands and live with her ever-suffering partner and their felines. Her debut novel ‘Forgive Me’ was published by indie press house, DarkStroke Books in 2021 and it reached #1 in the US Horror Fiction charts on Amazon. She is currently working on her third novel, Bittersweet Injuries and would love to pursue a full-time career in writing.
One unexplained disappearance is strange, but two are sinister.
In Lower Hembrow, an idyllic village nestled beneath Ham Hill in Somerset, the villagers are preparing to enjoy the autumn traditions of the rural English countryside until Joe Trevillion, a curmudgeonly local farmer and the father of six children, vanishes.
When Adam Hennessy, the ex-detective proprietor of The Plough, the village’s popular Inn, investigates, he finds ominous undercurrents beneath apparently harmless rumour and gossip.
Meanwhile, a vicious campaign of vindictiveness forces Adam and his three amateur sleuth friends to dig deep into the secret lives of their neighbours to expose the source of a cruel vendetta and prevent another death.
As they uncover the disturbing truth, the friends learn they must also lay their own past lives to rest before they can hope to make their dreams for the future come true.
One of the first jobs I ever had was a freelance gig writing pieces profiling towns for Sussex Life magazine. The money was fine – scarily this is at least 20 years ago and I doubt I could earn as much freelancing now as I did then – but what was really interesting was the opportunity to go nosing about the villages of the Home Counties and trying to pry under their skin a bit.
I’m not exactly sure what it is in crime fiction which attracts us to these small, rural villages but from Agatha Christie through GK Chesterton via Margery Allingham and right up to some of the writers working today – Fiona Leitch, Isabella Muir, Anna Legat and Simon Whaley – readers can’t get enough of peering behind the net curtain and white washed walls of the small English village.
Frances Evesham here provides another accomplished entry into the genre. Lower Hembrow is everything this sort of village should: picturesque, nicely appointed church, local pub.
And, obviously, dark undercurrent with disappearances and dark secrets from the past threatening to raise their ugly heads.
I know Raymond Chandler wanted to take murder out of the drawing rooms and put it back in the streets, but in the same way that Chandler was a Dulwich College educated public schoolboy, I like my murders cozy and my villages adorning the pages of Somerset Life.
Heartily recommended for fans of Midsomer Murders, Miss Marple and Poirot, A Harvest Murder arrives at the best time of year and should allow you a pleasant read as the workers gather the crops around you.
Frances Evesham is the bestselling author of the hugely successful Exham-on-Sea murder mysteries set in her home county of Somerset, and the Ham-Hill cosy crime series set in South Somerset.
PAJ Newman 