Book #48 Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

Broken Homes

Length Of Time In Possession : 2 weeks

Broken Homes is the 4th in Ben Aaronovitch's Folly Series, following PC Peter Grant, a young copper who at the beginning of the series, met a ghost and suddenly found himself a member of the Metropolitan Police's magic division.

The novel carries on the storylines from previous books, so I won't delve too far, for there would be spoilers. This time the mystery revolves around a housing estate called Skygarden.

It continues to expand the magical universe it is set in as Peter, Lesley, and Nightingale continue to hunt the Faceless Man, and the Little Crocodile society, it also brings back the always good value Rivers sisters, Fairy Zach, and others we met in the previous novels which is nice.

I also liked how we are given more detail about how Peter is slowly learning and studying his magical craft, necessary in the development of a clumsy apprentice.

There is good characterization of newly introduced surrounding players who pop off the page easily with pithy but greatly visual description.

I really enjoyed this one, having had some issues with both books two and three, I loved a certain passage which made a remark about schizophrenia, applicable to mental illness in general.

I also really loved the twist, which I never saw coming at all.

I knew if I stuck with this story it would pay off if I ignored the bits about the first two sequels I found a bit shaky, and kept up with it. I think Broken Homes is a return to form for this saga, but obviously if you've not read it you do have to start with Rivers Of London.

I'd absolutely love to see this optioned as a TV series, its sense of Britishness would work more on the small screen than the large.

Verdict : 8/10
Destination : ebook storage      

Book #46 The Red House Mystery by AA Milne

The Red House Mystery

Length Of Time In Possession : 2/3 Days

The Red House Mystery is from the pen of AA Milne, legendary Winnie-The-Pooh author. Personally, I was unaware he had ever written a novel for the adult market.


The novel is an amateur detective story, in the introduction Milne writes :

"It is the amateur detective who alone can expose the guilty man, by the light of cool inductive reasoning and the logic of stern remorseless facts"

Quite right too, some might say.

The amateur sleuth in question is one Antony Gillingham who, hearing his good friend Bill Beverley is staying at The Red House decides to pay him a call. Upon entering the house, he discovers he is in the immediate aftermath of a murder, but to Gillingham,  something doesn't feel quite right and he pursues his own investigation into the matter.

Published in the 1920's the novel makes innumerable references to Sherlock Holmes, indeed Gillingham appoints Beverley his Watson and constantly refers to him as such. For me, personally, this endeared me to the novel but when we discussed this at Book Club some people felt that this weakened the novel and made it rather derivative.

Indeed, it is hard to know whether Milne intended simply to pay homage to Arthur Conan Doyle or whether it is a pale rip off of Doyle's genius and this was our ongoing debate.

Personally, I found it quite charming and as it's a fairly slight read, worth reading if you like posh types in country houses engaging in an Agatha Christie type scenario.

Verdict 7/10
Destination : ebook storage

Book #30 Shattered Blue by Jane Taylor Starwood

Shattered Blue

Length of Time In Possession : 2 weeks

Shane Mackinnon lives off the grid. She has an isolated house in the hillside of a small town, she doesn't have a mobile and she doesn't go on the internet. An artist with a talent for tapestry, she sells her creations in a small, local gallery, and lives a quiet and private life. She is irked when a man, Matt, buys the property next to hers and begins building a home, encroaching on her cherished seclusion.

For some people this is a preferred lifestyle choice, but for Shane, it is necessary, deliberate, and cultivated. Her name is not Shane Mackinnon, but who or what is she hiding from?

Charming and good looking Matt begins to win Shane over, but her past has not yet finished with her.

A romantic thriller, Shattered Blue is a self publish from Jane Starwood, available from the Kindle on Amazon. I have to say that it is surprising that this hasn't been snapped up by a traditional publisher as it fits a certain sub genre really well, publishers are crying out for novels of this type right now.

I say this because it reminded me a lot of the Fifty Shades novels, don't mistake me, the sex in Shattered Blue is not BDSM associated or dreadfully gratuitous or anything like that, but in those novels the Christian/Ana relationship exists against a backdrop of various threats : Christian's mentally ill former sub and his jealous foster brother to name two, which ramp up the excitement and add soap opera style qualities to it. Shattered Blue has the potential to satisfy readers who are looking for "the next thing" to read afterwards.

The threat Shane exists under is an interesting one because it isn't the threat she has initially run from, and doesn't anticipate, she is stalked by her aggressor until he can build a strong picture of her habits and knows how to attack. As a menace, he is an ugly and uncomfortable character against whom the reader has strong convictions, and therefore succeeds well as a villain.

For my part, though the sex with Matt is often steamy and their relationship is enjoyable, I felt that slowing it down and allowing it time to develop over a number of months, and allowing her stalker to do the same with his surveillance would have given the realism of the book extra weight. In addition Matt discovers who Shane really is in a too quick, too convenient way, and I would have changed this slightly.  To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how I would change it, but in my opinion it needed to be less easy.

If this description sounds like the sort of thing you enjoy, then I would really recommend this novel to you. Again, I was happy to read a thriller that doesn't go down the traditional police procedural route and hope to see more from Starwood in future.

Verdict : 7/10

Destination : ebook storage

Book #27 The Back Road by Rachel Abbott

The Back Road

Length Of Time In Possession : 1 week

The Back Road by Rachel Abbott begins with a startling prologue of two children trapped in a cupboard, then introduces us to Leo Harris, a 20 something returning to the village she grew up in. Leo had an unhappy childhood marked by meanness and tragedy, but her sister Ellie, psychologically trapped by the mysteries of their childhood has chosen to buy and renovate the house they grew up in, unable to let go of the past; because of her sisters relocation, Leo too is forced to confront the past.

No more than it was when Leo was a child, Little Melham is a place of secrets. Ellie is hiding a stalker she can't dissuade and is terrified her husband is having an affair; yet the biggest secret comes in the form of local 14 year old Abbie Campbell. Abbie has been knocked down on The Back Road in a Hit and Run, but who knocked Abbie down and why was she even there?   

There was a lot I liked about The Back Road, certain sections of the writing were very sharp, particularly the prologue, and the section in which Abbie is being chased. I really liked Leo Harris as a character, flawed, but strong : a survivor. I liked Ellie somewhat less, and felt like she could do with a good shake!

I found the dinner party sequence a little overlong, as a soiree, I'm sure I wouldn't have enjoyed it particularly, at times very uncomfortable and cringe, not for the reader, but if you imagined yourself present. I struggled for a while to see why so many chapters were devoted to it, until I realised that it was all a clue to the whodunnit, and who may or may not have been culpable for the hit and run.

I actually live in Cheshire, or thereabouts, and I felt that at times the location of the story was over emphasised or over signposted, and need not have been reiterated more than once. Though the purpose is to signify that the village is small, populated by the comfortable, and in some respects remote, lending itself to a "locked room" mystery of sorts. (The culprit can only be a local) this is something that the reader can infer themselves.

As we reached the denouement, there is an element of inordinate drama, a little over the top, and some loose ends are a little too neatly tied. Yet, some other elements of the conclusion surprise.

All in all, for me, I could clearly imagine this novel as an ITV crime/mystery drama, one that would work well and be popular. ITV recently adapted Erin Kelly's The Poison Tree and I could see The Back Road fitting the same bill scheduling wise.

A good mystery novel, which for once, is more about the secrets and lies of people's personal lives instead of the well worn police procedural format.

Verdict : 7/10

Destination : ebook storage    

Book #22 Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway

Hawthorn and Child

Length of time in possession : 5 months

In Hawthorn and Child - a story of two policemen, an investigation into a criminal named Mishazzo, and the shooting of a young man, I feel that I've encountered my old friend "Emperor's New Clothes" in which a book that other people have raved about is a book which is completely lost on me, and a book which I feel is empty and hollow, masking itself as something superior.  Not just superior to other books, but superior to anyone who doesn't get it, because they mustn't be "clever enough"

What is in actual fact a linked short story collection, it is also masquerading as a novel, an incredibly short one at that. Each short story is vaguely linked to either the case or the duo, the first, 1934, starts well, introducing the duo. Other stories struggle to seem in any way relevant.

Not only is there no cohesive plot to speak of, characterization is so sparse as to barely exist.

It reminded me of Paul Auster and that's really not a compliment.

It's not remotely worth the cover price. Avoid.    

Verdict : 4/10

Destination : Ebook storage

Book #21 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl

Length of time in possession : 1 week

I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn for my book club. I had noticed it on promotion before and been attracted to it, but had no room to expand my List until I had it for book club.

Gone Girl is very hard to discuss in detail if you haven't read it, because the twists and turns of the plot mean it's hard to describe either the events within or the characters without revealing spoilers, which I am not going to do.

Gone Girl is a novel about a couple, Nick and Amy whose financial circumstances have meant they have had to leave their sophisticated New York life for the small town in Missouri where Nick grew up spurred on by the illness of both Nick's parents. Nick has opened a bar with his twin, but his wife, a minor faded celebrity, is finding it hard to adjust. 

Nick gets a call from a neighbour and drives home to check his house, when he arrives the house has been ransacked, and his wife is missing.

The narrative then alternates between Nick's experience of the fallout and the diary kept by his missing wife. Can't really say more than that.

Gone Girl is intriguing and thrilling, it's well paced, and a page turner, and I always like 'two side' novels. When you're reading it you really enjoy it.

But when we sat down to discuss it at bookclub the more we discussed the book, the more the flaws we had to accuse it of, which left the novel transformed into a Swiss Cheese.

There are a lot of baffling elements and plotholes I can't delve into without posting spoilers. The one I can point and laugh at though is this idea of the group of men who lost their jobs roaming around aimlessly in a large pack, like dogs.... very odd.

The novel is consistently entertaining however , and would make an excellent beach or holiday purchase.

Verdict :  7/10

Destination : Will pass on to other readers 

Book #65 Death Comes To Pemberley by PD James

Death Comes To Pemberley

Like many, I am a big fan of Pride and Prejudice, both the original Austen novel and 1990's BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth. Over the years, many "sequels" have been produced by other writers, with mostly insipid, cheesy covers capitalising upon and sullying another writers genius, at which I have resolutely turned my nose up.

But....the premise of this was, in theory, a different and original look from a respectable writer with established credentials, a murder mystery, with our beloved couples at the centre. The idea was too good to resist.


Sadly the execution does not match the readers anticipation. Darcy and Lizzie die a little under James' pen, and lose their charisma Lizzie particularly losing all vivaciousness, and the portrait of their life at Pemberley is very slight. Both seem cowed by others at times and not at all their assertive selves.

When I turned the page to the description of a servant scrubbing the silver, I sighed with a "Who Cares?" disappointment, and the entire servant saga was completely uninteresting.

At the end of Pride and Prejudice we are told that Kitty Bennet divides her time between the Bingley's and Darcy's and becomes a great friend of Georgiana and yet James chooses to erase Kitty from the story entirely and she does not feature except as a passing mention.

Additionally great chunks of the novel seem to recap past events from Pride and Prejudice and even in some cases, recycle dialogue used in the Andrew Davies script, though the reader has a fondness for this history, it seems to exist to bump up the word count, if these elements were stripped away, you would perhaps be left with a short story or at best a novella.

The only thing of note was an expansion of the story behind the relationship of Wickham and the mysterious baddie Mrs Young, but taken as a whole, the novel is sub par as an Austen sequel, and if it were a novel in its own right and therefore not relying on Austen's already established parameters and characterisation, it would be abysmal.

I will be returning to my former rigid rule of never reading a sequel not by the original author, a phenomenon which has always dismayed me and am really rather mad at myself that I broke that rule for this mess. 2/10      

Book #53 The Quincunx by Charles Palliser

The Quincunx

The Quincunx by Charles Palliser was recommended to me by Internet buddy Helen who knows I like Victoriana style literature. In The Quincunx a young boy named John grows up under a cloud, his mother alludes to their being in danger but does not state what this danger is, and they live under a false name.

I could not decide whether this book, a story of an extended family's fight over a will was a homage to Dickens or mocking Dickens, it certainly feels like a satire and therefore mocking of the sort of thing that Dickens produced. There are elements of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield and most fundamentally Bleak House throughout the entire tale. Henrietta for example reminded me of Estella and the character of Bissett reminded me of a female Uriah Heep.

There is plenty of suspense and action as John lurches from disastrous episode to disastrous episode, but I found I became infuriated by how often he is repeatedly tricked and cheated, suspects the wrong people and doesn't trust the right ones and ends up in a worst state than he was in before.

The book incites genuine feeling in the reader which not all books manage to do. In this book, it's severe irritation in the early stages with both conniving servant Bissett and foolish mother Mary. Others such as Miss Quilliam manage to pull off both respect and pity. So in that manner it is a well written novel because you do genuinely care.

One of the things I liked best about The Quincunx particularly in the initial stages was that the shadowy figures pulling the strings behind the scenes are not initially referred to as who they are but by what they represent. Power, Justice, Equity, Law. You don't know who they are, but you know what they are I thought this was clever. The mystery aspect too is genuinely intricate.


On the other hand the inter connections and general ancestral history of the family are (probably deliberately) highly convoluted and genuinely confusing. Towards the end it feels farcical, as heirs seem to sprout up from every corner. The Quincunx at over 1,000 pages long is quite the task to read in terms of sheer man hours, and in my opinion could have been pared back by about 400 pages.

A good book, but only if you like the style of writing of Dickens and his peers . 8/10 

Book #96 In The Shadow Of The Cypress by Thomas Steinbeck

In The Shadow Of The Cypress 

Written by Thomas "son of John" Steinbeck, In The Shadow Of The Cypress is perhaps existing proof that the ability to write is non-hereditary. It is a peculiarly vexing novel and proved a struggle for me from the very outset. The first character we are introduced to is academic Charles Gilbert who is working at a Stanford associated laboratory. He has an Irish friend, Billy O'Flynn who has very close associations to the local Chinese fishing community, and one night he discovers two artifacts under a cypress tree that appear to be of some significance. He shows Gilbert, who tries but does not get very far in his attempts to investigate matters. Gilbert contacts a Chinese academic named Lao Hong whose attempts at interacting with the local Chinese elders also seem rather fruitless.

Both these sections belonging to Gilbert and Hong were for me often incomprehensible, impenetrable and more importantly boring, yet there are interesting shades of post colonial "Orientalism" as defined by Edward Said in his 1978 book throughout the novel, but particularly in its earlier sections. On the UK Amazon, there is but one customer review giving this novel five stars but, look at its companion page on the US site and there is a flurry of one and two star reviews, saying they hated the book found it impossible to read and that many of them gave up early on.

I too found the early sections very difficult, and perhaps if not for the challenge would have given up but, the novel switches at the mid way point and moves its narratives to the present day.  Prodigious Stanford academic Luke rediscovers Gilbert's old papers regarding the Chinese artifacts and their significance in terms of historical import, teaming up with Chinese colleague Robert Wu he endeavours to uncover an ancient mystery. It is this latter section which makes the events of the former make sense, but, it's whether you have the patience to sit through page after page of confusing, dull, narrative to get to this point, my guess is many won't.

I actually enjoyed the Luke/Wu partnership, the developments and the sense of majesty in the behaviour of Mr Wu Snr. However as their research ends, Steinbeck Jnr gives us a summation of Wu and Luke's lives post their dramatic discovery, what they went on to do, who they married etc. It's very sudden, horribly done and feels terribly amateur like a school kid concluding their first short story. It has a rather nice epilogue, however.

In conclusion this is half a good book and an interesting theory apparently first espoused by Steinbeck Snr, but I would question whether the payoff in the second half was worth what felt like an unending trudge through the first.

5/10

Book #89 The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly

The Poison Tree

The Poison Tree, sharing its title with a a William Blake poem which I will also shortly post, is a novel which has finally broken what has been a lengthy reading hiatus for me. I have attempted unsuccessfully to read Frank Herbert's Dune in this period and have struggled, aiming to return and complete it before the end of the year.

The Poison Tree is a novel which has some shortcomings and flaws yet even with that is strangely addictive. Our protaganist is Karen Clarke, a girl from a humble background who goes to university and is settling in to what promises to be a very ordinary very boring very middle class future alongside similar girls when her life collides with that of Biba, a "Bohemian" carefree spirit in whose world she not only becomes entangled in, but willingly and deliberately becomes an essential part of, so in love is she with what she sees as an extraordinary world.

The story flashes between Karen in the present day, a single mother struggling to readjust to her partners return from prison, and in Karen in the past when she first met Biba and subsequently Biba's brother Rex. I felt like I'd read a tale of "enigmatic, slightly strange, brother/sister who enthrall people whilst living in a state of shambolic decadence" before, but I am still unable to pin down which novel it was in my head, suggestions welcome


I identified with the situation of meeting someone whom you so admire and want to emulate that you are blind to their faults and failings in not a sexual sense but in an inspired sense, almost as if you had been hypnotized by them, because part of you sees the person you would like to be in them. Like being in love, yet not quite. So, I understood Karen, yet to the reader as bystander Biba is an utterly obnoxious egotist, for whom people cease to exist when no longer physically present or no longer useful or interesting. I understood this too, and so ultimately does Karen. I liked this, I thought there was very strong characterisation throughout the novel I could clearly picture Biba and Karen both.

The problem with the book is that the writing isn't perfect, I've read so many much better written novels, it is only slightly above average in the actual quality of prose department yet the plot is very enjoyable, and there were parts I didn't see coming, although perhaps I should have. The final and the largest flaw really is the way in which the initial prologue of the phonecall in the middle of the night hangs together with the end, though it is what feels like a fitting outcome, it is unbelievably quickly done, too quickly, in a sense that makes you doubt the ultimate likelihood of it happening. It is satisfying though.

This, a book about intensity in friendship, loyalty, rivalry and deception would not automatically spring to mind if asked for a recommendation, yet with that, it has stayed with me in a sense, after I finished it. It is enjoyable and not at all heavy. It is easy to see why it was on so many summer reads lists. I wouldn't say, run and get this book or your life will be incomplete, but if you are humming and haa-ing in a bookshop, you could do much worse than pick this, and ultimately I don't think you'd be sorry  7.5/10

Book #52 Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

Case Histories

The second female writer I have chosen is Kate Atkinson who rose to public notice when her debut novel 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' won The Whitbread Book Of The Year. This novel, Case Histories, is the first of (currently) four Jackson Brodie novels in which the protagonist is an ex-soldier, ex cop and at the start of this novel, a private investigator. It came to my attention through its recent enjoyable adaptation on the BBC, which was an adaptation of this novel and subsequent Brodie novels One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? as a six part series. I'm something of a purist, and though I've seen the adaptation, I don't feel I can read new novel 'Started Early, Took My Dog' until I have read the three preceding novels.

The novel introduces us to three old unsolved cases, that Jackson has been approached with to investigate:   

The first is the disappearance of Olivia Land who vanished aged 3 in the 1970's from the family garden, and was never found.

The second is the shock murder of 18 year old Laura Wyre, ten years previously, for whom no killer nor motive could be found.

And the third is a guilt ridden woman searching for her sisters long lost child.

What is interesting is that all three cases are women and 'Lost Girls' seem something of a recurrent theme for Brodie, who himself has an unresolved case of a lost girl in his own life.

What is slightly off-putting when you do see an adaptation first is the differences between the TV and the book, there are subtle differences in each case, but the two most glaring differences are the end of the story (for Jackson) and its setting which, thoroughly Scottish in adaptation is located in Cambridge in the book. This makes some sense though as the two following novels relocate to Edinburgh, so the adaptation just moves all three books there. I did find it interesting whilst watching it, that in the first two episodes which show the stories of Case Histories; all Jackson's clients are clearly English and not just English and living in Scotland, but this goes unremarked on. This is a fault of the series not the book though, which is true to its setting.

It is difficult not to write a review that merely compares book to show, as this is the immediate thought. Unfortunately having seen the show I knew the outcome of each case. In many ways this didn't matter, what is great about Case Histories is that it is neither a crime novel nor solely contemporary literary fiction, crossing both categories admirably. A well written contemporary novel that happens to feature the investigation of mysteries. Perhaps the Land girls story is a cliche, and perhaps Jackson realises what kind of suspect killed Laura Wyre too quickly but he is an ex cop and ex army. The overall novel is very well written and held together nicely by the characterisation of Jackson himself, an extremely likeable man. If you didn't see the series, good as it was, I think you are lucky as you get to view the cases with fresh eyes, enjoy the story and then get the DVD and enjoy watching scary Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) become smouldering Jackson Brodie.

The ending of Case Histories seems to suggest that further Brodie novels were not planned, but perhaps Atkinson like the reader, finds Jackson Brodie a little hard to resist. I look forward to reading the other novels particularly recent new novel 'Started Early, Took My Dog' 8/10