I thought his first was mediocre, his second an improvement and his third and fourth efforts both excellent. You might have read the (weakest) first two only.
I started The Hitchhiker on Audible, and it was just getting too creepy.
I just finished The Last Trace by Petronella McGovern. It has some similarities to The Nowhere Child by Christian White (what’s happened to him?)
Lachy is a guy who works on water treatments in Africa, back in Oz, and is put out when he gets a request for a DNA sample from someone he’d met in the US. This concerns him a tad since he has complete memory blackouts and he’s worried he’s done something bad.
He decides to go back to the US, taking his son. His grandparents were into that old-time religion.
It’s not favourable to hardline religion…but that’s a plus in my book.
About a 7/10.
Now onto A Town Called Treachery by Mitch Jennings, a former journo. Matty is a 12-year old boy, inquisitive and living with his deadbeat widowed father and stroke-bound grandfather. He sees police attending a death on the beach and is upset that it’s his favourite teacher and soon realises everyone in town thinks his dad did it. The town also has a drunkard journo who befriends Matty.
He has a new one due out on 24th September. Here’s the blurb:
When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked and one group of old friends starts to panic. Their long-held secret is about to be uncovered.
It all began in 1999 when sixteen-year-old Aaron ran away from home, drawing his friends into an unforeseeable chain of events that no one escaped from unscathed.
In The Ledge , past and present run breathlessly parallel, leading to a climax that will change everything you thought you knew. This is a mind-bending new novel from the master of the unexpected.
His most recent effort ‘Wild Place’ was a tad disappointing so it would be great if he’s rediscovered his mojo with this outing. I’ll give it a go.
There’s also a new Richard Osman titled ‘We Solve Murders’ to be released on 17th September, which will also be an automatic buy for me.
Combining the heart and humour of The Thursday Murder Club with a puzzling international mystery, welcome to the blockbusting new series from the biggest new fiction author of the decade, Richard Osman.
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favourite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.
Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job . . .
Then a dead body, a bag of money and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a deadly enemy?
On 24th October, we can also look forward to the latest book by Benjamin Stevenson, one of my favourite Australian authors. This one’s called 'Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret’.
It’s another of his trademark quirky murder mysteries featuring Ernest Cunningham.
There’s a new Bosch/Ballard book coming soon too…either mid-Sep or mid-Oct.
They’ve commissioned a Renee Ballard sries too, with Maggie Q as Renee Ballard. They do seem determined to give roles to minorities even though the book character is Caucasian. Same with Siobhan Clarke in the new Rebus series.
I didn’t like The Wild Place at all. Kept waiting for something to happen.
Now I’ve broken your run of three consecutive posts.
Picked up 3 or 4 books in Sydney yesterday, including Susie Dent (Cats do Countdown) debut crime novel. I hope there’s a righteous avenger running amok amongst people misusing apostrophes or using subject pronouns after prepositions.
Another was a recent Anna Funder.
Spltting infinitives or endng sentences on prepositions are ok by me.
I’ve been reading DH Lawrence, The Rainbow and Women in Love. I had never read either before, and having now read them both, I don’t really think I missed much. The Rainbow is mainly about Ursula Brangwen growing up poor but smart, but I never felt that Lawrence really understood her. Women in Love is about Ursula and her sister Gudrun, who’s two years younger, and their relationships with Rupert Birkin and Gerald Critch respectively. Again I didn’t feel that any of them really came alive.
I’m now re-reading Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza. I was 19 when I read it for the first time, and it made an enormous impression on me at the time; but as I read it again I find that I’d completely forgotten most of it. There are a lot of references that are completely over my head, but they’re only incidental to the story, and I’m enjoying it a lot.
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Reading John Safran Murder in Mississippi. Not bad.
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It’s a good read. I hope you’ve stocked up on Green Dots!
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lol he’s getting led down the garden path a bit. I love his writing it captures his personality so well.
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Safran refers to this as his ‘Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil’ moment. That book, written by John Berendt, follows a similar theme and is also worth reading.
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I was in Savannah in ‘97 and we did a tour of the GOGAE. Forrest Gump had just been made and filmed there.
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Finished Mitch Jennings’s debut novel A Town called Treachery.
Its pretty clear it’s been written by an experienced investigative journalist , as was Scrublands by Chris Hammer. Wife of a local bigwig has been murdered and everyone in the town’s finger is pointed at Robbie Finnerty. Robbie’s 11yo son has a nose for news though and starts helping washed-up local scribe, Stuart Dryden.
Nothing all that surprising in the whodunnit, but you can always guess who the likely ones are.
Well written, well worth a look.
Girl, Missing by Sherryl Clark
Lou Alcott has just joined a private investigator firm. She’s an ex-cop, drummed out for attacking a domestic abuser’s hand with a hammer. Her father, with whom she has a very difficult relationship, is VicPol’s Assistant Chief Commissioner. Her grandfather, Hamish, is one of Melbourne’s top criminals, but on his way to getting out.
The first two jobs she’s assigned to are missing women, one apparently after using dating apps.
An enjoyable yarn too.
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I’m on holiday in Noosa and I read The Tilt by Chris Hammer.
It keeps you turning the pages, but I got to the end and thought, “There’s just too much!”
The plot is incredibly complicated, involving the murder of a soldier during the second world war, more murders during the 70s, neo-Nazi terrorists, family secrets long suppressed, possibly the Mafia, adulteries and adoptions. And of course the detective is personally involved in lots of it. I forgot agoraphobia, but that’s in there too.
Too complicated. And mysteries are solved by people deciding to tell things they’ve known all along.
After I finished it I went back to the bookshop. There was another Chris Hammer book there. The blurb said it was about 7 families who controlled a town somewhere. I decided I couldn’t face it and spotted a Kate Atkinson, so I bought that instead.
Having driven to and from Sydney in the last fortnight, I’ve had the opportunity to get through a fair bit of material on Audible.
Finished The Black Wolf as mentioned before. There’s a third Red Queen book on the way, White King, about the virtue of bleach and other disinfectants in Spain.
Then jumped onto The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. This covers the period from about the 4th or 5th century and discusses the rise of religions, explorations, wars and products new to the west. I’m up to Hitler’s invasion of the USSR. Very interesting.
He suggests that the British were seriously contemplating allying with Germany against Russia in WW1 but deciding against because of Russian designs on Persia (where all the oil was) and India, the jewel in the British crown.
Then there’s Greenmantle with the Brits and the Germans AND the Russians in the ME.
A long time since I read those John Buchans.
Not the same, but Erskine Childers, who worked in the parliamentary offices, was one of the first to suggest the Germans posed a major threat to Britain with plans to move soldiers across the North Sea on barges. After the war, he got heavily involved in the Irish anti-Treaty side of the Irish Civil War of 1922-24. He was captured by the Irish Free State (pro-Treaty, or Michael Collins) side and summarily shot.
Riddle of the Sands…
Damn…I meant to include that in the post.
If you are going to Brussels, I expect you to read the Professor and Villette. The Professor who Charlotte Brontë had a crush on was a famous educator, with a street or lane named after him. There is a Brontë society in Brussels ( Emily also did time there).
The Shirley novel also has an Antwerp connection, with the Flemish weavers and Luddites during the Napoleonic blockades.
Then, if you can bear Jane Eyre, The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a better read.