books – Page 6 – Life of Cri.me

Britta Bolt, Brown Cafés and Amsterdam.

Posted on May 13, 2015June 15, 2015 by J

It’s been around 18 years since I last wandered the streets of Amsterdam for Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) but the imagery in Britta Bolt’s Pieter Posthumus novels brings the memories flooding back….

Writing here for LifeOfCri.me, Britta Boehler and Rodney Bolt, the duo behind Britta Bolt talk to us about Amsterdam’s ‘Brown Cafés’

The ‘brown café’ or ‘brown bar’ is an Amsterdam institution. De Dolle Hond, in our Posthumus books, is a fine example. The ‘brown’, people will tell you, is because of tobacco smoke that has for eons stained walls and ceiling. Shift a picture frame in an old establishment and the chocolate-coloured wallpaper appears white beneath it. Some of these bars – like de Dolle Hond – date back to the Golden Age, when the Dutch had a saying: “If a Hollander should be bereft of his pipe of tobacco he could not blissfully enter heaven”. In today’s more healthy world, the dark wall-colouring is more likely to be the result of a coat of paint. But the basic ingredients of a brown café remain: wood-panelling, dark wooden furniture, a burnished bar. Décor is unfussy – though sometimes it’s been around for centuries, so you might be sitting beneath a priceless lamp, beside a time-stained oil painting. Something startlingly modern may join the flotsam and jetsam of past years, but the word ‘designer’ is anathema. There’ll be wooden barrels along one wall, perhaps, old prints, posters for a local theatre, quirky bric-a-brac reflecting one person’s obsession with football, love of Amsterdam, or downright curious taste – for these cafés often belong to the individuals who serve you. Some have been in the same families for generations. All very like De Dolle Hond. Among our real-life favourite brown cafés are De Dokter, which Rodney found closed one evening because the owner was at home putting up Christmas decorations, and De Englese Reet, which, because the eldest sons of each successive generation of the owner’s family are all given the same name, has had a barman called ‘Teun’ for nearly 100 years.

Published by Mulholland, Lives Lost is available to buy now. Read the LifeOfCri.me review here….

Reading, Reviews

Woman of the Dead – Bernhard Aichner

Posted on April 18, 2015April 18, 2015 by J

How far would you go to avenge the one you love?

Blum has a secret buried deep in her past. She thought she’d left the past behind. But then Mark, the man she loves, dies. His death looks like a hit-and-run. It isn’t a hit-and-run. Mark has been killed by the men he was investigating. And then, suddenly, Blum rediscovers what she’s capable of…

” A highly entertaining read…”

Some people really know how to do their job when it comes to attracting your attention to a book, and so when I saw some of the ‘blurb’ for Woman of the Dead I just had to pick it up….

“Kill Bill meets Dexter via The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”

It turned out to be an apt description for what I found to be a highly entertaining read.

Blum is an intriguing character, beginning as a warm, kind-hearted and loving wife and mother, despite the harshness of her childhood, and her actions of the past. She is an accomplished business woman running her own funeral home, happy and settled with her policeman husband Mark and their two daughters.

When Mark is killed in front of her eyes she is devastated. It is only when she discovers the ‘off the books’ investigation he was undertaking, amongst the papers in his study that she begins to believe that the accident was in fact murder. Then after beginning to investigate the crime Mark was looking into, she uses her skills, knowledge and the tools of her trade as an undertaker to exact brutal, bloody and violent revenge on those who were responsible.

I loved the pace of the story, and the way that not all things go to plan for Blum, forcing her to not only re-evaluate her actions and decisions, but also the repercussions to herself and her family. There are some vile and horrible characters to discover with some extreme language to accompany them, and many of whom you would rather see brought to justice, and yet at the same time you are always backing Blum.

If you want a break away from the usual gritty crime reads, or just fancy trying something different, Woman Of The Dead is ideal for that. It’s also the first in a trilogy, and I’m sure, like me, many of you will be keen to see what happens to Blum next.

Reading, Reviews

Sweet Nothing – Richard Lange

Posted on April 16, 2015April 16, 2015 by J

Every life is uncertain. Every choice is a danger.

Set on the dark side of Los Angeles, this is a masterful collection of edge-of-your-seat tales: a prison guard must protect an inmate being tried for heinous crimes. A father and son set out to rescue a young couple trapped during a wildfire after they cross the border. An ex-con trying to make good as a security guard stumbles onto a burglary plot. A young father must submit to blackmail to protect the fragile life he’s built. Sweet Nothing is an intense and gripping journey through real lives with big problems, from one of America’s great short story writers.

There’s nothing sweet about it……

I’ve read nothing of Richard Lange before, and suffering from a bad case of book hangover, I picked up Sweet Nothing, with a view to easing myself back into the saddle, taking the short stories as ‘bite sized chunks’ I could easily pick up and put down.

After reading the first story, I wasn’t quite sure what to think, so I have to admit to putting the book aside to try again at a better time. When I finally picked it back up again, I was surprised how quickly each story passed before me. It’s an interesting mix of tales that took me through a range of emotions as I read, which is something I’d more often associate with a full length novel, rather than from a collection of short stories.

With an eclectic mix of heroes and anti-heroes along with the dilemmas, decisions and tragedies of everyday life both, modern and in the past, forming the heart of each read, it’s a dark read, where the book title truly fits because there’s definitely nothing sweet about it.

Reading, Reviews

Second Life – S. J. Watson

Posted on April 15, 2015April 15, 2015 by J

She loves her husband. She’s obsessed by a stranger.

She’s a devoted mother. She’s prepared to lose everything.

She knows what she’s doing. She’s out of control.

She’s innocent. She’s guilty as sin.

She’s living two lives. She might lose both . . .

“A perfect pick for your book club”

There’s a lot that can be said about Second Life, although not without giving away too much of the plot, and like any story, it has both its positive and negative sides. On the negative side it’s a difficult book to get into, protagonist Julia comes across as the typical bored housewife, stuck in a rut of duty and care brought about by a combination of love and guilt, who, despite the unusual circumstances of connection, embarks on an affair. After a while you begin just begin to think, yeah, so what?

On the positive side, once you push past that inital bout of indifference to Julia, get to the repercussions, and the see the way Watson cleverly spins events on their head, you can really begin to understand just how smartly layered Second Life really is. To me it was like lighting a firework, just as you are beginning to wonder if the fuse has gone out, it suddenly sparks into life, delivering a dazzling display with bang, after boom, after bang until the darkness around you is nothing but a smokey haze.

With a clear understanding of the difficulties associated with an addictive personality, trading one addiction for another, and with an ending so distinctive you will either love it or hate it, this is one book that is a perfect pick for your book club. Prepare for a book hangover, this one will sit with you a while as you reconcile your thoughts, and will certainly create plenty of discussion amongst hardened book fans, particularly those who loved Before I Go To Sleep.

Reading, Reviews

Close To Home – Lisa Jackson

Posted on April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 by J

Vowing to make a fresh start, Sarah McAdams has come home to renovate the old Victorian mansion where she grew up. Her daughters, Jade and Gracie, aren’t impressed by the rundown property on the shores of Oregon’s wild Columbia River. As soon as they pull up the isolated drive, Sarah too is beset by uneasy memories–of her cold, distant mother, of the half-sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago night when Sarah was found on the widow’s walk, feverish and delirious.

Ever since the original mistress of the house plunged to her death almost a century ago, there have been rumors that the place is haunted. As a girl, Sarah sensed a presence there, and soon Gracie claims to see a lady in white running up the stairs. Still, Sarah has little time to dwell on ghost stories, between overseeing construction and dealing with the return of a man from her past.

But there’s a new, more urgent menace in the small town. One by one, teenage girls are disappearing. Frantic for her daughters’ safety, Sarah feels her veneer cracking and the house’s walls closing in on her again. Somewhere deep in her memory is the key to a very real and terrifying danger. And only by confronting her worst fears can she stop the nightmare roaring back to life once more. . .

A ghost story, a mystery, suspense and romance – all in one book. Wow – but it works.

Sarah McAdams moves back to her childhood home with her two daughters; a house that she has bad and missing memories about and ran from many years before. The past continues to haunt her and now starts to include her family as she struggles to find all the reasons for her fear.

At the same time, someone is kidnapping girls and Sarah’s eldest daughter is the next target – the daughter who has issues of her own as the past and present intersect. Add Sarah’s first love to the mix and each thread winds together to culminate in the need to confront secrets and lies.

Despite the fact that there are a lot of plot threads and at times it seems a struggle to keep up each part of the differing aspects and give them sufficient attention, as ever, Lisa Jackson offers a suspenseful novel that keeps you interested as the pages pass you by. The addition of the supernatural element gives extra life to the back story and cleverly amalgamates into the present that leads into the shocking climax.

I always enjoy books by Lisa Jackson; she writes suspense beautifully and does not have heroines that scream, cry, fall apart in tough situations or are used purely for corpses and her characterisation includes the frailties and fractures of life without being atypical of this type of book.

Close to Home is a good read and yet again Lisa Jackson delivers a page turner.

Review by KL

Reading, Reviews

The Lie – C.L. Taylor

Posted on March 26, 2015March 26, 2015 by J

I know your name’s not really Jane Hughes….

Jane Hughes has a loving partner, a job in an animal sanctuary, and a tiny cottage in rural Wales. She’s happier than she’s ever been, but her life is a lie. Jane Hughes does not really exist.

Five years earlier, Jane and her then best friends went on holiday, but what should have been the trip of a lifetime rapidly descended into a nightmare that claimed the lives of two of the women.

Jane has tried to put the past behind her but someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed Jane and everything she loves.

Frightening, tragic, uncomfortable & addictive…

Opening with Jane in her quiet new life, settled and trying to put the past behind her, the narrative splits in two once we discover, along with Jane, that somebody knows her secret. The first remains with Jane, as she tries to uncover who sent her the message that has threatened her fragile new existence. The second set five years before detailing the frightening and tragic tale of their trip together, the adventure of a lifetime that became the holiday from hell.

One of the things I like to see with authors I have read before is progression, and after already enjoying Taylor’s previous novel The Accident (Published as Before I Wake in the US) it was a delight to me to uncover a distinct step up in storytelling and style with The Lie. It has a far more addictive story line, and although I found it quite uncomfortable reading at times, I raced through it in just a single sitting.

I say uncomfortable, because of the excellence with which the friendships of the girlfriends are portrayed. I found that the fractures, faults, and issues in their relationships were so well written that I couldn’t help but reflect on my own friendships as I read. Particularly those that, whether missed or not, I have lost over the years, and to me that reaction alone marks The Lie as an outstanding read and one that will linger with me for some time.

Reading, Reviews

How I Lost You – Jenny Blackhurst

Posted on March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 by J

They told her she killed her son. She served her time. But what if they lied?

I have no memory of what happened but I was told I killed my son. And you believe what your loved ones, your doctor, and the police tell you, don’t you?

My name is Emma Cartwright. Three years ago it was Susan Webster, and I murdered my twelve week old son Dylan. I was sent to Oakdale Psychiatric institute for my crime and four weeks ago I was released early on parole with a new identity, address and a chance to rebuild my shattered life.

This morning I received and envelope addressed to Susan Webster. Inside it was a photograph of a toddler called Dylan. Now I am questioning everything I believe because if I have no memory of the event, how can I believe he’s truly dead?

If there was the smallest chance your son was alive, what would you do to get him back?

Last week feeling under the weather, more than a little sorry for myself, and wrapped up in bed having a duvet day, I picked up Jenny Blackhurst’s debut novel How I Lost You and finished it in one sitting. It was ideal, a perfect lazing by the pool / rainy day read, it is intriguing, engrossing and will have you flipping the pages quickly.

There are two main threads in How I Lost You, the first is the story of Susan, what happened to her when her son was murdered, her suspicions and beliefs surrounding the mystery of what really happened, and her re-evaluation of her previous life and the relationships within it. The second is set twenty years earlier, and tells the story of the lives and misdemeanours of a group of privileged boys as they grow up and go to university together.

It takes a little while to reconcile these two strands, trying to work out where the characters from one fit within the other, but once the pieces slot into place the story moves on apace. Susan teams up with journalist Nick, as they attempt to discover the reality of what happened to baby Dylan, and what, if anything, it has to do with the past life of her ex-husband Mark.

My only niggle with the book is that for a convicted killer released on parole, Susan appears to be incredibly naive and far too trusting of others, but if you can suspend that little bit of disbelief for a while then How I Lost you is a thoroughly enjoyable read, with a culprit that few will see coming.

Reading, Reviews

The Ties That Bind – Erin Kelly

Posted on March 7, 2015March 7, 2015 by J

Could a soul once sold, truly be redeemed?

Luke is a true crime writer in search of a story, when he flees to Brighton after an explosive break-up, the perfect subject lands in his lap: reformed gangster Joss Grand. Now in his eighties, Grand once ruled the underworld with his sadistic sidekick Jacky Nye – Until Jacky washed up by the West Pier in 1968, strangled and thrown into the sea.

Though Grand’s alibi seems cast-iron, Luke is sure there’s more to the story than meets the eye, and he convinces the criminal turned philanthropist to be interviewed for a book about his life.

Luke is drawn deeper into the mystery of Jacky Nyes murder. Was Grand there that night? Is he really as reformed a character as he claims? And who was the girl in the red coat seen fleeing the murder scene?

Soon Luke realises that in stirring up secrets from the past, he may have placed himself in terrible danger.

Absolutely brilliant.

For me a new Erin Kelly book is a much-anticipated event where as soon as I get hold of my copy I find quiet and comfortable space and lock myself away from the world so I can read in pure, uninterrupted pleasure, knowing when I’m finished, I will be able to close the book with a satisfying thud.

Delightfully, The Ties That Bind, has done nothing to change that feeling either. As a reader, I love to see growth in a writer, and in her fourth book, for me, Kelly has clearly bloomed. It’s also a pleasure to say that the book hangover I suffered when I finished was purely because I enjoyed the story so much, rather than because the author had left strands of story thread dangling in the wind.

There are some great characters in there too, I loved both gangster gone good, Joss Grand, and ex-journalist now cuttings library keeper Sandy. My particular favourite however, Was Jem, Luke’s controlling ex-boyfriend, who was so well written he really gave me the creeps at times.

The plot was as tightly done as ever with plenty twists and turns I didn’t see coming and a couple I did. Enough to make me enjoy getting those parts right, while also managing to ensure I was completely wrong about where things were going at the same time.

It’s a cracker of a read that I’d happily recommend to anyone looking for something refreshing in their crime fiction thrillers.

Reading, Reviews

The Ice Twins – S.K. Tremayne

Posted on March 7, 2015March 12, 2015 by J

One of Sarah’s daughters died. But can she be sure which one? A terrifying psychological thriller that will chill you to the bone.

A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives.

But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity – that she, in fact, is Lydia – their world comes crashing down once again.

As winter encroaches, Angus is forced to travel away from the island for work, Sarah is feeling isolated, and Kirstie (or is it Lydia?) is growing more disturbed. When a violent storm leaves Sarah and her daughter stranded, Sarah finds herself tortured by the past – what really happened on that fateful day one of her daughters died?

Not a book for an early night…

I picked The Ice Twins up to read one night, just as I was getting into bed, which wasn’t one of my best ideas because 3 hours after picking it up, my eyes, despite being somewhat more droopy, were still firmly glued to the screen of my Kindle. A quick glance at my reading statistics showed that I was already beyond halfway through the book, I was amazed, but not at all surprised. It is simply brilliant.

Following the death of one of their daughters, Angus and Sarah are a typically broken couple, creating more problems than they are solving by their lack of communication as they each grieve for a different child. Their remaining daughter is grieving too, and every day in the mirror must look at the face of the sister she lost. As the three of them stumble separately through the aftermath of the tragedy that haunts this family we discover that all was not as it seems.

Although they were identical twins, Kirstie and Lydia were remarkably different children, and both Angus and Sarah had their own favourite. Is this why their remaining daughter claims to be the other? In turn, lies, omissions and the solitude of her new home have thrust Sarah into a world of confusion, could this affecting her daughter and be why Kirstie believes she is Lydia or is there a more sinister reason yet to be uncovered?

Haunting, spooky, melancholy and with tragedy at its heart, this is not a book you want to read if you’re planning an early night, because even if you manage to put it down, The Ice Twins is one book that just won’t let you go.

Reading, Reviews

I Can See In The Dark – Karin Fossum

Posted on February 17, 2015February 19, 2015 by J

Riktor doesn’t ask the policeman why he’s stormed into his house without knocking – he’s certain that someone has finally realised what happened that day.

As the policeman questions him however, Riktor realises that he’s being accused of something completely unexpected – something he has nothing to do with. But can Riktor convince the policeman that he’s innocent of one wrongdoing without revealing that he’s guilty of another, far more terrible, crime.

It took me a little longer than usual to get into I Can See In The Dark, but once I reached that point where everything just began to slot neatly into place, the pure genius of Fossum’s writing came to the fore.

Riktor is a truly awful character whose behaviour will have your skin crawling as you read. he is genuinely evil and takes great pleasure in tormenting those in his care, expressing in bursts of cruelty the carefully controlled rage that bubbles beneath the surface.

What I really enjoyed about the book, was not only how ‘creeped out’ I felt at Riktor’s behaviour, and his lack of even unreasonable reasoning behind it which comes across clearly in his narrative, but also the irony of his situation, being suspected and prosecuted for a crime, although not the one he really committed, and yet this isn’t even the delicious twist in the tale that comes further in.

If you fancy a something a bit different from your usual crime read, I Can See In The Dark is a fantastic book, from a Queen of crime.