Tag: Blog Tour

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Fallowfield by Nicole Swengley

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Fallowfield Hall: once an avant garde art college, now abandoned and decaying. To journalist Rowan Woodhouse it is the fabled backdrop to her parents’ 1970s love story. But is there more to Fallowfield – and her family – to uncover?

Seeking solace after the loss of her artist-teacher father, Rowan accepts a research project to interview college alumni, hoping this may reveal more about him – and her enigmatic mother who died tragically young.

But Rowan soon discovers that Fallowfield had a darker side than hedonistic student life and idyllic picnics on its famous daffodil lawns. Jealousies, betrayals and rivalries emerge when she learns of the mysterious death of one young woman and the unsolved disappearance of another. As part and present become dangerously intertwined, how will the suspicions sparked by her investigations impact Rowan’s own troubled life?

I was immediately intrigued by this story that uncovers life at a progressive art school called Fallowfield, where journalist Rowan Woodhouse’s parents met in the 1970s. The opportunity to contact alumni from her parent’s years at the college has a personal benefit, to find out more about her parent’s relationship. However, she finds a surprising amount aren’t keen on talking about their student days, with some coming across as rude on her first phone call. Where people do engage with the project the author has cleverly created different perspectives of the same time, showing that while people might be in the same place they haven’t always had the same experience. This is usually because everything in life is experienced through our own filter, formed by our personality traits, learned behaviours, past experiences and general outlook Time also affects memories, causing events to be distorted, bundled together and confused. We each create a narrative of our past, but how do our friends and family see those same events? Previous student Patrick remembers his college days as living in a hazy bubble but recommends she talks to Maksym, a rival of her father’s who might remember it differently. Of course there’s also the possibility that people are lying, bringing a more sinister edge to the story and inspiring Rowan to dig further. Parts of the mystery are only revealed as Rowan uncovers them so we experience her emotions in the moment. It’s a slow- burn read and I enjoyed the chance to really understand the characters and Rowan’s complex emotions as she moves through people’s hazy memories and her father’s memorabilia and sketchbooks.

I thought the passage of time – can it really be over fifty years – played an interesting part, because the world has changed so much in that time. In the same way ideas about childhood developed during the Victorian period and into the 20th Century our views on teenagers and young people has changed. I feel like we’ve extended the protection and care we give to a child to this older age group. We’re more aware that they might need support with decisions and that they’re more open to exploitation. This comes from psychological research but also from the decision to extend school or training to the age of eighteen. Added to that is an extended time living at home for many young people thanks to the cost of living crisis and rising rents. The #MeToo movement has made us more aware of inappropriate relationships and power imbalances so behaviour that was perhaps frowned upon in the late 20th Century is an absolute ‘no no’ for today’s students and tutors. The criminalisation of coercive control and emotional abuse has finally made people realise that intimate partner abuse isn’t just physical and young people are vulnerable to manipulation and grooming. Rowan realises that her father’s romantic stories about how he met her mother Annie at Fallowfield could be viewed differently now. Nick had been a student at the college before returning as a lecturer and as Annie’s tutor he knew their relationship was against the college’s rules but they still continued to see each other. Now her father has died Rowan has been visiting his country cottage as an escape from her London home. She’s surprised to find newspaper articles in her father’s things about a student who went missing and a tutor’s girlfriend from around Fallowfield who was found dead during her parent’s time there. Could these articles contain the big secret behind the alumni’s reluctance to reminisce and what part do her parents play in the events of that time? 

I’m fascinated by artists and the art world and I learned a lot about a genre I’d never come across before. Rowan’s father painted within the Good Girl genre – an illustrative style often used for comics, book covers and erotic art. It’s glamorous women in tight or skimpy clothing and had been around for a few decades before Nick was a student. Rowan didn’t seem keen on her father’s style, branding it as trashy although she did listen as he showed her why his women were different from the more exploitative side of the style. I still wondered if there was a link between the representation of women in his art and his behaviour? It’s clear a toxic atmosphere was brewing at the college, an interesting contrast between the idyllic setting at Fallowfield which was a secluded country estate. Not many painters become household names and an atmosphere of determination and competition thrived between this group. It’s clear some will let nothing stand in the way of their success, creating dangerous situations. After the events in the articles and the summer ball Fallowfield was closed suddenly leaving students struggling to find other courses. The governing committee felt the scandal was too great for the college to continue in its current form. Alongside Rowan we’re starting to understand the rather permissive regime at Fallowfield, with drinking, drug-taking and free love. A woman called Zizi is part of the art college’s social scene but lived in a hippy community camping in a nearby field. Is she the one described in the newspapers as the girlfriend of a tutor? Could her father have been seeing this woman at the same time as her mother?

The most fascinating part of the story from a psychological perspective is how her parent’s ‘perfect’ love story seemingly prevented Rowan from forming loving and functional relationships as an adult. She sees Nick and Annie through a romantic lens, mainly due to Nick reinforcing the story throughout her life and after Annie’s death. All families have their own myths and this one was so strong she’s measured every relationship next to it and none have made the grade. She met current boyfriend Doug in a work capacity with Doug providing the photographs to her features on an assignment. It seems that he is often absent and while this is normal for someone who works freelance, when present in body he often isn’t in mind. Rowan seems a bit lost in terms of how he feels and where he sees their relationship going and is reluctant to invite him to her father’s cottage. She cooks him a dinner from scratch before leaving but he’s incredibly late and when she does get in touch he’s tired and wants to stay home, with no apology for wasting her time. I wondered if her feeling that she came second to her mother in her father’s affections had led to her repeating the pattern with emotionally unavailable partners. I found her a little bit childlike in her acceptance of her parent’s great love story. It’s something we often re-evaluate as we get older, especially when we start having our own relationships. As she starts to uncover student stories of drinking, drug-taking and multiple lovers she seems surprised and I wondered what sort of student experience she had because I would have expected it. It’s a jolt for her to realise Nick and Annie weren’t perfectly romantic and had their problems. I wondered whether her mother would have categorised their relationship differently had she lived longer? Rowan has to face that maybe she’d let people go who could have been a great partner. Being performatively romantic like Nick isn’t everyone’s style and verbal, public declarations of love often cover up a multitude of secrets. 

The anniversary celebration is to be held at Fallowfield’s original site, now a resort hotel owned by another alumni student. Everyone, apart from her father, will be present in the same place as the events of that final summer. The tension really kicked in at this point and I wondered if Rowan was placing herself in danger. Can this event be the catalyst to breaking through all the confusion and lies to finally see the truth? Through each of these characters we can see a stark contrast between the self- fulfilment of using your artistic talent and the dangerous and competitive scramble towards fame and success. Often incredibly talented people also have huge egos and narcissistic traits, a combination that could become deadly when their ego is bruised. I had so many questions at this point. I was intrigued by sculptor Maksym’s suggestion that he provided a service for Rowan’s father. I wanted to know whether it was true that Nick was seeing other women as well as Annie. Could being at the original college for an event like that final summer ball bring up new memories for the students? Rowan’s research had thrown up some disturbing truths in my mind and I was happy and satisfied by the ending. I wondered how the truth would impact Rowan’s life going forward. I was strongly reminded of the opening to L.P. Hartley’s The Go- Between – ‘the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there’. 

Out now from Breakthrough Books

Meet the Author

Nicole Swengley is an author and journalist who has written for the Financial Times, the Telegraph, The Times, Wall Street Journal, London Evening Standard and many other publications. Her short stories have featured in women’s magazines, a crime anthology and themed anthologies from Breakthrough Books. A past student of Faber Academy, one of her stories was shortlisted in a national TV/magazine competition some years ago. Her debut novel, The Portrait Girl, was published in 2024. Fallowfield is her second, standalone, art-and-design inspired mystery.

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The Deadly Inheritance of Everest MacDonald by A.J.West

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Some inherit a fortune.
She inherited murder…

1917. As the Great War rages on the continent, Everest Macdonald is summoned to her father’s deathbed and entrusted with a final urgent request: she must uncover the truth behind the murder of her uncle, the celebrated Victorian actor William Terriss, a crime that has haunted her family for twenty years.

In 1897, Terriss was stabbed to death outside London’s Adelphi Theatre, a killing that shocked Victorian society. The murderer was swiftly arrested and confined to Broadmoor, the case declared closed. Yet, years later, a sealed package of evidence is passed to Everest by her dying father, which casts doubt on the official verdict and the haste with which it was reached.

Drawn back to wartime London, with her husband and children left behind, Everest begins her investigation, following a trail that leads her into the world of late-Victorian theatre, where fame and fortune mask obsession, envy and cruelty. With time running out and her father’s strength failing, Everest must uncover what really happened on the night Terriss died, and shed light on the unsettling legacy he left behind.

It was amazing to finish this latest book from A.J. West and realise that it is based on a true story! I love this author’s combination of historical detail, a sprinkle of gothic mysticism and a determination to write people back into the history they’ve been removed from. There are moments where it seems impossible that this actually happened! Our story is told through Everest’s perspective as she vows to find out the truth about her Uncle William, murdered at the door of the Adelphi Theatre in 1897. Her intelligence, determination and forthright attitude carry us through her early enquiries and the hiring of a young woman called Clare who she meets on the train. Between her story we are also privy to the diary of Everest’s father TH Lewin from his time as a local dignitary in the Chittagong Hills of India. She also finds the diary of her beloved aunt Isabel Lewin, who married the wayward William and became his partner in his endeavours to be an adventurer abroad. There were a few moments when I became lost as to what time and place I was in because our narrators are so intrepid we visit both the Falkland Islands and Kentucky before William returns to London and a life on the stage. 

I loved the way the author brought mysticism into the historical story, especially the sections of William and Thomas’s 19th Century antics in India. His diary felt like the perfect period example of how their story would be told, a boy’s own tale through the lens of the exoticism and orientalism of the time. Thomas appropriates the local culture, dressing and behaving like a tribal chief and even taking an Indian wife.  His musings on what to do with Dari and their child shows that he considers her feelings in his decision to return home thinking she would be “ridiculed” but he never once considers it his duty to stay. She is a belonging he can discard at will. Even benevolent colonialism is still colonialism, his only saving grace is that he recognises the damage he’s done. William is reckless, taking whatever he wants because he can whether it’s substances or human beings. 

“William goaded me by bedding every woman in the village causing terrible ructions with the menfolk”. 

Each brother receives a curse, appropriate to their crimes, but while Thomas clearly has a conscience does his brother? I also enjoyed how the Victorian and early 20th Century theatre worlds aligned so beautifully with the murder mystery genre, with masking in both senses of the word. There’s physical and emotional transformation on stage and disguise is something that creates some huge surprises along the way. There are a lot of superstitions around stage acting and the gothic plays it’s part again with the ghosts of the Adelphi creating a haunted atmosphere or possibly a smokescreen.

Everest is a brilliant investigator with the accent and privilege of an Agatha Christie heroine. She’s dogged and determined, trying to weed through the frivolity and illusion of theatre folk as well as the attitudes of men. She has a wonderful turn of phrase, the delightful “those who say life is short, have never been to the theatre” made me laugh, remembering a particularly lengthy opera scene where I said to my companion that I would be leaving if no one died in the next ten minutes. She also used an insult I haven’t heard for years, in fact since caring for a cantankerous but funny Scottish lady in a nursing home, so I’ve been calling my cat Minka ‘a petulant bism’ for the past month. My favourite character aside from the brilliantly eccentric Everest, was her Aunt Isabel Lewin and her diary drew me in immediately. She was an incredible adventurer who took on any challenge William threw at her, while performing the role of wife and mother. She had a very liberated enjoyment of sex and isn’t cowed by rough seas, a potential drowning and suicide pact in the Atlantic or fighting off attackers. While she complained of the endless dust and wild weather of some places it’s clear she was left to deal with the consequences of William’s pioneering decisions. She actually lived the life he chose, while he failed and went on to the next adventure and abandoned his family sometimes for years. It’s no coincidence that the author paraphrases the speech of Elizabeth I before the Spanish Armada as Isabel states “I am no weak and feeble woman”. I was really sad that her epitaph – “she lived her life for others” – makes her out to be an angel when she’s really a queen.

A.J. West’s writing performs the feat of time travel. Each piece of writing in this novel feels like it was written at the time, whether it’s the 19th Century diaries or Everest’s investigation taking place during WWI. He skilfully whirls the reader back in time and I felt like I was there watching William kill a sacred crocodile in India or feeling Everest’s fear as she experiences a terrifying daytime raid on London by German bombers, a scene that’s absolutely electric. The novel is cinematic in scope and every place I was taken to was real in just a few sentences. In fact I read a passage about the Falklands to my ex- RAF husband who said it hasn’t changed much. Probably due to our heroine and her female assistant in the overarching narrative, I really felt the female gaze throughout the novel, both in the present and when reading about the past. So much changed for women in the space of fifty years, especially Everest’s present in 1917. When Thomas and William were young they might never have imagined women working as land girls or in munitions factories, another reminder that neither appreciated the power of the women they were with, whether it was Dari’s mystical curses or Isabel’s strength and anger. With all that said, this is a fascinating murder mystery that I hadn’t solved at all before the final revelations. It seems staggering that this is based on a real unsolved case and I think readers will find the afterword really interesting. I’m now holding my breath for an Everest MacDonald TV series, for some reason I can see Anna Chancellor, or maybe another literary adventure for this formidable character. 

Meet the Author

A.J. West’s bestselling debut novel The Spirit Engineer won the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown Award, gaining international praise for its telling of a long forgotten true story. His second novel, The Betrayal of Thomas True, debuted at number two on the Sunday Times bestseller list, and won the CWA Historical Dagger. A.J. was also shortlisted for the Booksellers Association Author the Year. An award-winning BBC newsreader and reporter, he has written for national newspapers and regularly appears on network television discussing his writing and the historical context of contemporary events. A passionate historical researcher, he writes at The London Library and museum archives around the world.

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 The Last Tenant by Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir

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Trust can be deadly…

When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the past hidden.

In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door. But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while trying to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar. Dark, atmospheric and rich with psychological suspense, The Last Tenant confirms Eva Björg Ægisdóttir as one of Iceland’s finest crime writers, as a meticulous investigation and a series of unsettling discoveries draw a close-knit community towards a reckoning no one can escape…

Wow! I love this series and at the sixth book in it just gets better and better. Elma’s case is a difficult and historic one as remains of a woman are found on a remote farm next to the long-buried bones of an infant. Elma will have to wait to find out whether the two are linked and how they’ve died, in the meantime she will have to trawl through missing person reports to find a likely candidate for the woman. She finds one in a young woman named Solrun, a medical student who had been dating a local boy when she went missing and both her car and clothes were found on a beach. Now Elma must delve into her past and reopen the scars for those she knew and loved because Solrun did not walk into the sea and drown. The baby’s DNA matches hair found buried with Solrun, but she hadn’t been pregnant and the baby’s remains predate hers by some years. Confused, Elma becomes engrossed in the case that is bound to cause a stir in her home town of Akranes as dark family secrets are uncovered. We see the case through Elma’s eyes but we’re also taken into the life of a young woman called Karitas who has recently moved into town with her young son Bessi. At first glance their basement flat is small but clean and her new landlord Baldvin seems odd but kind. There are also transcripts of a young man recording his troubled relationship with his father and the disappearance of his girlfriend on to his phone. Lyrical jornal entries from a young woman book end the novel. These different narratives are just one of the reasons I love this author’s writing. It reminds me of the Shetland novels by Anne Cleeves. In a remote small towns cases become complicated because everybody knows each other and their history family history. It brings home the emotional fallout of the crime committed and the toll it takes on the detectives like Elma who grew up here and have to picture their friends and neighbours as suspects. There are twists here you won’t see coming, but they’re not there for sensation but come about because people have secrets and tell lies. In the background runs the tension between retired police chief Otto and Elma, who blackmailed her on a previous case by claiming he knew a secret about Saever. 

Elma throws herself into this case, mainly working alone but with Saever close by or at home to test her theories. Otto’s claims from the last book haven’t been addressed between them and along with having a lively toddler it has definitely sewn a bit of distance into their relationship. Her concerns grow when she sees he is distracted and receiving emails or messages from a woman that he isn’t sharing with her. I love the equity of their relationship, always equally responsible for chores, cooking and childcare, with none of the angst or guilt we often read with fictional female police officers. She’s a great mum but when she’s at work her mind is on the case, endlessly scrolling what she knows so far like a fruit machine in her head until something suddenly matches. She’s so absorbed that she’s not always checking her own well-being, with her mum intervening here and there to let the couple have some time and fun. On a night of wine with friends she’s horrified to have blurted out something about the case and mentally kicks herself for being unprofessional but she has discovered something she didn’t have before – other people’s impressions of someone she’s considering.

I enjoyed the character of Baldvin, the landlord of the basement flat where Karitas and Bessi live. He’s just the sort of the elderly gentleman I’d make friends with and I’ve had some eccentric friends over the years! He comes across as harmless and lonely with monologues that drift off at tangents and become philosophical. With a typical child’s innocence Bessi forms a bond with him, mainly fuelled by biscuits and ice-cream. He’s kind to them both so Karitas is surprised when neighbour Kristofer suggests she should be careful, insinuating he was creepy around his previous girlfriend. He does mention something about Karitas’s last name, its meaning and something about three suns that seems odd. She couldn’t be so wrong about him surely? She does sometimes come home and feel that someone has been in the flat and perhaps senses the whiff of his aftershave. When Elma asks around she finds that many people find him an odd character, almost like a child himself with a strange little giggle. A story about him did the rounds some years ago, that when working at the leisure centre he touched a young girl inappropriately, but one of her friends insists it wasn’t true. It shows that ‘apparently the truth doesn’t matter’ she says, something that seems more true today than ever before. 

These cases are never tidy. There’s always something that doesn’t quite fit or can’t be explained. I imagine this is the norm in real life police work, but often detective fiction is way too cleanly tidied away. Here someone always knows more than they’re willing to say or are more involved than you imagined. Then there’s the burden of proof needed for a conviction. Elma knows Solrun was chasing down a clue before she disappeared, because one of her friends mentioned she’d asked for help about symptoms and medication. It wasn’t a personal enquiry but Elma can’t see where it might fit in her death, even when everything else is explained. Then there’s how everyone in Akranes is interlinked and having grown up in a small rural town I can see how it’s easy to think we know everything about another person. The truth is that we rarely see the full picture, just our part of it coloured by our own experience. Even within families there are things people know but no one talks about, there are different versions of the family history, things we’re open about and things we bury. Even so, how far would we go to protect those we love, especially our children? Throughout this series the people of Akranes are like a wider family, burying each other’s crimes and collectively forgetting the truth. The impact of one generation’s choices affecting the next. This the genius and the darkness at the heart of this series. The scariest truth about monsters is they don’t look like they do in storybooks; they can come out in daylight and ‘on the surface they’re just like ordinary people.’ 

Out Now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel. Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestsellerin Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023. In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key. The Forbidden Iceland series, due to hit streaming servicesin Autumn 2026 via GlassRiver, has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in twenty-nine languages with more than a million copies sold.

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The Mermaid’s Cry by Kate Rhodes 

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I’ve been catching up on Kate Rhodes’s series of Ben Kitto novels and I’ve jumped a couple to read this for the blog tour, now I have to go back and read frantically to work out how he and Noah have ended up in Penzance. However that didn’t ruin the novel for me because it’s jam packed full of atmospheric settings, Cornish folklore and a cast of characters that left me suspecting absolutely everyone! Ben is living in Penzance, taking a break from his home island of Bryhir in the Scilly Isles after the events of the previous novel. He’s taking a break from police work and instead has found a job at a joiner and cabinetmakers, using the skills he learned building boats with his Uncle. It’s settled and therapeutic work as Ben slowly creates beautiful pieces of furniture and starts to deal with his grief and loss. Noah is a little confused to be away from everything he knows, but he’s enrolled at a kindergarten near Ben’s work so life has some routine and peace. He is starting to be brought into the community too, with an arts festival on the horizon he’s bound to be pulled into the planning, even just as a steward he’s happy to do his bit. Then life takes a sinister turn as he’s on the beach and sees a young mother with a baby in a pram. One moment of distraction and a black figure jumps out of the shadows and racing towards the pram it grabs the baby and throws it into the sea. Ben and Shadow are running before they’ve even thought and he dives into the sea to rescue the baby. He’s now a local hero, but the disturbing and traumatic event plays on his mind. How could someone do such a thing and will they do it again? 

The author weaves her story around the local myth of the Zennor Mermaid, a figured carved into one of the pews in Zennor church. A beautiful woman called Morveren was said to attend the local church from time to time and listen to the choir. She had a wonderful singing voice and many suitors were interested in her, but she came to listen to Matthew Trewella who had the best singing voice. One day after church he decided to follow her and was never seen again. Years later a captain dropped anchor near the beach and was surprised to hear melodious singing. When he looked out he saw a mermaid sitting on the rocks nearby and she asked if he would raise his anchor as it was blocking the entrance to her house, where she lived with her husband Matthew. There are many mermaid figures in Cornwall and the upcoming festival will be based around music and singing in Penzance and then a sky-watching from the remote location of Zennor’s beach. However, the myth takes a more sinister turn when mermaid emblems and notes are sent to people with small children, warning that the mermaid is watching for those who don’t deserve them. The police are immediately involved and new DCI Carnforth approaches Ben for his take on the original crime, could this person strike again? In sinister short sections we are taken into the mind of this person who themself as a mercy killer, where parents are neglectful or harming their children, the attacker will offer them to the Zennor mermaid who waits under the sea to claim them. Ben isn’t keen on becoming involved but Carnforth is keen to have his input and suggests he works more like a consultant than actually making a return to the force. For those lucky readers who know Ben and his dog Shadow, it’s impossible to imagine him sitting back and not taking part. Both of them seem to have an innate instinct when something is wrong and when Ben finds a mermaid talisman in his own garden he knows that he must find this person before anyone else faces the devastation of losing their child. 

 It was strange to get used to Ben in a new environment because he’s always seemed so at home in the wildness of Bryhir. Penzance is a huge difference being on the mainland and being a town, although Shadow seems to get used to the geography of his new home very quickly. I enjoyed the way the author presents Cornwall, giving it a split atmosphere between the town itself and the wilder places beyond, echoed in the two sites of the festival. She also gives us a realistic view of Penzance beyond the tourist trail, as both picturesque and a working fishing port. There are hints at the port’s arty history too with the Tate being a few miles away in St Ives and the attached village of Newlyn associated with Barbara Hepworth and many other artists. There’s a mix of tourism or seasonal visitors, then the long term residents trying to survive, especially during the quieter months when seasonal work isn’t as available and every empty property is listed on Air BnB rather than let to locals who need a home. Young people are priced out of the market and have no hope of owning a home of their own where they were born. Social housing is just as poor and overcrowded as it is anywhere else and perhaps has more demand, in fact the mother of the first victim is living on an estate that miles away from our usual depictions of Cornwall and a big contrast to Ben’s usual working area. The town’s foodbank is busy showing that residents are struggling with the cost of living, but on the other hand Ben’s chosen nursery for Noah has the rather middle-class sign of being run on Steiner principles. There are definitely haves and have nots here and Ben is definitely pulled into the lives of people who’ve had very difficult upbringings in circumstances of poverty, neglect and abuse. However, recovery and rebuilding are also big themes here with Ben playing a huge part in helping those in difficult circumstances while struggling to handle his own grief. 

It’s sad to meet Ben at such a crossroads in his life and I was pleased to see how our regular characters rallied around him, very carefully while letting him think they’re close by for other reasons. He thinks his Uncle is visiting Penzance because he has a secret woman and when his best friend Zoe appears he thinks she’s just there to headline the festival. Yet they are around at a crucial time for Ben and Noah and possibly know our hero more than he realises. I was hoping he’d start to see the benefit of grieving alongside his friends and fellow islanders, rather than removing himself from the situation. His relationship with Zoe is as close as always and her support means the world. She’s also bringing music back into his and Noah’s lives, something that his nursery teacher seems very keen for Noah to pursue. She approaches Ben to tell him that Noah is very talented for his age, a skill that is probably from his mother Nina. She’s very intense and insists that not to nurture Noah’s skill would be tantamount to neglect. The author drops little clues like this one throughout the book until I had about six suspects in mind! The tension as the festival approaches is nail-biting as Ben works with the police to make plans for security so that parents can attend with their children safely. Ben is a natural investigator with an innate skill for trouble that’s almost prophetic. He knows when there’s a pattern in a criminal’s behaviour, his brain detects a clue but can’t quite get there yet. There are some uniformed officers in the local station who begrudge Ben working with them and are resistant to the changes their new female chief wants to make. I started to wonder whether our attacker could be closer than they realise, especially when the DCI also has a warning from the mermaid about leaving her child with a nanny. Crimes against children are so emotive and that’s very clear here as the inner voice of the attacker becomes even more disturbing with a strange circular logic that hard to understand – ‘I see unworthy mothers and fathers everywhere I look, they don’t deserve any more chances […] they think the world is safe and that chaos doesn’t exist. None of them understand the price their children could pay, laughing distracted or staring at their phones. Negligence is a sickness”. 

By the time the festival arrives everyone has done all they can to keep families safe, with a security perimeter at the park that can’t be broken, of course that assumes the attacker isn’t one of the stewards. I was still suspecting the nursery nurse, the festival organiser, a police officer, a young man who is abused by his older brother and even the DCI’s nanny. The author has created short, urgent chapters here. They ramp up the tension as we flip between Ben’s inner world and the attacker’s, following them and their newest victim to the dark, wildness of the festival’s other site at Zennor. We can sense the mystical feeling of Cornwall and how it’s become warped in this person’s mind. It’s pitch black and rough terrain, plus with miles and miles of coastline can they be sure to find the right place in time. I defy anyone to put the book down at this point and I devoured it in one sitting. Ben still knows he’s missing a part of the puzzle and we have to trust that his intuition will click in before it’s too late. This is a great thriller and taking Ben out of his natural habitat does bring a different feel to the series, though I hope he does eventually return to island because he belongs there. We can see in the aftermath that he needs his found family and just like Zoe he will always return to the island and each other. 

Meet the Author

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet, selected for Val McDermid’s New Blood panel at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for her debut, Crossbones Yard. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious. CWA Dagger in the Library award, and is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for the critically acclaimed Isles of Scilly Mysteries series.

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Fireflies in Winter by Eleanor Shearer 

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Nova Scotia 1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together in their homes to keep warm. So when she sees a shadow slipping through the trees, Cora thinks her eyes are deceiving her. Until she creeps out into the moonlight and finds the tracks in the snow.

Agnes is in hiding. On the run from her former life, she has learned what it takes to survive alone in the wilderness. But she can afford mistakes. When she first spies the young woman in the woods, she is afraid. Yet Cora is fearless, and their paths are destined to cross.

Deep among the cedars, Cora and Agnes find a fragile place of safety. But when Agnes’s past closes in, they are confronted with the dangerous price of freedom – and of love…

Eleanor Shearer tells stories about fictional people in situations I didn’t even know existed and then makes me root for them so hard that I cry real tears. Cora is our central character and we see everything through her eyes, so it’s no surprise I felt close to her. Cora is so vulnerable and thoughtful. She cares for her unusual ‘family’ – Leah who has brought her up and been a substitute mother and Silas and young Ben who’s still a young boy. It’s makeshift but it’s the only family she has known, ever since Leah found her as a baby. They are ‘maroons’, escaped slaves from Jamaica who settled in Nova Scotia, Canada. Many maroons negotiated peace treaties with the British, but part of that treaty forced them to aid the British in capturing any new runaways. However, Agnes’s freedom is more precarious. She’s out in the forest alone, except for her dog Patience, and it’s a harsh existence with the added fear of discovery. I’m not sure Cora fully understands that her presence and connection to the Maroons settlement adds to that anxiety and doubles her chance of discovery. Cora isn’t hardened to winter in the forest and hasn’t had to hone her survival instincts in the way Agnes has. Something she shows by getting into scrapes in the snow, saved by the ever present Patience. There are different types of freedom in terms of gender and sexuality too. Cora knows that Silas has an expectation that they will be together one day and so far she has avoided this. However, it is there in every confrontation they have; the fear of his resentment and the threat of sexual violence is ever present. Cora doesn’t question her sexuality, she just knows she loves Agnes. Will they have the freedom to be together? 

The environment is an incredibly strong part of this story and here the author excels in creating a Nova Scotia that’s harsh but exceptionally beautiful. I found the time Cora spends in the forest incredibly peaceful to read, the animals, the ice and the frosted trees have a romance, a poetry about them. Yet she doesn’t hide the raw reality of living in it. The girls must trap animals, although Cora frees a white hare unable to kill such a beautiful and mystical creature however hungry they may be. One of my favourite scenes is when Agnes takes Cora out on a boat to visit the whales who appear for them as if by magic. As they sit among these huge creatures one of them lifts their head and looks directly at Agnes and she feels seen for the first time in her life. Not as a woman, or a slave, or a Maroon. Just as Cora, another living being. There are also moments where Mother Nature shows its bite and when Cora falls through the ice I was holding my breath. The suspense of those moments are brilliantly pitched and show us that Agnes’s lifestyle may have magical moments, but it can be lethal. 

I love that Eleanor writes people back into history, we can read the historical facts about settled slaves in Canada but she brings their experiences to life in a way that hits the emotions and helps us to understand. We’re also reminded by Cora that women have choices, sometimes marriage is just another form of slavery. It’s something she’s keen to avoid, even if the offer came from a more loving and kind man like her friend Thursday. She knows herself enough to know it is not for her and she’s not willing to sacrifice herself. Luckily, Thursday is a loyal friend and will help Cora without imposing conditions. When Cora finds out the truth about where she comes from, secrets that have been held for years come flooding out and threaten everything that Cora has known about herself. When Agnes faces a similar reckoning it threatens everything in their future. I was emotional about the little details the author puts into her book such as the braiding of Cora’s hair being the only moment where they’re both present and the ‘love can flow between them unimpeded’. Cora’s loss of her sister also hangs over her and I loved the nature metaphors she uses to express those emotions: 

“Cora cannot stop thinking of her life like a tree, with the branches that split and split again until you reach the highest […] that there’s somewhere, the branches not taken – the world where she stayed with Elsy and Elsy would still be living.” 

However, in everything that happens, one loss hit me the hardest and actually brought me to tears. I loved the still moments created, where Cora learned to be in nature. Where they are both present and entirely in the moment. The fireflies are a symbol for Agnes and Cora, in that they are glowing in the darkest and coldest circumstances. Cora and Agnes have a bond that flourishes where many things don’t survive, they are extraordinary like fireflies in winter. 

Out from Headline Review on 10th February

Meet the Author

Eleanor Shearer is a mixed race writer from the UK. She splits her time between London and Ramsgate on the coast of Kent, so that she never has to go too long without seeing the sea.

As the granddaughter of Caribbean immigrants who came to the UK as part of the Windrush Generation, Eleanor has always been drawn to Caribbean history. Her first novel, RIVER SING ME HOME (Headline, UK & Berkley, USA) is inspired by the true stories of the brave woman who went looking for their stolen children after the abolition of slavery in 1834. The novel draws on her time spent in the Caribbean, visiting family in St Lucia and Barbados. It was also informed by her Master’s degree in Politics, where she focused on how slavery is remembered on the islands today.

Her second novel, FIREFLIES IN WINTER, is a love story set in the snow-covered wilderness of Nova Scotia in the 1790s. When Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, glimpses a strange figure in the forest, she is increasingly drawn into the frozen woods. She meets Agnes, who is on the run from her former life. As the two women grow closer, they learn more about love, survival and the price of freedom.

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The Cut-Up by Louise Welsh 

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It’s hard to be good when living is expensive. And times are tough on the streets these days. Luckily for Rilke at Bowery Auctions the demand for no-questions-asked cash is at an all-time high, and business is booming. 

When Rilke hears his old acquaintance Les is fresh out of prison, his inclination is to stay well out of his way. Letting sleeping dogs lie is one thing – but when one of Bowery’s customers winds up dead on their tarmac, Rilke needs a bit of help from his friends to tidy things up. If only his friends didn’t have such a habit of making things worse.

This is such a brief synopsis for a novel that’s full of character, atmosphere and set in one of the best cities I’ve ever spent time in. The novel is book-ended with someone coming out of prison and this is the world that valuer and auctioneer Rilke operates in. This is a world of second hand goods, murky dealers and eccentric characters who love collecting. Bowery Auctions is run by Rose Bowery and Rilke is part of the furniture. When one of their regulars, the creepy and questionable Manderson, is killed on the premises it’s only 24 hours till their next auction. In fact Manderson has been stabbed in the eye with one of the antique hat pins they had out for the viewing afternoon. An Edwardian amethyst pin would have had to make its way through a huge hat and into a woman’s long, piled up hair, to keep it secure. Now it’s made its way through Manderson’s eye into his brain and it’s going to take a lot of strength to remove it. Knowing the police will be involved and that Bowery’s will be implicated, perhaps it would be better if it wasn’t obvious that he’s been killed with one of their auction lots. Things get worse when a gangster turns up at Bowery Auctions with Rilke’s mate Les in tow. Ray has a way with a razor and he focuses Rilke with a swipe to Les’s face, he must now investigate who killed Manderson in just ten days or Les will pay the consequences. His investigations will take him to an old school where many ex-pupils have reported sexual abuse, to a brothel named after a questionable film and a girl called Chloe who may or may not be controlled by her boyfriend, Dickie Bird. Will he find the answers that will save Les? More to the point, are the answers to be found outside Glasgow or a lot closer to home?

The plot takes a few winding roads but we never forget that Rilke has a time scale for this investigation and he knows that a man like Ray isn’t joking. His best friend Les’s life is in his hands and the pressure and danger builds as we go along. I enjoyed the characters in this novel and I did grow to love them. I have to say thank you to the author here because one of my best friends was an antique dealer so I spent a lot of time visiting auctions and antique fairs with him. He also had an alcoholic cleaner and an ex-prisoner doing his garden. He died eight years ago and I’ve missed that part of my world. It is a world where any eccentric, misfit or miscreant can find a home and for the duration of the novel I was back there with Nigel, in his customary smoking jacket adorned with vintage brooches. So I wasn’t surprised to find characters like Manderson, Les and Rilke rubbing shoulders. Rilke’s vintage style was perfect and he struck me as a decent man who can’t get out of the circle he frequents. He’s also a deeply loyal man, especially to his newly released friend Les. I have to admit to falling in love with Les. I knew I’d love him as soon as he emerged from the Arlington Baths after a stretch in prison wearing ‘ a black kilt, tartan Doc Martens and a t-shirt bearing the slogan Get Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries.’ He’s an absolute imp, a mischief and so impulsive that he makes very bad choices. The author brings humour in with this character so when he’s in genuine danger from gangster Ray it hits even harder. It’s no surprise when Rilke immediately takes on Ray’s ultimatum in order to save him, but Rilke’s also thinking about getting the police out of Bowery Auctions and away from where Manderson was killed. The female crew aren’t remotely bothered that he’s met a sticky end, in fact one of the younger girls describes him as ‘handsy’ – an old man who wears trainers because he doesn’t want to be heard creeping up on them. So far, apart from Ray, nobody seems to missing him. 

The city of Glasgow is the main character in the book and I loved seeing the underbelly of a place I’ve only visited as a tourist over several years. The author builds the history of the city beautifully, until we get a sense of it as a multi-layered place, where we only see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to it’s residents: 

“The earliest sections of Glasgow’s West End, built on the site of old mines and quarries, for city merchants who had grown rich on the products of Caribbean plantations and compensation for freeing enslaved people who received no reward”. 

It’s a city that doesn’t hide it’s darker corners and it is sobering to think that the beautiful Georgian buildings in the best parts of the city could only be so grand due to these inflated profits and the subjugation of African people. There are dark and forbidding areas, pubs where you watch your step and streets where the old mines underneath threaten to drag buildings back into the depths. However, the creepiest setting has to be found on an investigative trip outside Glasgow to the site of an isolated school. Rilke makes the journey with a journalist who has been investigating the history of the school and ex-pupils claims of sexual abuse. It’s abandoned, but with evidence left behind of its original purpose. It reminded me of those videos found online of urban explorers in abandoned hospitals. It’s clearly been a hell for these pupils at the mercy of sadistic staff, but what Rilke needs to know is whether it’s linked to what happened to Manderson. Here the author brings in modern concerns around women using Only Fans and other internet sex work to make ends meet. Can it ever be a feminist thing? There are also issues around coercive control and manipulation, but as Rilke learns it’s easy to get the wrong end of the stick. There’s a familiar jaded feeling around these issues and a knowledge that no matter what’s brought to light, some people will always get away with it. 

The author absolutely captures the grubbiness of a sale room’s viewing day. Sale rooms are invariably freezing cold, filled with weird and wonderful items and often very dusty. I often came away from rifling through boxes with absolutely black hands. On sale day I’d wear thermals, a solid overcoat and gloves. There are people of every class too, from those who look like they’re homeless to fur coated women. I definitely felt that mix in the book and the little mentions of particular artists and makers made it authentic. Both Rilke and his boss Rose Bowery notice people’s interiors, often bringing humour into very dangerous situations. I loved Rose’s opinion of a particular setting and it’s purpose: 

‘Rose looked […] then realisation dawned. The low lighting, the plush carpet, satin upholstery and Japanese prints. “Ah, I thought you just had ghastly taste”. 

It’s also Rose who comments that everyone at Bowery’s is so familiar with employee Ina’s womb it should have its own Facebook page. Each character’s language is peppered with Scottish turns of phrase, such as ‘he was a sleekit wee liar as a laddie’. This just adds to all the other layers to convince me I was in a real world. I felt that if I took another trip to Glasgow I’d be able to walk in to Bowery auctions and see Rilke in his Crombie. Now, I can’t wait to read the others in the series.

Meet the Author

Louise Welsh is an award-winning author of ten novels. The Cutting Room, her debut novel, won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award and the Saltire First Book of The Year Award. In 2018, she was named the Most Inspiring Saltire First Book Award winner by public vote. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. In 2022 she published The Second Cut, which was shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland McIlvanney Prize for Crime Book of the Year and named by The Times as their Crime Book of the Year.

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Into the Dark by Orjan Karlssen (Arctic Mysteries 2) 

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In Norway’s far north, something unspeakable is surfacing…

When a mutilated body rises from the icy waters off the jetty in Kjerringøy, it shocks the quiet coastal village – and stirs something darker beneath. Not long after, a young woman is found dead in a drab Bodø apartment. Suicide, perhaps. Or something far more sinister. Detective Jakob Weber and former national investigator Noora Yun Sande are drawn into both cases. Then a hiker reports a terrifying encounter in the nearby wilderness: a solitary cabin … and a man without a face.

As the investigation deepens, the clues grow more disturbing – and the wild, wintry landscape closes in. Jakob is certain of one thing: if they don’t find the killer soon, he’ll strike again.

This was a genuinely terrifying thriller from Orjan Karlssen, the second in his Arctic Mysteries series featuring investigators Jakob Weber and Noora Yun Sande. I read one section out loud to my other half who said ‘no wonder you have weird dreams”. This referred to a recurring figure seen by people in the novel and variously described as having completely dark eyes, a face like liquid, and a face it’s impossible to truly describe as it seemed indistinct. The team find themselves with two cases that could potentially be linked, with Noora newly back at work after injury. This case is very dark and I love that Scandi Noir is never scared of taking its readers to the darkest places, in a way a lot of other crime novels shy away from. This maybe crime, but it’s certainly not cozy! The author uses the surroundings of Kerringjay to create a dark and dangerous atmosphere. Here it isn’t just weather, it can and does kill. There is something mystical about this place, isolated and surrounded by mountains inland and the coast. There’s a sense of being alone and also enclosed, when they encounter an artist as part of the case, his girlfriend Britt describes his obsession with one particular mountain that he seemed to be painting over and over. It’s beautiful but bleak here. Noora only has to look out of the window to see:

“a display of the northern lights played out  across the sky in shades of purple and turquoise. The atmospheric  glow made the water below sparkle like tiny pieces of silver. It was  a phosphorescence that arose and vanished in the blink of an eye.”

But the days are short and dark, the sea is bitingly cold and the wind will rip a scream away from your mouth before it can be heard. It all adds to the tension and also the sense of danger. It’s horrifying for Tuva, who is undertaking her naked swim with best friends Britt and Katja. She’s needed some time with her friends after her lover Emilio simply disappeared from her life, leaving no trace. Firstly the women spot an unusual figure, standing and watching them from the sidelines. He’s hard to describe but the women are unnerved and make sure he moves away. Then they’re hit by an unbelievable smell coming from the water, leaving them thinking a sewage pipe may have discharged. As a yellow anorak floats to the surface Tuva is transfixed. She knows this coat and its usual smell very well. It’s Emilio’s clothing. As the figure turns over in the water the women realise he’s been in the water for some time and his eyes are missing. 

“She didn’t want to gaze into that abyss but was unable to look away. The once full lips had been eaten away by fish […] leaving only grimacing teeth.” 

I enjoyed Noora and Jakob as characters and it’s definitely a good idea to read the first Arctic Mysteries book to get a sense of where their journeys started. Jakob comes across as very measured, he thinks of the different angles before acting. I loved the way he dealt with being called into his brother’s school as his guardian. While he remained respectful he was also well aware of certain teachers and their attitude, so made sure he got his brother alone to get to the bottom of what’s happened. Even the teacher who remembers Jakob is unable to get under his skin. He treats his work in a similar way, his only deviation from his customary caution is journalist Sigrid who he has a fledgling relationship with, but even then he’s constantly defining the boundaries of what he can and won’t share with her. Noora is more instinctive and that’s a voluble tool to have, however she’s vulnerable at the moment, just back at work after injury. The author’s description of the referred nerve pain Noora feels was painfully accurate and reminded me of days when I push myself too far. Jakob checks in all the time and at one point makes it clear that if she’s not being straight with him about her limitations they could both end up in trouble. I have complex pain so I understood her reticence about being open, she doesn’t want to be relegated to a desk or lose her job when she’s good at it. She does start to push it a little, taking a few more painkillers than she should here and there. She asks Jakob to trust her, but I was scared for both of them. 

It’s Noora who feels most angry about some aspects of the case because she’s a woman and from that perspective Kjerschow’s techniques are hard to accept. Their investigation after Emilio was found took them to the nearby Miele Foundation, run by financier and Gestalt Therapist called Kjerschow. Jakob finds him evasive when they question him about his centre and the clients who stay there. He feels like the man is deflecting questions back as if he is a mirror, which makes sense if you understand his training. Gestalt Therapy is a humanistic approach which asks the client to use the here and now to resolve long term problems, using techniques like the Empty Chair where they can talk to someone as if they’re present to resolve conflict. There’s an element of acting out or role play in these techniques and Kjerschow shows them the basement at the foundation, usually known as the Expurgation Room. It has a dirt floor and a strange, tree like structure with branches that show traces of blood. Is Kjerschow so arrogant that he believes the police won’t notice or that he can manipulate them to dig no further. He describes his usual clients as wealthy bankers and the like, who use activity based techniques in the room to expurgate their tendencies. I love that Jakob is one step ahead of him and won’t let money stand in the way of getting their man. 

As the killer takes out another victim, close to home, it becomes genuinely terrifying. The man without a face appears again and there’s something hypnotic about him, almost as if you couldn’t look away even if you wanted to. It doesn’t take long to find another body on the shoreline, with their eyes gouged and beautifully cut circle of skin taken from around the naval. Jakob starts to suggest potential suspects stay in a hotel together, where they can have an eye kept on them. At this point you’ll want to read on to the end and it’s totally worth it. The tension is incredible as Noora and Jakob get ever closer. Noora witnesses something despicable at the Miele Foundation while Jakob follows a lead up onto those mountains Emilio was so fond of painting. I was torn between whether something mystical was going on, or whether someone with great influence was orchestrating it all. My heart was hammering as Noora and Jakob put themselves on the line to prevent another murder. Will Jakob’s promised trust in Noora hold out? Who is the strange man in the parka and is he responsible for the murders? As the truth of Kjerschow’s therapy comes to light and the police surround a cabin in the woods, with ravens in cages as warning signals, they know this is no ordinary killer. I heartily recommend this series to fans of Scandi Noir because it really is a fantastic addition to the genre. Although I’ll have to read something a bit less nightmare inducing for a couple of days. 

Meet the Author

Ørjan Karlsson (b. 1970) grew up in Bodø, in the far north of Norway. A sociologist by education, he received officer training in the army and has taken part in many missions overseas. He has worked at the Ministry of Defence and is now head of department in the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection. He has written a wide range of thrillers, sci-fi novels and crime fiction, and been shortlisted for or won numerous awards, with a number of his books currently in production for the screen. He lives in Nordland, where the Jakob Weber crime series is set.

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Blackwater by Sarah Sultoon 

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As the clock ticks towards the millennium – and the threat of a potentially new apocalyptic reality – Jonny Murphy is sent to investigate the discovery of a child’s body on a deserted swamp island, fifty miles from London. What he finds is more than just a tragedy, it’s a warning. Something big is coming … Can Jonny stop it? Should he?

London, Christmas 1999. The world is on edge. With the new millennium just days away, fears of the Millennium Bug are spiralling – warnings of computer failures, market crashes, even global catastrophe. But fifty miles east, on the frozen Blackwater Island, a different kind of mystery unfolds. A child’s body is discovered on the bracken, untouched by footprints, with no sign of how he died. And no one has come forward to claim him.

At the International Tribune, reporter Jonny Murphy senses something is off. Police are appealing for relatives, not suspects. An anonymous call led officers to the scene, but no one knows who made it. While the world fixates on a digital apocalypse, Jonny sees the real disaster unfolding closer to home. With just twenty-hour hours before the century turns, he heads to Blackwater – driven by curiosity, desperation, and the sting of rejection from his colleague Paloma.

But Blackwater has secrets buried deep in the frozen ground. More victims – some dead, others still paying for past sins. And when Paloma catches up to him, they stumble onto something far bigger than either of them imagined. Something that could change everything. The millennium is coming. The clock is ticking. Can Jonny stop it? Should he?

I went into this novel quite late, so I was incredibly pleased to find that this is definitely a gripping, read in one sitting type of thriller. This is Sarah Sultoon’s third novel featuring investigative journalist Jonny Murphy, but could very easily be read as a standalone. For people like me, old enough to be an adult at the time of the possible ‘millennium bug’, I remember the panic and the predictions that planes would fall out of the sky, banking systems would collapse and the apocalypse would begin. I remember the money spent trying to mitigate its potential effects but like the British seem to do, we gathered with friends and family anyway and set off fireworks in the freezing cold and precisely nothing happened. It feels like an innocent time now, when we think that 9/11 came only 18 months later, followed by going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and then years of austerity followed by a pandemic. It’s certainly been turbulent ever since. My dad was convinced that the bug was a made up bogeyman, allowing technology companies and their shareholders to clean up by proposing to ‘fix’ something that didn’t exist. Maybe he was right. We don’t call him Fox Mulder for nothing.

Here Sarah Sultoon has created a fast paced thriller that plays out in the days before Millennium Eve. The timing gives us a countdown, but believe me this story creates its own tension. The setting of Blackwater Island is familiar but alien at the same time. Situated in an inlet only 50 miles from London and with a direct route by boat into the Channel and the Thames this place is hiding in plain site. Beyond the last village, the terrain feels like the eerie marshlands at the beginning of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield. The mist is so thick someone could be standing next to you and the black, viscous mud has the feel of quicksand. It sucks all explorers into its depths and is enough to put anyone off reaching the island itself. As if that wasn’t enough, the author brings elements of folk horror to the narrative as Jonny is warned off by very unfriendly and odd locals. The only place to stay is an old inn in the village, but the landlady isn’t very welcoming. She warns him that the only resident of Blackwater is Inka who is depicted in a framed picture behind the bar and on graffiti near the island:  

“it’s apparently a picture of a ghost that’s been haunting Blackwater since the Dark Ages. Our landlady told me some mad story about a mythical Icelandic warrior named Inka with a diamond-tipped spear and a mermaid’s tail.” 

Jonny is canny enough to know when he’s being warned away from something and it only sets his investigative skills tingling. On the other hand, actual protection for the crime scene is very thin on the ground. He meets the only police officer in the area and she feels like she’s been dumped in the backwaters of Essex with no support or back up. The facts are that the body of a boy was found on the island with no visible cause of death, but the weirdest part is that he was dressed like an extra from Oliver! His Victorian urchin clothing is so incongruous, but could mean anything from local amateur dramatics to time travel. It’s once Jonny manages to get on the island that answers start to come and it was nothing I’d considered. 

Jonny is a rather fascinating character. He’s absolutely determined to track down his story and has defensive walls a mile high where friendship and romance are concerned. Yet he does have empathy and tries to take the honourable route where possible. He clearly has feelings for photographer Paloma, but has been determined not to pursue them, not wanting to inflict himself on someone else. What does he know about himself that makes him hesitate? Will the story always come first? The scariest part of the whole story is that it’s believable and the afterword really does show that sometimes, what feels far fetched, is only the beginning. Taking in biological experimentation and weaponry, black ops, government conspiracies and the price paid by the locals caught up in it, it’s the writing and the very real atmosphere at the time that makes this a believable story. Jonny’s mission becomes unbearably tense as he has to make it to the centre of London with the city’s ’River of Fire’ fireworks display under threat. Thousands are gathered to hear Big Ben strike midnight and the start of a new century. Jonny fears they may be the target, but there’s also the press area where Paloma is hoping to catch the display on camera, no matter his reservations he’s determined to save her. Events and emotions build and I was half expecting a huge explosion, but Sarah Sultoon is more subtle than that and the fear here is insidious. It warns us not to trust those in authority, to question and investigate everything – an instinct that in real life seems to have been lost since the pandemic. Jonny is a brilliant hero because he has that instinct still and a moral compass that guides his work, something that’s a rare combination. This is incredibly tense, gripping and packed full of action with the added nostalgia of millennium memories. 

Out now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Sarah Sultoon is a novelist and journalist, whose prior work as an international news executive at CNN has taken her all over the world, from the seats of power in both Westminster and Washington to the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. She has extensive experience in conflict zones, winning three Peabody awards for her work on the war in Syria, an Emmy for her contribution to the coverage of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, and a number of Royal Television Society gongs. As passionate about fiction as nonfiction, she recently completed a Masters of Studies in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge, adding to an undergraduate degree in languages, chosen mainly so she could spend time itinerantly travelling the world. She likes running, Indian food, cocktails, playing sport with her children and throwing a ball for her dog, order dependent on when the cocktails are consumed.

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Spotlight Post: An Echo of Children by Ramsey Campbell

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That title is enough to get the hackles raised because everyone knows that the most terrifying type of ghost is a child ghost! The novel’s opening does nothing to dissuade us of our fears. Thom and Jude are an elderly couple visiting their son Alan, his wife Coral and their grandson Dean. Recently moved to the seaside town of Barnwall, it’s an environment that should be perfect for children, but there is something right from the outset that feels ‘off’. While Thom and Jude seem natural and doting grandparents, they are warm and seem to have real affection for one another. However, the house feels stifling and distinctly unnatural. There are no toys scattered around and Alan and Coral’s dialogue is stilted and cold, even towards their son. As his other grandparents arrive, it doesn’t improve. As his grandparents give him a present Dean is reminded to thank them even before he’s had chance to do so. Jude’s quiet replies try to chip away at their reserve, thinking perhaps that they’re worried about how she and her husband will perceive Dean’s behaviour. She makes it clear that they’re fine, not at all concerned or bothered by a bit of mess or a late thank you. It simply does not matter. Yet as the day continues I began to think this is how they are all the time. There are so many rules, all of them contrary to how a child of that age would normally behave. It’s no surprise that he’s conjured up an imaginary friend called Heady, who he talks to from time to time. Although he does point out that it’s sometimes hard for Heady to hear him, because he doesn’t always have a head. It’s the first sign that something very weird is going on in this sterile and unpleasant atmosphere. All too soon the significance of Childer Close will be revealed. 

The author clearly has a knack for making the reader uncomfortable and I certainly was. The dialogue didn’t feel real to me and this company of people made me squirm. As someone who immediately sits on the floor with children and starts to play I’m afraid I’d have been very vocal. My first thought was intergenerational child abuse and there are certainly clues that Coral’s parents are disciplinarians when compared to Jude and Thom, but why would Alan go along with it? It really did stretch my belief when time after time Dean is told that his wants and needs don’t matter, in tiny little micro-aggressions from his parents – not being able to play with his present as it will be untidy, talking too much, not leaving his grandparents alone, not finishing his fish and chip dinner. It’s a slow drip drip drip of negativity that drove me crazy. Why wasn’t Thom taking his son aside and asking what the hell was going on? We learn that an unusual number of children have died in Barnwall’s history, so why would a loving parent move there? Alan and Coral believe the house may have a malevolent spirit and perhaps an exorcism needs to be performed. He seems the least likely child to be possessed and by focusing on him in particular, again he gets the message that he’s not like other children and something is wrong with him. What unfolds I will leave you to find out…. 

Meet the Author

The Ramsey Campbell Special Editions. Campbell is the greatest inheritor of a tradition that reaches back through H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the early Gothic writers. The dark, masterful work of the painter Henry Fuseli, a friend of Mary Wollstonecraft, is used on these special editions to invoke early literary investigations into the supernatural.

Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946 in Liverpool) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. Two of his novels have been filmed, both for non-English-speaking markets. Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that “Campbell reigns supreme in the field today”, and Robert Hadji has described him as “perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition”, while S. T. Joshi stated, “future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood.”

Posted in Monthly Wrap Up

Best Reads September 2025

Posted on by thelotusreaders

September has been a month of crime fiction, with even my one historical read has a mystery at its heart. I’ve honestly been struggling to read and review this month because we are still living without a kitchen. We decided on a new one but it wasn’t as easy as popping in a new one – emptying the bath and having the water cascade through the kitchen ceiling is something I don’t recommend. So we have a new levelled ceiling and a new floor too. The kitchen is in and it’s now just tiling, painting and putting all the contents from the kitchen back! So my round up of September is a little late and a bit sparse!

I’m quite the Prime Suspect fan so I was beyond pleased to receive a proof copy of the first in Lynda La Plante’s new series featuring CSI Jessica Russell. I’m fascinated with the psychology of profiling suspects and in awe of how every tiny bit of evidence has to be catalogued and checked. There has to be so much trust between a team of CSIs and the team of detectives they work alongside. Jessica Russell is another strong character for the author, although outwardly she feels a little softer than La Plante’s other heroines. However, she has great confidence in her abilities and intellect as a forensic psychologist and head of the Met’s new MSCAN team. Jess, Diane and Taff have a lot of experience in working together and are hired to create this fast-track forensic team reserved for the most serious of the MET’s cases and they have to hit the ground running. Johan de Clerk is a young South African man who has settled in London after marrying his wife Michelle and started a branch of his family’s wine company that supples their products direct to restaurants across the capital. An intruder disturbed him while sleeping and there was a fight. The intruder fled, leaving Johan with serious stab wounds and a head injury. His sixty-thousand pound Rolex watch was taken along with money from a safe. While Johan fights for his life in hospital, Jess and her team make a start forensically examining the scene. I think what the author has done is very clever in terms of setting up a new series. We’ve spent a lot of time with the central character and there was a fascinating case to get lost in, but there are also clear hints where this might go next. There were whispers of a course with the FBI in Quantico for Jess, some hints of potential romance and I was sure there was a lot more to Guy who’s had a fascinating working life before MSCAN. There were also interesting aspects of her personal life I’d love to explore more such as Jess and her brother’s family background. Her brother is also diagnosed with a life limiting disease that will affect them all. We also don’t get much in terms of Taff and Diane’s lives. All of which shows there is definitely room to grow here, which isn’t surprising given the author’s track record at plotting a series. I can see this being an addictive reading experience and I look forward to seeing where this series goes next. 

This was a totally new series to me, despite this being the seventh in the Ben Kitto novels. I absolutely loved it! Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated remains of a young woman. The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer has made sure that no one will find her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace. Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He knows they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost. This is a fantastic crime novel, acknowledging the savagery of someone who will traffic young women and keep them captive and the daily difficulty of living on an island that’s at the mercy of the weather, cut off in the Atlantic. I could see what Ben finds so special about this place, but it does taint his idea that the islands are a safe place. To have had a crime that’s so serious happen right under his nose, involving people he knows, has left him feeling unsure and more suspicious of his fellow islanders. It’s going to be fascinating to see where things go from here for Ben Kitto. In fact I’m so fascinated that I’ve bought all the previous novels in the series to take on holiday with me and have a binge read. I’ve fallen in love with this unusual and wild backdrop but also with this giant of a man who carries the weight of the crimes he investigates with him. 

Nina and her daughter Ash live in the bougie seaside town of Whitstable in Kent. They are grieving for husband and father Paddy, who was killed when a man having a mental health crisis pushed him into an oncoming train. Ash has been living at home since her own mental health deteriorated. She was living in a house in London with two other girls but she developed a crush on her boss, that turned into an obsession. She claimed to have letters from him, but it turned out she’d written them herself and she was eventually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She had come home to recover when Paddy, her dad, was killed. When her mum receives a parcel in the post Ash is intrigued. It’s beautifully wrapped, with a note inside from a man who has heard about Paddy’s death. He used to work with him in the 1990s when he Paddy was just starting out. The gift wrapped box contains a Zippo lighter he borrowed from Paddy but never returned. Since then Paddy has built a restaurant empire, with his flagship restaurant in Whitstable and two others down the coast. There is of course a number, should Nina wish to thank him for his thoughtfulness. Over the next few months Nick and Nina start to WhatsApp each other and then go out for a drink. Ash is glad to see her mum with a glow, but there’s something about Nick that’s just ‘off’. She can’t be sure and maybe she’s viewing this situation through her own grief or her personality disorder, but something isn’t right. She needs to find out more about him before he becomes a permanent fixture. 

I galloped through this book as we went backwards and forwards in time, learning a little more in each chapter and inching towards the truth. I loved the fragile Ash who is at that stage of recovery where she doesn’t fully trust her own mind. Is she making too much of this? Is she just paranoid? Worst of all, if she finds something questionable, will her Mum even believe her? She’s so lonely at this point, she doesn’t have many friends to talk to and feels bad she’s had to bounce back home at her age. Her mum deserves to be happy and she might ruin it all. Just when you think you have all the answers, the author takes it to the next level! There were twists here that I wasn’t expecting and I felt very relieved that I once got away from a similar situation relatively easily, if not unscathed. This book is like a twisted knot in a necklace. It takes a long time to loosen it, but then the whole thing suddenly unravels before your eyes. This is masterful thriller writing from an author who gets better and better. 

According to our narrator, a ‘bride stone’ is a precious stone given to the groom’s family as a dowry, although they were sometimes shown a beautifully made fake stone that they could only have checked when it was too late. It’s an apt title for a book where the women are traded in many different ways. It is set just after the French Revolution when many aristocrats left France for British shores and were welcomed in society. Edmée has somehow made her way to Britain, despite seemingly being an ordinary citizen. Yet she is being offered at a ‘wives’ sale’ by her husband’s brother, this chapter can’t be worse than the last. For Duval Harlington it’s something he would never usually countenance, but his circumstances are uniquely desperate. Having been captured by the French while treating wounded soldiers, on his return he is met by one of the family servants who bears bad news. Duval has become Lord Harlington as his father has recently died. Although he has the title, his right to the ancestral home of Muchmore and his father’s wealth is rather more complex. Duval had a tough relationship with his father who didn’t see the point of him training as a doctor. Once he departed for France, Duval’s father installed a distant relative, Mr Carson and his wife, to manage the day to day running of the estate. So his will has an interesting stipulation, in order to claim his inheritance Duval must be married and now he has only two days to achieve this. Otherwise the estate is Mr Carson’s. When his servant points out the wife sale it seems like a means to an end. Duval notices a young woman being led around the room by a scarf round her neck. Her hair looks like it’s been shorn away and she has a veil covering her face, but the buyers call out for it to be removed and he’s shocked to see that one side of her face is swollen and covered in bruises. Someone has recently beaten her very badly. On impulse he puts up his hand and bids for her, his intention being to marry her quickly and claim his inheritance. Then he could seek an annulment. However he does find Edmée fascinating and with the Mr and Mrs Carson ready for a fight this might not be as easy as he thinks. 

This isn’t just a love story, it’s a thriller. Just as Duval starts to settle in to being home, the unthinkable happens. The couple are talked into holding a ball to introduce the new Lady Harlington to society. Their guests come from the local area, but also from London and some are French emigrés including a Marquis. Mr and Mrs Carson are even invited and unbelievably accept. Edmée is a great success as the host in her new role as mistress of Muchmore, but the next morning she has simply vanished. Did she leave of her own accord – perhaps spooked by someone she saw the previous night. Or has something more sinister happened? It could be the work of someone closer to home though – a disgruntled lover of Duval’s or someone determined that their marriage won’t succeed. I was drawn so deeply into the story of these unlikely partners. Duval and Edmée have both had difficult starts in life. It’s a hard read when it comes to the ways women are mistreated but I was hoping for Edmée to have a happy ending. It was clear that this might not be the case, which made for a tense read in those final chapters. The book has a mix of hardship, adventure and mystery interlaced with the romantic possibility of an unlikely match being perfect, if only he can find his unlikely wife.

That’s all for this week but here’s my potential tbr for October.