Novels No. 93

 

Denise Mina. The Good Liar. USA: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2025.

Claudia O’Sheil is a crackerjack forensic scientist working for Sir Philip Ardmore’s company ForSci—a leading U.K. forensic service used by police, among others. Claudia’s claim to fame was the creation of the Blood Spatter Probability Scale (BSPS) that became the standard for crime scene investigators. Philip promotes her to Clinical Director of his company so he can move to chair the independent Forensic Ethics Committee. The two are presently attending an august peer function where she’s invited to speak about her successful contribution to a notorious murder case. But Claudia instead intends to drop a bomb with the truth about it; heads and reputations will roll, including her own. What the truth bomb is, is unknown to us even as partial hints are sprinkled liberally throughout recent events in Claudia’s life. Hints that can make you dizzy with the tantalizing questions they raise.

The Met police, under dubious direction by their head, Maura Langston, wavered about arresting young William Stewart for the savage murder of his father Jonathon (Jonty) and fiancée Francesca. Jonty was a friend of Philip, an aristocrat in a social circle of likeminded high-finance flyers. Available evidence may not be enough to convict William, whose inheritance has disappeared; his legal interests are undertaken pro bono by Charlie Taunton, old friend of Claudia and her solicitor husband James Atkins. It’s less than a year since James died in a mysterious accident and Claudia and her sons are still grieving. Some of the closely involved characters include Philip’s ex-wife Mary Dibden and her daughter Amelia; Claudia’s drug addicted sister Gina; Francesca’s mother Elena Emmanuel; and rival scientist Kirsty Parry. But why is Charlie searching James’ investigative files of international corporations? Had James kept dangerous secrets from Claudia?

Plot, style, and characterizations here are splendid, not to mention engaging the reader’s best instincts. Intricate subplots simmer within a network of corrupted privilege and power. Mina channels Claudia’s emotional conflicts that lean toward a potential exposé; which of her responsibilities will take priority? It’s the fourth book by Mina I’ve read this year. Such is my admiration.

Pieces

▪ Everyone that mattered in the world of contemporary forensic science was here: the court staff and lab managers, judges and lawyers, even secretarial and admin people. In amongst them were important strangers, journalists and others half recognisable from podcast thumbnails or by-line photos in annual reports of the companies they CEOd, all mini-celebs in this small world, bringing the glam, a garnish on the gathering. (63)

▪ Sensing he had lost the sympathy of his audience, William turned to the vicar, waved his sheet of paper and shouted in a cracked voice: “A bad man and a worse father.” (75)

▪ She recognised that speedy, stumbling speech pattern. Gina had taken something. (92)

▪ “But why would he think the boys weren’t safe? Was it the case he was working on?” (102)

▪ “Maura’s not one of them, that’s why she was given the job. The Met are in a crisis and she’s disposable.” (130)

▪ “William is not a likeable young man. He’s an entitled little shit actually.” (131)

▪ “Kirsty’s inclined to overreach, I think. She had an article knocked back by the Oxford Forensic Journal about the BSPS. The peer review feedback was brutal.” (152)

▪ Claudia felt her anger fizzing up from her feet to her chest. She was going to find out who did this. She’d burn the world down around her to find out. (158)

▪ “You bloody well blackballed me!” (159)

▪ “Your scale said he did it. He knew he was going to be found as guilty as fuck.” (195-6)

Joan O’Leary. A Killer Wedding. USA: William Morrow, 2025.

Family and friends gather for a wedding weekend when Dr Graham Ripton will marry Jane Murphy, meticulously arranged in Ireland’s Ballymoon Castle by a wedding planner (hmmm—entitled, overbearing rich people?). Prestigious Bespoke Weddings magazine is covering the splendid weekend events for its celeb-hungry readers, in the person of young Christine Russo (pandering, obsequious articles expected?). Meeting the groom’s extended family brings a load of unhappy or quarrelling eccentrics (uh-oh—can some tiresome stereotypes produce a credible mystery?). Plus, at least three generations are involved, descended from Gloria Beauregard, grand dame of Glo cosmetic empire. Gloria dominates her personal and business relations with an iron fist, no one ever daring to contradict her. Especially anyone she’s blackmailing.

When Gloria is messily murdered on the Friday morning, the individuals who know about it agree to suppress the news until after the wedding, justified as Gloria would not have wanted anything to spoil the occasion. So the lavish preparations, expensive decorating, tons of flowers, and extravagant food continue while background secrets start creeping out. The narrative rotates among different voices; perhaps only Christine the outsider is unnerved that a killer lurks among the guests. Gloria’s son Trey’s poor performance as Glo’s CEO incurred a lawsuit that threatens to unravel her lifetime’s work. So who was Gloria choosing for new company leadership? Trapped in the conspiracy, Christine frantically tries to keep track of old feuds, adulterous liaisons, criminal connections, and fake identities in order to protect herself.

Author O’Leary goes to town with tropes and excesses—designer brand names, opulent descriptions of everything, hidden passages in the castle, greed for money and power—so who is to say how seriously she plays farce. Still, the characters are little more than facades in a holey plot of many improbables. Yet one reads on, hoping Christine will solve it all, save a few lives, and get a job promotion.

Personae

▪ “Leave it to Gran to invite a reporter to a family dinner to put us all on edge.” Ben glowers at her. (32)

▪ Christine watches Clementine’s face contort in annoyance: not only is her son marrying a lowly, trust-fund-less schoolteacher, but to make matters worse, her mother’s loud and gauche. (32)

▪ Gloria has always been confident, funny, and whip-smart. Everything Jane is not. (60)

▪ “They make their problems disappear.” Lyle’s voice wobbles. “So don’t become a problem, okay? Become an asset.” (95)

▪ Trey always knew that he wasn’t cut out to inherit the Glo empire. Now everybody else knows it too. Including his own son, who also happens to be general counsel of Glo. (100)

▪ “I don’t want Gloria Beaufort’s money. I want to be Gloria Beaufort,” Raquel says crisply. (169)

▪ Both women turn and watch through the stained-glass window as Graham tackles Ben to the floor. Blood gushes from Ben’s nose. (215)

Atmosphere

▪ “That woman’s meaner than a wet panther. You being invited here this weekend means you are a pawn in her game.” (55)

▪ “We cannot be in the press. Especially for something like this. A murder? We’ll never recover. It would be the final nail in Gloria’s coffin ... ” (70)

▪ “ ... you need to know that the NDA you signed prior to coming here prevents you from speaking a word about what’s happened.” (75)

▪ Everyone is watching each other, making sure nobody breaks. It’s like the prisoners’ dilemma in real life: if one of them comes clean about what happened to Gloria, they’re all in trouble. (185)

Novels No. 92

 

Emma Donoghue. The Paris Express. Canada: Harper Perennial, 2025.

What an amazing project! Researching, recreating an 1895 day’s train ride from a Normandy resort town to Paris, with dozens of passengers aboard. Each crew member or agent is brought alive in the bustling, demanding business of transporting people from place to place, thanks to a glorious steam engine. No detail of that engine’s operation is too small for the imagination to overlook, from sweaty coal shovelling to signals recognition and the intricacies of controlled steam release. Likewise we visit the proud but nerve-wracking jobs performed by driver Guillaume, stoker Victor, and senior guard Léon. And so, too, Donoghue conjures the contemporary milieu of politics and general unrest. France has been lately plagued with anarchist and Communard protests over social inequalities and injustices.

We meet passengers as they crowd into First, Second, or Third Class carriages. Some stand out more than others, especially the young woman who plans to blow up the train. Mado thinks her homemade bomb will make the best protest yet, even though she herself and many innocents must die in the blast; several government legislators in nearby First Class are her real target. But perspicacious old Blonska sees Mado desperately clutching her suspicious lunch bucket—can anything at all stop her death plan? As the train speeds to Paris ‒ where the explosion will do the most damage ‒ who has our sympathies? Pregnant Cécile deep in labour; young Maurice panicking at missing his stop; Marcelle and Henry forming a new friendship; a mother caring for her dying daughter; the coffee seller burdened with heavy equipment; carefree students joking; Jules-Félix resting uneasily in his luxurious private car.

The tension is unbearable as the train enters Paris suburbs. No spoilers—but what follows is nothing short of sensational. With her characters talking up the main concerns of the day, and newfangled inventions, Donoghue has placed us right in their laps for a thrilling ride.

Peeks

▪ Bad enough to have been born female, but she refuses to dress the part. Stone-faced, Mado checks the set of her cravat, then her hat. (3-4)

▪ Railwaymen are figures of legend to Maurice, and engines are the dragons they command. (4)

▪ The Express has a crew of four, including the guards, but only the driver and the stoker count as rollers—royals among railwaymen. (13)

▪ Blonska might move with the frail, bobbing glide of a seahorse, but she’s a tough old boot. (18)

▪ Moving at a trot, Léon doubles back to Front Baggage, his base for the journey, and climbs in just in time to hear Le Goff’s final warning whistle. He mounts the short ladder to perch in the senior guard’s birdcage, a lantern-shaped lookout on the roof. (22)

▪ Jeanne may be suffering from something serious, a mysterious disorder revealed by a special test. What a thing to suggest to a stranger on a train! (96)

▪ “But we can’t delude ourselves into thinking that tearing down this society will make a better one.” (145)

▪ Now the girl’s guessed that Blonska knows, which makes the situation even more dangerous. (187)

Giles Blunt. Bad Juliet. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2025.

How strange is this: two novels in a row that involve historical travel. It’s years since I’ve read anything by Blunt—loved his John Cardinal series, so this story was quite a change.

In 1916 Paul Gascoyne is an aspiring poet with a master’s degree, and due to an uncharacteristic breach of manners, he was turfed from a plum university teaching job. Luckily, a friend helped and he’s quietly working as an English literature tutor for patients at renowned Saranac Lake tuberculosis treatment complex. He lives among recovering patients in a “cure cottage” run by the sardonic Mrs Pryce. One of them is the wistful, attractive Sarah Ballard—Paul learns her history as a Lusitania disaster survivor, having lost both her father Lionel Redmond and her brand new husband, Stephen Ballard. Encouraging Sarah to write memoir stories is an uphill struggle; verbally, she’s appealingly articulate, but initially balking at writing. Paul is thrilled at a chance meeting with playwright Jasper Keene. Jasper (himself recovered from TB) is a grandiose, volatile personality and their common literary interests provide a bond.

Jasper is ebullient about his courtship of Sarah, who responds in kind, and Paul seeks solace in Saranac’s abundant population of nurses. Then drama: Stephen Ballard’s father accuses Sarah of lying about her marriage to his son. Sarah admits her deception. Only Paul, whom she trusts, hears the real story. In fact the novel’s only real drive is in Sarah’s stories, as they are told to Paul. Without coming to terms with his feelings about her, Paul is becoming a tediously passive creature failing to find his poetry mojo. Nevertheless the trio enjoys a warm friendship. Until Sarah over-exerts at Jasper’s bidding and suffers near-fatal hemorrhaging. Will anyone now display some pro-activity?

The Lake Saranac complex is/was real, including the sanitarium that closed 1 Dec 1954—the date Paul allegedly publishes this novel. The book’s mystery element lies within Sarah’s character, or how it is perceived by others; I felt at least one clever insertion by the author went unresolved. But Blunt gives us an environment rich in resort town culture and clinical treatment details of the era, all coloured in lingering Victorian sensibilities.

Paul

▪ I focused the less-than-chivalrous part of my mind on how to disarm Nurse Troy so that she might consent to free me — and I assumed herself — from the tiresome burden of virginity. (65-6)

▪ In the weeks and months to come, I would sometimes wonder if, had I been man enough to put my arms around her, had I held her close and assured her that she would not have to face her predicament alone, things — her future and mine — might have turned out differently. (130)

▪ “You won’t lose me, Sarah. Honestly, there’s nothing you could tell me that would change my feelings for you.” (220)

▪ I had told Sarah that memoirs need not be strictly factual, and clearly she had decided to turn hers into pure fiction — and melodrama at that. (236)

Sarah 

▪ “The Lusitania is the last thing — the last thing in this sad, sorry world I want to write about.” (54)

▪ For now she could take short walks, but any physical exertion greater than this could cause the scar tissue to tear, provoking a hemorrhage that — if it didn’t kill her — could add months, or even years, to her recovery. (71)

▪ “I just — yes. I mean, you did tell me it was a memoir, not autobiography, not history. It was okay to make things up.” (119)

▪ “But if you love me, you’re just going to be unhappy. I’m with Jasper, and that isn’t ever going to change.” (217)

Bits

▪ “Patients do not discuss their illness at the table.” (34)

▪ “The poor girl is already in the sights of Mr. Jasper Keene, and I don’t know which of you is the more dangerous. Hearts get broken, Mr. Gascoyne, and I do not want to see it.” (102)

▪ “She makes beautiful sketches — portraits, landscapes — in pencil, in ink, pastel. I think she’d make an excellent instructor.” (147)

▪ “Is that why you wormed your way into my confidence? To close in on the woman I loved?” (174)

▪ “I’m hearing from several fronts that you should be summarily dismissed from your position, if not horse-whipped out of town.” (212)

Novels No. 91

 My poor local Branch of the TPL was locked down again for the third or fourth time, with no access to the holds we ordered. Not only does the branch suffer repeat issues with the building that houses it, it was long ago outgrown by neighbourhood density. We understand they have been looking for appropriate new space for some time. When they are able to re-open, it could mean half a dozen holds are waiting for me at the same time! Meanwhile, the in-house library does a yeoman job of producing decent substitutes. 

Kate Quinn. The Briar Club. USA: William Morrow/Harper Collins, 2024.

A fading old brownstone in Washington DC in 1950: owned and operated by grumpy, snoopy Mrs Nilsson, it’s a boarding house for women where Mrs N’s thirteen-year-old son Pete labours after school to her demands. When exuberant Grace March moves into attic room 4B, the strict atmosphere melts every Thursday because Mrs N leaves the house for her bridge game. Grace makes and shares food with all the inhabitants, at the same time opening Pete’s eyes to a world of more freedom. Musician Joe Reiss who plays nearby in the mafia-affiliated Amber Club, is rumoured to be Grace’s lover. Then there’s Nora in 4A who is ardently pursued and bewitched by Xavier, owner of the Amber Club—he ends up on trial for murder.

But with glimpses of the present, 1954, we know someone in the house has been murdered and police are interviewing all the residents. Over the preceding four years, Nora is not the only occupant playing with danger. Reka is an elderly Hungarian artist, planning to steal back the valuables looted from her by a duplicitous politician; Bea wants her place in men’s world of baseball, spurning her FBI suitor; Claire’s clandestine lover is married to a controlling, important public figure; Fliss is the epitome of serene motherhood with daughter Angela, awaiting her doctor husband’s return from military duty; Grace stays quiet about her background. Besides some stunning twists and the most amazing climax I’ve ever enjoyed, the reader is treated to a dozen of the inhabitants’ authentic recipes.

Quinn’s special strength is in lively female friendships and interactions; her research of the post-war, Cold War period is meticulous, as we expect of her. The paranoid effects of McCarthyism, rampant racism, and misogyny in halls of power surround the women even as they break rules and speak up. A killer of an ending.

Random tidbits

▪ “You really think the Russkies won’t invade? The Commies have been making preparations for years.” (25)

▪ “I said at least I wasn’t preaching the sacredness of life while shoving miscarriage tea down my daughter’s throat.” (99)

▪ Wasn’t being old hard enough without having to dredge up a saintly smile when Claire was a bitch and Fliss was annoying and Bea droned about the Red Sox? (124)

▪ “What would you say if I had killed someone?” Reka blurted, half horrified and half fascinated. (154)?

▪ How Grace never got caught was beyond her—two years at Briarwood House and she whisked men in and out past Mrs. Nilsson’s curfew like a sorceress. (167)

▪ She could just sit and know that her baby was all right, that the Briar Club women had closed around Angela in that blessedly breezy, automatic way they always did, passing her from one set of fresh arms to another while Fliss’s arms got a little bloody rest.(176)

▪ Harland was still holding her off her feet as Mickey Mantle took his home run lap and an entire stadium went insane. (243)

▪ “I am in love with a career criminal, and it’s been over for ages but I don’t seem able to entirely get past it,” she said, and hiccuped. (291)

▪ “No, what’s completely mad is staying with that man until he kills you,” Claire cried. “You have to get away.” (316-7)

▪ “She told me I should find someone else to keep my bed warm, too; she wouldn’t mind a bit!” (329)

Emily St. John Mandel. Last Night in Montreal. 2009. USA: Vintage Books, 2015.

Before Mandel produced her bestseller Station Eleven, came this slim novel about leaving. As in not staying. Eli loves Lilia madly, but his fear that she will leave him comes true. Abducted from her Quebec home by her father at the age of seven, her upbringing consisted of car travel across the United States from town to town to avoid police, a few weeks or months in each place, haphazard home-schooling by dad. Knowing they were hunted, Lilia left anguished notes in hotel room Bibles to say leave us alone. This transient lifestyle is imprinted to continue even after her dad settles down; she moves from place to place working menial jobs, sharing casual relationships, voraciously reading in several languages. Suitably, Eli is a linguist, perpetually reworking his thesis about dead languages.

Montreal detective Christopher Graydon, whose daughter Michaela is the same age, is captivated by reported traces and sightings of the girl, dedicating himself to finding her. In time, a postcard from Michaela draws Eli to Montreal, renewing his hope of finding Lilia. Time and chronology are fluid with author Mandel, including her singular aura of surrealism. Teenaged Michaela had been left to fend for herself as her father’s compulsion kept him on the road, following signs of the fugitives. But she’s familiar with his notes of his journey. Eli and Michaela reach an impasse whereby neither is willing to trade secret information; reference to a cryptic accident is a mystery within a mystery. Does each have the answer the other needs? My patience was stretched a little thin waiting endlessly with Eli, night after night, to escort Michaela home from her grimy nightclub job.

Some of the surprise events made me wonder if the characters are all intentionally borderline mental. They have a lot to say about obsession, detachment, language articulation, and the nature of fight and flight. Unsettling, and unsettled.

Scraps

▪ “Try to imagine what it’s like,” she said. “I don’t know how to stay.” (33)

▪ “It’s a city with a probably doomed language. The Québécois are speaking French with an accent so ancient and frankly bizarre that French people from France can’t understand it.” (53)

▪ Stop looking for me. I’m not missing; I do not want to be found. I wish to remain vanishing. Lilia (54)

▪ Lilia said, floundering now, repeating herself, “I’m not arriving anywhere, I’m only leaving somewhere else.” (78)

▪ The time before she left her mother’s house was all closed doors and blind corners; her memories began the night her father appeared on the lawn below her window. (96)

▪ “Keep travelling,” her brother whispered. “You have to stay away, even if you’re in trouble, no matter where you are ...” (102)

▪ “The ironic thing is, I know everything about her life except the one thing that I really want to know. I even know the things she doesn’t.” (139)

▪ He had been travelling alone for thousands of miles, and the only thing he was at all certain of at that moment was that he didn’t want to catch them anymore. (175)

▪ “You’ve been chasing her since we were both eleven years old,” said Michaela relentlessly. She felt giddy and dangerous, slightly drunk, and she couldn’t stop talking although she knew she should. (186)

Novels No. 90

 

Ashley Winstead. This Book Will Bury Me. USA: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2025.

Jane Sharp seems to be an ordinary college student who, following the shock of her father’s death, finds solace and purpose in contributing to true crime forums. Unusually, the author places an introductory note to caution readers who might be sensitive because of their own experiences. And Jane begins her story by saying this ‒ hers ‒ is the only true story, unlike sensationalist, false media coverage of her exploits. Upon contributing insights to one forum network, it’s not long before Jane is invited to join four seasoned “armchair detectives”—Citizen, Mistress, Lightly, Goku (their online user names)—as a team. Although living in different places, they get to know each other well; competing forums recognize them as stars. They share insights with police investigators who, in turn, respect them enough to sometimes trade information.

Then came the Delphine, Idaho, murder case: three young women students slashed to death in their sorority house. The crime scene was contaminated even before the small town police arrived to bungle the case from the start. No one seemed close to solving it; an ex-boyfriend and other potential suspects were cleared. As media interest grew to explosive proportions, our Five were regarded as heroes or villains, depending on where their fingers pointed. But whoa! Three more victims are murdered the same way, same town; the FBI takes charge with Agent Hale treating the Five as bonafide consultants. They rent a house in Delphine, where crowds of excited amateur s and a voracious press mob are swarming. A tiny forensic clue intensifies the hunt, building to wild heights. Jane didn’t ask to be co-opted as a heroic figurehead—or expect the herd to turn, critics savaging her.

The hive mind at work is intensely fascinating for crime fiction fans; the culture itself generally serves some public interest, but where do ethics enter? Innocent people could be mistakenly targeted. Did Jane cross a line? The author adds thoughtful sidelights to a very complex tale. If ever a novel was hard to put down, this is it.

Jane’s take, about forum and media initial notions:

Mistress, the knitting grandma murder-solver. Lightly, the jilted ex-cop on his own mission for justice. Goku, the tech genius using his power for good. Citizen, the handsome hero, helping people in and out of uniform. And as for me? Trust me, I was just as surprised as anyone when they painted me as a savant. (92)

Thoughts

▪ I have nothing to hide. If I did, I wouldn’t offer you any of this, wouldn’t rip out my own heart describing my father’s death or how I faltered under the weight of it. (55)

▪ It was my first taste of the phenomenon sleuths call “victim attachment,” what others call a parasocial relationship with the dead. (63)

▪ To the average sleuth, frats were cesspools of toxic masculinity that existed solely to perpetuate old-money power systems, as well as white supremacy and rape culture. (124)

▪ I liked to think of the five of us as rogue scientists. It reminds me that even though we were operating outside the bounds of the establishment, there were still rules. We needed to stay dispassionate and logical. (126)

▪ “The true crime community is a menace,” Chief Reingold insisted, his face now tomato red. “They’re keeping my officers from carrying out justice. They’re condemning people to punishment before a fair trial.” (156)

▪ “Do you hear yourself? Stop working the case for a single second. You threw me to the wolves.” (337)

▪ Deep down, I wanted Citizen to want me, knock on my door for another kiss. (339)

▪ This was exactly what I wanted—proof that my friend was innocent, that the last twenty-four hours of mounting dread could be wiped away. So why did I feel so reluctant? (384)

Clare Leslie Hall. Broken Country. USA: Simon & Schuster, 2025.

Beth Kennedy is farm wife Mrs Frank Johnson, secure in their mutual love, but still painfully recovering from the death of their nine-year-old son Bobby—his cause of death not told us. Small-hold farming is hard work, but Beth, Frank, and his ebullient brother Jimmy can imagine no better life. Into their lives comes an awkward figure from the past: Gabriel Wolfe, now a highly successful fiction writer, returns to his old estate home in the neighbourhood. Years ago, Beth and Gabriel had had a tender but passionate affair that seemed destined forever. Again, we are not told why or how it failed, but Gabriel’s upper-crust mother made known her biting disdain of the country girl. Gabriel has a young son now, Leo, who takes to Beth like a kitten to cream; her obsessive grief over Bobby finds an outlet.

As the story of Beth’s younger self becomes clearer, so does the present—Frank is uncomfortable that she spends so much time with Leo because Gabriel is obviously nearby. How long can Beth deny the yearning she has? Is it possible to love two men wholeheartedly and simultaneously? How aware is she of creating extended collateral damage? Unanswered questions drive the tension toward the biggest mystery: who is the person currently on trial for murdering an unidentified man? Meanwhile, Jimmy marries his vivacious sweetheart Nina to everyone’s satisfaction. But Beth is not the only family member harbouring some guilt as the courtroom trial progresses. I could not agree with the verdict in the way the case was presented.

Well-structured to make the most of suspense, Beth’s story paces evenly, beautifully. With so many dramatic turns, we suspect it can’t end well. In fact, it smacks of Shakespearean tragedy.

Before

▪ We smile, perhaps both thinking the same thing: two would-be writers, two dreamers, two lonely teenagers waiting for their lives to begin. (20)

▪ We lie together, heartbeats fading, wrapped up so tightly in each other’s arms I cannot see his face when Gabriel says, “By the way, I love you. I think I did from the first moment I saw you.” (50)

▪ “It’s starting to feel like we share a brain,” Gabriel says. “How will we integrate ourselves back into the real world?” (58)

▪ “You should go,” he says, and still he doesn’t look at me. “You’re right. This is finished.” (103)

▪ Not Eleanor, who never bothered to hide her distrust of Gabriel on the basis of his being “ ... let’s face it, a bit of an entitled prat.” (197)

After

▪ He’s a boy who misses his mother and I’ve managed to make it worse by showing him how much I miss my son. (133)

▪ Frank can’t often bear it because he’s so steeped in guilt he manages to carry on only by acting as if Bobby never existed. (133)

▪ It’s like Bobby is a ghost everyone has forgotten. And I miss him. I miss him so much. (135)

▪ Frank, who has been attuned to my every mood, who hears the words I don’t say just as much as the ones I do. (197)

▪ And then we’re kissing and it doesn’t even feel wrong, kissing one man, and then another. They are different things. (190)

Novels No. 89

 

Mick Herron. Clown Town. USA: Soho Press, Inc., 2025.

Great excitement here for the new, 9^th Slough House novel! It’s been awhile since Bad Actors (Library Limelights No. 283), so I appreciate the roving tour of the decrepit office building to see the usual suspects. Shirley is as belligerent as ever, Roddy sports a tattoo, Louisa contemplates a real job offer, more recent incomer Ashley Khan is on the self-pity train, and naturally, Catherine Standish holds it all together. River is recovering from near-fatal poisoning, arranging for grandfather David’s library to be catalogued; lo and behold, his girlfriend Sid Baker is back in good form after a long coma (since the first book?!). Regent Park’s (MI5) First Desk Diana Taverner is already surreptitiously requesting a favour from Lamb. And a quartet of retired spooks led by “CC” have acquired ammunition—once hidden by David Cartwright at the height of his career—in order to blackmail Regent’s Park (fools, they).

Oh yes, chaos is about to erupt as Taverner sets her private schemes in motion, at a time when a new government takes over in Britain. Slimy former politician Peter Judd is putting a squeeze on her; Diana bargains with Sid to stop the blackmail to save River’s career; Lamb sets Louisa to find out what River is up to; Sid disappears with the quartet; CC gets a meeting with Diana; Standish endorses a rescue outing by the slow horses. Echoes of past ops like Pitchfork and Waterproof are heard; the ghosts of Min, Marcus, Coe, and Emma Flyte drift momentarily here and there. Did we know Herron discovered a Spook College somewhere in Oxford?

Herron easily transitions from street slang to the poetic, from comedy to insidious social commentary. Is it possible this is the best Slough House book ever? Seems like it as you desperately try to keep up with their manic action. Because every character is compelling, making you care. This addictive series is further enhanced by the brilliant AppleTV episodes that follow, more or less, the order of the books. Seventh heaven for crime fiction fans.

Gems

▪ When Emma died, she’d been wearing Louisa’s coat, and Louisa had never quite rid herself of the notion that the two facts were connected. (71)

▪ “If it was just one of us,” CC said, “a lone wolf, yes, they might try to bury their mess. But four of us? Our ages? They’d be mad to try. It would make a worse stink than what they’re trying to keep under wraps.” (87)

▪ Old spies can grow ridiculous. Old spies aren’t much better than clowns. (127)

▪ He laughed. Diana Taverner telling him not to overthink was like Liz Truss suggesting someone apologise. (140)

▪ River stared at the jottings on his palm, committing them to memory in case he washed his hands by accident. (149)

▪ “Did you really just threaten First Desk?” (159)

▪ “Me, gone? You’re forgetting who you’re talking to. There’s a reason I’m First Desk while you’re still working the bins.” (247)

Lamb-isms

▪ “You look like you found a condom in your cornflakes, Diana. You going to tell me about it or just piss off back to the Park?” (31)

▪ “She implied I looked fat,” said Lamb. “This caused me to feel unsafe.” (54)

▪ “Tell him to undo his seatbelt and head for the nearest concrete wall at eighty-five.” (154)

▪ “And that was a brainstorm, was it? If brains were actual weather, none of you’d get wet.” (193)

▪ “You’ve got a monkey like Judd on your back, you don’t feed it bananas. You find a flamethrower.” (255)

Michael Malone. Uncivil Seasons. TPL download. USA: Sourcebooks, Inc., 1983.

We’re in small town North Carolina where generations of interbred Dollards and Cadmeans comprise the upper level of social order. Other people spend their days pleasing or appeasing their class superiors. Briggs Cadmean owns C&W Textiles, the dominant industry; his extensive family includes a lovely daughter with the same name. Our protagonist Justin (“Jay”) Savile’s solicitous mother Peggy is not the only hilarious character in the novel. Since Jay is one of two town detectives (such a disappointment to his parents), he and his colleague Cuddy Mangum are working on who killed Cloris Dollard—a middle-aged pillar of the community with no enemies—wife of state senator Rowell Dollard, Jay’s maternal uncle. Cuddy is from the other side of town where petty criminals, the Pope boys—Preston, Graham, and Dickey—are persons of interest. In addition, jewellery and other valuables are missing. Cloris’s first husband, Bainton Ames, died years ago in a somewhat suspicious drowning.

The large cast of characters ranges among belligerent or pathetic ex-wives, pontificating elders, sly businessmen, not-so-secret adulterers, a homeless schizophrenic, and such-like. Then there’s Joanna Cadmean, the mystic whose gift helped the police solve many past cases. Author Malone trolls the wealthy uppah classes and their cover-ups of misbehaviour. No wonder Justin drinks. On the one hand, you will laugh out loud. Funniest ever dialogue/banter between Cuddy and Jay. On the other hand, author Malone deeply portrays Justin’s struggles against the family expectations of him. Attempting to nail the killer gives him satisfactory purpose, but places him in danger.

Whether the killer is discovered seems almost irrelevant, Justin’s pursuit is so engrossing—and so annoying to family members. Purpose and sensitivity sustain him in a very complicated, self-serving web of power. Well done, Michael Malone.

Scraps  ... Because this was a download and I was in the midst of travel, the quotes were awkwardly, erratically collected.

▪ I forgot things when I drank. What I forgot first was how frightened my Dollard relatives were that I would start drinking again. (14)

▪ Captain V.D. Fulcher was happy, because he’d heard that Preston Pope had seven placesettings of the Grand Baroque sterling belonging to the Rowell Dollards, and that told him that Preston Pope had murdered Mrs. Dollard, and that told him the case was closed and that the important people in Hillston would think well of him for letting them forget in a hurry that homicides ever happened in Hillston to important people. (48)

▪ “Your trouble is, you’re too domestic. You got too many towels. Sideboards. Relatives. You ever hear of Philip Marlowe’s mother coming to visit him at the office?” (74)

▪ “Leave all this old mess alone, son. Bainton’s dead and gone. And Cloris left her fool house open to trash and trash got in and killed her.” (114)

▪ “Everybody’s got a little shit on their shoes, son. Everybody. People like us don’t track it into the parlor and wipe it on the rugs.” (114)

▪ He meant me to remember I was a Hillston Dollard, blood kin to men of high degree, and I was bound in a circle of courtesy, and I was closely guarded there. (115)

▪ “You are telling me Mrs. Cadmean plotted her suicide to make it look as if you had murdered her?” (210)

Novels No. 88

 

Alina Grabowski. Women and Children First. USA: SJP Lit/Zando, 2024.

One small seaside town. Turn by turn, various residents offer a slice of their lives. They will overlap in revealing a very originally-conceived mystery revolving around the death of high school student Lucy, how others interacted with her. To give an inkling of how it unfolds, I’ll try to whittle down the connecting personalities to a nub but it’s difficult. The residents concerned:

Student Jane is secretly having sex with Rob, the new young maths teacher; Jane’s part-time job co-worker Eric says his cousin Lucy is subject to occasional epileptic seizures. Natalie is visiting from the west coast to see her hospitalized mother; she sees a distraught man called Charlie asking the nurses for Lucy. Layla is the school counsellor to whom Sophie confided that the Coach is a sexual predator. Layla lives with Mona where they hear students partying at a construction site in the woods. Mona is Natalie’s former roommate, hoping for grad school acceptance; Mona and Layla distantly glimpse Marina and Olivia coming from the party in bloody clothing. At the party, student Marina encourages Lucy to revenge herself on a boy who had taken ‒ and posted ‒ a stealthy, naked video of her; only Marina comforts Lucy who suffers a disastrous fall and all the under-age drinkers disappear.

Student Olivia is Principal Cushing’s neglected daughter in favour of sister Lila; at the party she dares Lucy to push the offending boy off a dangerous building. Rae is an aspiring actress working at O’Dooley’s pub where Charlie—Rae’s godfather and Lucy’s father—is a regular; Charlie married Brynn but they’re separated. Maureen is the PTA president whose daughter Emma has made fun of Lucy; Maureen and Layla have issues with the school whitewashing the investigations of Lucy’s death and teacher Rob’s inappropriate conduct; Brynn shows up at the meeting. Student Sophie was Lucy’s BFF; she and Jane become close after the funeral, resolving some relationships in their lives. Brynn is Lucy’s mom, convinced her death was an accident unlike swirling rumours; she comes to terms with the artistic expression of her daughter.

Teenage daughters and mothers! In many cases, absent mothers. Each person here gets full character insights. Do we even know how much parental or sibling drama plays out daily at school, on social media, at home?! Grabowski’s presentation is brilliant, almost dizzying.

Bits

▪ Men love it when you make fun of other men. They think it “keeps them honest,” which is apparently something they can’t do themselves. (6)

▪ The hospital, like all hospitals, seems to have been designed by a coked-out architecture student determined to trap all visitors within its sanitized walls. (49)

▪ I wonder if there’s a correlation between being skinny and uptight. Maybe all that internal clenching makes your metabolism speed up. (130)

▪ “Should you be drinking that?” I ask. “With your medication?” (149)

▪ “Drink, drink, drink!” she shouts while Lucy chugs, and I think about how much more useful she’d be if she ever knew when to shut the fuck up. (149-50)

▪ He just turns on Bruce Springsteen and hums along like maybe we can all pretend that the mirror isn’t busted and Mom isn’t pissed and Coach didn’t touch me and a girl didn’t die and Lila was always, only, one of us. (175-6)

▪ “It’s what you do to everyone else. I have to make Mom and Dad happy to make up for you. And I have to make you happy to make up for Mom and Dad.” (179)

▪ But lately I’ve been thinking it’s not particularly healthy to spend multiple nights a week with my dead best friend’s mom, especially since Lucy’s death has turned Brynn into a kid. (251)

Hannah Deitch. Killer Potential. TPL download. USA: William Morrow, 2025.

Talk about a racing start! Evie Gordon is a tutor paid by wealthy families to prepare their teenagers for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) required for acceptance at American colleges. One day she arrives as usual at Serena Victor’s LA-area home to find both the parents shockingly murdered. Not only that, she finds an emaciated unknown woman tied up in a closet—whom she releases just as Serena appears in hysterics and her boyfriend Lukas arrives. In the confusion and fright, everyone pushing and fighting, Serena falls lifeless to the floor and Lukas is calling the police. Evie senses that she will be blamed for three deaths, grabs the other woman, and hightails it away in her car. Heading east, the strange woman can’t or won’t speak, but she assists in the getaway; they’ve become fugitives wanted for the murders of Peter and Dinah Victor. Evie has a dazed, formless thought of reaching her North Carolina hometown.

This is a journey, in more ways than one. The women are suspicious of each other; they have to buy gas and food without being recognized. Evie works out that her companion had been a kidnapped sex slave for the strange Peter Victor. Slowly they warm up to each other, avidly following the news, hoping police will catch the real killer. Jae finally speaks. To their surprise they hear Serena is recovering; but she may think Evie was the perpetrator. Certainly the media paints them as stone cold killers, and their brutal wayside encounters do nothing to dispel that impression. Jae and Evie begin acknowledging their attraction to each other as they also acquire the scary demeanour attributed to them in the widespread publicity. Evie’s unbridled imagination continually builds fantasies of an alternate life but crossing into Canada is their last hideout together. Events go spinning sideways; hard truths and twists are coming.

A road trip where the tension never lets up, and a psycho-drama of the first order: breathless seems like a good description of an amazing writer’s first novel!

Scraps

▪ I circled her. I felt like someone starving who’d finally stumbled upon some meat. She was roadkill. (62)

▪ Whenever anyone picked a fight with me, I could never resist the bait. I was a stranger to the high road. (78)

▪ We were two brutes, scaly and unyielding, together, and alone. (78)

▪ I’d spent the entire day driving. Nonstop, eagle-eyed surveillance. I couldn’t imagine stepping back into the car, back into the night, a world of cops and US Marshalls, FBI agents and hotel clerks. (120)

▪ It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. Why is this happening to me? (151)

▪ A funny thing, how the language of courtship mirrors the language of hunting. Chase. Pursue. Stalk. We had become the object of it all. Objects of lust, objects of fear. (170)

▪ “I just couldn’t stop thinking it was a person. There was a person, living in our walls. Taking food in the middle of the night. Watching me sleep.” (219)

▪ “You had to have known there was another story unspooling, unseen, alongside your own.” (225)

Novels No. 87

 

Kate Quinn. The Rose Code. USA: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2021.

Bletchley Park, a place of some mythology since the Second World War: where Brit personnel laboured in top secret to decipher intercepted German intelligence, transmitted via their daunting Enigma machines. Quinn gives us amazing detail how the many different “BP” units operated, using her three young women recruits as examples. Osla is a fun-loving upper class deb fluent in German and French; Mabel (call me Mab) is working class with practical secretarial skills. The two become best friends, and lure their landlady’s timid daughter into the service as well. Beth is uneducated and agoraphobic thanks to an abusive mother, reluctant to take part until her excellent grasp of cryptography boosts her confidence. The official secrets act says BP denizens can’t speak to anyone of their work but they can and do socialize; some romantic liaisons are inevitable. Mab seeks husband material while Osla holds a torch for a royal boyfriend.

That doesn’t mean their lives go smoothly or predictably. After months of feverish work and mental exhaustion, Beth triumphs in codebreaking one of Germany’s Enigma machines, prompting her to defy her mother and leave home; the three women happily share lodgings. But London is being pounded by the Blitz; BP people are prone to nervous breakdowns. Tragedy is never far in wartime: bombs and destruction and PTSD, so much loss and grief. D-Day preparations emphasize the necessity of sworn secrecy, more important than the needs of friends and lovers. While we follow their wartime exploits, Quinn deftly contrasts a post-war narrative hinting at a major cataclysm in their friendship. Not only that, Beth is committed to an asylum, convinced that a BP colleague is a traitor. And Osla’s boyfriend prepares to marry Elizabeth Windsor.

This is a long book, 650 pages, packed with people so absorbing I am having night dreams about them. These characters are built from known activities of people of the era; their intense stories merge with true events. Beth’s unit boss Dilly Knox was real. Cameo visits by figures such as Lord Mountbatten, General Montgomery, and Prime Minister Churchill are genuine. The flavour of the Forties permeates flawlessly. Quinn is a magnificent, master storyteller.

Osla

▪ Osla had been called a silly deb enough times for it to sting—a burbling belle, a champagne Shirley, a mindless Mayfair muffin. (21)

▪ Osla looked around, blinking blood out of her lashes, but couldn’t see anything through the splintered darkness but rubble and overturned tables. Humped forms lay along the floor. (132-3)

▪ “Now, Beth—when Mab and I distract your mother, you run out the back while we tell her you’re tucked up in bed with a headache.” (191)

▪ “I’m no princess, Philip,” she said at last. “You’ve already got one.” (462)

Mab

▪ Mab imagined men in headphones listening in on German radio channels, jotting Morse madly), then whirled through the various Bletchley huts so university boys could crack them open, so typing-pool girls like Mab could decode them, so bilingual girls like Osla could translate them. Like a conveyor belt at a factory. (72-3)

▪ Darling Mab, you are and always will be the Girl in the Hat. The girl who makes life worth living. (322)

▪ “You killed them,” Mab rasped. “You let go of Lucy—you let her go, and Francis went tearing off after her—” (393)

▪ I used to decode Nazi battle orders, Mab thought, and now I’m folding napkins into swans. (404)

Beth

▪ Get me out of here, the ciphered message read. You owe me. (56)

▪ “I just told my mother she was a Sunday School bully,” Beth said. (257)

▪ “There’s not much of me left over, Beth. But all of it belongs to you.” (311)

▪ In one day, she’d been stripped of everything: her job, her friends, her oath, her home, her dog, her freedom. (506)

May Cobb. The Hunting Wives. USA: Berkley/Random House, 2021.

Some days, you never know where a book’s blurb might lead you.

Sophie moved her husband Graham and son Jack to a small-ish Texas town to escape big city pace and job pressures, so she could be a housewife. It doesn’t take long to bore her. She knows one friend here, Erin, who also slightly bores her, so she takes to Facebook to scour the community for mutual interests. Sophie becomes fixated on Margot, the leading town socialite, apparently an irreverent kindred spirit. She’s introduced, she’s hooked, and she’s invited to join Margot’s exclusive Friday night gatherings: four women who love to shoot guns and drink wine—Tina, Jill, and Callie are the other forty-somethings. Drinking monumental amounts of any alcohol is the standard as they follow wherever sly Margot leads them at night. Teenage boys are one destination. It’s that distasteful.

The author must be trying to render sympathy or pity for narrator Sophie but my ship sailed on that. With a perfect husband and adorable child, Sophie risks losing them over and over thanks to Margot’s hypnotic hold on her. She castigates herself endlessly, to no avail. Teenage boy’s girlfriend is found shot to death and Sophie is Detective Flynn’s prime suspect. Someone else dies by drowning. After all the sensual adventures and self-berating, finally, a mystery with a rather good twist. Slender story, slender plot, stops short of porn, hardly worth 300 pages of heavy breathing from all involved to reach the end. Charming recipes don’t save it.

Bits

▪ It was so much more than that. I wanted to be near her. For her to notice me, too. The idea of it took my breath away. (36)

▪ My darker urges simply followed me here and are even more amplified because it’s so quiet, and sometimes so boring. (57)

▪ “Margot’s appetite for men is insatiable. You’ll see.” (74)

▪ I promise myself I’ll never do it again. What bothers me, though, is the creeping sense that whenever I’m around Margot, I’m out of control. (109)

▪ I just played freaking spin the bottle with a pair of eighteen-year-olds; this is not who I am. I need to go now, I try to convince myself. (178)

▪ The thought of Graham finding out about Jamie makes me double over, grab the counter, and fight to catch my breath. (207)

▪ I should tell Flynn about the drugging, but I don’t want to get into all of that. (292)

▪ What if Callie was spying at the window watching us, and decides to tell him? (299)