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The Woman in Cabin 10

22/9/2017

 
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Ruth Ware: Vintage $19.99
 
IT HAS the makings of an extraordinary, all-expenses-paid, first-class indulgence: a five-day northern lights cruise to the Arctic tip of Norway aboard a lavishly appointed vessel so exclusive it carries no more than a dozen handpicked passengers.
Not surprisingly, British travel writer Lauren ‘Lo’ Blacklock is acutely conscious of her privileged status alongside fellow journalists, photographers and potential investors invited to join the maiden voyage.
At the same time, her enthusiasm is overshadowed by the echoes of a violent burglary at her flat in London only days before her scheduled departure that has left Lo with bruises on her face and a case of crippling insomnia. Her preparation is dampened even further by an ill-timed argument with her boyfriend and the temptation to self-medicate with alcohol.
It’s an unfortunate lead-up to what Lo has been hoping will become her big career break: the chance to finally show off her professional capabilities.
Surely such luxurious surrounds will be the healing balm that’s needed to help Lo conquer her nightmares and refocus – or so she thinks.
Within hours of boarding the tiny ship, however, Lo finds herself fearing for her safety all over again.
Jolted out of her boozy, sleepless, post-midnight daze by a human scream, she staggers to the railing of her cabin balcony to glimpse a female body slipping beneath the surface of the near-freezing ocean.
When her attempt to alert the ship’s security chief is brushed off, Lo begins to suspect that something truly sinister is occurring.
Is there a murderer lurking somewhere on board – one of the VIPs with whom she has already shared a dinner table, perhaps, or a member of the beautifully mannered but timid crew? Or did the mysterious ‘dead’ woman never exist at all, as an increasing number of people around Lo now insist?

The Woolgrower's Companion

15/9/2017

 
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Joy Rhoades: Penguin $32.99
 
LONGHOPE in January 1945 is a district largely devoid of men. Anyone fit enough to fight is doing so, called away to defend their king and country against the Axis powers.
Five years of war have stripped the remote northern New South Wales farming community of its traditional workforce.
Kate Dowd’s husband Jack – a serviceman she met and married quickly when he was sent to Longhope to rest a wounded hand – is among them, based at an army training centre in Sydney as he prepares new waves of young recruits for dispatch overseas.
In place of the patriotic local soldiers the government has offered the services of a group of prisoners of war: Italians captured in North Africa and locked away in rural Australia. Kate’s father Ralph – a mentally broken World War I veteran who named his property ‘Amiens’ after the famous battleground in France – is assigned two such workers: cheeky, hot-headed Vittorio and the considerably more serious but disdainful Luca. Language, customs and politics separate Kate and her father from these strangers, yet if ‘Amiens’ is to survive, together they must somehow find a way to fend off the looming double threat of bankruptcy and drought.
As Ralph’s mind drifts ever further from the present day, Kate must assume responsibility for running the entire operation, guided in her decision-making by two long-serving farmhands and The Woolgrower’s Companion, a how-to book for novice pastoralists.
Bucking social convention, the lonely young wife has little choice but to educate herself almost overnight in bookkeeping, animal husbandry and workplace management.
Drawing on her own upbringing in western Queensland and the recollections of her grandmother – a fifth-generation grazier – Rhoades presents a snapshot of the views, beliefs and prejudices that coloured mid-20th-century society and shaped the attitudes of middle-class Anglo-Australians towards Aboriginal people, European immigrants, domestic and sexual violence, and gender rights.

Cold Earth

8/9/2017

 
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​Ann Cleeves: Macmillan $29.99
 
BARELY have the remains of Shetland native Magnus Tait been lowered into their grave when the soil beneath the party of mourners begins to shudder. Heavy winter rain has destabilised the hillside, prompting a sizeable slab of earth to slither across open sheep-grazing pasture and into the slate-grey North Sea, sweeping with it several headstones and a significant swathe of the island’s main highway.
Elderly loner Magnus’s body is not the only one caught up in the landslide, however; as the clean-up begins, in a supposedly vacant farm cottage facing onto the remote cemetery, a second person is found. It soon becomes clear that the victim did not die in the subsidence.
Responsibility for driving the investigation into the unidentified woman’s death falls to homegrown Shetland detective Jimmy Perez.
Perez is himself still grieving the all-too-recent loss of his fiancée, Fran, an artist whose young daughter Cassie is now in his care.
Juggling the needs of a primary-school-aged child with the demands of small-town policing is challenging, not least when leads in a stranger’s apparent murder are frustratingly sparse.
Seeking an unbiased outside perspective, Perez calls in Willow Reeves, a fellow law-enforcer from Scotland’s Western Isles. Chief Inspector Reeves is familiar with the archipelago’s windswept coastline, tight-knit community-centric culture and deep-rooted Scandinavian heritage, having collaborated with Perez on a previous case.
The family living closest to the site, Kevin and Jane Hay and their two teenaged sons, claim not to have known the next-door house was occupied.
Enquiries further afield – including in the capital, Lerwick, awash with oilfield proceeds – also yield disappointingly few clues, despite the suspicion that high-profile solicitor and aging playboy Tom Rogerson is somehow involved.
As Perez and Reeves probe ever-deeper into Shetland’s shadowy underbelly, will their questioning lead to the killer’s quick and safe apprehension or drive an already-desperate assailant to commit further crimes?

The Killing Bay

1/9/2017

 
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Chris Ould: Titan Books £7.99
 
IT’S not every day that a novel set in one of the world’s least-known archipelagos, the Faroe Islands, appears in print. Even rarer is a book that delivers both a spine-tingling plot and at the same time an insightful, informative and entertaining glimpse into the psyche of the Faroese population.
Faroes-born, British-raised policeman Jan Reyna is back in the islands for the funeral of his biological father, a man with whom Reyna has had no contact since his mother died, leaving her five-year-old son to be raised by her sister in England.
At the same time the Faroese are celebrating the start of the traditional whaling season – a time when pods are driven onto beaches to be butchered and then shared by the community. This centuries-old but gory act of self-sufficiency has caught the attention of an international animal rights group that is determined to disrupt the practice in any way it can.
When the anti-whaling protesters’ photographer, Erla Sivertsen, is found murdered, the culprit is soon identified as a local fishing-boat captain and the victim’s former boyfriend, now a married man who rekindled his relationship with Sivertsen when she returned to document the hunt and for the past few weeks has been involved with her in a clandestine affair.
It’s an open-and-shut case, according to the local law enforcement branch’s second-in-command, based in Tórshavn, the Faroes’ capital and only town of any real size.
Police detective Hjalti Hentze isn’t quite so certain, however, despite being the adulterous fisherman’s father-in-law, and enlists Reyna’s help to explore other possibilities. Inadvertently the pair opens a door on subterfuge, espionage and covert intelligence that stretches far beyond the Faroes’ own watery border.
Ould describes the landscape, culture and lifestyle of the Faroe Islands to perfection, delivering a portrait of an impressively independent society that takes care of itself when threatened.​

    ' Books are treasure for the spirit and ​the soul. '​
    — VB 2020

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    Each 300-word review is accompanied by a high-resolution cover image.
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