Category: Fiction

Mountain Ghost

1/1/2021

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $6.99 ebook

PEOPLE who disapear in the midst of an Arctic winter generally don’t resurface until the spring thaw begins.
When police data analyst Mats Lindström vanishes onto the slopes of Sweden’s highest mountain, Kebnekaise, leaving behind his wife Márjá and their infant son, it’s assumed he has walked off into the wilderness to commit suicide. His body will be found by hikers months from now.
In their home in Gällivare, a mining town above the Arctic Circle, Márjá isn’t convinced, however.
And when Lindström’s social media accounts are suddenly reactivated, she’s not alone in questioning the circumstances and seeking an investigation.
In Québec Inspector Etienne Gagnon recalls that around the time of his unexplained departure from Gällivare, Lindström was applying to join Polarpol, the elite multinational law-enforcement agency of which Gagnon is currently acting commander. Surely taking his own life isn’t the logical act of a man who is at the exact same time pursuing his next career move.
Determined to lead a private search for the missing policeman, the Canadian Mountie prepares to cross the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, in London Gagnon’s senior officer Constable Hákon Sigurðarsson – on leave as he struggles to recover from injuries suffered during a Polarpol operation in Iceland only days earlier – is making use of his time off duty to pursue a ‘ghost’ of his own: notorious assassin-for-hire Byrne Cantrell.
Cantrell has threatened Sigurðarsson’s sister and daughter; he cannot be allowed to remain at large.
On the run since slipping through the Polarpol net in Reykjavík, Cantrell has been exhausted by too many sleepless nights of moving constantly in his desperation to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, both official and otherwise.
This is the second instalment in Christoffer Petersen’s series of Polarpol Arctic thrillers, picking up the storyline immediately after the first novel, Northern Light, ends.

One by One

25/12/2020

Ruth Ware: Harvill Secker $32.99

CORPORATE retreats are divisive. People generally either love them or loathe them – but in the case of music-tech start-up Snoop’s week-long outing to an exclusive French Alps resort, the participants’ loathing is directed more at each other rather than at the bonding exercise itself.
The company’s co-founders, Eva and Topher, are openly feuding, one determined to accept a lucrative buy-out offer while the other is doggedly opposed to relinquishing control. The shareholder group is split exactly down the middle with a single vote still swinging, guaranteeing that the leaders’ time at Chalet Perce-Neige will be spent lobbying and/or bullying in an attempt to sway their former colleague’s decision. With a billion dollars at stake, neither side is going to concede defeat while ever there’s a chance of claiming former personal assistant Liz’s all-important support.
Chef Danny and hostess Erin are the only onsite staff, responsible for catering to their visitors’ every whim – and there are whims aplenty among these privileged millennials with their unfathomable job titles, demanding diets and haute couture skiwear. Not only do the Snoopers arrive with an extra person to be accommodated without warning but now the weather forecast is dire, derailing their plans to spend the first afternoon out skiing.
It’s a scenario that could easily turn murderous – figuratively, at least.
There’s nothing figurative about one woman’s sudden disappearance, however: one minute she’s there in their midst, right among them on the slope, and the next she’s gone. Trying to trace when and how she vanished is thrown further into chaos when an avalanche sweeps down the mountainside, cutting the party off from any chance of seeking help.
Alone, hungry, cold and at loggerheads – and with one of that morning’s breakfast companions now missing, presumed dead – the Snoop team members and their hosts are living an Agatha Christie-like nightmare.

The Runes of Destiny

18/12/2020

Christina Courtenay: Headline Review $22.99

ONE minute Linnea Berger is pitching in to help her father Haakon’s boss at an archaeological dig near their family home in central Sweden, the next she’s waking up on the ground with a stranger standing over her.
Regaining consciousness after an apparent blackout, Linnea is accused of having stolen the local jarl’s silver brooch – the same brooch she had just located with the help of a metal detector and dug out of the soil.
Now she’s surrounded by a group of Swedes dressed as some sort of throwback to the Viking era. It’s clear to Linnea that these people take their role-playing seriously – very seriously.
Not only are they wearing the clothing of ninth-century Svía villagers but they’re actually speaking Old Norse too. History student Linnea is capable of holding her own linguistically but the characters of this make-believe setting are absolutely fluent.
This can’t be happening. Nobody has spoken Old Norse like this since… well, not since it evolved into the group of modern-day Scandinavian languages roughly a millennium ago.
Her captors are taking this fantasy way too far, even referring to her as their “thrall” and discussing plans to sell her in a slave market in Miklagarðr – known in Linnea’s world of 2017 as Istanbul.
Surely they don’t actually believe they’re living in Viking-Age Svíaríki, do they?
If this is real, then she’s somehow been catapulted 1200 years into the past: a past in which expeditioners from this part of Sweden routinely navigate their way across the Baltic, along the rivers of western Russia and Ukraine and across the Black Sea to the heart of the Ottoman Empire and in some cases even to Iran.
Being immersed in a Norse community such as this is every historian’s dream but for Linnea the experience she’s now having feels much more like the worst possible nightmare.

Winterkill

11/12/2020

Ragnar Jónasson: Orenda Books $6.64 ebook

INSPECTOR Ari Thór Arason’s picture-perfect Easter is about to implode.
With his former partner and their son due to fly in for a short visit, Ari Thór has been anticipating a few days of happy family downtime. Since the dissolution of the couple’s on-off relationship, Kristín and little Stefnir have been living in Sweden. Ari Thór has waited for months for this reunion with Stefnir and is determined to make the most of their too-few days together.
Woken well before dawn, however, he’s now in the early stages of opening an enquiry into the death of a teenage student whose body has been found lying in an iced-over street.
Siglufjörður is not normally a hotbed of crime – in fact, it’s anything but. In Ari Thór’s six years in this remote fishing town on the north coast of Iceland he’s had to deal with only a handful of serious incidents.
This is his first real challenge as head of the local police team of two. With his former boss now comfortably settled in Reykjavík, the newly promoted Ari Thór has only an impertinent junior officer, Ögmundur, for backup.
Leaving a potential murder investigation in Ögmundur’s inexperienced hands isn’t ideal, but if he’s to have the bonding time he desperately wants with his son, Ari Thór will need to insist that this young upstart shoulders his share of responsibility while his boss is off-duty.
But, with a blizzard looming and a past lover resurfacing, the planned break is fast becoming far more complicated than any simple long-weekend at home should be.
Winterkill is the sixth and final book in Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series of crime thrillers, translated into English by David Warriner. It features characters and storylines established in Snowblind, Nightblind, Blackout, Rupture and Whiteout but can easily be read in isolation.

Dark Tides

4/12/2020

Philippa Gregory: Simon & Schuster Australia $32.99

TWENTY-ONE years have elapsed since Alinor Reekie and her teenage daughter Alys left Foulmire in a hurry – both pregnant and both deeply in disgrace.
Alinor has never fully recovered from her very public near-drowning as a suspected witch at the hands of Foulmire’s elders. Plagued by poor health, in 1670 she is a frail impersonation of the woman she was during her time as a healer and midwife on the south coast of England.
Now the pair support themselves as wharfingers: mistresses of a ramshackle little warehouse on the River Thames on the eastern fringe of London. Their clients are the second-tier traders whose goods aren’t required to go directly to the government wharves closer to the city centre for official customs inspection.
Alinor’s son Rob has been working as a doctor in Venice and her brother Ned – the one-time ferrymaster at Foulmire – is making a fresh life for himself as a New World settler, having been forced to flee their hamlet after the king he had opposed was restored to the throne and embarked on a purge of all known adversaries.
Suddenly an inordinately attractive young Venetian woman arrives by ship in Southwark claiming to be Rob’s widow Livia, the Nobildonna da Ricci. Her husband, she says, has drowned in a lagoon in Venice, leaving her all alone with their newborn baby to raise. Her only remaining family are Alinor, Alys and Alys’s adult twins.
When the vivacious Livia crosses paths with a man from Alinor’s past, the aristocratic landholder Sir James Avery, her prospects start to look brighter – but her desires are the polar opposite of her inlaws’ wishes.
Dark Tides is the sequel to Tidelands, the novel that introduced the Reekies and James Avery (then a Catholic priest travelling under the assumed name ‘Summers’) during King Charles’ exile on the Isle of Wight.

Invisible Touch

27/11/2020

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $6.99 ebook

WITH the nightmarish killing sprees of the previous Christmas and New Year now behind her, Police Commissioner Petra ‘Piitalaat’ Jensen is looking forward to spending this festive season unwinding quietly at home in Nuuk.
In the year 2043 Petra’s Greenland is finally independent of Denmark thanks to the successful referendum of almost 12 months earlier and starting to make its own way in the world. Nuuk is a peaceful, well-balanced, multicultural city with its distinct Dutch, Chinese and US quarters living in harmony to forge a prosperous and progressive future for the country.
There’s cause for much celebration for members of the Greenlandic police in particular, operating for the first time as a fully self-determining force answerable to no-one beyond its own borders.
Petra’s assistant Aron is recovering from injuries suffered in the course of intercepting a former colleague bent on disrupting Greenland’s self-government vote and Petra is once more contemplating the possibility of taking early retirement. Since the death of her long-time partner Constable David Maratse she hasn’t had her usual passion for enforcing the law. A low-key December is exactly what she needs as she weighs up her options.
Someone has other plans, however. Someone – it will be up to Petra’s officers to discover who – sees Advent not as a time of preparation, anticipation and relaxation but as an opportunity to settle old scores.
As the long dark nights envelop Nuuk, suddenly the run-up to Christmas starts to seem eerily familiar for Petra and her team.
Invisible Touch is the third in Christoffer Petersen’s series of Dark Advent literary ‘calendars’: stories written in distinct parts designed to be enjoyed one chapter at a time over in this case the first 24 days of December, allowing the reader to experience the action as it unfolds in Nuuk in real time.

City of Spies

20/11/2020

Mara Timon: Zaffre $29.99

NATHALIE Lafontaine’s luck has just run out. A neighbour in Paris, offended by her rebuffing of his unwanted advances, has made a complaint against her to the occupying Germans and now she is being hunted by the dreaded Gestapo.
After a desperate flight south through the countryside she is fortunate to escape onto a fishing boat that delivers her to Spain. There she is received by the British Consul-General in Madrid as Elizabeth de Mornay, codename ‘Cécile’, a highly trained member of the Special Operations Executive who has been working behind enemy lines in France.
Rather than send her home to London, however, her superiors assign Elizabeth yet another alias and divert her to theoretically neutral Portugal. The Portuguese ruler, António de Oliveira Salazar, is maintaining a delicate balancing act, welcoming refugees from both sides of the war and maintaining regular contact with the Allied countries while hedging his bets by turning a blind eye to Axis actions within his own border.
In Lisbon Elizabeth emerges with a new identity: that of Solange Verin, a French widow in need of safe shelter far from the dangers of the Nazi occupation of her homeland. Her brief is to meld into the expat German community – a relatively easy assignment for an attractive 20-something woman guaranteed to catch the attention of any number of German intelligence officers.
Lisbon, she quickly finds, is a city in which watching one’s neighbours is an everyday obsession. People appear – and, all too often, disappear – suddenly and without explanation.
Everywhere she goes brunette Solange is being observed – so much so that with the help of a wig she disguises herself as blonde Veronica Sinclair on occasion in order to evade the bufos who constantly monitor her movements on behalf of various parties, some more or less friendly, some definitely not.
Under such close scrutiny, can she actually achieve anything worthwhile?

Deadly Waters

13/11/2020

Dot Hutchison: Amazon Publishing $29.99

DEATH by alligator is rare in Florida – so rare that when a college student’s mauled remains are discovered decomposing in a lake in the centre of Gainesville, the news creates a tidal wave of panic on the local university campus.
At first it is assumed to have been a case of misadventure: the result of stumbling drunkenly off the footpath into dangerous territory at the height of the reptiles’ breeding season.
When a second young man dies in similar circumstances, however, and then two more, it starts to look like more than simple bad luck. Is a pattern emerging and, if so, what is the link between the victims?
Flatmates Rebecca, Ellie, Delia, Hafsah, Susanna, Keiko and Luz share accommodation but are decidedly individual in character.
Conscientious Rebecca is a journalism major, intent on making a career for herself reporting on legal issues.
Ellie, on the other hand, seems to be far more focused on self-destruction. Under-age drinking and brawling in bars are her two priorities – that and kneeing her male counterparts in the groin. Ellie has zero tolerance for the type of brazen, boorish misbehaviour that has left dozens – perhaps hundreds – of girls in Gainesville emotionally and physically scarred by sexual assault. The more Ellie stands up for the sisterhood, the more worried her friends become that one day soon she will destroy not only someone else’s life but also her own.
Detective Patrick Corby – ‘Det Corby’ to the group – is an ever-present knight-in-shining-armour – or shining police department badge in this case: a trustworthy law enforcer whose steady presence and gentlemanly manners ensure they have a safe escort home at night and a level head to turn to for support and advice as the tally of attacks by both male students and alligators continues to build.

The Evening and the Morning

2/10/2020

Ken Follett: Macmillan $17.99 ebook

THERE’S a first time for everything, so the saying goes – and in the case of unfortunate Combe, the ‘first’ this season is its first Viking attack.
Although a terror of pillaging Norsemen has hung over the settlements of western England for many years, never before has Combe been targeted. Finally, however, in mid 997 the village’s luck runs out.
At 17 Edgar is already a fully grown man, the youngest of three brothers apprenticed to their master-boatbuilder father.
When the marauders arrive, he is away from his parents’ home, waiting desperately at dawn on the far shore of the bay for his beloved Sungifu to join him. Edgar has constructed a sturdy wooden vessel to carry the young couple away together and can already imagine the happiness they will soon share. Today’s elopement will be the start of a new life for them both.
On the opposite side of the English Channel, the high-spirited Lady Ragnhild is ensconced safely inside Count Hubert and Countess Ginnilaug’s castle at Cherbourg.
Themselves the descendants of Viking conquerors, the Norman nobles are proud of their Norse heritage and feel no need to turn away the longships that visit their port en route to rich, undefended pastures nearby.
They are on friendly terms with the English at the same time and often welcome delegations led by clergymen.
As the fallout from the Viking plundering of Combe begins to solidify, the ruling families of the two communities are drawn closer together.
Wilwulf, ealdorman of Shiring, needs help. His coastline is being ravaged and Combe’s destruction has left its mark on his finances.
Gaining the co-operation of Cherbourg could be an important step towards stemming the flow of aggressors from the north but in order to forge an alliance he must be able to offer something to the Normans in return.

Winter Magic: A Bitter Creek Novella

25/9/2020

Joan Johnston: Joan Mertens Johnston Inc $4.13 Kindle e-book

A BATTERED woman. A fatherless child. A man with features mutilated years earlier by the jaws of a grizzly bear.
It’s an unconventional combination, yet these disparate characters find themselves forced to wait out a blizzard together after cattle rancher Mike Sullivan finds a vehicle broken down on the roadside near Whitefish in north-western Montana. Inside the rusty old pickup truck Mike discovers Joanne Henderson and her daughter Daisy, a sweet-natured, kitten-loving four-year-old.
In the rural high country, with snowdrifts rising ominously Mike’s only option is to open his home to the pair as shelter until the storm has passed and it is safe for them to continue their journey.
But welcoming two strangers into his cabin is an uncomfortable experience for the unmarried former navy SEAL whose near-fatal mauling has left him with the type of hideous scarring that startles children and makes adults flinch. Mike has had little social interaction since suffering his run-in with the bear and is pitifully awkward in the presence of his unintended house guests.
Joanne is exquisitely attractive: small, delicate, dainty and blonde. Pragmatist Mike knows himself to be hulking, shaggy, deformed. Any attraction he might feel towards this bruised and broken young mother is futile.
Yet, as brief as their time under the same roof is destined to be, it is nevertheless a cosy taste of domestic bliss that Mike can’t help but relish. If only his face and his confidence weren’t so terribly disfigured perhaps this could be his reality.
Winter Magic is the fifth release in the ‘King’s Brats’ series of Bitter Creek stories, adding to the Grayhawk family saga explored in Sinful, Shameless, Surrender and Sullivan’s Promise.
For Southern Hemisphere readers celebrating Christmas in July it is a perfectly themed shot of escapism into a world of generosity, acceptance and unlikely love.

One To Watch

18/9/2020

Kate Stayman-London: Hachette Australia $29.99

LOVE comes in all shapes and sizes – or does it? Certainly not in the highly unrealistic world of ‘reality’ TV, where contenders on the top-rating Main Squeeze bear absolutely no resemblance to LA-based fashionista Bea Schumacher and her social media followers.
As 25 single women or men vie on screen for the attention of a potential husband or wife, Bea is frustrated to see that season after season the line-up is all but identical: tall, swimsuit-sculpted, white.
When a series of tequila-fuelled comments catches the eye of the Main Squeeze production team, the studio decides to turn the program on its head by introducing its first ever plus-sized romantic heroine. Can Bea be convinced to step into the role?
It’s horrible timing for the self-employed blogger, who has been in emotional freefall since her one-time best friend and love interest decided to ghost her.
Now, faced with having to choose a possible life partner in front of a national prime-time viewing audience, she is all but paralysed by self-doubt and indecision. Could any one of these so-called suitors truly be attracted to Bea or are they more likely merely going through the motions with a view to boosting their own public profiles?
Is chef Luc, professor Asher, farmer Wyatt or soccer coach Sam really Bea’s ideal match? All four men are physically perfect – and the reflection Bea sees in her mirror is not that of someone whose natural place is standing beside one of these god-like figures. After all, she reasons, there never has been a fat fairytale princess.
Will Bea’s lack of trust in the process derail this opportunity to find love?
Far from being a froth-and-bubbles glimpse into the world of The Bachelorette et al, One To Watch is a thought-provoking conversation starter that questions societal attitudes to weight, femininity and appetite.

Echoes of the Runes

4/9/2020

Christina Courtenay: Hachette Australia $22.99

CURVING possessively around the index finger of Mia Maddox’s right hand, the delicate serpent-head ring is exquisite. As an heirloom inherited from her late grandmother Elin it has special significance for British Museum conservator Mia.
The ring in the display case is equally impressive, if significantly bigger; in fact, the size disparity notwithstanding, it is all but identical. This one, however, is part of an exhibition of Viking-era jewellery in Stockholm, where Swedish-born Mia is spending a few hours before attending Gran’s funeral.
As she stares in astonishment at the thousand-year-old twin bands of gold, Mia is interrupted by a stranger who has also noted the similarity.
Archaeologist Haakon Berger’s head is swirling with questions. Is this Englishwoman wearing an unauthorised replica, or is it an unreported – and therefore stolen – piece of Norse heritage?
Inspired to try to trace the origins of Mia’s ring, the pair decide to embark on an excavation of her family’s land on the shore of Lake Mälaren, an area known for its rich seafarer roots.
The physical signs suggest this could have been the site of a settlement presided over by a chieftain: a man powerful enough to have raided kingdoms far afield in search of precious metals and human slaves.
Unbeknown to the research team, one such local jarl, Haukr Erlendrsson, did indeed set out a-viking from this waterfront stronghold, returning many weeks later with a valuable hostage among his spoils. As the sister of a high-ranking Welshman, Ceridwen – Ceri – was destined to spend winter in the Norse community before being ransomed by her people.
The further Mia and Haakon investigate, the more clues to Haukr and Ceri’s long-ago presence emerge from the soil.
But, as Mia becomes increasingly invested in uncovering the stories of these past generations, her life in London recedes in importance. Could her future lie in rural Sweden instead?

The Governess

28/8/2020

Wendy Holden: Welbeck $39.99

ONE minute Marion Crawford is turning down a marriage proposal from a long-time friend in Edinburgh and preparing to complete her final year of teacher training, the next she is being whisked by train to London as the newly appointed governess to the world’s most famous siblings: the ‘little princesses’ Elizabeth and Margaret Rose.
King George V and his formidable consort Mary occupy the English throne when Crawford is introduced to royal circles as a favour to her college principal in the summer of 1932. Recommended to ‘Bertie’ and Elizabeth, the Duke and Duchess of York, by relatives in Scotland, she agrees to work an initial four weeks’ trial as the sole tutor of six-year-old ‘Lilibet’ and toddler ‘Bud’.
One month becomes several, then those several transition into 1933. As the Yorks move between their weekday residence within walking distance of Buckingham Palace and their country home in Windsor, ‘Crawfie’ travels with them. Hers is far from the glamorous fairytale existence observers on the outside assume it to be, however, as she struggles to add a degree of normalcy to the girls’ cosseted lives.
An overflowing schedule of competing activities means classes are often abandoned without notice, leaving Crawford frustrated that educating the princesses seems to be the least of the family’s priorities. At this point Lilibet is, after all, merely the daughter of a second son and the niece of the dashing playboy who will be the British Empire’s next king; Margaret ranks even lower in intellectual importance. Deportment and grooming are essential attributes; an ability to read, write and reason is irrelevant.
A work of fiction with historical figures and events at its core, The Governess imagines Crawford’s 16-year career within the royal household in an era of political and social upheaval set against a backdrop of abdication, blanket bombing, betrayal and romance.

Dragon in the Snow

21/8/2020

Lexie Conyngham: The Kellas Cat Press £12.99

FEW things of note ever happen on quiet little Shapinsay, one of the lesser islands of the Orkney group off the north-eastern tip of Scotland, known for the quality of its sheep and little else.
This lack of genuine news doesn’t prevent Beinir, the community’s designated scribe, inundating Earl Thorfinn with detailed accounts of Shapinsay’s trivial comings and goings, however. As one of the few fully literate men in Orkney, Beinir is exceedingly proud of his ability to present handwritten parchment records to his master at the Norse stronghold on Birsay.
Now Beinir is about to have something of true interest occur in his otherwise-routine life: Thorfinn has despatched the widow Sigrid, a renowned wool-worker, to Shapinsay on a reconnaissance mission. Her assignment is to weigh up whether she can see herself settling there as Beinir’s wife.
The timing of Sigrid’s arrival is unfortunate: no sooner has she unpacked in her temporary residence than a neighbour’s longhouse catches alight.
Fire is one of the worst things that can happen to an 11th-century dwelling, constructed from timber clad with strips of turf and fitted out with wooden furniture, furs and straw. So careful are householders in Orkney that a single blaze is unusual; that a second hut should burn less than 24 hours later is unthinkable.
And as two bodies are being pulled from the smouldering remains, assuming themselves to be under attack, the surviving residents do not hesitate to trigger the signal beacon that summons help from Birsay – help in this instance in the form of Sigrid’s childhood friend Ketil, newly engaged without his consent to Thorfinn’s only daughter, Asgerdr, and thankful for the hastily forced separation.
What – or who – could be responsible for such a rash of ill-luck in a small out-of-the-way hamlet where the half-dozen households are all closely inter-linked?

You Deserve Each Other

7/8/2020

Sarah Hogle: Piatkus $29.99

NAOMI Westfield has an idyllic life – or, rather, she will have just a few short months from now when her wedding day finally dawns. To the outside world, Naomi is blissfully happy.
Nicholas Rose is the man of any sane woman’s dreams: a handsome, caring, career-focused dentist earning a generous income and with an open, welcoming family behind him.
By contrast, Naomi’s own parents are distant – both physically and emotionally – and she has little in common with her siblings.
However, appearances can be dangerously deceptive – particularly in the case of this engaged couple as they’re shepherded towards mother Rose’s vision of ever-after togetherness.
Naomi and Nicholas are in fact dreading marriage yet neither is willing to be the one who has to bear the shame of breaking their engagement. Instead they’re locked in the ultimate game of intimacy chicken, each daring the other to be the first to blink and walk away from an impending avalanche of lifelong disaster.
So intent are they on maintaining the façade that they’re willing to go to almost any lengths to conceal their true fears. After all, in this age of social media obsession, appearing to have the ideal bond in public is far more important than actually feeling respected, supported and understood in private – isn’t it?
“Knowing that our relationship looks enviable from the outside is the only thing we’ve got going for us,” Naomi admits to herself.
Unwilling to confide in her friends and workmates and seek their advice, she begins finding convert ways to undermine Nicholas’ plans for their future – ways that to the outside world seem increasingly off-balance and bizarre. The result for onlookers is hilarious and thought-provoking.
Will one or other of the engagees realise their mistake and call off the wedding before it’s too late or will they simply continue freewheeling towards marital misery?

Darkness Falls

3/7/2020

David Mark: Amazon £2.99 Kindle e-book

SIMPLE, straightforward everyday murder – a shooting, a knifing, a strangulation – is one thing; the macabre, repellent, debauched torture and dismemberment of bride-to-be Ella Butterworth is quite another.
A decade into his police career Sergeant Aector McAvoy is shell-shocked by the scene he uncovers in a nondescript flat in suburban Hull.
Once the offshore fishing capital of the world, Hull in early 2012 is a city in decay, ravaged by unemployment, disinterest and organised crime.
The abduction and subsequent discovery of Ella is merely the latest in a seemingly endless parade of atrocities. This time, however, the offender has been caught.
For once, opinion in Hull is undivided: the public, the media and the law agree almost to a person that Shane Cadbury – ‘The Chocolate Boy’ – is the despicable pervert who killed this beautiful young woman.
Or is he? McAvoy, as a lone dissenting voice, is not entirely sure.
As the officer whose investigation uncovered the corpse in Cadbury’s bedroom, McAvoy struggles to blot out the heinous scene he witnessed.
Yet, deep within himself he is uneasy. It is undeniable that the lumbering, intellectually awkward social misfit was in possession of the body, but is it possible that by the time he first crossed paths with Ella she was already dead?
Complicating matters, this is not the only case in front of McAvoy and his colleagues.
Press Association journalist Owen Lee could not have chosen a worse time to die. Having driven to a carpark at the northern end of the Humber Bridge, intent on diving into the murky, tempestuous estuary, Lee blunders into the midst of a gangland assassination. In a Sliding Doors moment, an instinctive desperation supplants despair and he reacts without thinking.
Now, his unintended survival is the trigger for a growing trail of missteps that explodes when professional duty draws him into Cadbury’s courtroom.

Camino Winds

19/6/2020

John Grisham: Hodder & Staughton $32.99

RARELY does John Grisham revisit a set of characters, regardless of how successful that cast’s original exploits have been. In Camino Winds, Grisham makes an exception.
The fact readers are served up a second helping of Mercer Mann and Bruce Cable is a gift in itself; that their reinvigorated storyline takes an entirely new direction makes this sequel an intriguing contrast to the original novel, Camino Island, and at the same time a release that deserves to stand independently on merit.
In this instalment bookstore owner Cable is the key to the plot while Mann takes a sideways step into a peripheral role.
Hurricane Leo has just carved its way across Camino, twisting, churning and inflicting on the pretty seaside village of Santa Rosa catastrophic destruction and at least one death.
When Cable is called to the property of lawyer-turned-novelist Nelson Kerr to identify a battered body, it seems his friend has become an unwitting victim of the storm’s ferocity.
However, prompted by local author Bob Cobb and college student Nick Sutton, Cable soon starts to question whether the fatal injuries were indeed inflicted by flying debris. Could at least three separate blows to the head really have been caused by windborne branches? Surely the odds of this having happened must be extraordinarily low, so what – or who – actually did kill Kerr?
In the chaotic aftermath of Leo, Cable, Sutton and Cobb start to examine the circumstances surrounding his demise and workshop credible explanations.
Kerr – a former FBI whistleblower known for focusing on corporate wrongdoing – had just put the final touches to his next best-seller-in-waiting so could its imminent publication have spooked someone into wanting him silenced? In theory nobody has yet seen this freshly completed manuscript and so far the police have not considered it worth investigating. It could well be the motive they’ve been lacking, however.

The Mist

5/6/2020

Ragnar Jónasson: Penguin $12.99 Kindle e-book

CHRISTMAS in Iceland is traditionally a season for giving new-release novels as presents, reading by candlelight and dining on smoked local lamb. It is not a season for finding uninvited visitors on one’s snow-covered doorstep.
When an unfamiliar man arrives at Erla and Einar Einarsson’s farm near Höfn in the east of the country, the couple feel obliged to offer him shelter. A blizzard is brewing and he’s on foot, having lost his way while out shooting ptarmigan with friends from Reykjavík – or so he says. His story is weak, however: he’s not carrying a gun, after all, and he claims not to have noticed their daughter Anna’s house as he approached the Einarsson property even though he followed the main road directly past it.
At the western extremity of the island, Hulda Hermannsdóttir is struggling to corral her own family into celebrating appropriately this year.
Husband Jón refuses to take teenager Dimma’s withdrawn, reclusive behaviour seriously, despite Hulda demanding that they consult a psychologist. It’s just typical adolescence, Jón insists. They’re yet to choose and decorate a Christmas tree, the last few gifts still haven’t been bought and the prospect of having her mother visit is gnawing at Hulda. What should be a happy, peaceful period is anything but.
Away from her chaotic homelife, a day in the office is equally excruciating for police officer Hulda. A young woman has been missing for months and her parents are frantic. Returning a phonecall from the girl’s family is right at the top of Hulda’s to-do list.
The third and final instalment in Jónasson’s Hidden Iceland series (also known as ‘the Hulda triology’), The Mist precedes both The Darkness and The Island chronologically in the saga of Hulda and her family so elaborates on situations only hinted at in the first two releases.

Lockdown

15/5/2020

Peter May: Riverrun $22.99

LONDON is in lockdown: nobody is allowed out and almost nobody wishes to be allowed in, with the rare exception of the few contractors for whom a frenzy of emergency construction has created an earning bonanza.
Early on the morning of his last full day on the job, Detective Inspector Jack MacNeil is called to a building site where a sports bag full of human bones has just been found. It’s an unpopular discovery: the building team is on an almost-impossibly tight deadline to compete a new overflow hospital facility and any interruption to the schedule is both politically and financially awkward.
MacNeil’s priority, however, lies with discovering the identity of the victim and then tracking down the killer. But at precisely 7am tomorrow he will clock off from his role with London’s Metropolitan Police for good. Finally, he will have time to spend with his son, who is presently living in isolation with MacNeil’s estranged wife as residents voluntarily cut themselves off from all outside contact in an effort to evade near-certain death.
The strain of bird flu that has infected London is incredibly contagious and is fatal in roughly 80 per cent of cases. The odds for anyone unfortunate enough to contract it are dismal.
Yet MacNeil must continue to go about his work in as professional a way he can manage under a crippling state of martial law.
Eerily accurate in its depiction of a life-threatening 21st-century epidemic, the manuscript of this novel had been sitting completely ignored in bestselling author Peter May’s files for years, having failed to attract the support of any mainstream publisher when it was first completed.
The arrival of the novel coronavirus saw it reborn and green-lit through the production and distribution process in a matter of only weeks, and it has now been translated into several languages, including German and Portuguese.

Tidelands

1/5/2020

Philippa Gregory: Simon & Schuster $19.99

BEING female in 1648 is dangerous for even the most reputable of women; being a deserted wife suspected of practising witchcraft in a devoutly puritan community is almost certain to be fatal.
Medieval England is in turmoil, enveloped by a malicious civil war: the hereditary monarch, Charles I, is under house arrest in exile on the Isle of Wight, the Catholic queen consort is with her family across the channel in France and control of the country is in the hands of a renegade parliament backed by the army of Oliver Cromwell, a “middling farmer from Cambridgeshire”.
Alinor Reekie’s household is equally dishevelled. Alinor’s husband is missing, presumed drowned after having disappeared while fishing off the south coast of England months earlier. A herbalist and midwife, Alinor treads a perilously fine line between earning an honest shilling here and there dispensing natural remedies to neighbours and assisting in home births, and finding herself ostracised or worse for allegedly perpetuating ‘the old ways’. As she scrounges together a subsistence for herself and her two children on the edge of a tidal wasteland, Alinor’s days are back-breakingly long and uneventful.
When a stranger appears in the churchyard in the twilight of Midsummer’s Eve, Alinor has two choices: denounce this papist foreigner’s presence to the godly people of Foulmire or take the enormous risk of helping him to reach the apparent safety of the local lord’s manorhouse. It’s the type of potentially life-altering decision no-one can afford take lightly, but for Alinor the correct course of action is clear.
Known around the world for her historical fiction pen-portraits of the English nobility, Philippa Gregory delves for the first time into the lives of everyday Britons with The Fairmile Series, established with Tidelands and soon to include a second instalment in the saga of the desperate Reekies, Dark Tides.

Virusi

17/4/2020

Christoffer Petersen: Aarluuk Press $0.99 Kindle e-book

GREENLAND is on red alert.
Clinging as it is on the outermost rim of the inhabited world, this enormous but sparsely populated island is just about as far removed from the tropical diseases of central Africa as it’s possible to be.
The arrival home of one infected traveller is all it takes to change that, however. Suddenly, with the identification of a critically ill returnee, a tiny islet off the mainland’s east coast is a potential threat to thousands of scattered Greenlanders stretching from far-flung settlements to the capital, Nuuk.
Aid worker Navana – now known officially as “patient zero” – is presenting with all the classic symptoms of a fast-moving virus. The fact she has only recently left a developing area of South Sudan bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo is particularly troubling to the health department.
Responsibility for ensuring residents of Niisarnaq comply with a hastily ordered lockdown rests with Constable David Maratse, a loner in the Greenlandic police force who finds himself on assignment in the minuscule community at exactly the wrong time.
Only hours earlier Maratse’s sole mission had been keeping the peace between two warring neighbours – a fisherman and a hunter – engaged a long-running local feud.
But with no law-enforcement backup available, insufficient protective clothing on hand and only an inexperienced trainee nurse on duty, corralling Niisarnaq’s population and at the same time stabilising Navana until help can be flown in is a nearly insurmountable challenge.
Petersen’s release of the 17th novella in his Arctic Shorts series is a timely gift to readers weathering the coronavirus pandemic in isolation, desperate to find a few hours of relief through a storyline that develops as quickly as its subject matter and in an exotic setting. Virusi’s skilful mirroring of real-world events makes for a perfect few hours of diversionary escapism.

The Wife and the Widow

10/4/2020

Christian White: Affirm Press $16.99

KATE Keddie’s husband John is missing.
Only hours earlier, with their daughter Mia, Kate waited for an excruciatingly long time in the arrivals area of Melbourne International Airport for a man who was not on his nominated flight home from a week-long conference in London that it has now emerged he was never even registered to attend.
Baffled and disillusioned, Kate is searching desperately for clues as to what, exactly, has been unfolding in John’s apparently parallel life for the past few months.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact John’s parents are behaving oddly. His father is bluntly critical of the marriage and his mother is claiming to have had a religious vision that confirms John is not yet dead.
Abby Gilpin’s husband is also absent – not physically, in Ray’s case, but certainly on an emotional level.
Abby is trapped in a numbingly mundane routine of restocking shelves and counting out change at the supermarket on Belport Island, a popular holiday hotspot off the southeastern coast of mainland Australia, accessible by ferry from the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong. Belport’s off-season population is claustrophobically sparse compared to the hordes of high-season visitors who flood across the water to take up temporary residence in summer.
Ray has barely touched his wife in weeks – or is it months? Abby knows something feels off in their relationship but rather than raise the subject directly with Ray opts to bury herself in her other great passion: taxidermy.
The common denominator between the troubled couples is the island: John Keddie spent time there as a child but has been reluctant as an adult to make the most of the house he and Kate own in a quiet corner of this laid-back community.
Can the superficially blissful Keddies’ and the openly distant Gilpins’ lives somehow be intertwined?

The Tenth Girl

3/4/2020

Sara Faring: St Martin’s Press $20.72 Kindle e-book

TALES of ghostly hauntings are not unheard of in remote boarding schools – but when the facility in question has been abandoned for decades, the first wave of new teachers deployed to its musty classrooms is justifiably skittish.
Perched at the southernmost tip of South America, surrounded by inhospitable mountains and fields of jagged ice and accessible only by water, the ramshackle cluster of buildings is rundown and eerie.
Among those recruited to teach an elite class of 10 handpicked teenage girls is Mavi, the orphaned and destitute daughter of an anti-establishment couple ‘disappeared’ by Argentina’s ruling dictatorship. Mavi’s only ally against disengaged students and disaffected colleagues is Yesi, an aspiring author who spends every non-teaching moment adding to her manuscript.
It’s not long, however, before Mavi also attracts the attention of Domenic, the overly privileged wastrel son of the current principal.
The Vaccaro School was once one of Argentina’s most elite institutions – until its sudden closure ignited speculation that a curse had been cast upon it by the local indigenous Zapuche tribe, condemning it to fail as a business and leading to the outbreak of a fatal virus among its few remaining inhabitants.
Now, against the backdrop of the country’s crippling political turmoil, Carmela De Vaccaro has taken charge, denying outright the existence of all such paranormal phenomena and determined to reclaim her family legacy’s former prestige.
But with inexplicable happenings becoming increasingly evident around her, Mavi quickly starts to suspect there is more than a pinch of truth behind claims that the premises are populated by mysterious beings known as los Otros (the Others).
Told through the eyes of alternate narrators, The Tenth Girl is an up-close chronicle of a chain of psychologically disturbing scenarios unfolding within the confines of an isolated community cut off from the wider world.

The Good Turn

21/2/2020

Dervla McTiernan: HarperCollins $32.99

LIFE for Anna has reached its lowest possible ebb: her daughter Tilly is refusing to communicate, apparently traumatised by some unspeakably scarring ordeal; her drug-addicted brother Niall is incapable of leaving the bed of the flat the siblings share in Dublin; and she is broke to the point of being too poor to afford a proper midday meal for herself and her child.
On the other side of Ireland, Detective Garda Peter Fisher is frantic. A 12-year-old girl has been snatched from a footpath and thrown into the boot of a vehicle in Galway.
Fisher’s mentor, Detective Sergeant Cormac Reilly, is being denied the police resources the pair need to start a search – payback, they assume, for the straight-laced Reilly having fallen foul of the unscrupulous hierarchy at their station during previous incidents. Both men know that time is all-important when attempting to solve an abduction.
With Reilly temporarily diverted to interview the distraught parents, Fisher must decide on his own what to do next. Dusk is falling and a potential suspect’s car has been sighted heading away from the city and towards an isolated wilderness area. Should he try to follow it now, before any more daylight is lost, or wait for Reilly to return his call?
The consequences of the young detective’s choice will have ramifications not only for himself but also for those around him, spinning Fisher out of his comfortable Galway existence and into the village of his early years, Roundstone, where he finds two strangers living in his grandmother Maggie’s house.
Is the scattering of recent events somehow connected?
Dervla McTiernan’s third Cormack Reilly novel (building on the success of The Rúin and The Scholar) promotes Fisher to the front line as a key character for the first time while Reilly takes a sideways step into a parallel investigation.

Mourning in Malmö

17/1/2020

Torquil MacLeod: Torquil MacLeod Books $3.15 (Kindle e-book)

EIGHT hundred and fifty-two people died when the Baltic ferry MS Estonia sank just after 1am on September 28 1994.
It remains the deadliest peacetime shipping disaster ever in European waters and the second-worst involving a European-flagged vessel after RMS Titanic’s loss more than 80 years earlier.
In the midst of a ferocious storm, roughly midway between Tallinn, Estonia, and Stockholm, Sweden, the ferry shuddered violently, then began taking on water and quickly capsized. The wreck was never salvaged and most of the bodies now lie trapped on the sea floor.
Conspiracy theories abound. With the former Eastern Bloc disintegrating, in the early 1990s cross-border smuggling of people, technology and equipment was rife. Is it possible something or someone on Estonia that night could not be allowed to reach land?
Among those on board was Anita Sundström’s father, Jens Ullman. Now a police inspector, Sundström has never fully understood the circumstances surrounding her papa’s death. The surfacing of a tenuous link between Estonia and a pair of baffling attacks in Malmö, southern Sweden, reignites her curiosity.
Markus Jolis has attempted to murder his elderly wife with a kitchen knife and then reported his own crime to the authorities; he has dementia, however, and can’t so much as recall – let alone explain – this bizarre behaviour.
In the same city, businessman Iqbal Nawaz has been found bludgeoned on the periphery of a sports ground, apparently overpowered while jogging. The forensics team reports that the weapon used is wooden and ridged but so far nothing of this type has been found.
Against a backdrop of cross-cultural distrust and entrenched prejudice, Sundström pushes the boundaries of her sometimes-conflicting roles as a senior officer, professional colleague, long-distance girlfriend and doting grandmother. As she juggles her priorities, one misstep could cost Sundström much more than just a figurative rap over the knuckles at work.

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