REVIEWS

THE WICKED OF THE EARTH . . . Between the covers

I live in what could be called Cromwell Country. Oliver’s former house in nearby Ely is a tourist attraction, and he is well commemorated in Huntingdon. Was he a Great Englishman? He was certainly an excellent military commander and a successful politician, but I find him hard to warm to. This novel takes us back to the England of 1650. The Civil Wars were over, the King was dead, but the peace was deeply uneasy.

The political situation in 1650 was complex. The country was ruled by the Council of State, a group of forty or so senior politicians who held supreme executive power. It would be another three years before Oliver Cromwell became Head of State, styling himself as Lord Protector. The most significant former Royalists were businessmen and merchants. Their riches and commercial acumen were essential for the country to regain some form of equilibrium after the turmoil of the war years irrespective of their having backed the losing side.

James Archer, a native of Newcastle, is something of a contradiction. He made himself locally notorious by breaking away from his Royalist roots and signing up to fight for Parliament. Although still in his twenties, he has seen – and participated in – great violence, including Cromwell’s barbaric campaign in Ireland. He is sent back to his home town by the Council of State, ostensibly to check that the former King’s men who ran the vital mining and shipping of coal were playing by the rules.

Archer’s subsidiary mission is to investigate the findings of the now infamous Newcastle Witch trials, which took place in 1649 and 1650. The deaths of these women are only of procedural interest to the Council, but Archer certainly has a dog in the fight, as his sister Meg was one of the accused.

What made me distinctly uncomfortable in Bergin’s narrative is his reminder that a society dominated and swayed by hellfire preaching and scriptural quotes is a deeply unstable one. Archer observes the Newcastle town-folk, crowded on the benches of St Nicholas Church, quaking as Dr. Jenison, “so skeletally angular that it appeared he was already half way to the grave,” spits out his sectarian venom, and his demeaning view of the place of women in society. Thank goodness we have no places of worship in Britain where this still goes on. Oh, wait….

After a series of violent encounters, Archer becomes the victim of a conspiracy involving the Great and The Good of Newcastle’s commercial and political world, and he resolves to abandon the town, and head north into the countryisde to search for his sister. As the bruised and battered Archer ventures into border country, he notices something.
“…no men were to be seen. The old had died in the hard winters, the young not yet returned from the wars.”

It is in the Teeside village of Norham that Archer finally earns the truth about his sister, and Bergin has created a masterly ironic twist that is worthy of Thomas Hardy. There is so much to admire in this novel, but one or two things stand out. The fight scenes – and there are several – are superbly described, and the reader can almost hear the clash of steel, and smell the sweat and blood of the participants. Bergin’s historical research is immaculate, as befits a Cambridge history graduate, and his portrayal of the dark and foetid alleys of 17th century Newcastle is vivid and memorable. Published by Northodox Press, this fine novel is available now.

November 22, 2024 0

FLOWERS FROM THE BLACK SEA . . . Between the covers

Revenge thrillers come in many shapes and sizes, and Flowers From The Black Sea by AB Decker (left) begins with the main character, a barely competent English security consultant called Matt Quillan travelling to end-of-season Turkey on an all-expenses-paid favour for his old university chum Ben Braithwaite. Quillan’s task appears relatively simple, and it is to locate the whereabouts of a man called Ahmet Karadeniz, last known of in the vicinity of Karakent, a small town on the south coast. Any job is a job as far as Quillan is concerned, and so he fetches up in Karakent and starts to ask questions. However, on his bus journey from Istanbul he meets a mysterious stranger called Rekan, who gives him a USB flash drive for sage keeping. Anyone with a grain of sense would probably have refused, but Quillan takes it, and when the bus is stopped by the police, and Rekan is taken into custody, our man begins to wonder.

After being questioned by the police Quillan is allowed to continue his journey, and soon makes the acquaintance of a local English estate agent, Pearl, and then her sister Amber, who is in town for her annual holiday. Eventually Quillan learns why he has been sent to Turkey. Ben’s sister Peggy married Karadeniz but died in circumstances which were, from a distance, highly suspicious although, according to Muslim custom, Peggy was interred very quickly, and autopsy was ever carried out.

Having reported back to Ben via phone, Quillan is surprised when his wealthy friend arrives in Karakent, aboard his luxury yacht. Quillan is, perhaps, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he is persuaded to stay around while Ben exacts revenge for the untimely death of his sister.

The matter of the flash drive and what it contains is central to the plot. I haven’t been to Turkey since the 1970s, and I won’t pretend that it was an altogether pleasant experience. Yes, countless British holidaymakers go to tourist resorts these days and experience nothing but enjoyment, but these places are pretty much gated off from the real Turkey. Back in the day, we were ‘hippy’ travellers with little cash and, shall we say, we had our moments. Today, Turkey is pretty much an autocracy, and its treatment of minorities such as Kurds and Armenians is often in the news.

This novel is not a sermon about the shortcomings of Muslim societies, but it reference the mistreatment of women in what is predominantly a patriarchal society, by any Western standards. I suppose, aside of the dramatic plot, Decker is simply reasserting what we have known for centuries. Turkey is very much a ‘twixt and between’ place, never sure if it belongs to the urbane West or the visceral certainties of the East.

Long story short, Ben and Matt are captured by gangsters, Ben’s yacht is seized and run aground but, thanks to an intrepid Kurdish nationalist called Leila, the mysterious contents of Rekan’s USB drive, all’s well that ends well. Except it isn’t. Literally in the last paragraph, we have an act of violence that redefines the nature of revenge. Decker has written a convincing and engaging thriller which captures the sense of menace and political uncertainty in a complex country. Published by The Book Guild, it is available now.

November 20, 2024 1

VICTIM . . . Between the covers

Former Oslo police officer Alexander Blix is trying to put his life back together after serving a spell in prison for killing the man who murdered his daughter Iselin. There was eventually a retrial, and he was acquitted and released. He is doing nothing in particular, while he waits for the full compensation package to come through from the government. He knows he can no longer work as a policeman, but then his world is turned upside down. Back in the day, his most significant failed investigation was the disappearance of Elisabeth Eie, a young mother. The whereabouts of her body, if indeed she was killed – and the identity of the person who abducted her – remain a mystery. Then, out of the blue, he is contacted by a man who claims to be Elisabeth’s killer. Almost simultaneously, a party of school children out on a forest nature walk discover a body. It is that of Elisabeth.

Blix has few friends, but one is investigative journalist Emma Ramm, with whom he has co-operated on previous cases. She, too, is no longer working, but living on the proceeds of a true crime book she wrote. She is approached by a young woman called Carmen who asks for her help. Carmen’s stepfather, Oliver Krogh is in police custody, suspected of the murder of a young woman – Maria Normann – who worked in his fishing and hunting store, which was destroyed in a mysterious blaze. The only sign of Maria, however, was traces of her blood on the door of one of Krogh’s gun cabinets. Carmen is convinced that Krogh, the only father she has ever known, is incapable of murder.

Blix’s relationship with his former colleagues is, at best fraught, and he is kept at arm’s length as the disappearance of Elisabeth Eie becomes a murder case. The killer seems to be fixated with Blix, however, and has invaded his personal space. here are many brilliant moments in this novel, but one stands out. In order to keep himself vaguely sane, Blix makes fishing flies. It is a process that requires delicacy of touch and a great deal of patience. One particular fly has been very testing, and he has left it unfinished while summoning up the mental energy to have another go.

“He stepped aside and moved over to the bench. A cold shiver ran through him. The fly was finished.“

It is obvious that Blix has a stalker, and one who has the keys to his apartment.

The past weighs heavy on Blix. His mother had Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, and kept him constantly unwell by lacing his food with debilitating drugs. After she died of cancer he walked away from his neglectful father and went to live with his grandparents. His father is still alive, but in the later stages of dementia in a nursing home. Eventually, we learn who Blix’s stalker is, and that he had a similarly traumatic upbringing.

Emma finds out how and why Maria Normann died, and there is a dramatic face-off between Brix and his tormentor. Co-authors Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst have captured the ambience of a bleakly autumnal Oslo, and have written a dramatic and atmospheric thriller, with two investigators who are perfect foils for each other. The novel is translated by Megan Turney, published by Orenda Books and is available now.

November 18, 2024 1

THE CHRISTMAS STOCKING MURDERS . . . Between the covers

Denzil Meyrick introduced us to 1950s copper Detective Inspector Frank Grasby in Murder at Holly House, and you can read my review of that by clicking the link.

Grasby and his boss Superintendent Juggers are despatched to the little Yorkshire fishing village of Uthley bay to investigate the apparent murder of fisherman. It is just before Christmas 1953 and, as in all good seasonal fiction, it is snowing heavily. When they take up their quarters in The Trout Hotel, they discover that they are in the middle of a very complex conspiracy, involving the smuggling and distribution of women’s stockings. Remember that this is Britain worn down by the struggle against Hitler and Hirohito and, eight years later, with no end to austerity in sight, many people are asking themselves, “ I thought we were supposed to have won the war?”

Despite the general tone of gentle humour there are moments that are deeply serious. Grasby is reassured by Superintendent Juggers that everything is going fine, but he has a pause for thought.

“Now, this instantly sends me into a funk. You see, I heard this type of thing so many times during the war from senior officers. Almost inevitably, there would follow an utter catastrophe, involving swooping Stukas, tanks appearing out of nowhere through a hedge in the bocage, or a division of German paratroopers landing on one’s head. However, I must remember that the war is over, but for me and so many others, we carry it with us like a millstone every day. One that becomes ever more cumbersome as the years go by and the memories crowd in on dark lonely nights.”

One of the things Meyrick captures with uncanny accuracy – and I use the word uncanny because he is too young young to have experienced it himself – is the unique bond which bound British society together in the 1950s. That bond was the shared experience of a generation that had fought two world wars in the space of four decades. Grasby fought Hitler, and Juggers was in the Great War trenches. I was born in 1947, but what my father – and his father – created was an almost tangible sense of time and place that belonged to all of us.

Of course, Grasby and Juggers eventually solve the mystery, despite many blunders and wrong turns, and Meyrick cannot resist the standard Golden Age denouement where the detective gathers everyone together (usually in the library) and exposes the villain after a lengthy explanation.

Meyrick has created a background set of characters who, undoubtedly comical, are just the right side of being grotesque. Grasby himself is undoubtedly clever, but has seen enough death and misery during his time with the army that has little personal bravery left, and his discretion trumps his valour every time. While Grasby is tall and spindly, Juggers is just the opposite. Short, square and perhaps running to fat, he always advances towards the sound of gunfire. Grasby’s father is a genuinely unpleasant fellow. He is a retired Anglican cleric and a total misanthrope. He is as horrible to his son as he was to the parishioners of whom he was supposed to have pastoral care. Grasby has fond memories of his late mother, and is genuinely disgusted by the fact that his father has a new paramour, in the spindly form of Miss Hetty Gaunt, an elderly psychic.

This is a seasonal delight, but would be just as good at any time of the year. Meyrick mixes some moments of knockabout farce with genuine reflections on human behaviour and our own history. To mix comedy with crime takes a very deft touch. We might read of a clumsy and overweight senior copper taking a pratfall, but a couple of pages later we witness the discovery of a dead body – someone’s husband, father or son. Few writers attempt it, and even fewer get it right. Back in the day, Colin Watson with his Flaxborough novels had it down to a ‘T’ and, more recently, Peter Bartram’s Crampton of The Chronicle novels strike exactly the right note. I suggest that Denzil Meyrick is just as good. This book is published by Bantam, and will be available on November 7th.

November 4, 2024 1

KARLA’S CHOICE . . . Between the covers

We are in a wintry London in 1963. Older readers will recall that it started snowing on Boxing Day 1962, and it barely relented for weeks, with temperatures plummeting across the country. Susanna Gero is just one of the many thousands of Hungarians who fled to the west just 6 years earlier, after Russia had put down an uprising with its trademark brutality. She works at a shabby literary agency called Baánáti & Clay. Mr Clay never existed, and Laszlo Baánáti is missing. As part of a scheme of retribution devised by the Kremlin, agents have been despatched to the West to kill people who had the effrontery to leave the Soviet Union and its vassal states. One such is Miki Bortnik, and his target is Baánáti . Between the airport and Baánáti’s office Bortnik has a kind of epiphany, and meekly surrenders to the British authorities.

Baánáti’s disappearance is brought to the attention of the British intelligence service, and for old Le Carré buffs, we are back in the familiar world of The Circus, alongside Control, Connie Sachs, Percy Alleline, Bill Haydon, Toby Esterhase and – of course – George Smiley. Our man has taken early retirement of sorts in the wake of his involvement in the death of double agent Alec Leamas on the Berlin Wall (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Richard Burton in the film). Smiley is persuaded to make a temporary return to work in order to trace Baánáti, who is actually a Soviet agent called Ferenzc Róka. There is mention of the ominous sounding Thirteenth Directorate. This was basically a KGB hit squad, set up to deliver Moscow’s summary justice to former citizens across the world who had irritated Stalin.

Smiley discovers the reason for Róka’s disappearance. He has a son, now in his early twenties. Léo is young man of much promise, something of a gilded youth, but prone to upsetting local communist party officials. The lad has now been taken into custody. Róka has abandoned the pretence that he is a mild-mannered London literary agent, and via a series of false passports is on his way to central Europe to save his son. It is with some inevitability that Control sends Smiley off to Berlin, to rescue Róka and his son from the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Stasi). Smiley hopes that assistance will be given by Hans-Dieter Mundt, nominally leader of the East German Secret Service, the Abteilung. Mundt is actually a double agent who works for the British.

The book’s title, by the way, refers to the man who leads The Thirteenth Directorate. In the three books known as The Karla Trilogy, Le Carre provides an extensive biography of the agent, but we never meet him in person. The BBC cast Patrick Stewart in the role for TV, but he was glimpsed only briefly.

Control complicates matters by sending Susanna off to Berlin in the belief that her presence may help to smoke out Róka. The ploy does not work, as Susanna goes ‘rogue’ on her Circus companions, and things come to a head with a dramatic encounter on the streets of Budapest

How does it feel to be back among old friends? To be honest, it is such a long time since I read the original books or watched any adaptations, that I had to use Google to remind me of some of the characters, but the chill of the Cold War remains inescapable. Harkaway cannot be aiming purely at aficionados of his father’s books, so what will younger readers make of it, coming as they do to the Le Carré ensemble for the first time? The author is already an experienced writer in a different genre, his prose is therefore both subtle and sturdy, and ‘his’ Smiley remains true to the man his father described.

George Smiley remains one of fiction’s most enduring but enigmatic characters. He is not, however, a fragile Ming vase too delicate to be handled. Here, he not only survives, but is given fresh shape and form in a vivid reminder of how espionage was done in the dark ages before the digital revolution. Karla’s Choice is published by Viking/Penguin and is available now.

October 24, 2024 0

THE BURNING STONES . . . Between the covers

Anni Korpinen is sales director at a firm called Steam Devils. They make stoves for saunas and are based in the little Finnish town of Phutijärvi. She is 53 years old, and married to a waster called Santeri. He is obsessed with historic F1 motor racing, and spends most of his time replaying classic races via scratched VHS tapes. He also buys and sells F1 memorabilia, such as socks reputedly worn by Mika Haakinen. Sadly, he never turns a profit.

When the new CEO of Steam Devils, Ilmo Räty, is found burned to a cinder in his own sauna, the hunt is on for his killer. When the firm’s founder, Erkki Russula, calls a meeting and states that he sees Anni as the obvious successor to Räty, she becomes the person with most to gain from his death. Key personnel at Steam Devils include:
Susanna Luoto – Finance Manager
Mirka Paarmajarvi – Logistics Manager
Jarkko Mutikallio – CEO’s PA
Porkka – Technical Director
Kaarlo – Senior Advisor

Of course, the sauna is completely central to Finnish culture, and part of the accoutrements are little squares of towel cloth which separate the bum cheeks from the wooden bench, and are essential both for hygiene and preventing the skin from becoming stuck to the wood. They are known, at least in English, as ‘bumlets’. When one of the bumlets from Anni’s home sauna, conveniently embroidered with her name, is found in the vicinity of Ilmo Räty’s sauna, she knows she is in big trouble. Reijo Kiimalainen is the community’s senior policeman, and he harbours a grudge against the Korpinen family. Many years ago, both he and Anni’s late father had both been stalking the same elk, the largest in the local forest. The hunting season started at 6.00 am, and at precisely one minute past, Anni’s father shot the beast. Ever since then, Kiimalainen has been convinced that skulduggery had taken place.

Once Anni realises that she is prime suspect in the Rati murder case, she does what all wrongly accused prime suspects do (at least in crime novels) – she turns detective. Although she realises that she is not Sherlock Holmes, but a stove retailer, she is intelligent and resourceful. Her investigations take her to an abandon resort with a sauna the size of a sports stadium, and here she witnesses another sauna related death. This time the victim – the engineer Porkka – is stabbed in the head with the sharpened metal handle of a ladle used to sprinkle water on the hot stones which are an integral part of Finnish saunas.

Anni’s task is made more complicating by the strange behaviour of Kahavuori, a holiday complex owner, to whom Anni had been hoping to sell 64 sauna stoves. When he hears of the death of Raty, he refuses to close the deal. Instead, he adopts what seems to be a very unhealthy obsession with finding the killer. The problem is that Kahavuori is an ardent fan of True Crime documentaries, and he has a vivid imagination. When Anni catches him snooping in her sauna, she clouts him with a lump of wood. When he recovers consciousness, he outlines his theory, and Anni wonders if the crack on the head hasn’t further addled his brain

There is a genuinely touching backstory behind the hunt for the murderer. They are both in their fifties now, but three decades earlier, Anni and policeman Janne were engaged and in love. It was Anni who handed back the ring, but now, as Janne reveals that Anni’s husband Santeri is not the clueless bungler she thinks he is, events take an unexpected turn.

On the cover of the book is a quote from The Times: “Tuomainen is the funniest writer in Europe.” He may well be, but humour is a complex business and takes many forms. I don’t think you will be belly laughing as you read The Burning Stones, and I do wonder how well humour in one language survives translation into another, but I did enjoy the sheer freakery-geekery of Santeria and his idiotic obsession with old motor races. Is he mad? Probably not in a medical sense, but I did wonder why Anni married him in the first place. That aside, The Burning Stones is a beautifully written and engaging murder mystery. It is translated by David Hackston, published by Orenda Books and available now. You can find out more about Antti Tuomainen on social media – he is @antti_tuomainen on X, and on Facebook facebook.com/AnttiTuomainen

October 20, 2024 1

THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER . . . Between the covers

The central characters of this powerful novel are Grand Duchess Militza Nikoleyevna, married to a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, and her daughter Princess Nadezhda Petrovna. The background, as you might guess, is the decline and fall of the Romanovs, and two headed monster that was WW1 and the Russian Revolution.

The early pages set the tone. The catastrophic failures of the Russian Army, culminating with the Battle of Tannenberg, turn the world on its head for Russian citizens, be they of noble birth or peasant stock. Of course, at that time, the centre of the Imperial Universe was Petrograd, and we learn of the impact on those close to the Tsar’s court of the murder of Rasputin. Historians both professional and, like myself, amateur, have long pondered the great paradox that is Russia. Perhaps no other place on earth can provide such examples of great beauty in architecture and music, but also of the most bestial behaviour by human beings. One of the great ironies is that the place where the revolution burst into flames was a city literally built on a swamp, and costing the lives of 100,000 workers. They died to give Peter the Great access to The Baltic and – arguably – a pathway to make Russia a great international nation.

The Witch of the title is Militza. In her private thoughts she describes how she ‘created’ Rasputin. What are we to make of this? She muses:

“Maybe if she explained how she and her sister fashioned the Holy Satyr from wax, mixed it with dust from a poor man’s grave and the icon of Saint John the Baptist; how she moulded the creature, rolling and warming the wax in her hands; how she baptised it with the soul of an unborn child, the dried up foetus, miscarried by the grand Duchess Vladimir all those years ago; and how they’d called on the Four Winds and the koldun -the insatiable, unconscionable, licentious, duplicitous, covetous, impious, soused, drunk and self appointed Holy Man man from Siberia – Rasputin had come. Just as she had commanded.”

Nadezhda is also a paradox. Despite her scorn for her mother’s ‘sorcery’ she carries with her a bottle of water, allegedly from the frozen waters of the River Neva that melted around the corpse of Rasputin after he was hauled from its depths. While nursing an admirer, a young man called Nicholas Orlof, severely injured in the unrest, she falls back on the old wisdom of her mother. The author (left) allows us to make up our own minds as to the efficacy of the spells and incantations.

The novel doesn’t take sides politically, but I must confess I have a long standing sympathy for the Russian nobility, and it still angers me to read about the utter brutality of what happened on 16th/17th July 1918 in Yekaterinburg. Yes, Nicholas II was weak, and his regime presided over breathtaking inequality by modern standards, but his sins pale into insignificance when judged against those of Lenin, Stalin and, dare I say it, more recent rulers of Russia.

The author puts Nadezhda centre stage as revolution takes over the streets of Petrograd, and the Tsar’s soldiers commit atrocities in an attempt to emulate Canute and turn back an inexorable tide. She is drawn into the animal vigour of the protests, bread marches and the resounding choruses of The Marseillaise. Perhaps I am wrong to say this, but it reminds me of modern day youngsters from impeccable middle class backgrounds taking to the streets to demand the downfall of Israel, or attacking paintings to draw attention to climate change.

As we know, the Tsar’s abdication saved neither him nor his wife and children. Historians still argue over the apparent rejection, by King George V, of his cousin’s request for sanctuary. This book suggests that, even if it had been granted, the Tsar and family would never have made it to Britain unscathed. When Lenin returns in his sealed train, the gunpowder keg explodes:

“The Neva was thawing. There was an open stream some 20 yards wide alongside the banks while the centre still remained frozen. And along with the filth swirling through the streets and the slush came the rats and the rebels. No one was working. No one wanted to work. No one was being paid. It was anarchy. Nearly 2,000,000 had now deserted the front and they were loitering in the city with nothing to do. Starving, cold, penniless and angry, they were ripe for the plucking. All Lenin had to do was reach out and take them.”

And take them he did. Militza, Nadezhda and the remainder of the minor Romanovs escape to Crimea where they just about manage to survive until they are rescued by ships of the British navy. A few minutes on Google will reassure readers that Malitza, Nadezhda and Nicholas lived long lives, but each – of course – died thousands of miles away from Petrograd. Only the most rabid and bitter socialist would fail to be touched by the sheer horror of the destruction of the Russian aristocracy described here. Yes, many of them were vain, privileged, and oblivious to the social injustice endemic under Romanov rule. But they were human. Like Shylock, they were entitled to ask{
“ If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”
This novel is the result of astonishing historical research, but above all, it is a tale of human resilience, courage and that ineffable human quality immortalised by the words of St Paul, “But the greatest of these is love.” Published by Aria, the book is available now in all formats.

October 10, 2024 0

THE STALKER . . . Between the covers

For fans of domestic psychological thrillers, this will be right up your street. Someone once coined the phrase ‘anxiety porn’ and, without giving too much away, The Stalker fits the bill perfectly. Eloise is an academic at Cambridge. Her subject? Psychology. Her speciality? The phenomenon of stalking. She has published several serious research papers, is regularly called on by the criminal justice system and – naturally – has a social media presence with numerous followers.

She is now in the unfortunate position of having to apply her own professional wisdom to her own life. She has a stalker who, via messages, phone calls and letters, only ever says three words. “Me or you.” Her stalker attacks her from behind on a Cambridge street, causing Elly to crack her head on the pavement. When she discharges herself from hospital, Elly makes her way home, only to find evidence that her husband of 18 years, successful architect Rafe, has been unfaithful. And all this within the first 40 pages.

To add to Elly’s mental turmoil, her 17 year-old son Jamie is a troubled teenager par excellence. He frequently disappears without trace and is close to being thrown off his ‘A’ level course for failing to attend classes and complete coursework. Author Kate Rhodes is parsimonious with her clues, but she does suggest that the clue to Elly’s distress lies in a childhood where she was ostracised by her widowed mother, and brought up by a kindly aunt and uncle. By this stage in the book, most readers, like me, will have made one ‘fatal’ assumption, which will add spice to startling denouement of the novel.

If there were such a thing as an Angst Counter, rather like the device for measuring radioactivity, it would be crackling alarmingly as every page of this book turns. What can go wrong in Elly’s life, does. Yes, she wins a coveted prize for a textbook she has written, but then the university reception in her honour is disrupted by the enraged father of a young woman, now in intensive care, whose stalker was released from prison on Elly’s advice, but then returned to attack her. Elly’s annual report to her boss on her teaching and research, vital for retaining tenure, is wiped from her computer. Someone has also cancelled her college key-card. Obviously the stalker is someone close to Elly, and Kate Rhodes cleverly sets a few hares running, each in a quite different direction. The answer lies in Elly’s troubled past when she was just a girl and, despite a few clues, I didn’t see it coming.

Kate Rhodes (left) makes clever use of the contrast between the enclosed streets and buildings of Cambridge, and their inescapable sense of learning and history, and the timeless sense of space and vastness of The Fens, just beyond the city to the north east. Most of the water that once made The Fen impenetrable to outsiders has gone, but the communities that grew up amid the sedge and reeds are still isolated, insular and inward looking. Elly is ever conscious, even as she sets up a second home in the old cottage once occupied by her aunt and uncle, that despite her investment in security cameras and state-of-the-art alarms, she is just as vulnerable here in the rural darkness as she is in her modernist glass and steel Cambridge home, designed by her husband.

The Stalker is a classy and absorbing thriller which sets the reader a beguiling challenge – to discover just who is the person who is relentlessly trying to destroy Elly’s life. The novel is published by Simon & Schuster, and is available now.

September 30, 2024 0

DEATH AT DEAD MAN’S STAKE . . . Between the covers

Death at Dead Man’s Stake sounds like something from the Wild West, but it is, in this new novel by former copper Nick Oldham, an incident at an isolated farm in Lancashire. With his veteran Henry Christie perhaps taking a well-deserved break at his (hopefully) rebuilt moorland pub, Oldham introduces Detective Sergeant Jessica Raker. After fatally shooting a London gangster following a botched raid on a jewellers’ in Greenwich, Raker has been moved to the North West – where she grew up – in an attempt to distance her from the dead man’s vengeful relatives.

Her first day is nothing if not eventful. She has barely unloaded her kit into the Sergeant’s office from her car, when she is called out to a crisis at Dead Man’s Stake. When the local fire brigade attends an unexplained fire in the derelict farmyard, one of the firefighters is grabbed and held hostage by the farmer, a drunken, mildly crazed man called Bill Ramsden. Jessica rescues the fireman after tazering Ramsden. Her day is not over, however. A cantankerous old man, resident of a local cafe home, is found dead, his corpse floating in a nearby reservoir. Raker, viewing the scene, suspects that a physical struggle lead to the old man ending up in the water.

Jessica Raker is a good copper, but she has been dealt a poor hand. At the Greenwich heist, who was one of the customers eying up an expensive item at the moment the robbers burst in? None other than her husband Josh, a high flying player in a City firm. And the piece of jewellery was intended not for Jessica, but for his secretary. Improbably, the marriage has survived, and Josh is now working in Manchester, but resentful at the move.

Meanwhile, we learn a little more about the man Jessica shot dead in Greenwich. He was the most ungovernable of the sons of Billy Moss, a millionaire crook grown rich on the proceeds of all manner of criminaity, ranging from the inevitable drug trade to trafficking people. Goss wants revenge. He wants the hapless amateurs who lured Terry Moss into the doomed jewellery raid, but most of all, he wants Jessica. The problem is that the Met Police have done a very good job in smuggling her away to the Ribble Valley, and she has gone completely off the Moss radar. Nonetheless, a professional killer is hired to hunt her down and end her life. While on the school run, Jessica bumps into an old adversary. Years ago, when she was growing up in Clitheroe Jessica and Maggie Goss fell out over a mutually desired boyfriend, and Maggie, now boss of huge scrapyard empire, hasn’t forgotten the teenage slights. What is more important is that the scrapyard business is a million miles away from being strictly legit, and one of Maggie’s LinkedIn buddies is none other than Billy Moss.

It is not just Nick Oldham’s years of experience as a working copper that makes his books so good. Nor is it the loving and detailed sense of place, where he describes a beautiful and windswept rural Lancashire, blissful yet only an hour’s drive from pockets of deprivation and criminality like Blackpool. For me, what puts his novels up there on a pinnacle is his sense of dialogue – nothing flashy or pretentiously poetic – but an unerring version of how real people actually speak to each other.

As the Moss organisation moves against Jessica Raker, there is a satisfying symmetry to the main plot, as it ends where it began, out at Dead Man’s Stake. This is a firecracker of a police thriller, and Nick Oldham has established a cast of coppers, with Jess Raker at its heart, who will keep us entertained for many years to come. The novel is published by Severn House, and is available now.