REVIEWS

THE GENIUS KILLER . . . Between the covers

The central character of this novel is Karl Jackson. He has survived a brutal upbringing punctuated with savage beatings by his drunken father, and sexual abuse from his uncle Charlie. Karl has a twin, Nathan, but he never faced the same storm of violent rage. Karl Jackson is described in the cover blurb as a sociopath. I am no psychologist, but Jackson’s steady job as a chemistry teacher and his scrupulous and well-planned crimes make me think he is more psychopathic, but it does not matter. He is a genuinely awful human being. His spree of undetected killings started in his childhood when, merely for the fun of it, he pushed a young boy – fishing in the lake where they played – down into the water, and then watched with amusement as the lad struggled, choked, and then bobbed about on the surface as lifeless as the float attached to his fishing line.

Jackson’s genius (hence the title of the book) is to organise killings in such a way that no possible evidence can link the deaths to him. While Jackson was working as a student in Australia, one of his murders involved the ingenious combination of a sleeping bag, a sedative injection and a deadly Brown Snake on a hiking trail in the Blue Mountain region of New South Wales. Jackson exacts an elaborate – and some may say justified – revenge on his father by causing the old man’s death in hospital with a very clever use of cyanide and the sharpened end of a coat hanger.

The background to this novel is the atmospheric landscape of the English Lake District, where Jackson carries out another long delayed act of retribution on his abusive uncle Charlie by faking an accidental climbing death. When Charlie is found dead at the bottom of a solo climb, his head shattered like a melon hit with a hammer, no one believes it is anything other than an unfortunate error of judgement.

Thus far, Jackson has been clever enough to avoid any attention from the police but, inevitably, he meets his nemesis. Theodore “Tex” Deacon is a late career – but distinguished – detective slowly recovering from the trauma caused by the protracted death of his wife. As is the way with institutions these days, he is temporarily sidelined and identified as a vulnerable person in need of psychological help and treatment by the ubiquitous counselling profession. However, his many successes in tracking down murderers brings him to the attention of Debbie Pilkington, an ambitious young reporter with a local Lakeland newspaper. She alerts him to the many coincidences surrounding deaths in the Jackson family, and so he goes off piste to investigate the case.

Black humour is never very far away in this book, despite the body count. Here, Karl Jackson describes the man who is having an affair with his wife.

“Richard Turkington’s graying Beatle cut had a bald spot on top giving him the appearance of a rock star monk. A fleshy roll wobbled over the top of his chinos. Turkington had clearly ignored warning signs of middle age and had lived a pudgy existence preferring a world of pints and puddings. Quite a contrast to the sleek wire framed fell runners surrounded by them at a function like this. Richard looked like Mr Blobby.”

The Genius Killer rattles along at great pace and is sometimes darkly comic, but in Jackson, the author has created a genuine larger-than-life monster. The book ends rather enigmatically, but as it is described as No.1 in the Tex Deacon series, I suspect the Cumbrian copper will be back soon with another case. Mark Robson is a sports journalist and this is his debut novel. It is published by Orla Kelly Publishing and available now.

July 14, 2023 0

AND THEN I’LL KNOW . . . Between the covers

This novel is, on one level, an entertaining and robust police procedural. On another level, however, it is a study in obsession, and something of an object lesson about what happens when, metaphorically speaking, people lift heavy stones and are surprised at what they see scurrying around underneath. Amber Ryan is a detective sergeant with the Manchester police. The greater part of the book has a then and now narrative. ‘Then’ describes, Amber’s childhood which turns out to have many a tragic twist. Her father, a policeman, goes missing. Then, her mother dies of cancer. She and her sister Rachel are taken in by their aunt and uncle but when her uncle is killed in a road accident and her aunt goes to pieces emotionally and physically, the two girls are taken into local authority care.

Back in ‘Now’, Amber’s obsession is to find out what actually happened to her father. On the pretext that a local murder of a young woman is connected to similar murders in London, she requests permission to go to the capital and look at the files. In truth, however, she is more interested in the fact that the women killed in London all had connections to a children’s home and cases of child abuse. She knows that her father was involved in investigating this case and is convinced that she will turn up evidence which will lead her to the truth of what happened to him.

With a mixture of good fortune, instinct and background knowledge, Amber is able to refocus the investigating team on the murder of the young women. As a result she is then seconded for a further two weeks and comes something of a blue eyed girl in the eyes of the senior officers. This is not to the satisfaction of everyone in the team. Temporarily promoted to Detective Inspector, it has to be said that she pushes her luck she interviews some of the men who were found guilty of historic child abuse crimes. The interviews are not particularly friendly or gentle, and she moves from one appointment to the next hoping to stay ahead of phone calls of complaint to Professional Standards. Amber also suspects that there is someone on the investigating team who is leaking information to the very people they are trying to track. But who?

Two thirds of the way through the book it turns into anything but a police procedural as Amber breaks every rule in the book in her determination to find the truth. This final section of the book,where Amber goes very much off piste, may not be to everyone’s taste and it has to be said some of it does stretch credulity. There is certainly something of a “with one bound she was free”element to what goes on. Amber’s heroics result in the bad guys being brought down, but it does not bring the outcome that she was looking for. She is almost drowned by a tidal wave of betrayal, shattered childhood dreams and a bitter sense of betrayal. It could be said, though, that at the very end Amber does gaze into the abyss but sensibly turns away before the abyss gazes back at her. She is left with another personal challenge, another search and possibly a deeper sense that this final quest will bring her personal happiness.

And Then I’ll Know is certainly a gripping read (I finished it in two or three sessions) and is clearly a departure from Brady’s previous two novels – comedy thrillers on the theme of food. The Meal of Fortune and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Chef may not have caused much of a stir in the world of crime fiction, but this latest book deserves to be read and admired by a wider audience. And Then I’ll Know is published by 5W Press and is available now.

https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/and-then-i-ll-know

July 9, 2023 1

WATER STREET . . . Between the covers

Britain’s relationships with both North and South during the American Civil War (1861-65) are something of a historical byway these days, but at the time, the conflict was a major issue in the port city of Liverpool. When the Union navy blockaded Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and Mobile, it prevented shiploads of raw cotton from departing in the direction of Liverpool, thus dealing a crippling blow to the spinning and textile industries in and around Liverpool. The popular and political sentiment in the city became very much pro-Confederacy, and despite the national government remaining stoically neutral, shipyards on the River Mersey continued to build fighting ships – such as the Alabama – and sell them to the South.

Water Street is a highly entertaining novel set in the summer of 1863, and features murder and mayhem involving Union and Confederate spies trying to outwit each other and advance their respective causes with the British government. Author JP Maxwell centres his tale around two women – Harriet Dunwoody and her creole companion Conté Louverture. Harriet is married to a grotesque man called Banastre Xavier Dunwoody, an ardent and violent secessionist who plans to swing the support of Britain’s government – led by a seriously ill Lord Palmerston – behind the cause of Jefferson Davies and the Confederate States. Harriet is playing a very dangerous double game, along with Conté, as they conspire behind Dunwoody’s back to thwart local efforts to boost support for the Confederacy. In doing so, they enlist the aid of a rather ramshackle band of Irish nationalists, led by a thug called Royston Chubb.

Having thoroughly enjoyed the book (a quick read, just over 200 pages) I did want to step back and examine if – and to what extent – the characters in the book are based on real life historical figures. First, Palmerston. Although he was sick and elderly in 1863, there is no evidence that he was comatose and incapable of thought. The novel has Edward Seymour as First Lord of The Admiralty, and this he certainly was, but it seems his real life influence on Palmerston was nowhere as crucial as portrayed in the book. There was a Confederate agent in Liverpool called James Dunwoody Bulloch who did his very best to advance the Confederate cause during the war years, and he was certainly instrumental in pushing through deals with shipyards like Cammell Laird to build warships for the Confederacy, but he wasn’t the drunken gunslinger portrayed here.

One character who Maxwell doesn’t play fast and loose with is the official US Consulate to Liverpool – Thomas Haines Dudley. Dudley worked tirelessly for the Union cause, always being careful to stay within the constraints of diplomacy. The most curious real life character in the book is that of Major General Benjamin Butler. History has not been kind to him as either soldier, lawyer or politician, but there is no evidence (that I have seen) that he was running a ring of Union spies in the UK, nor that he visited Liverpool in 1863. In an edgy epilogue, Maxwell has Butler listening cynically to Lincoln’s famous speech at Gettysburg on 19th November 1863. He is joined by two characters called Surratt and Wilkes-Booth. If you know, you know!

To be fair, JP Maxwell has not claimed that Water Street is accurate historical fiction, and so my comments on real historical people can be ignored if you enjoy the book. The writing is very much ‘larger-than-life and, to borrow a sporting cliché, Maxwell leaves nothing in the dressing room. I loved every page – it’s full of drama, period detail and vividly portrayed characters. It was published on 1st July – a significant date, in the context of the story – by BK Books.

July 9, 2023 1

LEHRTER STATION . . . Between the covers

John Russell is an Anglo American journalist turned spy. His problem is that he has spied for too many different countries. He has spied for the Russians, the Nazis, the British and the Americans – and they all have a piece of him. In his heart of hearts he is a pre-Stalin communist. Once a member of the party, he is a man who once believed in the promise of genuine socialism.

December 1945 finds him in London with his long term girlfriend Effie Koenen, his son by his marriage to a wife long since dead, and Effie’s sister. He is basically a puppet waiting for the next tug on his strings. This time it comes from the Russians. Such is Stalin’s power and reach in the postwar world that he can easily persuade his allies to terminate Russell’s temporary haven in London, and so it is that Russell and Effie are forced to return to the shattered remains of Berlin.

Effie was a considerable star in the pre-war film world and is anxious to resume her career. For Russell it is a question literally of life and death. If he does not follow the instructions of the NKVD he knows that his life will not be worth living, nor those of Effie or his son Paul. Paul fought in the Wehrmacht in the dying days of the war but has been allowed to re-settle in London as part of the Russian deal for Russell’s continued cooperation.

One historical issue that runs through the book is the plight of Europe’s Jews. Despite survivors living in Berlin being given special victim status by the occupying administration, and thus receiving better rations, further afield many Jews still found themselves homeless and unwanted. The British are determined to limit the number of Jews heading to the new land in Arab Palestine. The Russians are indifferent and the Americans are torn between support for the British and an awareness of the voting power of Jewish American citizens.

Across central Europe there are several Jewish organisations determined to avenge the deaths of their fellow citizens, by whatever means necessary. Russell meets a young man called Michael who is in one such group.

Michael smiled for the first time and it lit up his face.

“Do you know Psalm 94?” he asked.
“Not that I remember.”
“He will repay them for their iniquity and wipe them out for their wickedness. The Lord our God will wipe them out.”
“The Nazis I assume? So if God has them in his sights, where do you come in? Are you God’s instruments?”
“Not at all. if there is a God he has clearly abandoned the Jews. We will do the work that he should have done.”

Screen Shot 2023-07-09 at 08.43.41

David Downing (left), writing this book in 2012, was obviously well aware of how things have played out in our own times, but he has Russell reunited with a young Jew who he had helped escape Germany years earlier.

“And I’ll tell you something else,”. Albert said. “I understand why the Poles are expelling the Germans from their new territories, and I understand why they are making it impossible for the Jews to return. If my friends and I have our way the Arabs will all be expelled from Palestine. Anything else is just stirring up trouble for the future.”
“That will put a bit of a strain on the worlds sympathy, don’t you think?”
“Once we have the land we can do without the sympathy.”

Russell’s sense of world weariness and and the depth of his cynicism about those who employ him does not prevent him from being a compassionate man. In order to file a marketable story with his London agent, Russell embeds himself with what could be called a gang of people smugglers, except the people that are being smuggled are Jews desperate to get away from Europe and start a new life in Palestine. The route involves a long and arduous trek – literally across mountains and rivers in – order to get to Italy and then to the Mediterranean Sea. There is one bitterly ironic scene where, on the way, Russell meets up with a man who he knows is a former SS officer. The man is with his young son and Russell promises not to betray them to the Jews, basically because of the young boy. In an awful reversal of what happened to so many Jews years earlier, the pair are identified as non Jews because they are uncircumcised. Russell cannot prevent the father being gunned down; neither can he persuade the boy to leave his father’s body as the convoy moves on.

In another sub plot of the book, Russell tries to locate two missing Jewish people. One is very much close and personal to him and Effie. Earlier in the war Effie had given a home to Rosa, an apparently orphaned Jewish girl. She has now taken Rosa as the child she now knows she will probably never have, and Rosa has gone with them to England. However, at the back of Effie’s mind is that if either of Rosa’s parents should be discovered alive, this will pose a great problem should they wish to reclaim their daughter. Using the same sources – mostly meticulous Nazi bureaucratic records of who was sent where – Russell also tries to discover the fate of a young Silesian Jew called Miriam who we met in an earlier book in this excellent series. (Click the link below for more information)

https://fullybooked2017.com/tag/david-downing/

With a mixture of luck, cunning – and favours from friends – Russell manages to survive the t. ands of his Russian minders goes fatally wrong. By the end of the book Russell has peeled back layer after layer of spectacularly evil deeds committed by all parties and nationalities, but somehow his personal integrity – and that of Effie – survive. This is a compelling literary journey through a wasteland which is both moral and literal.

July 9, 2023 0

VOICES OF THE DEAD . . . Between the covers

Edinburgh physician Dr Will Raven returns for the fourth in the series set in Edinburgh in the middle years of the nineteenth century. Ambrose Parry is the husband and wife writing team of Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman. For new readers, a brief ‘heads-up’ about the personal dynamics between the main characters might be useful. Raven is assistant to – and disciple of – Professor James Young Simpson, pioneer anaesthetist and the only real life character in the book. Sarah Fisher was once Simpson’s housekeeper and, briefly, Raven’s lover, but he has since married, as did she, but her husband is now dead. She has a burning ambition to become a doctor.

When Raven is summoned to Surgeon’s Hall by his friend Henry Littlejohn he becomes caught up in a chain of events which range from the comically macabre through to the murderous. Wrapped in a blanket and deposited in the bottom of a cupboard, a human foot has been discovered. The head of the College, the aloof and irascible Dr Archibald Christie has been informed. Anxious to avoid any whiff of scandal, and aware that Raven has something of a reputation as an amateur investigator, Christie orders Raven to discover the origin of the foot without alerting the police. Things spiral beyond Raven’s control, however, when other body parts are located. Along with the irascible detective James McLevy, all concerned initially make a wrong assumption about the person whose limbs seem to be randomly scattered around the city. Will Raven’s past is punctuated with several episodes that might be described as unfitting for a respectable physician, and one such – by way of an all-too-human ghost from the past – sets him back on his heels.

We are soon drawn into a fascinating parallel plot involving the ‘science’ of mesmerism. Its creator, the German physician Franz Mesmer has been dead for over thirty years, but displays of what we now call hypnotism are still able to draw crowds. The flames of interest in mesmerism are being found by the activities of two people. One, Richard Kimble is more of a stage illusionist but the other, Doctor Harland Malham, seems to have better credentials, so much so that Sarah is extremely interested in what he is doing. Her interest is heightened because, when meeting her for the first time, he suggests that she has an aptitude for mesmerism and could possibly be taken on by him as a trainee. Raven of course is deeply sceptical, but is acutely aware of Sarah’s determination to succeed in the medical profession by one way or another. Is she being duped? And who is the mysterious local businessman, Mr Somerville, to whom Sarah has become attracted?

One of the key elements in this series – and this book is no exception – is the nature of the relationship between Raven and Sarah, now Raven is married. He already has one child, a small son, and another is on the way. He is devoted to his wife Eugenie, but there is always a frisson between him and Sarah and we wonder, as readers, where this will end.

It doesn’t take a critical genius to work out that Brookmyre is providing the plotting and textual nuances while Haetzman is providing the (sometimes grisly)medical details and sense of medical authenticity. This is certainly one literary partnership that works very well, and the world of 1850s Edinburgh is portrayed in vigorous detail, contrasting the often squalid lives of the poor with the very different world of the more advantaged. The bottom line is that this is a bloody good crime novel, full of twists and turns, convincing historical ambience and main characters we believe in. It is published by Canongate Books and is available now.

June 29, 2023 1

EVERYONE HERE IS LYING . . . Between the covers

One of the most resilient tropes of the modern domestic psycho-thriller is the bland suburban community where something goes terribly, terribly wrong. This is bread-and-butter for Shari Lapena, and she introduces us to the manicured lawns and domestic harmony of Stanhope, a small town where, at opposite ends of Connaught Street, live Dr. William Wooler and Nora Blanchard. They are both married, with children, but they have been having an affair. When Nora ends it, abruptly, at their regular tryst in a seedy motel, William drives home distraught, only to find his nine year-old daughter Avery in the house. She has been sent home from school after yet another outburst of disruptive behaviour. Avery is the very last person William wants to see, and they fight.

Avery Wooler is, frankly, a junior monster. She has all manner of letters after her name. Think of a syndrome, and she has it. She disrupts other little girls’ birthday parties because she can’t open the presents first. She drives her mum and dad to distraction and, in her father’s case – violence. On this afternoon. Avery greets her dad with her usual insouciance and he snaps, giving her a slap round the face. After making sure that no serious damage has been done, Wooler – his mind a turmoil of rejection and anger – storms out of the house. Or does he?

When the rest of Wooler’s family – wife Erin and son Michael – arrive home, Avery is nowhere to be found. Eventually, the police are alerted, the panic button is hit, and a huge search ensues. The prescience of the book’s title becomes ever more apparent as – one house at a time – the families who live on Connaught Street are sucked into the mystery. The cops leading the hunt for Avery Wooler – officers Bledsoe and Gully – follow one false lead after another, not because they are particularly dim, but rather because they simply don’t have a physical trace of Avery. At the back of their minds is the awful truth that in child abduction cases, if the victim isn’t found alive within the first few hours, then it becomes a hunt for a body.

Shari Lapena describes in grim detail the psychological disintegration of the families involved, the Woolers and the Blanchards, but about two thirds of the way through she lets us know what actually happened to Avery so – in one sense – our suspense and stress are relieved, but our x-ray view of what is going on behind inside the walls of the houses on Connaught Street still allows for a few shocks. In my review of one of Shari Lapena’s earlier novels (click the link below) I used the term Anxiety Porn, and that’s what the Canadian novelist does really well.

BETWEEN THE COVERS . . . The End Of Her

Lapena’s speciality is describing how unfortunate events can tug away at domestic security like a loose thread being insistently pulled from a much-loved cardigan, with the result that the cosy garment disintegrates and becomes unwearable. Everyone Here Is Lying will be published on 6th July by Transworld Digital as a Kindle and Bantam in hardcover.

June 29, 2023 0

CLASSICS REVISITED . . . The Drowning Pool

One of the abiding tropes of private eye fiction is that the book begins with a glamorous and mysterious woman knocking on the door of the PI’s office. Ross McDonald doesn’t disappoint.

“If you didn’t look at her face she was less than thirty, quick bodied and slim as a girl, her clothing drew attention to the fact: a tailored shark skin suit and high heels that tensed nylon-shadowed calves. But there was a pull of worry around her eyes and drawing at her mouth. The eyes were deep blue with a sort of double vision. They saw you clearly, took you in completely, and at the same time looked beyond you. They had years to look back on, and more things to see in the years that a girl’s eyes had. About thirty-five, I thought, and still in the running.”

Maude Slocum has been sent an anonymous letter which is demanding money with the threat of exposing her marital infidelity. After much sparring, because Maude is giving little away, Lew Archer agrees to take the case.

The cast of characters, as in all good PI novels, is diverse: Maude Slocum is married to James Slocum, an amateur actor who is kept in funds by his mother Olivia, with whom he and his family live. Maude and James Slocum have a teenage daughter, Cathy, who is physically and mentally older than her years. Olivia Slocum owns a large plot of land in Quinto, the only place in the town which has not been brought up by an oil syndicate headed by Walter Kilbourne. Kilbourne, obese and devious has a wife, Mavis. Detective Frank Knudson is connected to the Slocum family. Pat Reavis is a tall good looking young man who is something of a Walter Mitty character.

When Olivia Slocum is found dead in her swimming pool, Archer is drawn into a web of lies and scheming which sideline his original quest for the author of the threatening letter.

More erudite critics than I have written about the comparison between Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer. We need to remember that The Drowning Pool was published over a decade after the ground breaking The Big Sleep. For me, Macdonald takes the style and attitude of – let’s call him ‘the master’- and simply refines it while never departing from the same bleak poetry that is unique to the sun scorched and wind blown California landscape.

“The water in the pool was so still it seemed solid, a polished surface reflecting the trees, the distant mountains and the sky. I looked up at the sky to the west, where the sun had dipped behind the mountains. The clouds were writhing with red fire as if the sun had plunged in the invisible sea and set it flaming. Only the mountains stood out dark and firm against the conflagration of the sky.”

Archer has a sharp eye – and an even sharper tongue – for some of the characters he comes across.

“While I was eating a woman came through a door at the end of the bar. She was tall and big- boned, with more than flesh enough to cover her bones. The skirt of her cheap black suit was wrinkled where her hips and thighs bulged out. Her feet and ankles spilled over the tops of very tight black pumps. Her north end was decorated with a single grey fox, a double strand of imitation pearls approximately the same colour, and enough paint to preserve a battleship. Her chest was like a battleship’s prow, massive and sharp and uninviting. She gave me a long hard searchlight look, her heavy mouth held loose, all ready to smile. I took a bite of my sandwich and munched at her. The searchlights clicked off almost audibly.”

The title of the book is both literal and metaphorical. It is literal in the sense that Olivia Slocum is found dead in the family swimming pool, and later in the book Archer is subject to a kind of water torture from which he has great difficulty in escaping. But there is also the metaphorical sense that the frailties of many peoples lives are exposed, and they are seen as perhaps basically decent people drowning in a moral swamp not entirely of their own making – the Aeschylean conundrum much loved by Shakespeare and Hardy.

Blood feuds in California (at least the fictional California) seem only ever about two things. One, as in Chinatown is water, and the other – in this case – is oil. Archer battles his way through the corruption and venality of rich men and women to reach a conclusion which is at least morally satisfying but, as ever, leaves him financially no better off. The Drowning Pool is full of pain, poetry and compassion, all of which are as vivid now as they were almost three quarters of a century ago when it was first published. This new edition of the novel, thankfully free from the malign attentions of Sensitivity Readers, will be published by Penguin on 13th July, as part of the first tranche of novels issued as an homage to the wonderful Green Penguins of yesteryear.

June 28, 2023 0

THE FASCINATION . . . Between the covers

Essie Fox takes us back to Victorian times with her novel The Fascination. It is the late summer of 1887. Keziah and Tilly Lovell are twins, but they are far from identical. At some point, Tilly simply stopped growing and, as she gets older, she is a woman in a child’s body. They escape from the brutish attentions of their drunken father, and are taken on by a showman called The Captain who senses a financial opportunity in the diminutive Tilly. She has the looks and voice of an angel, made all the more alluring by her tiny body.

Their paths cross that of Theo Seabrook. Cursed by being a (literal) bastard he is brought up by his aristocratic but malevolent grandfather, who eventually disinherits him. He finds work as assistant to Dr Eugene Summerwell – a former physician, but now another showman – who runs a ‘Museum of Anatomy’ in London. Despite its lofty title it is just another opportunity to make money out of punters who pay to marvel at preserved freaks of nature and medicine, mostly contained in glass bottles and cases.

The Fascination is described by the publicists as a ‘Gothic novel’. Church buffs will be aware of the architectural term, insofar as it applies to the three great periods of English medieval architecture – Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular – but what does it mean when applied to a novel? Although Wikipedia is frequently wrong, its definition of Gothic Fiction isn’t far off the mark:

“Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. Gothic fiction is distinguished from other forms of scary or supernatural stories, such as fairy tales, by the specific theme of the present being haunted by the past.”

The anonymous author might have added:

“A fascination with human deformity, ever-present reminders of death, physical beauty ruined by excess, the darkness of human imagination – and a general absence of normality.”

Away from the intriguing story – of which more in a moment – Essie Fox raises interesting questions about our age-old fascination with physical and mental differences in our fellow humans. I am old enough to remember traveling fairs in 1950s Britain, where people would still part with their hard-earned bobs and tanners to view The Bearded Lady, The Irish Midget or The Rat Woman. Most of these owed more to make-up than genuine deformity, but let’s not forget the 1932 American film (banned for many years) called Freaks. Directed and produced by Tod Browning. It was a melodrama set in a traveling circus. The basic plot was that a scheming female trapeze artist sets out to defraud a dwarf called Hans of a sizeable sum of money. In doing so, she invokes the wrath of Hans’s fellow ‘freaks’ – some of whom actually had severe physical deformities.

In these ‘enlightened’ days many enjoy a slightly more refined fascination with grotesques when they tune in to watch shows like Britain’s Got Talent and Love Island. Back in Victorian times, however, these pleasures were much more raw and face-to-face, and this is where Essie Fox places her characters. Few deviations from ‘the norm’ are excluded; in no particular order she offers us kidnap, prostitution, paedophilia, drug addiction, child abuse, grave robbing, pornography and debauchery.

Under the skilful management of El Capitano, Tilly becomes a star of the London variety stage. It doesn’t hurt that she has a lovely singing voice, but the bottom line is that there is a sexual attraction, too. Essie Fox doesn’t lay this on with a trowel, but the fact is that Tilly is a nubile teenager, but one encased in the body of a nine year-old. It is this that brings her to the attention of Lord Seabrook, Theo’s syphilitic grandfather, and his scheming new wife. Tilly is kidnapped, and the intention is to use her as the central attraction at a Hellfire Club-style orgy in the crumbling mausoleum of Dornay Hall. After a daring rescue by El Capitano and his retinue of rather odd characters, Tilly’s virtue is saved, but not before several family skeletons are dangled in public view.

The Fascination is supercharged melodrama from start to finish and, on one level, gloriously over the top, but discerning readers will admire the many subtle counterpoints in the story, such as the intriguing relationship between Tilly and Keziah. The most telling twist only emerges in the final paragraph when the author reminds us that the proverbial ‘eye of the beholder’ is capable of powerful insight. This novel was published by Orenda Books on 22nd June.

June 26, 2023 1

THE ROOM WITH EIGHT WINDOWS . . . Between the covers

December 1930. Henry Johnstone, a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Metropolitan Police, has been forced to resign due to a debilitating injury. Now, he ekes out a solitary existence in a crumbling Brighton house, empty except for a large library assembled by the former owner, the late Sir Eamon Barry. Johnstone’s task – one given to him by a friend, concerned about his mental state – is to catalogue the thousands of books in the library. He is convinced he is being stalked, perhaps by someone linked to an old case. Then, he disappears. We know how – if not why – but his friends, among them his sister Cynthia and his former Sergeant Mickey Hitchens, are left with few clues, but one – left behind by Johnstone – suggests there is a link to a mysterious death and disappearance five years earlier.

When Johnstone is eventually found, he has been beaten within an inch of his life by a criminal gang, and is in no fit state to help the investigation into what seems to be a brutal and very well organised smuggling cartel. England’s south coast has been the backdrop for smuggling for centuries. I am reminded of the romantic lines of Kipling:

“If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie. Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark –
Brandy for the Parson, ‘Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
And watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!”

These days, sadly, the smugglers don’t tend to deal in the traditional commodities of brandy and tobacco, but in the more profitable contraband of human lives. I would like to think that back in the day, the profiteers were not aided and abetted by the historical equivalent of the RNLI and the Border Force, but that is a debate for another day As Henry Johnstone slowly recovers his strength, Hitchens – and his slightly odd (but learning something new every day) Sergeant Tibbs – eventually get to the root of the mystery, but not before more lives are lost.

As is only right and proper in novels set in the 1930s, Jane A Adams makes us aware that most of her protagonists have a shared history – that of The Great War. Those over the age of 35 will have either fought in that conflict or lost husbands and sons: Younger people will have fathers they will never see again, with only a marble gravestone somewhere in France as a far-away reminder of what they have lost.

The period details in The Room With Eight Windows are impressive and convincing, as are the quirks and foibles of the main characters. This excellent and atmospheric thriller will be published by Severn House on 4th July.

June 21, 2023 0