This is a curious and quite unsettling book which does not fit comfortably into any crime fiction pigeon-hole. I don’t want to burden it with a flattering comparison with which other readers may disagree, but it did remind me of John Fowles’s intriguing and mystifying cult novel from the 1960s, The Magus. I am showing my age here and, OK, The Gilded Ones is about a quarter of the length of The Magus, it’s set in 1980s London rather than a Greek island and the needle on the Hanky Panky Meter barely flickers. However we do have a slightly ingenuous central character who serves a charismatic, powerful and magisterial master and there is a nagging sense that, as readers, we are having the wool pulled over our eyes. There is also an uneasy feeling of dislocated reality and powerful sensory squeezes, particularly of sound and smell. Author Brooke Fieldhouse (left) even gives us female twins who are not, sadly, as desirable as Lily and Rose de Seitas in the Fowles novel.
So, what goes on? A young designer who we only know as Pulse, takes a job with a north London firm headed run by Patrick Lloyd Lewis. We are introduced to Pulse via a disturbing dream where he is witness to a fatal car accident on a precipitous alpine road. Any first hand account of such a traumatic event is bound to be unnerving, but Pulse’s dream goes one step further.
“On her feet are shiny mink-hued ballet pumps, en pointe. I stare at the tips of the pumps and cover my mouth with both my hands. My spleen drops past zero, through the valley bottom and into the void. I look at her eyes, no longer scintillating as they did when she read the signpost. The figure is suspended invisibly and diabolically, one foot above the snow-covered ground.”
Lloyd Lewis is the Magus-like figure. He is so thumpingly male that you can almost smell him, and he rules those around him, with one exception, with an almost feral ferocity. So who are ‘those around him’? Ever present psychologically, but eternally absent physically, is his late wife Freia, the subject of Pulse’s dream. Martinique is Patrick’s girlfriend, and loitering in the background are his children, step-child and office gofer Lauren. Lauren, who has “thousand-year-old eyes”, is of the English nobility, but quite what she is doing in the Georgian townhouse we only learn at the end of the book. The one person to whom Patrick defers is his Sicilian friend Falco. Equalling the Englishman’s sense of menace, the sinister Falco appears briefly but is, nonetheless, memorable.
“There was something of the giant baby about his movements, and I wondered if he had been breastfed long after there had been a physical need for it.”
Pulse is transfixed with the idea that Freia was murdered by Patrick. But can he prove it? While ostensibly working with clients in a northern city, he discovers a link between the late Freia, the design practice, and a seedy but powerful club-owning gangster.
Patrick Lloyd Lewis is a morbidly fascinating character, and Fieldhouse does his damnedest to convince us that he is a wrong ‘un. I lost count of the number of times that Patrick’s mouth was compared to an anus, in various states of dilation. Too much information? Maybe so, but the graphic image certainly cemented in place the bas relief of an oleaginous and venal alpha male.
The Gilded Ones is an inventive and frequently entertaining enigma, written with panache and a love of language. The focus of the story is, however, occasionally soft to the point of becoming elusive, and the plot often darts off in unexpected and unresolved directions. Despite there being many questions left unanswered by the dreamlike narrative, this is as individual and different a novel as I have read all year. Fans of rum-te-tum police procedurals or blood-soaked serial killer sagas should look away now, but there is more – much more – to this novel than just another cri-fi potboiler. It is published by Matador and is available in Kindle and paperback.
Also Sprach, in no particular order (put the name to the quote for a bit of fun, but no prizes, sadly) Napoleon, Jack Nicholson, Hitler, Sartre, and Nietzsche. In this brilliant new novel by Simon Lelic we have, in theatrical terms, an intense two-hander between Susanna (a counsellor) and Adam (a troubled young man). Just a couple of problems here, though. First, neither person is exactly who they claim to be and, second, Adam has abducted Susanna’s daughter Emily and, for reasons which emerge as this extraordinary dialogue develops, wants her dead.
is a writer who views the human condition with what some might term a jaundiced eye, as witnessed in his previous novel, 
Lowery sets out his narrative stall with those four threads which will eventually weave together to powerful effect. Ibrahim, his puppet strings pulled from afar courtesy of the internet, plans a terrorist bomb attack which goes spectacularly wrong and he goes on the run. A revered and respected fighter, Karl, has to watch in frustration while his ISIL soldiers are outgunned and overwhelmed by coalition forces, and his position is undermined by over-promoted jobsworths in his own organisation. Faqir has finally had enough of living in the shell-torn morgue that Mosul has become, and gathers together his hard-earned savings and is determined to find a better life for his family. Battling German privacy laws which prevent him from publishing photos of his suspect, Kellerman presses on and is determined to bring his man to justice.
This is a big, sprawling novel – nearly 450 pages – but it is grimly readable. I say ‘grimly’ because it goes behind bland newspaper headlines and ten-second TV news video clips, to reveal the whole Iraq – Syria situation as the ruinous, depressing and insoluble shambles it has become. It would be impossible to write a novel like this with it being political, but I don’t think Lowery (right) allows himself to become partisan. For sure, he pulls no punches in his scathing depiction of the social intolerance of many Muslim communities, and the genocidal fanaticism of ISIL which is as close to mental illness as makes no difference. He is, however, just as clear sighted in his scepticism about the real reasons why America and its allies – most pointedly Britain – became involved in Iraq in the first place.
Born and educated in the United Kingdom, Marion Leigh (left) has lived in France, Germany, Indonesia, Canada, the USA and, latterly, Spain. She has also spent time in Australia and the Far East, India, Africa, South America and the Caribbean. Her debut novel, The Politician’s Daughter, was the first in a series of adventure thrillers featuring feisty globetrotting Petra Minx of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Dead Man’s Legacy followed, but now Petra is in South Africa, accompanying her buddy, Carlo, to his cousin’s wedding. She becomes involved in the hunt for the attacker of two teenage girls in Cape Town and finds among her foes, in no particular order, a wicked step-brother, a phony priest, and a reluctant bride. This is out now, from 
Here, though, Lowery (right) turns his attention to an equally violent centre of rage and recrimination – post-Sadam Iraq. This hard hitting and meticulously researched thriller focuses on two contrasting pairs of Iraqis. The first pair are bitter and vengeful jihadists who travel west determined to wreak havoc with bomb and bullet on a world they blame for the destruction of their homeland and an assault on their religion. The other two. a married couple – Hema and Faqir Al-Douri – flee the Mosul death trap with only one intention – to find peace and safety in Western Europe. The Mosul Legacy is published by Urbane Publications and will be out on 
One of my sons was, in his teens, an avid fan of the Andy McNab books and acquired several signed copies of the SAS man’s adventures, and even had a couple of autographed photos of the great man (complete with the obligatory black rectangle across his features, naturally). I have to confess that I didn’t share his enthusiasm, and military thrillers are not normally high on my TBR pile. When the publicists at Michael Joseph sent me a copy of The Break Line by James Brabazon two things aroused my interest. The first was the frankly terrifying background of the author, a documentary film maker and journalist who has been to some of the darkest and most dangerous spots in the world and lived to tell the tale. Second was my admiration for the team at Michael Joseph and my awareness that they don’t, in my experience, publish bad books. If The Break Line had convinced their editorial team, then maybe I should take a closer look?
Exactly what it is that McLean faces will only be learned when you read the book. The instant you begin to read the first-person narrative, you will rightly assume that McLean survives his ordeal, as an action novel has yet to be written where the protagonist convincingly records his own death, but what happens between the first page and the last is a curious but utterly compelling mix of The Heart of Darkness, Indiana Jones, science fiction and visceral horror shot through with musings about the two great imponderables – life and death. Thriller fans will be able to fill their boots with the usual tropes; Le Carré style double and treble dealing at the highest level, fierce fire-fights, fascinating military detail, treacherous Russians and a cataclysmic body count. Brabazon (right) is not, however, simply ticking genre boxes. He shows an assured and convincing style of writing that puts him way above many of his contemporaries in the genre.
Dania Gorska has come to work in Dundee after starting her career in London with the Met. A divorce from husband Tony (watch out for the clever twist) has left her footloose and fancy free. Her exemplary record has meant she has enjoyed a swift and welcome transfer to Police Scotland. She lodges with her brother Marek, who is an investigative journalist.
The Polish Detective is in some ways a standard police procedural which chugs along nicely on its accustomed rails. All the usual characters are present and correct; no such story would be complete without a dyspeptic senior officer, the obligatory post mortem scene with a sarcastic medical professor wielding the bone saw, the male junior detective who thinks he’s Jack – or perhaps Jock – the Lad, and the mind numbing tedium of the door knocking and CCTV scanning that sits behind every brilliant solution to a murder mystery. What lifts this book above the average is the character of Dania Gorska herself, and in particular her musical passion for, naturally, her great countryman Frédéric François Chopin and his sublime piano music. Hania Allen (right) describes herself as a pianist who makes up in enthusiasm what she lacks in talent, but under the fingers of DS Gorska, the great man’s preludes and nocturnes shimmer and sparkle throughout the pages, and the darker notes of the Polish soul are never far away.
Something we do all too rarely on Fully Booked, mea culpa, is to feature articles and reviews by guest writers. I am delighted that an old mate of mine, Stuart Radmore (we go back to the then-down-at-heel Melbourne suburbs of Carlton and Parkville in the 1970s, where he was a law student and I was teaching art at Wesley College) has written this feature on a writer who, as an individual, never actually existed. Stuart’s knowledge of crime fiction is immense, and so I will let him take up the story.
Their first joint outing (published under their own names) was They Used To Play On Grass (1971). Described, not incorrectly, on the paperback cover as “the greatest soccer novel ever”, it’s still an enjoyable read, with each man’s contribution being pretty obvious.
The authors were keen to develop the Hazell character into a possible TV series, and the later two books seem to be written with this in mind. This duly came to pass, via Thames Television, and the first series was broadcast in 1978, starring Nicholas Ball as a youthful James Hazell. Gordon Williams, with Venables (right) and other writers, was responsible for a number of the episodes (including ‘Hazell Plays Solomon’), and it remains a very watchable series. The second, and final, series broadcast in 1979/80 was not so successful. The hardness was gone, Hazell and Inspector ‘Choc’ Minty had become something of a double act and, while not outright comedy, it came close at times. It’s not surprising to learn that Leon Griffiths, one of the second series screenwriters, went on to create and develop the very successful series Minder later that year.
Parker is on similar form here in Morte Point which, as Devonians know, is a rocky peninsula on the north west coast of that county. Rather than the bitterly feuding rural families in Crook’s Hollow, Mr P gives us a jailbird ex SAS soldier, a mysteriously beautiful Kosovan biochemist, a sunken plane wreck containing only the body of a woman (minus her head), a senior British government minister determined to engineer the biggest international shock since Hitler declared war and Stalin, a bloody shoot-out in London’s most prestigious hotel and – at the centre of the drama – a phial containing a synthesised botulism capable of killing millions.
What follows is, to my mind, the best part of the book. Back in the day when the mysterious Andy McNab (and his ever-present black rectangle) was the media’s darling, survival skills, initiative in the wild and hiding in plain sight were familiar tropes in thrillers and on the screen, but Parker (right) has revitalised the idea. Bracken manages to stay half a step – but no more – ahead of his pursuers as he travels rough on his way north to meet up with Salix. You might scoff, and say that rural Devon is hardly the Iraqi desert, but Bracken realises that he is Britain’s most hunted man and, in these days of 24 hour news coverage on a bewildering range of devices, he knows that he has no friends, and no ally except his own resources and awareness of nature. He comes unstuck, however, after a chance encounter with vipera berus, and from this point the story takes a very different direction.
In his debut thriller, James Brabazon enlists that familiar but effective trope, the elusive and anonymous killer who does unpleasant things for his country’s government, despite the knowledge that he ever gets caught, his paymasters will, like the biblical Peter, deny him thrice. Max McLean is one such ‘invisible man’ but when his bravest and most reliable colleague falls foul of the official machine, Max tears up his contract and goes to the violent wastelands of Sierra Leone in search of the men who have destroyed his best friend. The Break Line is published by 
There is a bona fide medical condition called face blindness, and sufferers lack the vital mental ability to retain data about another person’s appearance in order to recognise them at a future meeting. Laura is one such, but she can relate people to clothing. When she wakes up, hungover after a woks Christmas bash, she remembers that she slept with a man in a pink shirt. Or did she? When she realises that the shirt on her bedroom floor is blue, her troubles are only just beginning. Transworld Digital publish the Kindle version of 
Central to the story is an all-powerful Russian President who sits like a spider at the centre of a web which is designed to snare unwary political and military flies across the world. Sounds familiar? Well, maybe, but this guy is called Alexander Volkov, and he plans to boost his power by revealing a potentially damaging historical pact between the Vatican and Hitler’s Germany. Lorenzo Rossi is the Head of the modern day Vatican police and his quest to limit Volkov’s malign intentions leads him into clear and present danger. If you are minded to grab this thriller, it is available now in paperback and as a Kindle, courtesy of 
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