Month: August 2022

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Summary:

And then there is a scream. Ragged and terrified. A beat of silence even after it stops, until we all seem to realise that the Reading Room Rules no longer apply.’

Hannah Tigone, bestselling Australian crime author, is crafting a new novel that begins in the Boston Public Library: four strangers; Winifred, Cain, Marigold and Whit are sitting at the same table when a bloodcurdling scream breaks the silence. A woman has been murdered. They are all suspects, and, as it turns out, each character has their own secrets and motivations – and one of them is a murderer.

While crafting this new thriller, Hannah shares each chapter with her biggest fan and aspirational novelist, Leo. But Leo seems to know a lot about violence, motive, and how exactly to kill someone. Perhaps he is not all that he seems…

The Woman in the Library is an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship – and shows that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.

My Review:

This is one book that could so easily slip under the radar, but I have to say I loved it. Read in two sittings. The Woman un the Library (Ultimo Press) by award-winning author Sulari Gentill is a wonderful novel that is compelling and sharp and it is unique and extremely clever. Once you have started reading it’s addictive approach and storyline together with great characters means you won’t want to stop read.

Inside this thriller there is another story so you will need to keep your wits about to keep up but that is just another twist. In the Boston Public library four people are busy doing their own research when there is a scream. So now there is a murder in the library. But who and why and who committed the murder?

The four are now kept in the reading room of the Boston Public Library while a search goes on around them to find the killer. This is when the four strike up an unlikely friendship and there is one called Freddie who also is the narrator of this novel, she has quietly been busy giving names to the other three while they were working. This seems to inspire Winifred to start writing her book and at the same time they all suspects in the crime of a murder in the library. One by one they are starting to talk about themselves and sometimes you just cannot help revealing too much about your past even if you intended not to. We all have secrets some are best kept locked away.

Meanwhile there is a murder to solved. Could one of them be the killer and could they strike again? And so, we come to the other story Dear Hannah… are the email exchanges between a successful writer Hannah Tigone and her biggest fan called Leo who is trying to get an agent and a book out there. Each of the emails at added at the end of each chapter which are all part of building the thriller and makes the story so compelling. Just where is this heading. Well you will have to read for yourself but the ending caught me completely by surprise and that is why The Woman in the Library is such a clever murder mystery and one I am more than happy to recommend.

272 Pages.

My thanks to Laura Creyke (Mark Hutchinson Management) for the review Copy of The Woman in the library by Sulari Gentill and is Published on 15 September    2022 and is now available to pre-order through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org

The Deal Goes Down by Larry Beinhart

The Deal Goes Down by Larry Beinhart

Summary:

Ex-private eye Tony Casella lives in the Catskill mountains, southern New York, a lonely old tough guy whose body can no longer do what it once did. His wife and son are dead; his daughter barely talks to him; his bank is threatening to repossess his house. But a chance encounter with a rich young woman on a train changes everything. He is hired to kill her superrich, Jeffrey Epstein-ish husband. That job leads to others and he joins a small start-up whose mission is to save women from abusive marriages – and make a tidy profit to boot. Tony’s problems seem to be over, but are they? An old, angry associate is determined to get his cut of Tony’s earnings, murky government agents start to tail him, and when he s sent to the Austrian alps to kill a Russian oligarch and rescue his American wife, all hells breaks loose. Packed with action The Deal Goes Down is an unforgettable portrait of a Lion in Winter who still has a few tricks up his sleeve, from a writer garlanded with awards and critical acclaim.

My Review:

After a 30-year hiatus crime writer Larry Beinhart brings back ex-private eye Tony Castella in The Deal Goes Down (Melville House) which is published this month. Life really has been tough for this tough old private eye, on top of everything that life has thrown at him, now the banks are closing in on him and threatening to take his home from him. Just how low can life get. But then a chance encounter could turn things around for. Or does it in the end?

Tony Castella is now 70 years-of-age, and is on a train journey musing over how life has turned against him, and wondering what he can do to get out of the financial crisis he is in. No-one not even his daughter. But on that train is a wealthy woman who knows he was once a private detective who got results even if they were in a questionable way. She has a $100,000 proposal for Castella, she wants him to kill her husband. But why, it turns that he is an abusive husband who has been more than just carrying on behind her back. She wants him dead. Stone cold dead.

But this job with its lucrative reward soon gets out and his former partner is looking for a cut of the reward. So it goes that one good case turns into another case but this one has serious risks attached for this ageing private eye, now he is hired to rescue the wife and son that have been taken from a very wealthy Russian, but this is where things hairy in more ways than one. Could Tony Castella have taken on one case too many, these Russian’s are armed to the teeth and won’t go quietly. Bullets are flying and so are the bodies.

One thing I will say is this is a romping good thriller from a great crime writer who can spin a really good story with some humour added. This has it all, great characters.

288 Pages.

My thanks to  Nikki Griffiths (Melville House Publishing) for the review Copy of  The Deal Goes Down by Larry Beinhart Published on 11th August 2022 and is now to pre-order through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org

Codename: Madeleine by Barnaby Jameson

Codenaame: Madeleine by Barnaby Jameseson

Summary:

A Mystic’s daughter flees Moscow on the eve of the Great War.
A French soldier lies wounded on the Western Front.
A German officer veers between loyalty and integrity.
An English courtesan reclines on a sea of books.

Each will make a journey that changes history.

The constellations will force the Mystic’s daughter to make an impossible choice. To remain at her harp as the shadow of war looms again – or join the top-secret Special Operations Executive (SOE). Babouli to her Sufi father, ‘Madeleine’ to the Gestapo, a lone mission to Occupied Paris promises to be the most hazardous of World War Two.

Inspired by real events, CODENAME: MADELEINE is the most unexpected spy story ever told. It teems with tigers, zeppelins, elephants, U-boats, angels, assassins, chessmen, cyanide, beetles, butterflies and Rumi. Revolving between Paris, London, Prague, India and Latin America, CODENAME: MADELEINE is a kaleidoscope of love, war, music, betrayal, poetry and resistance.

My Review:

Throughout my life I have read so many WWII spy stories, both true and also fictional but I have been completely blown away by the debut Codename: Madeleine (Whitefox Publishing) by Barnaby Jameson which is based on the true story of Noor Inayat Khan a remarkable brave woman who became the first woman SOE agent to be dropped into occupied France during WWII.

What Barnaby Jameson has written is a deeply moving and compelling accounts of one of the most celebrated heroines of the last war. She was posthumously awarded both the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre in 1949. The story though begins much further back and her father Inayat Khan who was to become a celebrated concert musician and Inayat travels meets Ora and their own journey begins. On New Years Day 1914, Noor was born in Moscow and so her story begins but first they now must leave Russia and head for London as WWI breaks out as Inayat was a pacifist as his religion dictated.

As time went on Noor would go on to study music and play the harp. But now Europe was to be engulfed by war again as WWII breaks out and the family flees Paris and heads back to London where Noor goes on to join the WAAF and it is here she learns how to become a radio operator. But it is not long that she wants more and in 1941 she is recruited into the Special Operations Executive. (SOE). The story now moves to 1943 and Noor is parachuted into France, and this is where the story really becomes compelling and heartbreaking.

I don’t want to go on from here as it is a story, I would completely recommend to anyone. There are many characters in the story based on Noor’s life here in the book including those she trained with at the SOE as well as her family members. One thing I will say is that the bravery shown by Noor and many more who joined the SOE and sent to France is something that you cannot begin to imagine, the fear as the Gestapo were always watching and listening and you feared the net was about to close at any moment.

In 2019 a blue plaque was announced at her home in Bloomsbury, London, the address she left as she headed for France on her final fatal mission. The plaque was unveiled on 28th August 2020.

At just under 500 pages this is not a short story, but this is 500 pages that goes by so quickly. Codename: Madeleine by Barnaby Jameson is highly recommended.

480 Pages.

My thanks to Sofia Saghir (Midas PR) and Whitefox Publishing for the review Copy of Codename: Madeleine by Barnaby Jameson Published on 28th July    2022 and is now available through Waterstones, Amazon and through your local independent bookshop or through Bookshop.org that supports your local independent bookshop. UK Bookshop.org

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