Favourite Discoveries of 2016 (3)

Here is Rich Westwood's favourite crime discovery of 2016:

Rich's Favourite Discovery of 2016

My discovery of the year is Ethel Lina White, the writer best known for THE WHEEL SPINS, which was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock as The Lady Vanishes in 1938.

White was born in Abergavenny in 1876. After three mainstream novels she turned to crime in 1931 and was writing until her death in 1944. I've read a few of her fourteen crime novels in 2016 and have been really impressed with her versatility.

FEAR STALKS THE VILLAGE (1932) is a classic poison-pen story set in a close-knit community. The titular village is one of those idealised English villages of the Golden Age mystery, but stretched almost to hyper-cosiness. It is a deliberate caricature of the type.

SOME MUST WATCH (1933) is a claustrophobic siege set in a lonely Victorian house on the Welsh borders, damp and wind-swept, surrounded by trees, and difficult to reach by car. There's a murderer at large in the countryside - or is he in the house? This has also been filmed, as The Spiral Staircase.

WAX (1935) is set in a small town rife with vulnerability, dysfunction and cruelty. A young journalist becomes obsessed with the town's wax museum, with Gothic consequences.

THE WHEEL SPINS (1936) finds a young socialite travelling across Europe by train. Sunstroke, lack of food, and her lack of understanding of the language all combine to give the journey an unpleasantly feverish atmosphere. And then the only friendly face, an English governess, disappears without trace.

STEP IN THE DARK (1938) is another type of thriller again, more akin to a Mary Stewart romantic suspense with a heroine choosing between two men and (of course) picking the wrong one.

If you're tempted, a collection of White's work is available on Amazon very cheaply. For print editions, Orion's imprint The Murder Room has republished her in paperback. Finally, two of her short stories, CHEESE and WAXWORKS, have appeared in British Library anthologies (CAPITAL CRIMES and SILENT NIGHTS).

Review: Cara Massimina by Tim Parks

Cara Massimina by Tim Parks, November 2011, 288 pages, Vintage, ISBN: 0099572621

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Morris Arthur Duckworth is a down-at-heel English teacher in the Italian city of Verona. His life is financially precarious, always one step ahead of the gas being cut off in his flat, and largely reliant on providing additional private tutorials for his wealthier students. Morris simultaneously despises them and yearns to join them as an equal in wealth and lifestyle.

"He loved taking care of beautiful things... Normal things he was rather careless about (his scuffed shoes, for example) but with beautiful things it was different (and that was the mystery in the end, to have opened one's eyes in North Acton and yearned for class and style before he even knew they existed). And Morris thought that when one day he had finally got a good number of beautiful possessions together, he would spend a long time looking after them and get a great deal of pleasure from it."

His student Massimina seems to offer a step up. She is beautiful, biddable, and deluded enough to have fallen in love with Morris. She is the third daughter of a wealthy family. She is also, unfortunately, seventeen, which means he cannot marry her for several months.

Before you feel sorry for Morris, you should know that he is a liar, a petty thief, and an embryonic blackmailer, driven by an unjustified sense of self-pity. In many ways he is similar to Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley (a similarity heightened by the Italian setting). He flunks his crucial first meeting with Massimina's family by getting caught lying about his prospects.

"Morris then very casually mentioned the names of three Veronese companies he was working with closely at the moment... Names you saw on posters and local television commercials. There was a fair chance, of course, Verona being the tiny tight-knit place it was, that either the signora or Bobo would know people in these companies. By precisely the aplomb with which Morris took that risk should prove the clinching factor."

An elopement seems like the obvious next step. But is it an elopement or a kidnapping? Morris doesn't seem quite sure himself. And is the studiously asexual anti-hero actually falling for Massimina?

"Massimina was in a complete mess. Red in the freckled face, make-up all over the place, hair tousled, body apparently quite shapeless in a running outfit of all things. And out of breath to boot - nostrils flaring and eyes puffy. Rather horrible."

Maybe not, and yet....

CARA MASSIMINA is the first of three books featuring Morris Duckworth recently reissued by Vintage. The first two were originally published in the '90s and CARA MASSIMINA is a reminder of simpler times when kidnappers had to buy newspapers to compose their ransom demands and find out if the police were after them. The Italian setting (informed by Tim Parks' own time as an English teacher in Verona), inexorable plot, sort-of-likeable antihero, and relatively short length make this an ideal holiday book. Good fun.

Rich Westwood, July 2016

Favourite Discoveries of 2015 (3)

The next entry in the Euro Crime reviewer's Favourite Discoveries of 2015 is a new publisher, recommended by Rich Westwood.

Rich Westwood's Favourite Discovery of 2015

My discovery of the year is the publisher Dean Street Press, one of the small number of independent publishers resurrecting classic crime fiction for a new generation equipped with e-readers.

They came to my attention early in the year with two novels by George Sanders. George Sanders was a Hollywood star from the 1930s onwards, appearing in Hitchcock’s Rebecca, a number of films playing the Saint and the Falcon, and as the voice of Shere Khan. He wrote (or more probably just put his name to) two very enjoyable and very different novels. CRIME ON MY HANDS is narrated by a fictionalised 'George Sanders' and is a screwball mystery played out on the set of a western in Northern California. STRANGER AT HOME is a far more serious affair with a degenerate LA high-life setting reminiscent of Raymond Chandler.

Dean Street Press followed the Sanders novels with two by Ianthe Jerrold, a virtually forgotten Golden Age mystery writer. THE STUDIO CRIME, published in 1929, begins with the murder of an art dealer in St John's Wood. The irresistibly named John Christmas plays the part of amateur sleuth. His friendly rivalry with Scotland Yard bears comparison with his Golden Age peers, but in a nice variation on the trope, his friends are sceptical and unwilling to subscribe to his great amateur detective lifestyle.

DEAD MAN'S QUARRY, first published in 1930, could well be my favourite reissue of the year. It opens with a group of young people (and one parent) on a cycling holiday in a polite and ordered countryside, where the consistency of boiled eggs is the main topic of conversation. As events unfold, we meet suspicious locals, mysterious strangers, ginger beer bought at cottages, and that old staple the remote shepherd's hut. And there is a full supporting cast of rustics (who all add something to the story): a philosophically philandering footman, a poetic shepherd, and a grumpy pub landlord. All great fun.

After Jerrold, Dean Street Press has moved on to the somewhat fuller back catalogues of E R Punshon (fifteen titles), Annie Haynes (seven titles), and Harriet Rutland (three titles).

It's great to see these authors given a chance to reach new audiences so long after their heyday, and I hope to see many more new discoveries next year.

Review: Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle by J A Lang

Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle by J A Lang, April 2015, 240 pages, Purple Panda Press, ISBN: 191067902X

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Chef Maurice is the proprietor of Le Cochon Rouge, Beakley, a renowned restaurant nestled in the heart of the Cotswolds.

As A SPOT OF TRUFFLE opens, Maurice is panicking about a missing supplier. Ollie Meadows, the local forager, has disappeared with no forwarding address. Maurice needs his precious champignons for the night's menu, so he breaks in to Ollie's cottage and retrieves his latest finds - a variety of mushrooms including an unexpected trove of expensive truffles.

Maurice's keen chef's nose picks up the earth notes of the English countryside and concludes the truffles are local. Are the nearby Farnley Woods growing on top of a fungal goldmine?

Luckily, Maurice knows how to find out. He visits the local animal sanctuary and comes away with a new pet, miniature pig Hamilton. Hamilton's first hunt in Farnley Woods (for various reasons disguised as a baby) turns up zero truffles, but does locate one dead forager.

Then when Hamilton is stolen, Maurice realises that the police won't pour all of their available resources (PC Lucy Gavistone) into locating his pig until the murder of Ollie Meadows has been solved. With visions of a vanishing truffle menu, he channels his not inconsiderable energies into finding the killer, with a flagrant disregard for propriety or procedure.

The comic timing is excellent, there are some good set-pieces (Maurice interrupting a police interrogation by shouting through a grille is very funny, as is his three-course stake-out menu), and some almost Pratchett-esque one-liners...Alf had “moved to Bleakley from the hamlet of Little Goving, population six. Life in the big village was currently exceeding all his expectations”. And here's Ollie's nosy neighbour: “I could hear them shouting through the walls. Terrible the way sound travels through these walls. Had to turn the telly right down, I did.”

Chef Maurice, monomaniacal about his work, never short of a pastry, and with a tenacious French accent, has the makings of a comic crime classic. Much recommended for fans of Simon Brett or M C Beaton.

Rich Westwood, November 2015

Review: The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards, May 2015, 528 pages, HarperCollins, ISBN: 0008105960

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

THE GOLDEN AGE OF MURDER is a history of the Detection Club written by crime writer Martin Edwards.

The Detection Club is a dining society for crime writers founded in 1930, and during what is usually called the Golden Age of crime fiction (roughly speaking the period between the two World Wars) it had as its members most of the leading lights of the genre. Martin Edwards, as the Club's Archivist and President elect, is uniquely qualified to write their story, and has produced an entertaining history with loads of human interest.

The 1930 Club line-up included G K Chesterton (Father Brown), E C Bentley (who kick-started the Golden Age with TRENT'S LAST CASE), A A Milne (who wrote THE RED HOUSE MYSTERY four years before WINNIE-THE-POOH), Baroness Orczy (THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER and THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL), Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Anthony Berkeley Cox (who wrote as Frances Iles and Anthony Berkeley).

All of the Club's members get their moment in the limelight, but the majority of the story is carried by three mainstays of the Club: Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Anthony Berkeley Cox. Of these, Christie is of course a household name and Sayers will be very familiar to mystery fans at least. Martin Edwards points out that both had mysteries of their own. Christie's eleven-day disappearance in 1926 has never been fully resolved. Meanwhile, Sayers somehow managed to keep a much-loved illegitimate son quiet for most of her life. The third pillar of the book - Anthony Berkeley - probably qualifies as a forgotten author these days, but was one of the most inventive and influential crime writers of the period. Also one of the crankiest, it turns out (and the not-so-proud owner of an extremely complex love life).

Many lesser lights are fascinating by virtue of their politics, their personal lives, or their approach to the genre. The crime-fiction connections, often related in the end-notes to each chapter, are great. For example, Margaret Cole (half of the left-leaning married couple writing as G D H and Margaret Cole) was sister to Raymond Postgate, who wrote three crime novels including the influential VERDICT OF TWELVE. Raymond's father-in-law was grandfather to Angela Lansbury, famous for playing Miss Marple and of course Jessica Fletcher in MURDER, SHE WROTE. Raymond was also father to Oliver Postgate, inventor of Bagpuss.

One surprise was the debt owed by crime writers to true crimes, which often inspired details in their work or in many cases inspired them to write more socially-aware mysteries. Several members collaborated on a book of essays entitles THE ANATOMY OF MURDER. Founder member of the Club, Millward Kennedy, came unstuck when he was sued for libel by the acquitted suspect in a murder case. Another surprise was the media savvy of the Club, with members working together on plays for the BBC as early as 1930.

As usual with this kind of book, the reader can scribble down recommendations as they read, and nowadays it is becoming a lot easier to own previously out-of-print titles, with even mainstream publishers such as the British Library, Faber Finds, Bello, and Collins racing to revive forgotten books.

A lovely reference book for the classic-crime aficionado, and at 528 pages you won't feel short-changed.

Rich Westwood, September 2015

Review: A Devil Under the Skin by Anya Lipska

A Devil Under the Skin by Anya Lipska, June 2015, 320 pages, The Friday Project, ISBN: 0008100357

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

This is the third in the Kizska and Kershaw series, set in London's Polish community, that began in 2013 with WHERE THE DEVIL CAN'T GO.

As the book opens, we have moved on more than a year since the events at the end of book two, DEATH CAN'T TAKE A JOKE.

Kasia, the long-time girlfriend of East London Polish 'fixer' Janusz Kiszka is about to move in with him, having finally decided to leave her useless husband Steve. Kiszka hopes that she is a hundred percent committed to her decision, but has lingering doubts...

Then Kasia fails to turn up. Kiszka visits her home to find that both Kasia and Steve have vanished, leaving one-way tickets to Alicante behind in their flat. He begins tracking them down, starting with Steve's dodgy acquaintances in the local pub. Soon Steve's friends begin dying in mysterious circumstances. As the dead Cockneys begin to pile up, Kiszka realises he needs to call in the police (even though the thought of officialdom makes him feel queasy).

Meanwhile Natalie Kershaw, now a firearms officer in the Met, has been cleared of any wrong-doing after fatally shooting a samurai-sword-wielding maniac outside a McDonald's in Leytonstone. But she still has to endure psychological evaluations before being allowed back on active duty. Has the stab-wound she endured in the last book made her trigger-happy?

Kershaw jumps at the chance to use her rusty detective skills to help out her old ally Kiszka. The hunt leads them from small-time crooks to big-time gangsters, and the investigation turns official, with Kiszka alternately working with Kershaw and hiding his own discoveries from her. Kiszka has some tough choices to make as he gets closer to Steve and Kasia.

An interesting subplot concerns Stefan Kasparek, an elderly hacker with some much-needed IT skills. Who knew that it was Polish codebreakers who first cracked the Enigma code?

A gritty story heightened by its depiction of the Polish community and some good jokes (as usual, Janusz's clownish friend Oskar provides laughs and loyal support to his old army friend).

As with most series, it probably pays to begin with the first book before it's too late, but this works fine as a standalone story. The inclusion of a little glossary and pronunciation guide at the back is much appreciated.

Rich Westwood, July 2015

Review: I Nearly Died by Charles Spencer

I Nearly Died by Charles Spencer, January 2015, 252 pages, Bello

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

I NEARLY DIED is the first of three crime novels by the recently retired Daily Telegraph critic Charles Spencer, now brought back into print by Bello and available in ebook or hard copy.

Will Benson (who I think must be a fictional version of Spencer) has graduated from local journalism to a staff post at Theatre World. He is an ordinary sort of guy, unambitious but dissatisfied with his life, drinks too much, running to fat, an unlikely fan of the works of Noel Streatfeild.

He opens the book on an apparent drive to make enemies. Attending a terrible production of Romeo and Juliet, he pans it in a review but finishes with a final-paragraph tribute to the genuinely brilliant Juliet. His review is cut for space and leaves out the praise.
Next he interviews Joe Johnson, a thinly veiled version of a particular British nightclub comic:

Dressed in baggy khaki shorts, a scarlet Hawaiian shirt crawling with green parrots, and with a plastic policeman's helmet perched on his head […] the whole house was indeed helpless with laughter. But it was a laughter of hate and ugliness and fear.

Joe turns up to his interview steaming drunk and makes some career-ruining admissions to Will, all of which go onto tape. Joe’s agent, the tough-as-nails Harry Meadows threatens Will if his revelations get into the papers.

So when Will starts getting death threats, there is no shortage of suspects.

This is an enjoyable book, deftly satirical (‘Prejudice and schmaltz, the twin pillars of light entertainment’), unafraid to mock real-life stars (Andrew Lloyd Webber is described as having an ‘I’ve just won the prep school scripture prize’ expression). The author's familiarity with the world he is describing lends the story realism and a great sense of atmosphere. The mystery element is none too strong, but this is more than compensated for by the sense of humour, a bit of romance between Will and his colleague Kim, and a likeable narrative style. I enjoyed hanging out with Will and look forward to sharing more of his adventures.

Rich Westwood, May 2015

Favourite Euro Crime Reads of 2014 - Rich

In today's instalment of the Euro Crime reviewers' favourite reads of 2014, Rich Westwood reveals his favourite Euro Crime titles:

Rich Westwood's favourite reads of 2014

5. Margery Allingham - Hide My Eyes
Paperback: 224 pages (2007) Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0099506092
Margery Allingham, one of the crime queens of the Golden Age, is probably one of my favourite writers. 1958's Hide My Eyes, a story of blind faith and unearned forgiveness, is by no means her best, but it earns a place in my top five by being a pleasant surprise - somehow I had managed not to read it. A plausible small-time conman has turned his hand to murder, and is getting away with it. The colourful policeman Charlie Luke is the only one who believes he even exists. Truly sinister.

4. Jasper Gibson - A Bright Moon for Fools
Paperback: 368 pages (July 2014) Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd ISBN: 1471138828
I read this and thought 'cult classic'. Harry Christmas, a boozy, pugnacious and unattractive Englishman, blazes a sorry trail of destruction across Venezuela. He is hunted by the unbalanced son of his latest conquest, who somehow contrives to be more unpleasant than his prey. Funny and sad.

3. Len Deighton - Mexico Set
Paperback: 416 pages (2010) Publiser: Grafton Books ISBN: 0586058214
The second of the Game, Set and Match trilogy featuring robustly ordinary spy Bernie Samson, whose greatest strengths are his paranoia, the massive chip on his shoulder, and a wife who understands him. These are also his greatest weaknesses. In Mexico, Bernie tries to 'turn' his KGB opposite number but discovers wheels with wheels (and they have their own wheels). I can't remember why I scored this more highly than Berlin Game or London Match, so you should probably read all three.

2. Francis Beeding - The Norwich Victims
Paperback: 256 pages (2013) Publisher: Arcturus Publishing ISBN: 178212442X
A little gem of a Golden Age mystery. Miss Haslett, the spinsterish housekeeper at a Norwich prep school, wins a fortune and falls straight into the hands of a dodgy investment advisor named John Throgmorton. Inspector Martin investigates when her body is found in a train-yard. Very readable, and the inclusion of photos of the main characters adds a certain charm.

1. Michael Sims (Editor) - The Dead Witness
Paperback: 608 pages (2012) Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks ISBN: 1408822008
I love short story collections, especially when they revive forgotten gems. In The Dead Witness, Michael Sims has collected together early crime stories from the UK, US, Australia, Canada and France. The usual suspects are here – Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, C. Auguste Dupin – but they are outweighed by rarities, including a new candidate for the first published mystery story. For me, the Bible-bashing frontier lawman Uncle Abner was the stand-out character. A brilliant read for historians of the genre.

Favourite Discoveries 2013 (I)

As usual I have asked my fellow Euro Crime reviewers to come up with their top 5 reads of 2013 - these will be collated and announced in early January. Like the previous two years, I have also asked them what their favourite crime fiction discovery of the past year - be it book, film or tv series - has been.

The first entry comes from Rich Westwood who has chosen a publisher.

Rich Westwood's Favourite Discovery of 2013

My favourite discovery of 2013 isn't an author, a book, or a TV show, but a publisher.

The British Library began publishing crime fiction taken from its archives last year, and has really gone for it this year, with a few choice selections. Both the texts and their production values are high quality. The books have excellent covers (THE SANTA KLAUS MURDER is possibly the most striking), and also feel much nicer than most publishers' paperbacks - dense yet flexible.

Charles Warren Adams' THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY is usually regarded as the first detective novel - it was published in 1862. Its narrator, the perplexed detective Ralph Henderson, is forced to blame a mesmerist for an impossible crime, even though he refuses to believe in mesmerism.

They have also unearthed the earliest female protagonists in crime fiction.

William Stephens Hayward's REVELATIONS OF A LADY DETECTIVE was one of my books of the year - a wildly Victorian romp full of disguises and moustache-twirling villains.

Andrew Forrester's THE FEMALE DETECTIVE feels like a more serious contender for a place in the canon. Miss Gladden, our heroine (Gladden’s not her real name, and her friends think she is a dressmaker) shares a collection of tales from different stages of her career as a detective.

MR BAZALGETTE'S AGENT is an easy-to-read Victorian novel, although difficult to categorise as crime fiction (it's actually more like chick lit). Leonard Merrick was a respected Victorian novelist who hated, this, his first book, to the extent that he would buy up and destroy copies. I liked it a lot.

And to cap it all, back in January the Library also staged a lovely little exhibition of crime fiction. Amongst other treasures I saw Conan Doyle’s original manuscript of ‘The Adventure of the Retired Colourman’ (extremely neat writing), Walter Eberhart’s 1933 THE JIG-SAW PUZZLE MURDER (complete with jigsaw), and a 'crime dossier’ created by Dennis ‘The Devil Rides Out’ Wheatley. This featured included real clues, including a lock of human hair, used ticket stubs, and fag ends in little cellophane pockets.

Rich Westwood

Review: The Magus of Hay by Phil Rickman

The Magus of Hay by Phil Rickman, November 2013, 464 pages,Corvus, ISBN: 0857898655

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

THE MAGUS OF HAY is the twelfth book in the Merrily Watkins series that began in 1998. For the uninitiated, Merrily is a single mum with a rebellious daughter, the vicar of the fictional Herefordshire town of Ledwardine. At this point, I usually end up pointing out that these aren't Vicar-of-Dibley-esque cosy mysteries, but rich and sensitive stories with a deep-rooted sense of place.

There are also supernatural overtones, largely stemming from Merrily's role as Deliverance Office for the Diocese (exorcist, in other words), but there are always rational explanations for the crimes, if not the spooky goings-on.

THE MAGUS OF HAY reintroduces Robin and Betty Thorogood, a pagan couple who first appeared in 2001's A CROWN OF LIGHTS. They didn't have much luck in that book, and not much has improved in the interim. Robin is a dreamer and falls in love with the idea of starting a pagan bookshop in the bookselling town of Hay-on-Wye. A new set of troubles is about to begin for the couple as they settle in to the shop.

Meanwhile, an old man called David Hambling is found drowned under the waterfall just over the border in Herefordshire. Merrily's old friend DI Frannie Bliss goes to view the scene, and calls her in as an advisor as soon as he has discovered Hambling's idiosyncratic library.

Merrily is feeling a little lonely - temporarily abandoned by her boyfriend and her daughter - and is additionally being drawn into a potentially embarrassing situation with a bereaved headteacher who believes she is being haunted by her partner (and seems to like it). She welcomes the diversion, especially as it takes her out of her jurisdiction. Her knowledge and contacts soon reveal that Hambling was a formerly influential magical practitioner with a regrettable history of inspiring far-right activists.

DI Bliss also inadvertently inspires an ambitious young policewoman named Tamsin Winterson to conduct her own enquiries on the side. It is her disappearance which brings the two strands of the story together, as Robin soon becomes prime suspect in her murder. Unpleasant secrets get uncovered (literally in some cases) and the investigation brings Robin, Betty and Merrily into real danger.

The story is also about a unique town in danger of losing its hard-won individuality and becoming just another place. The locals are keen for Robin and Betty to rent the shop in order to prevent it becoming a nail bar. Phil Rickman talked to Crime Fiction Lover about Hay's history and declaration of independence,

THE MAGUS OF HAY is another strong entry in this series; well worth catching up with.

Rich Westwood, November 2013

Review: Gone Again by Doug Johnstone

Gone Again by Doug Johnstone, November 2013, 256 pages, Faber & Faber, ISBN: 0571296610

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

GONE AGAIN is a stand-alone suspense novel by the author of last year's HIT & RUN.

It opens with Mark Douglas, a photographer for the Edinburgh Evening Standard, standing on Portobello Beach in a gale, trying to capture the perfect picture of a pod of whales swimming dangerously close to the shore.

Rough grey swells were chopping up the firth, where a coastguard speedboat was zipping and turning, trying to guide the whales towards open water. Black fins darted and dipped, too many to count properly, but at least forty.

Mark is interrupted by a call from his son's primary school. His wife Lauren hasn't arrived to collect Nathan - could he come to get him?

This isn't the first time Lauren has gone AWOL - the last time was during a bout of postnatal depression - and Mark is instantly concerned that her disappearance is related to the fact that she is expecting another baby. As the minutes turn into hours, it becomes obvious to Mark that she is in real danger. The police, as always, cannot act until a longer period of time has passed.

Johnstone is good on the vacuum left by a missing person. What should Mark tell his son? Who will do the school run? Who will look after Nathan when Mark is speaking with the police? It is these minutiae which make GONE AGAIN a realistic and satisfying read.

Mark is under incredible stress from the moment Lauren disappears. His anxiety expresses itself in very 2013 ways - checking Lauren's Facebook and Twitter accounts once an hour rather than going to friends and family. Mark and Lauren have few connections outside of work and are remote from their friends. Mark's only adult ally is his mother-in-law Ruth, but their relationship is far from uncomplicated.

As with all good suspense novels, we are never quite sure where we stand. Mark seems like a nice guy, but he has some ugly sides to his character which are drawn out by the stress of Lauren's disappearance. As he pursues his own suspicions it's not clear how much he is driven by paranoia and jealousy. The plot is cleverly set up, and appeared to me to be building inevitably towards one of two conclusions before taking a surprising left turn.

Dads in particular will find that Mark's relationship with his son Nathan is touchingly drawn, their closeness mainly expressed through Star Wars cartoons and the Nintendo DS. Mark is constantly questioning how much to tell Nathan or whether it is kinder to leave him in ignorance.

Mark said she was away working for a few days [...] Nathan wanted to know why she hadn't called though. Maybe her phone needed charging up, another familiar scenario, she was always forgetting. With each little lie, he felt the universe closing in on him, the wind outside trying to make him pay for what he said by pushing the windows in.

Read another review of GONE AGAIN.

Rich Westwood, November 2013

Review: An Act of Kindness by Barbara Nadel

An Act of Kindness by Barbara Nadel, July 2013, 464 pages, Quercus, ISBN: 0857387774

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

I'm a fan of Barbara Nadel's other series - the cosmopolitan Istanbul-set investigations of chain-smoking Inspector Ikmen and his friends and family, and the more offbeat books featuring the shell-shocked undertaker Francis Hancock. They're very different series, but if they have anything in common it is their depiction of multi-faith, multi-ethnic communities - and the ways in which different people get along (usually). Nadel brings the same approach to AN ACT OF KINDNESS, the second in the Hakim and Arnold mysteries set in contemporary London.

Lee Arnold is an ex-army, ex-police, recovering alcoholic Private Investigator in the London borough of Newham. Mumtaz Hakim is his veiled partner, providing a specialist service for the Muslim community.

The book opens just before the 2012 Olympics, with the apparently happy scenario of a young couple doing up a derelict house on the Strone Road. Nasreen and Abdullah are newly-weds, still living with her family while they get their new home ready. In the course of the renovations, Nasreen finds two curious things in the house. The first is a photo hidden underneath a painted metal object in the doorway. The second is a troubled Afghanistan veteran, John Sawyer, living rough in the bushes at the bottom of the garden.

Nasreen has worked with veterans before, so is sympathetic to his plight. She starts to bring John food, but hides his existence from Abdullah, who is a traditional man despite his yuppie credentials as a solicitor.

Soon, John is found murdered in the Jewish cemetery backing onto Nasreen and Abdullah's home. The police investigation is led by Lee's girlfriend DI Vi Collins, but runs into the dead ends traditionally associated with investigating the death of a homeless person. Nasreen, though, is beginning to suspect Abdullah. She asks Mumtaz to check into his background.

A parallel investigation is initiated by a converted Muslim woman who is concerned her sister Wendy is becoming a prostitute. Lee and Mumtaz discover it is worse than this - she is basically being forced into being a sex slave for her gangster-landlords the Rogers.

The two investigations intertwine and culminate in more than one tragedy.

Nadel has a warts-and-all approach to her depiction of East End gangsters and the lives of the women they victimise, so this isn't a light read, but she has an adept approach to building sympathy for her characters. For me, the mystery element was almost secondary to the more realistic and involving stories of Wendy and Nasreen. There is also clearly more to learn about Lee and Hakim, who have a touching relationship.

I must admit I haven't read book one in this series, A PRIVATE AFFAIR, but I didn't feel at all left behind. On the basis of AN ACT OF KINDNESS I'd say this is a series to follow.

Rich Westwood, September 2013

Review: Traitor's Field by Robert Wilton

Traitor's Field by Robert Wilton, August 2013, 480 pages, Corvus, ISBN: 1848878400

Reviewed by Rich Westwood.
(Read more of Rich's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

From the opening scene, in which a man searches bodies on a battlefield and imaginatively recreates what has happened blow by blow, it's obvious this is a very good book.

For years I have been recommending Iain Pears' AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST as my favourite historical mystery. TRAITOR'S FIELD is my new favourite. It's literate, learned without forcing the reader to sit through pages of the author's research, complex, and indefinably authentic.

The book's events take place in Britain in the years between 1648 and 1651. It's a tumultuous period, from the final sputterings of the civil war in England and the execution of King Charles I, through the false dawns of Royalist hopes in Ireland and Scotland, to the ignominious escape into exile of Charles II.

It's the story of two intelligence men working on opposite sides of the conflict: the Royalist Sir Mortimer Shay and the Parliamentarian John Thurloe.

Shay is depicted as a semi-mythic figure criss-crossing the country stirring up his network of Royalist sympathisers but rarely coming out of the shadows. When he does emerge, he is a solid-as-a-rock veteran with 30 years' experience of battle across Europe.

By contrast, Thurloe is green, a lawyer rising through the ranks of Oliver Cromwell's fledgling intelligence service, painfully aware that he is playing catch-up, but not sure who against.

Both men become obsessed with uncovering the truth about the killing of the Leveller ringleader Colonel Thomas Rainsborough during what, on the face of it, was a botched attempt at a kidnapping.

Wilton's prose is dense and he is adept at conveying atmosphere - from a besieged town to a run-down prison to a remote country house. He excels at fight scenes:

Then the nightmare: the earth shuddering and the heads screaming and the drowsy clusters of men dragging themselves awake and somehow up, and staggering and clutching for shoulders and weapons and clarity and the nightmare is on them. The nightmare is Cromwell, vast leather-and-metal men on rampaging horses, exploding dark out of the night, monstrous grey-brown shadows and a madness of noise.

You have to meet TRAITOR'S FIELD halfway. It's not always obvious what's going on or who's doing what to whom, but it is well worth the effort. Shay and Thurloe are worthy predecessors to John le Carré's Smiley and Karla.

Rich Westwood, August 2013

Favourite Discoveries 2012 (5)

Today's instalment of favourite discoveries of 2012 comes from Rich Westwood who goes back to the 1960s for his choice.

Rich Westwood's Favourite Discovery of 2012

My greatest discovery of 2012 was the greatest discovery of 1965 to a lot of people.

I've read a lot of fantastic crime fiction this year, but until November I'd yet to find a new series I could wolf down the way I do Bryant and May or Montalbano. That requires a mix of readability, likeability and personality. I found all three in the Modesty Blaise books by Peter O'Donnell.

I knew there were Modesty Blaise comics and a film, but had no idea there were 13 novels by her creator Peter O'Donnell. So far I've read just three - Modesty Blaise (1965), the fourth title A Taste for Death (1969), and a story collection, Cobra Trap (1996; I'm not sure when the stories were first published). All are being reissued by their original publisher Souvenir Press in their classic covers.

Modesty Blaise was born on the run, and did most of her growing up in prison camps across the Balkans and the Middle East during WWII. Aged 17, she took over a small gang and turned it into The Network, a phenomenally successful criminal organisation based in Tangier (criminal, but principled: The Network stood against drugs and prostitution). She retired at 26 with half a million pounds and a penthouse flat in Hyde Park - until tempted back into a life of action by Sir Gerald Tarrant of British Intelligence.

Where Modesty goes, Willie Garvin follows. Willie speaks four languages fluently (but prefers his native Cockney accent), has a photographic memory, is a master of several martial arts, and is 'machine-accurate' with the two throwing knives he keeps under his shirt. Modesty bought Willie out of a Saigon gaol and he's been a constant and eternally grateful companion ever since.

"That's a mighty tall pedestal you've got her on."

"She's never fell off."

I'm going to be upfront about the plots: they don't make a lot of sense. Modesty and Willie go after a bad guy in a glamorous location. Bad guy catches them. Bad guy says, 'No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.' Modesty and Willie make an ingenious escape involving undressing or a gadget. There's a set-piece single combat with another martial artist. Then there's a slightly romantic coda. I put in the bit about Mr Bond, but you get the idea.

There's a lot of humour too. Here's Weng: "Certainly I am worried, Sir Gerald, but I am also inscrutable. I do not allow my manner or my expression to reveal that I believe you have dropped them in it again". And here is Modesty comforting her mathematician boyfriend Collier before a trip to North Africa:

"I’ll hold your hand and quote statistics during the flight."

"You may do so," Collier agreed, "whenever you have a moment to spare from carrying advice, exhortations and urgent technical questions from me to the pilot."

So these are light and amusing stories, but I've stuck around for the characterisation. Take Modesty and Willie. O'Donnell could easily have turned their relationship into a will-they-won't-they story. Instead he makes them best friends - soulmates even - 'a strange and rich companionship incomprehensible to many'. They're happiest in each other's company, and are long past jeopardising that by pushing things any further.

The wider Blaise circle acts as a family group. Sir Gerald is the father figure, perpetually tormented by guilt for putting Modesty in danger. Weng, 'possibly the richest houseboy in the world', takes care of Modesty's domestic arrangements. A multitude of friends drift in and out, and are cared for. Genuine bonds of affection, loyalty and occasionally poignant humour exist between them all. O’Donnell clearly loved his characters and that really comes across.

So Modesty Blaise is in many ways exactly what you'd expect, but also much, much better.

A Taste for Death has been serialised on Radio 4 this week.

Rich blogs at Past Offences where you can read his posts on Modesty Blaise/Peter O'Donnell, and you can read his reviews for Euro Crime here.

The Euro Crime review (by Susan) of A Taste for Death is here.