‘Blood Guilt’ by Ben Cheetham

Published by Head of Zeus,
26 December 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-7818-5248-4   

A moment of anger gave DI Harlan Miller four years in prison and ruined his career.  Now released, he wants to make it up to the widow and children of the man he killed – and when one of those children is abducted, he has his chance to atone, if he can force himself to be ruthless enough ...

This book gives the back-story quickly, then takes us straight into Miller’s shattered world.  From there, the plot moves swiftly, with the search for the missing boy, and tension added by the 4-day count-down till he must be feared dead.  Miller’s remorse and self-loathing for what he’s done is vividly depicted and make his later actions plausible.  I found this book quite violent, because generally the ‘good guy’ is on the side of law, so Miller’s behaviour in some of the book’s scenes is more shocking than I expected, and I couldn’t always agree that the end justified the means.  Miller’s relationship with his former cop partner and ex-wife add depth to his character, but his main emotional focus in this book is Sarah, the missing child’s mother, and her changing reactions to him help drive the story. The Sheffield setting gives the opportunity for a variety of interesting characters and locations. 

A gritty page-turner, with plenty of action and an interesting hero.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Ben Cheetham  lives in Sheffield, UK.  His writing spans the genres, from horror and sci-fi to literary fiction, but he has a passion for dark, gritty crime fiction. His short stories have been widely published in magazines in the UK, US and Australia.
If you want to learn more about him, or get in touch, you can look him up at:

http://bencheetham.com

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘The Quest’ by Nelson Demille

Published by Sphere,
19 September 2013.
ISBN: 978-0751553246

A priest has been held captive for forty years in Ethiopia.  An attack by opposing forces releases him, and he runs into the jungle where he meets journalists Frank Purcell and Henry Mercado, and their photographer, the mysterious Vivian Smith.  Dying, the priest tells them of the reason for his imprisonment: he had found the location of the ‘black monastery’ and seen its greatest treasure, the Holy Grail.  The trio set off on their own quest, in spite of the final battles between Prince Joshua and the sadistic General Getachu, who would also like to find the cup.

This book is a new version of one published almost forty years ago, and presumably brought out again in the slipstream of The Da Vinci Code.  The author had family connections with the Italian army in Ethiopia, and I found the background of the civil war interesting, and well described.  The characterisation is slight, and I found the behaviour of the girl, Vivian, improbable.  The prose is workmanlike.  However, the author’s interest is in telling a fast-moving, action-filled story, and he succeeded in this.  The action did move quickly, with good cliff-hangers, and a lot of jetting from place to place.  The battle and escape scenes built up a lot of tension.  There were some very gruesome episodes.  If you enjoy this genre and want something light to take on holiday, this one’s a good, fast-moving read.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Nelson Richard DeMille was born in New York City on August 23. He moved as a child with his family to Long Island. In high school, he played football and ran track. DeMille spent three years at Hofstra University, then joined the Army and attended Officer Candidate School. He was a First Lieutenant in the United States Army (1966-69) and saw action as an infantry platoon leader with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He was decorated with the Air Medal, Bronze Star, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
DeMille returned to the States and went back to Hofstra University where he received his degree in Political Science and History. He has three children, Lauren, Alexander, and James, and still lives on Long Island.

http://www.nelsondemille.net

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘The Siege’ by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
29 August 2013.
ISBN: 978-0297864332

This story is set in Cadiz, 1811, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars.  The Spanish king and his court have fled to South America.  The French troops have swept across Spain, so that Cadiz is jostling with refugees, but they’re unable to capture the city.  Instead, they’re bombarding it with cannons, and blockading its port, in spite of Wellington approaching from on land, and the British fleet harrying it by sea.  Now, tension in the city is stretched to breaking point by a series of gruesome murders: young girls flayed to death ...

It took me a while to get into this large novel – large both in its canvas and in words, at 560 pages of the larger size of paperback.  The prose is densely textured, so you can’t easily skim-read.  There is a huge cast of characters, apparently unrelated, and you meet most of them in the first chapter – and because they are all Spanish or French, the names aren’t easily familiar to British ears.  I had to keep flicking back to the maps at the front to keep track of where I was, because Cadiz too was a character in the story.  There were times when I needed more information about Spain at that time – about the Regency in Brazil, for example, and I feel some of the detail of walk-on characters could have been pruned.

However once I’d got used to writing style and grasped the main characters, I was totally drawn in.  I felt as though I was living through the siege with the characters – the fear, the hunger, the pretence of normality when a bomb might kill you at any moment.  We moved from high-life at the theatre to low in the taverns, from policeman to spy, from Spanish lines to French.  I loved the scenes at sea, which were very vividly done.  I felt I came to know the characters:  Dona Lolita, heiress and director of the shipping firm Palma y Hijos, the corsair Pepe Lobo with his troubled past, and his vividly-imagined tubercular lieutenant, the French artilleryman Desfosseux who drowned thoughts of his wife and home by concentrating on trajectories, the taxidermist and spy Fumegal.  Most of all we moved in the shifting world of the policeman, Rogelio Tizon, brute, bully, dreamer.

The research for this novel must have taken years – reading every daily paper for those months, for a start.  This is more novel than crime story, with the murders being a strand in a much larger story, and it’s a challenging read – but well worth the effort.  If you want something that will engross you wholly in another world, try this.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Arturo Perez-Reverte was born 25 November 1951 in  Cartagena, He is a Spanish Novelist and journalist.. He worked as a war correspondent for  RTVE and was a war correspondent for twenty one years (1973–1994). His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste " series of novels. He is now a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, a position he has held since 12 June 2003.

 

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘The Glass Factory' by Ken Wishnia

Published by PM Press,
13 September 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-762-6

Filomena Buscarella is an ex-cop latina who left Ecuador for the bright lights of the US.  Now she’s a woman on a mission: to get the big boss who’s poisoning all the land in his area... 

From the first sentence, this book was a delight.  Filomena is smart and sassy, and totally believable, from her tussles with her three-year-old daughter Antonia (an extra in this book is a fun story told by Antonia aged 12) through sorting out unpleasant thugs and hitting the worst news ever, to the joys of a surprising new romance.  She’s the superwoman we women would all like to be, taking everything in her stride – she’s the fastest improviser around, and there’s no situation she can’t get out of somehow, but in a way that you feel ordinarywoman could too, if she just had Filomena’s pazzazz.  The ‘voice’ was wonderful, the action fast, the ethical dimension of the story satisfying.  This is a re-issue of Wishnia’s third novel (of five Filomena books), first written in the 80s, but there was no outdated feel, and none of those heart-sinking ‘Now this is what you missed in the last three books’ paragraphs.  It read like a stand-alone, and once I’d started I couldn’t put it down.

If you like Santa Teresa’s Kinsey Millhone, or Val McDermid’s Kate Brannigan, you’ll love Filomena.  The first in the series is 23 Shades of Black.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Kenneth Wishnia was born in Hanover, NH  to a roving band of traveling academics. He earned a B.A. from Brown University (1982) and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from SUNY Stony Brook (1996). He teaches writing, literature and other deviant forms of thought at Suffolk Community College in Brentwood, Long Island, where he is a professor of English.
Ken’s novels have been nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, and have made Best Mystery of the Year lists at Booklist, Library Journal, and The Washington Post. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Murder in Vegas, Long Island Noir, Queens Noir, Politics Noir, Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere.

kennethwishnia.com/

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.