‘The Butcher Bird’ by S.D. Sykes

Published by Hodder & Stoughton,
22 October 2015.
ISBN: 978 1 444 78581 4

Oswald de Lacy was never expected to be the Lord of Somershill; as the third son, he had been intended to make his career in a monastic setting. The Black Death killed Oswald's father and two elder brothers and left him as lord of the manor, but there is a secret about Oswald's birth that haunts him and which now only a few people know. Oswald struggles to prove his worthiness to himself and to his mother and ruthless sister, Clemence.

The Black Death has left few people fit to work on the land and, because of this, the remaining workers feel that they should be paid more for the extra work, especially as many of them are struggling to grow enough crops to feed themselves. However, the King has decreed that no worker should be paid more than they were paid before the workforce was decimated. Oswald finds himself in an impossible position, aware that he is losing his workers and that those who do not leave his manor are the weak who will be to frail to work and, in time, starve to death, but also unable to break the King's Law and give his people the money that they need. Then a large and ugly bird is sighted in the skies, killing young lambs, and a new-born baby is found impaled on a thorn bush. Rumours abound about a Butcher Bird that is preying on the weak and defenceless and the villagers turn on one of their number, a man driven insane by the loss of his family to the Black Death. Oswald has already been sickened by an earlier act of superstition-fuelled murder committed by the villagers and he is determined to discover the truth, protect the innocent, including his own new-born nephew, and to prove his worthiness to be Lord of Somershill. His quest takes him from rural Kent to medieval London and places him in mortal  danger before he discovers the truth.

The Butcher Bird is the second novel featuring Oswald de Lacy and follows very directly from the first book, Plague Land. Indeed it reveals so much of the action of Plague Land that readers would be well advised to read the books in the correct order. It paints a dark picture of the cruel realities of medieval life and describes a time when, even for the wealthy, life was harsh. An interesting book, recommended for those who enjoy stronger and darker historical novels.

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Reviewer: Carol Westron

S D Sykes  has lived in Somerset, London, Manchester and now in the Weald of Kent. She says that she has always been a storyteller, even as a child - writing her first book at the age of six and insisting it be typed up and bound. After a career writing copy for brochures, direct mail, and company newsletters, she started Plague Land after attending the course in novel writing at literary agents Curtis Brown. Her influences are gothic literature, nature, history and my large and mildly eccentric family.

http://www.sdsykes.co.uk

Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative Writing teacher.  She is the moderator for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  The Terminal Velocity of Cats is the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, was published July 2013. Her second book About the Children was published in May 2014.

www.carolwestron.com

‘Even the Dead’ by Benjamin Black

Published by Penguin,
28 January 2016.
ISBN: 978-0-241-19735-6 (PB)

If I wanted to find one word to sum up the underlying atmosphere of the latest in Benjamin Black’s series featuring a Dublin pathologist, that word would be frustration.

All the main characters, even the arch-villain who doesn’t appear in person until the final chapters,  have reason to be frustrated about something. Quirke, the pathologist, is bewildered by his own brain, damaged by alcohol and a beating in a previous volume in the series, and prone to letting him down at awkward moments. Hackett, his detective friend, knows all too well that his best efforts at cleaning up the city can be thwarted by powers beyond his control. Other characters are baulked by a similar sense of helplessness in the face of cruel fate.

Quirke and Hackett set out to investigate an apparent suicide which is more likely murder: a young man whose car has crashed, leaving him dead and with a suspicious injury to his skull. His pregnant girlfriend approaches Quirke’s daughter, desperate for help, then disappears without trace.

My own frustration played a part too: having missed the previous six books in the series, there was clearly a lot of history to which I wasn’t party. But Benjamin Black, AKA the acclaimed literary novelist John Banville, drops plenty of hints: enough to make the devoted crime reader go back and read the earlier episodes.

The quality of the writing, needless to say, is flawless, and almost poetic at times, sprinkled with delicious phrases like lozenge of silvery light and a haircut which resembles a ragged and tipsy pageboy. But it’s never overdone; the prose flows and the story unfolds at a leisurely pace, but is never held up by the demands of fine style.

Eventually the mystery is solved and justice is done – but the book’s main strengths are the interplay between the characters, and that underlying atmosphere. Black evokes a multi-layered 1950s Dublin with a sure hand; think Golden Age with a darker edge and a smidgen (though no more) of sex and violence.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Benjamin Black is the crime-writing pen name of acclaimed author John Banville, who was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He was educated at Christian Brothers Schools and St. Peter's College, Wexford. He worked in journalism from 1969, as a sub-editor on The Irish Press and from 1986 at The Irish Times. He was Literary Editor at The Irish Times from 1988 to 1999.  He is the author of fifteen novels, including The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. In 2013 he was awarded the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Achievement in Irish Literature.
Black has written seven novels starring Quirke, the surly but brilliant pathologist. In 2014 the Quirke novels were adapted into a major BBC TV series starring Gabriel Byrne.

http://www.benjaminblackbooks.com

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

'Scared to Tell' by Barbara Fagan Speake

Published by Country Books,
19 November 2015.
ISBN 978-1-910489-0

This is the fifth adventure for Annie Macpherson as she returns from Scotland to Connecticut for a longer assignment with the Westport police.  The previous books documented her experiences on an exchange from Stockport, U.K. to Westport, Connecticut through various cases.  She is quickly absorbed back into the life of the unit after her visit back to her family but is, equally quickly, asked to undertake an undercover assignment.  She is sent to work in a care respite home after one of the residents there has accidentally locked herself out of her room and died of Hypothermia.  With personal experience of dealing with a family member with an intellectual disability Annie is the ideal candidate to look into the treatment of individuals having respite care in that home.

At the same time a journalism student, Ellie Harrington , starts to volunteer in another care home as she pursues a degree assignment which will look at the work such homes do.  Both women become concerned about the treatment of some of the young female inhabitants and attempt to investigate this. 

This is a slow boiling situation and making connections proves difficult.   The stories of both protagonists eventually cross as the seriousness of the plight of many women from the homes becomes obvious. 

Barbara Speake provides authenticity on many levels as an American who has lived in England for many years and as a woman with a career in clinical psychology.  The characters in her books ring true as we are privy to their thoughts and actions. This tale reaches an exciting conclusion as Annie and Ellie follow threads to the ultimate conspiracy.

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Reviewer: Jennifer S. Palmer

Barbara has written 4 police procedurals about Annie and a debut novel, Secrets Only Sleep, with some overlapping characters.

Barbara Fagan Speake was born and brought up in Connecticut. She has written 3 crime novels so far.  The first, Secrets Only Sleep, is a standalone mystery.  The second is this book and the third, Programmed to Kill, develops Annie’s adventures in the USA further

www.barbarafaganspeake.com 

Jennifer Palmer Throughout my reading life crime fiction has been a constant interest; I really enjoyed my 15 years as an expatriate in the Far East, the Netherlands & the USA but occasionally the solace of closing my door to the outside world and sitting reading was highly therapeutic. I now lecture to adults on historical topics including Famous Historical Mysteries.

‘Savage Magic’ by Lloyd Shepherd

Published by Simon & Schuster,
2 July 2015.
ISBN: 978-1-47113-608-5 (PB)

Research is an essential element of all historical fiction; making sure the historical details are right ensures credibility and a tightly woven background. Making it feel right is the really difficult part: what sorts the amateurs from the truly talented writers.

On this evidence, Lloyd Shepherd falls firmly in the truly talented category. He weaves a complex plot with a supernatural edge, and sets it against several different backgrounds, exploring various less than savoury aspects of early 19^th century life – but most of all he creates an atmosphere in keeping with the times, which not only draws the reader deep into the murky world of dissolute behaviour, abuse and prostitution he portrays, but also reflects the sense of  almost stifling frustration which surrounds the protagonists as they battle with forces they do not quite understand.

The historical detail is drawn in detail, with a great deal of colourful description; an afterword explains how much of it is genuine and how much the author’s invention, but the two are inextricable in the complex narrative. The prevailing attitude of the time towards witchcraft has a large part to play, as does the experimental approach towards treatment of mental health problems, and it all carries a sense of reality.

Several apparently unconnected storylines run parallel for most of the book, presented from four viewpoints and in as many different styles. One follows two young women confined in a mental institution, one severely troubled, the other haunted by delusions which she knows aren’t real. Another explores the causes of a number of disturbing incidents at the country home of a dissolute peer and his mistress. In a third, a series of bizarre locked-room murders baffles a senior magistrate tasked with investigating them. In a world long before mobile phones, or indeed any swift method of communication, the links between them take a long time to appear.

The result is a dense piece of storytelling which echoes some of the novelists who came later in the same century: Dickens, Wilkie Collins, with a nod towards Thomas Love Peacock, Maria Edgeworth and Bram Stoker. It isn’t an easy or comfortable read, but Shepherd’s deft hand with character and plot ensures that it quickly becomes a compelling one. I found a few chapters at a time were enough, but I was soon drawn back for another helping, partly because I found I cared about the fate of the viewpoint characters, and also simply because I wanted to know how it all tied together.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Lloyd Shepherd worked as a trade journalist and a digital product manager for the likes of the Guardian, the BBC, Yahoo, Channel 4 and Financial Times Newsletters.

Lloyd lives in South London. His first book, The English Monster, came out in 2012. His second, The Poisoned Island, followed in 2013. They're both set in London in the early 19th century, they both feature a proto-detective named Charles Horton and his magistrate John Harriott, and they both combine historical fiction with murder-mystery and a good healthy dash of the supernatural. They've been called 'Regency X-Files'.

www.lloydshepherd.com

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.