‘The Killing Grounds’ by Jack Ford

Published by HQ,
29 June 2017.
ISBN: 978-0-00-820307-8 (PB)

This book is the first in an exciting new series featuring ex-US Navy –turned high-risk investigator Thomas J. Cooper. He’s an emotional man tormented by his past and deadly encounter with Somali pirates in the Horn of Africa. That coupled with a tragic accident at sea that resulted in the disappearance of his sweetheart means he must battle endlessly with PTSD and an addiction to prescription drugs.

Set between the US and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Cooper’s new assignment is to recover an aeroplane from the DRC and return it to the US. With a close-knit team of colleagues that also comprises his estranged wife, Maddie, he ventures into that vast, edgy and complex country. The reader is given rare insights into the territory immortalised by Joseph Conrad ‘s Heart of Darkness and of superstition, ancient tribal rituals and voodoo.

The book has an enormous cast of characters and the research that has gone into the writing is truly impressive although at times somewhat too detailed.   However, I urge the reader to persevere with the journey because he/she will be rewarded by a rip-roaring tale.

I would categories this as a thriller where the shenanigans of politics and business collide, where characters are portrayed as either sinister and menacing or decent but flawed.  Every page is an extraordinary action-packed, rollercoaster ride that feels as though it is never going to come to a full stop. But when it does, you’ll be clamouring for more…

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Reviewer: Serena Fairfax

Jack Ford is a novelist and is the author of six gritty British crime novels published under a pseudonym. Having studied global political Islam and American politics Jack went on to take a Master of Science degree in counter-terrorism, and will further those studies next year by tackling a PHD focusing on radicalisation and extremism. Jack lives in a quiet part of England and has three children along with lots of dogs and horses.

Serena Fairfax spent her childhood in India, qualified as a lawyer in England and practised in London for many years. She began writing by contributing feature articles to legal periodicals   then turned her hand to fiction. Having published nine novels all, bar one, hardwired with a romantic theme, she has also written short stories and accounts of her explorations off the beaten track that feature on her blog. A tenth, distinctly unromantic, novel is a work in progress. Thrillers, crime and mystery narratives, collecting old masks and singing are a few of her favourite things.

www.serenafairfax.com

‘Friend Request’ by Laura Marshall

Published by Sphere,
11 January 2018.
ISBN: 978-0-7515-6835-6 (PB)

This is the author’s debut novel and it’s a very promising psychological thriller.  Divorced mother Louise juggles her life between running an interior design business from her London home and caring for her four-year-old son, Henry. Ex hubbie Sam, a former classmate for whom she still carries a torch, has remarried but shares custody of Henry.   

Louise uses Facebook intermittently and one day a friend request reaches her from a former school friend, Maria Weston. What’s so surprising about that you may well ask, but Maria is no more, having departed this earthly world, presumed having taken her own life, 25 years earlier.

Louise’s world is turned upside down. She has always harboured guilt about how she joined a clique in school, located in a sleepy Norfolk town, and became complicit in bullying and isolating Maria.

A school reunion of the pupils in that fateful year of 1989 beckons. Louise, who has hitherto not bothered to keep in touch with past schoolmates, feverishly contacts those deemed likely to be attending in order to get to the bottom of the mystery.

The narrative action bounces between 1989 and 2016. Messages from Maria continue, getting progressively menacing and creepy and keeping Louise in a frantic state of emotional turmoil.  Tension mounts, affecting her professional and personal life.

The author doesn’t flinch from exploring several hot topics like the ups and downs of online dating, playground and social media bullying, and single working parenthood.

I confess that the ending didn’t come as a surprise to me.  That said, I highly recommend it as a riveting read as the many characters are rounded and believable, it has an ingenious plot, the dialogue is relevant and sharp and the standard and quality of writing is compelling, all of which auger well for the author’s career in this difficult to master genre.

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Reviewer: Serena Fairfax

Laura Marshall grew up in Wiltshire and studied English at the University of Sussex. After almost twenty years working in conference production, in 2015 Laura decided it was time to fulfil a lifetime's ambition to write a novel, and enrolled on the Curtis Brown Creative three-month novel writing course. Her first novel, Friend Request was shortlisted for both the Bath Novel Award 2016 and the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize 2016 and was published by Little, Brown in the UK in July 2017, selling over 100,000 copies to date and becoming a kindle number one bestseller. Friend Request has sold in a further seven territories around the world including the USA, Germany, France, Poland and the Netherlands. Laura is working on her second novel, which is expected to be released later in 2018. Laura lives in Kent with her husband and two children.

http://www.lauramarshall.co.uk

Serena Fairfax spent her childhood in India, qualified as a lawyer in England and practised in London for many years. She began writing by contributing feature articles to legal periodicals   then turned her hand to fiction. Having published nine novels all, bar one, hardwired with a romantic theme, she has also written short stories and accounts of her explorations off the beaten track that feature on her blog. A tenth, distinctly unromantic, novel is a work in progress. Thrillers, crime and mystery narratives, collecting old masks and singing are a few of her favourite things.

www.serenafairfax.com

‘Dark Pines’ by Will Dean

Published by Point Blank,
4 January 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-78607-253-5 (PB)

The author, who is British, has made rural Sweden his home since 2012 and this is his debut novel.  Right from the start the reader is thrust into sub-zero temperatures, a dank and thick forest the size of an English county, the rituals of elk hunting, eyeless corpses and a young blonde investigator, Tuva Moodyson.

But she’s no ordinary lass. She’s a reporter, afflicted by deafness and wearing hearing aids, who works on a local newspaper in the small town of Gavrik, where everyone knows everyone. She links the latest killings to similar ones that occurred in the forest twenty years earlier and pokes her nose into where she’s definitely not welcome, like the creepy, isolated inhabitants of Mossen deep in the woods where the bodies are discovered. She treads a delicate path between exposing the truth and staying on the right side of the local community who’s averse to its town being depicted as unsafe and depraved.

Tuva’s hearing aids must remain dry if they are to function properly and she’s hampered by the never-ending rain and damp. Nevertheless, despite her fears and the hostility of the locals, she intrepidly presses on alone, a thorn in the side of the local police force, and, in terrifying circumstances, homes in on the perpetrator.

Some readers may find that at times the pace slows down and take a while to pick up but when it does the author cranks up the pressure and piles on the sinister elements rendering the conclusion satisfyingly unexpected.

This is a stunning chiller of a thriller and, intended as the first in a series, readers will look forward to more of Tuva, and her unique style of sleuthing. 

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Reviewer: Serena Fairfax

Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands, living in nine different villages before the age of eighteen. After studying Law at LSE, and working many varied jobs in London, he settled in rural Sweden with his wife. He built a wooden house in a boggy forest clearing and it’s from this base that he compulsively reads and writes.  Dark Pines is his first novel.

Serena Fairfax spent her childhood in India, qualified as a lawyer in England and practised in London for many years. She began writing by contributing feature articles to legal periodicals   then turned her hand to fiction. Having published nine novels all, bar one, hardwired with a romantic theme, she has also written short stories and accounts of her explorations off the beaten track that feature on her blog. A tenth, distinctly unromantic, novel is a work in progress. Thrillers, crime and mystery narratives, collecting old masks and singing are a few of her favourite things.

www.serenafairfax.com