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Thursday, 27 June 2019
LONGLIST ANNOUNCED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE 2019
Wednesday, 26 June 2019
‘Force of Nature’ by David Collenette
Published
by The Book Guild Publishing,
28 February 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-91257589-3
28 February 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-91257589-3
Matthew Hawk has the ability to look into a person’s
eyes and see their soul and then draw them as they really are.
A friend of his Roche needs his
help and arranges for him to fly to Israel, where he meets him along with an
Israeli, Haim Ezer. Haim works for Life Sciences Research Institute, and he
describes how by using a person’s own DNA they hope to eradicate all illnesses
and in theory people could live for ever.
They are taken to the ancient city
of Jerusalem where a body has been found. Matthew is then introduced to Marc a
priest and friend of Roche. They are puzzled by a large round picture drawn on
the wall by the body. In the centre is depicted the Dome of the Rock. They
explain the same symbol has been turning up in random places all over the
world, always near a dead body. It is hoped Matthew can use his special powers
to help solve the murders and see more in the symbols than at first meets the
eye.
Unknown to them, psychopath and
assassin Eva Colombo, known as The Machine, has been hired to kill Matthew
before he can identify the murderer and painter of the symbols. After a couple
of very close shaves, Roche realises someone is after Matthew and arranges for
him to go to an army training camp to learn how to defend himself. It's in the
middle of the desert in Tunisia and he finds it hell! At least after a few
weeks he emerges able to shoot and look after himself even if most of the
experience was agony.
A while after completing his
training, Matthew with Roche fly to Gibraltar where there has been another
murder together with the usual symbol. The dead man is a professor at the Life
and Earth Sciences Institute, can the murderer be a religious fanatic intent on
preventing all investigations into the DNA theory?
Hot on Matthew's heels wherever he
goes, is The Machine. Will he be able to identify the killer before he becomes
another of her victims? Also, who is hiring her, is it the murderer or someone
else involved and if so why?
I thoroughly enjoyed this tale; the
action never lets up and although there are several murders there are some very
amusing moments. The scrapes Matthew gets into and how he gets out of them by
the skin of his teeth had me chuckling out loud, especially when he is training
in the desert.
A thoroughly good read which I
highly recommend.
-------
Reviewer:
Tricia Chappell
David Collenette lives in South Wales
with his wife, Louellan, their cat, Chester, and a bizarre collection of
personalities squeezed into their psychotic black dog, Martin. They also have
four grown children. Writing was always important to David, even from an
early age and, although "Could do better" was plastered on all of his
school reports, stories came thick and fast. "Writing is therapeutic. To be authentic
with your characters you have to write what you know, so I try to include a
piece of me in each of them. It's a great way to write but often frustrating,
as the characters' interactions often force the story in ways I'd not initially
intended. It makes the characters real and sustainable and provides a richness
to them that wouldn't be there otherwise. Writing is addictive; I love
it."
Tricia Chappell.
I have a great love of books and reading, especially crime and thrillers. I
play the occasional game of golf (when I am not reading). My great love is
cruising especially to far flung places, when there are long days at sea for
plenty more reading! I am really enjoying reviewing books and have found lots
of great new authors.
Monday, 24 June 2019
The Cinderella Plan by Abi Silver
Published by Lightning Books,
11 July 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-7856127-6 (PB)
11 July 2019.
ISBN: 978-1-7856127-6 (PB)
Things are going pretty well for James Salisbury, CEO
of the car company SEDA which manufactures autonomous (self-driving) cars. Although
special legislation is required the Government, anxious to promote advances in
technology particularly when it appears that the risk of accidents is likely to
be substantially reduced thus leading to a considerable reduction in the cost
of driving insurance – both of which factors will be highly popular with the
voting public, is encouraging despite the fears of Government lawyers as to
possible legal liability. If the legislation goes through not only will SEDA
(and James) make a lot of money but he will be seen as a public benefactor par excellence. And that pleases him no
end. The wonderful thing about a self-driving car is that although the law
requires the driver to sit in the driver’s seat, he doesn’t have to actually
drive at all. He can text on his mobile, write on his IPad: on top of the car
there is a computer which uses LIDAR (a combination of laser and radar
technology) which can not only see hazards that could escape the attention of
the most careful and thoughtful driver but take the appropriate non-hazardous
action. Another app, VERA (Voice-activated, Enhanced, Road-experience
Assistant) will talk to him about what is going on and chat about all sorts of
things: in fact, a more extreme version of ALEXA now found in so many homes.
And yet another app, EDR (Event Data Recorder) records everything that has
happened.
So, in that case, how
is it that James, being driven home by his SEDA and texting his wife, knocks
down and kills two small children who ran out into the road and severely injures
their mother? Just the sort of thing that SEDA should prevent? Had James in
fact switched from SEDA to manual but, having himself been concussed and
suffering from memory loss, been unaware of what he had done? If there was some
fault in the autonomous system that would be a huge blow to SEDA’s prospects,
not to mention James’s vision of himself as a major contributor to road safety.
But if he had after all switched to manual, then he is to blame and could be
facing a prison sentence of 15 years.
This is where
solicitor Constance Lamb and barrister Judith Burton come in. They are called
upon to mount a defence of James. In order to do that they have to establish
fault – was it James’s or the car’s? - and find out exactly what happened.
There is quite a bit of obfuscation, particularly by the Government with
evidence being withheld. And James himself is horrified at what has happened
and the parents of the two dead children are devastated and would like nothing
better than to see James in jail for a very long time. The trial begins and
then some unexpected evidence is introduced. What effect will that evidence
have on the verdict? And will the verdict be the end of the matter?
In this third in the
author’s Burton and Lamb legal series the author presents a highly complex
story which the author expertly unravels while at the same time presenting
readers with her concern at recent developments in information technology (lie
detecting in The Pinocchio Brief,
robots performing operations in The
Aladdin Trial, and in this book self-driven cars): such developments, she
is telling us, may bring their own problems with them. And at the same time, in
The Cinderella Plan, we must not
forget that two very young children with their lives before them, died
needlessly. Recommended.
------
Reviewer: Radmila
May
Radmila May was
born in the U.S. but has lived in the U.K. since she was seven apart from seven
years in The Hague. She read law at university but did not go into practice.
Instead she worked for many years for a firm of law publishers and still does occasional
work for them including taking part in a substantial revision and updating of
her late husband’s legal practitioners’ work on Criminal Evidence published
late 2015. She has also contributed short stories with a distinctly criminal
flavour to two of the Oxford Stories anthologies published by Oxpens Press – a
third story is to be published shortly in another Oxford Stories anthology –
and is now concentrating on her own writing.
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