‘White Bodies’ by Jane Robins

Published by HQ,
28 December 2017.  
ISBN: 978-0-00-821754-9 (HB)

Fiction, like every other leisure activity, is subject to trends and fashions, and at the moment, following a long overdue change in legislation and attitudes, one which is ripe for attention is men who use devious means to control the women they profess to love. White Bodies isn't the first psychological thriller I've read on that theme, and I doubt it will be the last. The challenge for the author, of course, is to offer a new twist on what has rapidly become a familiar message.

It begins with a funeral – not, as you might expect, of the abused wife, but of the controlling husband. That's not a spoiler; it's right there in the first chapter, described, as is the entire story, from the point of view of the wife's sister. And that viewpoint is the first indication that Jane Robins has a sure hand on the tiller: Callie, the narrating sister, comes across as just as sharp and rounded a character as Tilda, the histrionic abused wife, and Felix, the charming abuser. Turning a first-person narrator into a real, scratch-me-and-I-bleed person is hard to pull off, and she does it.

The same applies to all the characters; even the most minor players have extra layers and dimensions. I felt I would know them if I met them, not just visually but in terms of personality as well. I especially enjoyed Daphne, the owner of the bookshop where Callie works, and Wilf, the estate agent turned gardener who brings some much-needed sanity into her life. I wanted to hug Callie, drag Tilda to safety, grin at Wilf, visit the bookshop, slap selfish Charlotte (read it and see), or simply hang out with some of the others. and as for Felix... Best not to ask.

Locations are equally well depicted; it's easy to visualize Tilda's sophisticated flat in both its incarnations, the rough and ready pub which serves cheese and Marmite sandwiches on the lunch menu, and the wasteland Wilf is turning into a garden. The plot twists and turns along with a nod, duly acknowledged, to the classic thriller Strangers on a Train. Then, just when you think you know exactly where it's going and prepare yourself for the mild disappointment of not being surprised by the ending... I'll say no more, except you won't see it coming; I certainly didn't.

Jane Robins was already an experienced writer of non-fiction before embarking on this, her first novel, and she shows herself to be equally accomplished in her new chosen genre.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Jane Robins began her career as a journalist with The Economist, The Independent, and the BBC. She has made a specialty of writing historical true crime and has a particular interest in the history of forensics. She has published three books of nonfiction in the UK, Rebel Queen, The Magnificent Spilsbury, and The Curious Habits of Doctor Adams. More recently, she has been a Fellow at the Royal Literary Fund.

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.

'Out of Mecklenburg' by James Remmer

Published by Matador,
28 August 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-788035-59-0 (PB)

In World War II the Nazi government had two well-established spying agencies: the Sicherdienst (SD), part of Germany’s mainstay security apparatus presided over by the infamous Heinrich Himmler and the equally infamous Reinhard Heydrich; and the military Abwehr, part of the German Army hierarchy. But as Hitler prepared to invade the Soviet Union his Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop set up a third spying agency, Information Department Three. All three agencies detested each other.

It is to this third agency that the young diplomat Carl von Menen whose aristocratic family is from Mecklenberg (in what subsequently became East Germany) is recruited and is immediately sent to Argentina. Von Menen is on the face of it an ideal choice being a fluent Spanish speaker as well as a highly intelligent and accomplished diplomat. What the authorities do not know about him is that he is strongly anti-Nazi and is connected to an anti-Nazi organisation, the Kreisenau Circle. The reason for sending von Menen is to report back on a new group in Argentina’s volatile political situation, the United Officers Group (the GOU), a pro-Nazi faction of military officers whose leader is the ambitious Juan Peron. On the voyage out von Menen encounters and falls in love with a beautiful young doctor, Maria Gomez, and she with him. Maria is deeply anti-Fascist as is most of her family with the exception of her uncle Felipe Vidal who is strongly pro-Fascist and supports the GOU, seeing it as a way to advancing his own ambitions and supplanting Peron. Von Menen’s task is to find out what he can about the GOU and feed the information back to Information Department Three. His ambiguous role in Argentina leads him into considerable danger, and throughout the story his fears for his family and friends haunt him while at the same time he is determined that his spying will neither compromise them nor give undue assistance to the regime he  detests.

This is a very long book which covers virtually the whole period of the war from 1941 to the fall of Berlin. The author’s commitment to deep and wide research is evident throughout so that we follow not only von Menen’s story but the wider narrative of the war itself. And the toll taken by the war on the people of Germany, led almost to total destruction by Hitler, with all its pain and distress is brought home to the reader again and again. Part of the narrative is told from the point of view of von Menen’s father, General von Menen, who has been tasked by the Gestapo with dealing with a vast amount of gold bullion, to abstract the bullion and divert it to some better, worthier purpose when von Menen  also becomes involved: his plan is to get the bullion to Argentina where popular sentiment is very much on the side of the Allies and Peron himself, for all his Fascist inclinations, does not want to give the U.S. an excuse to intervene in Argentina. 

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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.

‘Legacy’ by Jim Napier

Published by Friesen Press,
24 April 2017.
ISBN: 978-1-46029975-3 (HB)
978-1-46029976-0 (PB)

Sally Beck was born into a working-class family in Yorkshire.  She was fortunate in that she was able to attend an elite girl’s school paid for by her grandmother, who died when Sally was fifteen.

In London in 2015 a young woman is fatally involved in a traffic accident.  Initially the incident is ascribed to either an accident, or possibly suicide.  However, the absence of any identification results in the matter being deemed ‘a suspicious death’ and Detective Inspector Colin McDermott is assigned to establish her identity and trace her family, and/or next of kin.  He sets his team Albert George Ridley one of the last surviving post war bobbies on the beat from the 1950’s, and new DC Wilhenina Quinn to discover the victim’s identity. A most unlikely coupling.

Their investigations lead them to St Gregory’s college, and not one identity but two! Willy Quinn proves to be no stranger to lateral thinking and puts forward several interesting scenarios.  As the investigation becomes centred on St Gregory’s which incidentally is Colin McDermott’s alma mater. Further complications arise when he learns that his old Tutor and mentor is still teaching at St Gregory’s, and his case has turned into the search for a murderer, who strikes again.

DI Colin McDermott like many officers of his rank is delicately treading the minefield of inter-office politics, and also his complicated personal life.  

This is a fascinating mystery enhanced by the in-depth characterisation of the inmates of St Gregory’s. What a motley crew!  The college abounds with politics and intrigues.    And of course, at the heart of the story is the fate of Sally Beck, but by whose hand and why?

An absolutely top-class whodunit.  I so love them.  And despite my 60 years of reading whodunit’s I didn’t spot the murderer.  I see that this is the first in a series and I look forward to the next. Highly recommended.

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Reviewer: Lizzie Sirett

Jim Napier turned to writing full time, after a successful academic career that included teaching crime fiction and creative writing.. Since then he has published nearly five hundred reviews, interviews, and articles about crime writers, both in print and on multiple Internet sites, and has participated in writing workshops in Britain and Canada. He has chaired or participated in panels on crime fiction at Montreal's Bleu Metropolis literary festival and at the Canadian crime writing festival, Bloody Words. He has twice served on juries for the Arthur Ellis Awards for Canadian crime writing, and in 2010 he chaired the Arthur Ellis Awards. Along with such notable crime writers as Louise Penny, Peter James, Sophie Hannah, Simon Brett, Marcia Talley and Rhys Bowen he contributed to an anthology on the craft of crime writing titled Now Write! Mysteries, published by Tarcher/Penguin. In 2012 he was commissioned to write biographies for several Canadian crime writers for the Canadian Encyclopedia, and also joined Louise Penny in co-chairing a fiction writing workshop at the Knowlton LitFest. Legacy is his first crime novel in the Colin McDermott Mysteries; the second, Ridley's War, is nearing completion.

http://JimNapierMysteries.com