On a windswept British coastline the tide deposits an unexpected gift…
It was the cry that she first noticed, the plaintive wail that called to her over the crash of winter waves. Wrapped only in a sealskin, the baby girl looks up at Effie and instantly captures her heart. She meant only to temporarily foster the young orphan but when news reaches Effie that her husband has been lost at sea, and months pass without anyone claiming the infant, she embraces her new family – her son Jack and her adopted daughter Morna.
Effie has always been an outcast in her village, the only granddaughter of a woman people whisper is a witch, so she’s used to a solitary existence. But when Midsummer arrives so too does a man claiming to be Morna’s father. There’s no denying Lachlan is the girl’s kin and so Effie is surprised when he asks her to continue looking after his daughter, mysteriously refusing to explain why. She agrees, but when he returns six months hence she pushes him for answers. And Lachlan tells a story she never anticipated … one of selkies, legend, and the power of the sea…
Author Bio – Elisabeth’s writing career began when she finished in third place in Harlequin’s So You Think You Can Write contest in 2013. She was offered a two-book contract and consequently had to admit secret writing was why the house was such a tip. She is the author of numerous historical romances with Harlequin Mills & Boon covering the Medieval period to Victorian England, and a Second World War romantic historical with One More Chapter. She lives in Cheshire because the car broke down there in 1999 and she never left.
Giveaway – Win a signed copy of Daughter of the Sea (UK Only)
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome; enter here. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
r/suggestmeabook: I want to watch how detectives balance competing cases as well as their personal/work lives in the context of a well-crafted mystery.
Movie rating: PG-13
Pages: 392
Publisher: Self
Series: DCI Satterthwaite Mysteries
ARC provided by Rachel’s Random Resources
Contemporary traditional mystery
From the publisher: When a young woman, Summer Raine, is found drowned, apparently accidentally, after an afternoon spent drinking on a boat on Ullswater, DCI Jude Satterthwaite is deeply concerned — more so when his boss refuses to let him investigate the matter any further to avoid compromising a fraud case.
This is the sixth of Jo Allen’s DCI Satterthwaite Mysteries, and the second I’ve read, and she does not disappoint—this one is just as good as the last one I reviewed, Death at Rainbow Cottage. Allen has a talent for keeping you guessing, and, just like last time, I was constantly sure I had the riddle solved and then realized, nope, I hadn’t. In this case, there was one key fact that wasn’t disclosed that would have made the difference, but I’m okay with that, as that disclosure also would have made the whole thing rather obvious (or at least it seems that way to me in retrospect).
Shared secrets allowed you to love someone for what they were, just as confession cleared your conscience.
Jo Allen, Death on the Lake
I particularly enjoyed that Allen talked about the use of resources in this book, something I don’t know I’ve ever seen before. My retired cop husband’s constant bitch about TV shows involving police investigation (and one of many, many reasons we don’t watch them) is that they act like the full resources of the police are available for every case, and that every department has all of the latest scientific testing available. So having the prickly Detective Superintendent Faye Scanlon set some very difficult parameters for DCI Jude Satterthwaite’s investigation of Summer Raine’s death was quite rewarding.
Thirty-six years of insatiable curiosity had matured into a store of rock-solid local knowledge.
Jo Allen, Death on the Lake
I also really like the way Allen is investigating the romantic relationships of the recurring characters. Ashleigh and Jude are so much more honest about their relationship than most people are, and both understand how much a career in law enforcement complicates everything, particularly in a situation like theirs, where overtime is expected and required.
But he knew and she knew he knew, and the resulting tension was always there between them.
Jo Allen, Death on the Lake
Another lovely feature was grappling with the relative importance of various crimes. Police officers have a great deal of discretion, so when is it appropriate to bust someone for marijuana and when should you let it go? Which is worse, murder or money-laundering/fraud? Satterthwaite comes down firmly on the side that murder is worse, but money-laundering/fraud can, depending on the particular scam, ruin far more lives than a single murder, so which really is more important to stop? (If you’ve read anything on recidivism, you’ll know that most studies show that murderers tend to have a lower recidivism rate; my old criminal law prof joked it was because “you only have one mother-in-law.”)
There must have been a reason why everyone disliked him, but for all that he was her family.
Jo Allen, Death on the Lake
And then there are the characters who are around (presumably) for just this installment. The family at the center of the murder, fraud, and money-laundering questions, the Neilsons, are fascinating: a young wife trying to help raise privileged-as-hell twins of 18 with an oft-absent wealthy husband who came from the area and made his fortune after leaving. There are so many levels to explore in this family, and Allen does a good job of covering the waterfront.
It was rare she coveted anything, but the Neilsons’ summer mansion brought out the worst in her.
Jo Allen, Death on the Lake
And then there’s the setting. More so than the last book, the Lake District’s geography comes into play in this novel. I took some time to look at some of the landmarks Allen discusses in the book, and the difficulties the lay of the land create for observation and security become quite obvious.
Because fear, like loyalty and friendship, made you do terrible, terrible things.
Jo Allen, Death on the Lake
All-in-all, Death on the Lake is a triumphant installment of this engaging murder mystery series, marked both for the clever puzzle and the layers of depth in its treatment of the crimes and characters.
Giveaway to win a signed and dedicated copy of A Hostage of Rome (Book 3).
*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
From the publisher
218 BC. Sphax is seventeen and haunted by the brutal murder of his parents at the hands of Rome. After ten years of miserable slavery he will make his last bid for freedom and go in search of Hannibal’s army and his birthright. He will have his revenge on the stinking cesspit that is Rome!
Destiny will see him taken under the wing of Maharbal, Hannibal’s brilliant general, and groomed to lead the finest horsemen in the world – the feared Numidian cavalry that would become the scourge of Rome.
From the crossing of the great Rhodanus River, Sphax’s epic journey takes him through the lands of the Gaul to the highest pass in the Alps. This is the story of the most famous march in history. A march against impossible odds, against savage mountain Gauls, a brutal winter and Sphax’s own demons.
This is more than a struggle for empire. This is the last great war to save the beauty of the old world, the civilized world of Carthage, Greece and Gaul. The world of art and philosophy – before it is ground into dust by the upstart barbarity of Rome.
When Cato the Censor demanded that ‘Carthage must be destroyed,’ Rome did just that. In 146 BC, after a three year siege, Carthage was raised to the ground, its surviving citizens sold into slavery and the fields where this once magnificent city had stood, ploughed by oxen. Carthage was erased from history.
That’s why I’m a novelist on a mission! I want to set the historical record straight. Our entire history of Hannibal’s wars with Rome is nothing short of propaganda, written by Greeks and Romans for their Roman clients. It intrigues me that Hannibal took two Greek scholars and historians with him on campaign, yet their histories of Rome’s deadliest war have never seen the light of day.
My hero, Sphax the Numidian, tells a different story!
When I’m not waging war with my pen, I like to indulge my passion for travel and hill walking, and like my hero, I too love horses. I live in Pembrokeshire, West Wales.
A Big 4+ review of The Spanish Girl by Jules Hayes
Rachel’s Random Resources Book Tours
r/suggestmeabook: I want to follow an orphaned daughter’s search for her mother who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War.
Movie rating: PG-13
Pages: Less than 300 pages (probably)
Publisher: Orion Dash
ARC provided by Rachel’s Random Resources
Spanish Civil War Novel
From the publisher: Feisty journalist Isabella has never known the truth about her family. Escaping from a dangerous assignment in the turbulent Basque country, she finds her world turned upside down, firstly by her irresistible attraction to the mysterious Rafael, and then by a new clue to her own past. As she begins to unravel the tangled story of her identity, Isabella uncovers a story of passion, betrayal and loss that reaches back to the dark days of Spain’s civil war—when a passionate Spanish girl risked everything for her country, and for the young British rebel who captured her heart.
The first thing that comes to mind for me when the Spanish Civil War is mentioned is Pan’s Labyrinth. [1] Yes, it’s a fable, and, yes, it actually takes place after Franco won, but the protagonist’s stepfather so vividly portrayed the brutality under a veneer of sophistication, and the story’s so rife with the undercurrents of the recent conflict, that images from the movie invariably conflate with whatever else I read on the subject. So it’s not surprising that the odious stepfather was cast as the various villains in my mental production of The Spanish Girl by Jules Hayes.
I’m generally a fan of dual or multiple timelines, and this novel has one set in 1976 and one in 1937. I ultimately liked having both periods, but at about a third of the way through, I wasn’t sure why the later one was bothered with. I’m not sure if it would have been aided by cutting between the two sooner or more frequently; I just know that I didn’t particularly care if we got back to the one in 1976 after the 1937 Spanish Civil War scenes started.
Was I like the majority of Spain, insofar as I’d been remiss in not investigating what had really happened, even regarding my own parentage, about my own mother and father?
Jules Hayes, The Spanish Girl
Part of that was because I had a hard time buying the instalove Isabella has for Rafael, perhaps because most of his alleged attractiveness is mediated by Isabella telling us about the attraction rather than making him charming and seductive through his actions. For example, he persists in calling her “querida,” a term of endearment, having only met her a scant time before and despite her request that he stop it, making me find him less than attractive. And in the beginning, that romance and a lot of re-iteration of how much Isabella wanted to know about her mom seemed to be the only justification for the framing of it. And, I suppose, the ability to weigh in on the consequences of the Franco regime, particularly during, but also after the war.
As rapidly as the suspicion had descended, it dissolved, and something shifted within me as this man I did not know spoke of a woman he did not know with such empathy.
Jules Hayes, The Spanish Girl
So if you start the book and have that feeling, don’t give up on it after you find out the story about the Spanish Civil War; there is, eventually, some payoff for the inclusion of Isabella in the story. I still find the first timeline more compelling, but it didn’t bother me when I found out where it was going. I think, though, I would have preferred to read a more developed version of Sofia’s story than both of them.
Despite the heavy cloud cover the morning light was growing brighter but the quietness, which hung like a physical entity around Miguel’s abode, hit me as hard as the rumble of noise when I opened the balcony doors of my Barcelona flat.
Jules Hayes, The Spanish Girl
Alternatively, I would have liked more info about the “other victims” that are vaguely referenced in the story. The White Terror killed somewhere between 160,000-200,000 and no one knows how many victims of rape, torture, and oppression. Like most countries recovering from fascist regimes, the new government is ready to move on rather than deal with the legacy of those insidious political ideologies, and Hayes does a good job of bringing that reluctance (at best) and whitewashing (more frequently) into the limelight. But the magnitude of the tragedy is harder to discern, although it’s clear that Hayes has done the research and is aware of it.
With Franco dead, the new Spanish government does not want Spain’s civil war in the global eye. They want trade, they want tourists. The don’t want the remains fo a murdered woman and her unborn child in the world media.
The plot, however, is quite good, and although I suspected most of the eventual outcome of events, I was not ever completely sure I was correct until the author revealed those plot points. One of the distractions (I’m not sure that it was meant to be a red herring) was that the “young British rebel” referred to in the publisher’s synopsis is named Jack Hayes, which you probably already realize shares a last name with the author (although I now believe it’s a pseudonym). So I kept wondering if this was a family history that Hayes the author was fictionalizing, and wondering when that was going to become obvious. It seems a petty complaint, but it took me out of the flow of the story, and I wish that the author had chosen a different name for the character.
As well as being patient, George was also kind and generous to his men. Something else a family’d knock out of him.
Jules Hayes, The Spanish Girl
As long as I’m bringing up petty complaints, I really dislike the way the book is captioned on Amazon (US, UK, Canada, and Australia): “The Spanish Girl: A completely gripping and heartbreaking historical novel.” It’s like someone getting ready to tell you a story at work and starting it with “This is soooo funny.” It almost never is. Let me decide if it’s completely gripping and heartbreaking, and don’t tell me that in the title. If I’d come across the book that way, I’d have done a hard pass.
Barcelona caught Jack’s imagination and captured his heart—because the city itself had a heart. Beating and pulsing. It was a feeling he wanted to scoop up and put in a box.
Jules Hayes, The Spanish Girl
This book does deal with some serious trauma, and there are moments that are sad, although I didn’t find them as heartbreaking as whoever wrote the header. I never got completely vested in the characters, and I’m not completely sure why. However, my favorite character was Jack Hayes, and it’s because my view of him was based on his actions and attitudes, not because a narrator told me how great he was, that I rather suspect my lack of connectedness with most of the characters was for the same reason I wasn’t enamored with Rafael.
I objected a little to the characterization of the villainous Severino Herrera; the word “instability”is most frequently used, and sometimes “madness.” These descriptions come up regularly before Herrera actually appeared, and I expected someone with wild mood swings or a tenuous grip on reality. Instead, we have a remorseless sadist who hungered for power. Although this can be a pathological psychiatric state, it’s not really unstable—he seems to be consistently nasty, and the frequent references to Isabella’s godfather as an effective protector would seem to indicate that Herrera is quite capable of reining in his instincts in a rational manner. If I were to characterize anyone as unstable, it would be Joe Hayes, Jack’s duplicitous brother.
He thought he could cry forever. But of course we don’t cry forever, only inside.
Jules Hayes, The Spanish Girl
Despite those criticisms, I did find it a…well, “pleasant” isn’t really the word for a book about a traumatic civil war, although I suppose it could be applied to the love story…well told mystery of a woman’s disappearance in a period that deserves far more attention than it gets.
[1] Never Hemingway. Not a fan, to say the least, but this isn’t a review of any of Papa’s works.
r/suggestmeabook: I want to go to Nazi-occupied Venice and see it through the eyes of a young man grappling with his identity.
Movie rating: PG-13
Pages: 320
Publisher: Severn House
ARC provided by Rachel’s Random Resources
WWII historical fiction
From the publisher: The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men, trapped together in the dusty palace on Venice’s Grand Canal. Awkward fifteen-year-old Nico. His distant, business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather, Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes, he has secrets he’s waited his whole life to share.
David Hewson has created a taut snapshot of a few days in Nazi-occupied Venice through the eyes of a young weaver and those whose stories intersect his own. The frame story is set in Venice of 1999, but the main action is in Venice of 1943, when 18-year-old Paolo finds himself confronted with the world outside his hidden retreat set in the garden of a long-abandoned palazzo. His neighbors thought the isolation was because he was gay, a fact Paolo has mostly stayed unaware of, knowing that his family was also considered outsiders by the insular Venetians.
Imagination was a place he’d usually avoided. Particularly of late. There were corpses there, eyes open, looking at him.
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels
Paolo must confront the basic question raised by the Nazi occupation: Does he stand aside, and hope the storm passes him, or does he act, whether to collude with the Germans to help himself out of the poverty the war has brought or to resist them? It’s a question most of the book’s non-Jewish characters ask themselves at some point. Paolo’s moment comes at the insistence of the parish priest Filippo Garzone, who believes that inaction is not a choice.
There were occasions, it seemed, when the right decision was beyond a simple man like him. To act or do nothing? Both might end in bloodshed, for guilty and innocent alike.
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels
I haven’t been reading many WWII era books of late, but I made an exception for this one because it is set in a part of the war I know less about. The invasion of Allied troops helped split Italy in half between the southern royalist government and the northern Mussolini one, which was, effectively, a puppet of Hitler. Venice was in the northern half. This sobering book gave a lovely introduction to the people and geography of Venice. Hewson’s pride of elegant and measured, giving the story the respect it deserves.
The city on the water was spared most of this since it lived at the edge of the conflict, a precious gilded prison too beautiful for the horrors Italy was seeing elsewhere.
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels
The framing works quite well, as Nico provides a counterpoint to his grandfather’s story. No one in the 1990s wants to talk about the war, preferring to boil it down to its barest essence, so Nico is left on his own to puzzle out how the veracity of his grandfather’s account. Not surprisingly, Nico is unnerved by the idea of his grandfather’s sexual identity being something other than completely heterosexual. The frame also helps build the tension for the main story, as Paolo insists that Nico keep it to himself, that he’s not to share it with his father.
If the fact a couple of men in extremis should get close to one another is …weird…I hate to think what you’ll make of life later on. Unless you lead a dull one.
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels
Hewson manages to avoid creating characters of unrelenting good or evil, allowing us to see that all of them are human, making choices that are good or evil instead. The text highlights how well-meaning people can drift into a totalitarian state, which is part of the enduring fascination with the Third Reich: how do ordinary people end up committing the atrocity of the Holocaust? He also does a good job of presenting the pressures the Germans (which the Venetians call the Crucchi) put on the inhabitants of the country they occupy, and how those pressures warp people.
That was one of the lessons I think he was trying to teach me: evil wasn’t special. There was no need for extraordinary villains with scars and wicked, dark glints in their eyes. It was ordinary, mundane, a part of the city, a lurking virus within us all.
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels
The character who best exemplifies the grays of the story is Luca Alberti, a former police officer turned liaison with the Nazis. Alberti is hard to get a grasp on, as he lies to himself as much as to anyone else. He’s somehow likable despite his alignment with the Crucchi, although the Venetians generally view him with contempt. Perhaps his motives are more than self-serving, but each reader will have to render judgment.
Dust and the remains of insects rose like a golden mist in the lamplight as he unhinged the bronze clasp on the cover and let the contents breathe for the first time in years.
David Hewson, The Garden of Angels
The Garden of Angels is an absorbing tale, both for its imagining of wartime Venice and the themes it raises of how to deal with oppression in the present and with memories of the past.
r/suggestmeabook: I want a well-crafted murder problem nestled into a tight-knit community of well-developed characters.
Movie rating: PG-13
Pages: 392
Publisher: Self
Series: DCI Satterthwaite Mysteries
ARC provided by Rachel’s Random Resources
Contemporary traditional mystery
From the publisher: The apparently motiveless murder of a man outside the home of controversial equalities activist Claud Blackwell and his neurotic wife, Natalie, is shocking enough for a peaceful local community. When it’s followed by another apparently random killing immediately outside Claud’s office, DCI Jude Satterthwaite has his work cut out.
This is the fifth of Jo Allen’s DCI Satterthwaite Mysteries, and as a first-time reader of her work, I can say I’m immensely pleased that this works as a standalone. I generally don’t review books that are several down a series unless I’m going to read the preceding books, but I apparently missed the part of the memo that this was number five, and I’m glad I did, or I’d have passed on this delightful mystery.
Because a murder in an isolated lane was one thing, but there was nothing to put the fear of God into the local population like a violent death on their own doorstep.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
I also generally skip police procedurals, because I’m married to a retired cop and I know enough by osmosis to get annoyed. But since this is set in the UK, not the US, and really fits more into the traditional mode than a mystery that is overly wrapped up in the CSI details, again, I’m glad I didn’t miss this one.
Allen does a marvelous job of the key ingredient that makes mysteries fun to me: she creates a deft puzzle, and I had different suspects pegged throughout the book, changing my mind with new information, but never guessed the actual killer until scant pages before the reveal. All the clues were there, and seem glaring in retrospect, but were laid with such skill that none clicked.
Claud had struck him as a man who never let anything go, who worked long hours and never respected anyone else’s time off and now, it seemed, he had the proof of that.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
As if that wasn’t enough, the book is dense with great characters, none of them overly simple, and she does a good job of avoiding most of the usual tropes. It’s clear there’s more to the story than what is covered within it, but it struck me not as though I’d missed something by not reading the first four (which are now on my TBR), but more like the windup for a larger story arc that had elements yet to be revealed.
Church and folk music were Doddsy’s interests, two things that suddenly made him feel older than he was. The shadow of a mid-life crisis lengthened behind him, stealing ever closer to his shoulder.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
Allen’s prose is straightforward and crisp, with the occasional infusion of dry wit, and the pace is as brisk as that sounds. The insulated world of the police department is well done, as officers do tend to flock together as much as the book implies, and there is a certain disconnect between those on the inside and those family members who just don’t quite get how running an investigation can interfere with your social and family commitments.
Jet lag was a brute at the best of times, bestowing all the privations of a hangover with none of the fun that might have preceded it.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
My quibble would be that I wasn’t sure that DCI Satterthwaite was actually the protagonist, despite the name, although I suppose the same could be said for Hercule Poirot—in the novels, usually someone else is the protagonist, with Poirot managing to confound them. But the shifts of POV took me a little work to figure out who’s story was being told, although in the end, it was effective.
Civil twilight, her father called it—daylight was done, darkness yet to come upon them. Only the glow over the Lake District fells and the light from the car headlights offered her any comfort.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
My other quibble was the representation of various mental health issues: anxiety disorder and OCD in particular. It’s not that the representation was unsympathetic; it just felt incomplete. However, the inclusion of characters with these issues doesn’t mean you have to show the total array of how those mental health issues may manifest; it just that these representations hewed a little closer to some stereotypical representations (which, in all fairness, exist as well as other versions) and may cause some discomfort for those who do have those syndromes.
She wasn’t so simple that she didn’t understand her new boyfriend’s driving passion was a slow-burning determination for revenge on the old.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
This book also is an intriguing look into all the ways people can love and mate. At the core of it, the Rainbow Cottage is what it sounds like—the home of a man devoted to promoting understanding among straight cisgendered people and the rainbow of other sexualities. These themes are brought up explicitly in the sensitivity sessions that are not particularly welcomed by the busy DCI nor the gay officer who feels like he’s being pressured to talk more than he’d like, as well as the murders themselves, which begin with a gay man and a lesbian woman.
Though even the metrosexual parents, the ones who thing they’re right up with it…even those ones are perfectly happy for everyone else to be gay but they can’t help questioning things a little bit when it’s their boy.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
Allen sensibly took the time to employ a sensitivity reader for the topics, because although the protagonists and tone of the book is clearly meant to be LGBTQIA+ friendly, it touches on homophobia, particularly as a motivation for the murders, and some of the statements of certain characters are a bit distasteful. As a cisgender straight woman, I can’t speak for the experience of someone in the community, but it felt like a lot of effort was made to avoid stereotypes or tropes.
It wasn’t always self-doubt that held people back from being themselves, but doubt about the open-heartedness of their neighbors and friends, unspoken judgment behind a mask of tolerance.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
Not only that, there’s the romantic life—and its complications—of Jude and Ashleigh as well as the other members of their circle. The takeaway for me was that although we can be attracted to and love lots of different types of people, the problems we face in relationships seem to boil down to the same short list of problems.
Perhaps a lot of crimes took place behind just such a curtain of perfection, dramas playing out in the heart while the window on the world was one of false happiness.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
I particularly want to give a shoutout for the portrayal of the prickly Detective Superintendent Faye Scanlon. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve worked for this bitch before (although sometimes as a bastard)—and the paranoid, ambitious boss is a great person to love to hate. You just cringe every time she walks into a room.
Faye championed equality and fairness in the workplace but only for others. In personal matters ruthlessness and her own interests held sway.
Jo Allen, Death at Rainbow Cottage
Although I wouldn’t call this a cozy, I’d recommend it to cozy mystery fans who also like Agatha Christie and the like. I vastly enjoyed my time in Cumbria with DCI Satterthwaite and the gang, and look forward to reading more of this series from the talented Jo Allen.
From the publisher: It’s the summer of 1976, and after nine years in prison, James Minter is home to bury his mother. A history of depression and a series of personal issues has seen her death ruled as suicide. His refusal to accept that conclusion means he must confront his violent stepfather, deal with the gangster who wants his mother’s shop and, of course, face the family of the boy he killed.
ARC provided by Rachel’s Random Resources
Excerpt from Mint
The shop is all so familiar. This place I should have called home, yet only ever thought of as a place to return to. The address where my mother and half-siblings lived. Never home, more an approximation. I’m not connected to it like I imagine others are theirs. I hadn’t been safe here, nor welcome. My mother had been too controlled by her husband, and Sam too in his thrall. Lara had kept me here. All the time, I’d felt like the small bird being pushed from the nest by the bullying interloper. While he’d called me the cuckoo.
I restock the fridge with some milk and butter from the nearby shop and put the bread and cereal on the worktop. I open a new jar of coffee and put the kettle on.
Outside, I hear the whine of heavy machinery starting up, and the contact of whirring metal on stone.
I leave the kitchen and go out into the back yard, through the gate and into the alleyway running along the back of the houses before entering the yard of the Mason’s next door.
Along one side, slabs of rough-cut granite lean against the high wall, while black marble and white marble are stocked horizontally, kept apart by thick wood battens. A corrugated plastic roof built off the garden wall opposite the stacked stone extends over the yard, shielding the work bench and tools and bench-saw from the elements.
White dust fills the air, billows fussily around the head of a man in a grubby blacksmith’s apron, safety goggles, and blue facemask, who’s guiding a huge slab of white stone along a bench and through a whirling rotary saw. Water sprays onto the slab and throws globules of wet white dust onto the floor. The saw reaches the end of the cut and, as the slab breaks free, he presses a red button on the wall and the machine shuts off.
The man notices me but doesn’t pause to invite me to speak, or offer to himself.
“I’m Abigail’s son,” I say, when the whine of the slowing blade ends. The dust has reached me and the air clears slowly with little breeze to disrupt it.
The man pulls the mask free. Dust has turned his thick black hair grey and clogged the deep lines of a weathered face. Years of wrangling stone slabs has built a powerful upper body with square shoulders, and large hands that hang at the end of strong forearms.
“I know who you are. I have to make the noise. Can’t work without it. That’s the last of the cutting,” he offers, as if there’s one purpose for my visit. “Your mother didn’t mind the noise, it soothed her.”
“I’m not here about the noise.”
“She liked the idea of hearing there were other people about.”
My mother had once admitted her weakness to me. ‘I don’t like being on my own, and I don’t like the company of women much. Which means I’m vulnerable to the attention of men. And women like her see only the baser reasons for that’. It had been her explanation for why Mrs Ayles had called her a harlot.
“Thought I should introduce myself, tell you I’ll be living in the shop while I’m here. In case you see the lights on.”
“None of my business.”
We face each other with our exhausted chitchat, whilst sensing there should be more.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” says the Mason, in the unpractised way of a man who doesn’t express emotion.
“I hear you found her?”
“Yes.”
“How come it was you?”
The Mason frowns, as if the answer has a multiplicity of paths for him to choose and he’s afraid he might opt for one it will be impossible to find his way back from.
“You mother and I…” He stops, already regretting the path taken. There is no way back. “We were friends.”
“Since when?”
“Since I arrived. More so after George moved out. Not before,” he adds, as if it might be important to me. “We were neighbours, so we’ve always talked. After George left, I used to go in and watch some TV with her in the evenings. She didn’t like being alone, certainly not since all you children have grown.” He stops talking abruptly, in the way of a man who’s aware he’s over explaining.
“Did George know?”
“He didn’t need to. Our relationship wasn’t improper. It was perfectly respectable.”
“I suspect George would see it differently.”
“I’m not afraid of him.” It’s a jarring boast, stuck into the conversation like a lone weed in a flowerbed. “We watched TV, that’s all.”
I don’t challenge his statement; can’t know if it’s truth or lie. It means little if it had amounted to more than his claim. My mother had been free to live the life she chose. But what had this reticent man talked to her about? Or had she talked and he simply listened. It struck me as the likely scenario of a relationship between them if sex wasn’t involved.
I catch movement in the right rear quarter of the image in front of me. A yellow flash through the doorway, and a slender woman wearing a sunny shirt tucked into jeans, bare ankles with flat shoes, and short brown hair hitched behind one ear, comes out.
“Dad, dinner’s ready,” she declares, before turning to me. “Hello,” she says shyly, and steps forward to offer her hand.
I’m struck by the contradiction of the diffidence set against the confidence of instigating a handshake. The skin is dry and the hand firm.
“Mint,” I say, and feel stupid, as if it’s a meaningless bark of a word. “Jimmy Minter,” I explain.
“Beth. Elizabeth Green.” She mimics my awkward delivery and smiles.
I’m not sure if she’s mocking me, or sympathising with me. I’ve spent nine years apart from women and I’m like a man who’s forgotten how to walk in a straight line. The need to leave overwhelms me, her presence making me feel unwelcome.
“Anyway, I’d better go. If your dinner’s ready.” I recall a long-forgotten line from the manual of social interaction. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Their eyes are on my back as I leave the way I came, and I’m in the shop before I remember my unasked questions. I want to return, need to get to the end of that particular conversation. I battle with the pull of curiosity and the contra-tug of my self-consciousness.
I’ll go back tomorrow, when my sudden retreat has faded from their minds.
Murder, conspiracy, radicalism, poverty, riot, violence, capitalism, technology: everything is up for grabs in the early part of Victoria’s reign.
Radical politicians, constitutional activists and trade unionists are being professionally assassinated. When Josiah Ainscough of the Stockport Police thwarts an attempt on the life of the Chartist leader, Feargus O’Connor, he receives public praise, but earns the enmity of the assassin, who vows to kill him.
Circles of Deceit, the second of Paul CW Beatty’s Constable Josiah Ainscough’s historical murder mysteries, gives a superb and electric picture of what it was to live in 1840s England. The novel is set in one of the most turbulent political periods in British history, 1842-1843, when liberties and constitutional change were at the top of the political agenda, pursued using methods fair or foul.
About the author
Paul CW Beatty is an unusual combination of a novelist and a research scientist. Having worked for many years in medical research in the UK NHS and Universities, a few years ago he took an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University emerging with a distinction.
His latest novel, Children of Fire, is a Victorian murder mystery set in 1841 at the height of the industrial revolution. It won the Writing Magazine’s Best Novel Award in November 2017 and is published by The Book Guild Ltd.
Paul lives near Manchester in the northwest of England. Children of Fire is set against the hills of the Peak District as well as the canals and other industrial infrastructure of the Cottonopolis know as the City of Manchester.
Selected quotes
Hands were steadied by friends so that older Chartists might sign for themselves. Those who could only make their mark had them attested by others, who initialed the petition forms.
Paul CW Beatty, Circles of Deceit
Of all things, he’s a Policeman, even though he went to grammar school. It’s a very common sort of profession, if you can call it a profession; even lower than being a manufacturer like Pappa.
Paul CW Beatty, Circles of Deceit
So now I know you, in your black and silver uniform. You who have only your fists and your pathetic stick with which to demand obedience. No rifle nor musket. No sharp sword or dagger. Nothing to protect you but the respect of the people. You are a servant, a humble servant, not a soldier, not a man of honour. You know nothing of true honour, nothing of true respect.
Paul CW Beatty, Circles of Deceit
Josiah had often heard it said that good news travels fast, but his own experience was that good news did not often travel faster than bad news.
books + ecstatic = BIBLIOSTATIC 