Tag: crime

#TopTenTuesday Books Featuring Characters in Holy Orders #TuesdayBookBlog

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is a freebie meaning we have to come up with our own topic. My list contains books I’ve read that feature characters in holy orders, e.g. priests, monks, nuns, etc. Links from each title will take you to my review.

  1. The Sea Road West by Sally Rena – Trouble begins when a new young priest, Father James, arrives in a remote Scottish village
  2. For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie – The story of two 15th century female mystics – Margery Kempe and anchoress, Julian of Norwich
  3. Sister Rosa’s Rebellion by Carolyn Hughes – 1363. When Mother Angelica, prioress of Northwick Priory, dies, many nuns presume Sister Rosa will take her place. But Sister Evangelina, Angelica’s niece, believes the position is hers by right and sets out to ensure it is
  4. My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor – Based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty who, along with others, risked his life to smuggle thousands of Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy during WW2. 
  5. The Second Sleep by Robert Harris – In 1468, dedicated young priest, Christopher Fairfax finds everything he’s been taught to believe – and has preached to others – is turned upside down by the discovery of a book containing an earth-shattering revelation
  6. The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting – In 1879, young pastor Kai Schweigaard arrives in an isolated village in Norway determined to replace its 700-year-old stave church and its two bells, believed to have supernatural powers, with a more modern, larger church
  7. Clear by Carys Davies – In 1843, John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister, is sent to evict the sole occupant of a remote Scottish island so it can be turned over to the grazing of sheep
  8. The Monk by Tim Sullivan – The body of a monk is found savagely beaten to death in a woodland near Bristol
  9. The Road to Grantchester by James Runcie – A prequel to the series featuring Sidney Chambers, vicar of Grantchester and honorary canon of Ely Cathedral
  10. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather – The story of two priests – Bishop Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant – who are sent to establish the Catholic Church in the newly acquired territory of New Mexico

Book Review – The Cracked Mirror by Christopher Brookmyre

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About the Book

FORGET WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW. THIS IS NOT THAT CRIME NOVEL

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes.

You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a Sunday best hat.

Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation. It will end with a rabbit hole that goes so deep, Johnny and Penny might just come to question not just whodunnit, but whether they want to know the answer.

Format: ebook (496 pages) Publisher: Abacus
Publication date: 18th July 2024 Genre: Crime

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My Review

The Cracked Mirror is described as ‘a cross-genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly’. (Having never read a book by Michael Connelly that didn’t help me much.)

Initially, the story alternates between two different storylines. There’s Penny Coyne, known for solving murders in Glen Cluthar which, like St Mary Mead in Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple series, has an unusually high death rate for a small village. However, the latest murder in Glen Cluthar has a darker side to it than Penny’s used to. Added to this, she’s beginning to worry about strange lapses in her memory and wondering if she should follow her nephew’s suggestion that she move into a residential home. Being fiercely independent, it’s something she has resisted up until now.

And then we have LAPD detective Johnny Hawke, who’s not afraid to bend the rules in order to bring bad guys to justice and is always a hair’s breadth away from death. He’s investigating a death which in all respects looks like suicide – room locked from the inside – but about which Johnny has his doubts.

At this point the two storylines come together as both Penny and Johnny find themselves – for different reasons – in the same hotel in Scotland where a society wedding is taking place. Suddenly something happens which has similarities with the case Johnny was investigating meaning Penny and Johnny find themselves becoming partners, albeit with very different approaches when it comes to solving crimes.

That makes it sound straightforward but it gets increasingly complicated as more and more characters are introduced to the point where I found it hard to keep track of who was who and how they were related. And at around 80% of the way through, well let’s just say it goes in a completely different direction that left my head spinning even more. (Some readers may pick up references that eluded me meaning it doesn’t come as quite such a surprise for them.)

I loved Johnny and thought he was an authentic representation of the maverick cop beloved of American crime thrillers. I didn’t get the same feeling about Penny, perhaps because of the contemporary setting and the fact Glen Cluthar is soon left far behind.

If the author set himself the challenge of creating a mind-bending crime novel then he definitely succeeded. If you’re game for a crime novel that will get your brain working hard, The Cracked Mirror will be right up your street.

In three words: Clever, imaginative, complicated

About the Author

Christopher Brookmyre was a journalist before becoming a full-time novelist with the publication of his award-winning debut Quite Ugly One Morning, which established him as one of Britain’s leading crime writers. His 2016 novel Black Widow won both the McIlvanney Prize and the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year award. Brookmyre’s novels have sold more than two million copies in the UK alone. He also writes historical fiction with Marisa Haetzman, under the pseudonym ‘Ambrose Parry’.

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