Tag: Reviews

#BookReview Thea and Denise by Caroline Bond

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Thea and DeniseAbout the Book

Two women. An open road. The trip of a lifetime.

Thea is confident, sorted, determined to have fun, but there are sorrows beneath the surface of her life. Denise is struggling under the weight of her many commitments and in desperate need of some excitement.

When these polar opposites meet, and unexpectedly become friends, they realise they’re both looking to escape. So begins a road trip that leads them far from home and yet closer to their true selves.

But they can’t outrun their pasts forever and when things start to get complicated, both women have an important decision to make. Do they give up or keep going? Turn around or drive on?

Format: Hardback (368 pages)    Publisher: Corvus
Publication date: 2nd June 2022 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

As might be guessed from the title, Thea and Denise is inspired by the author’s favourite film, Thelma and Louise. In the Acknowledgements, Caroline describes her book as ‘a very English take’ on that film. It’s a film I haven’t seen myself but I’m guessing it doesn’t include a lot of swimming in the cold North Sea or wearing one of your mother’s old nighties.

Denise and Thea’s friendship develops following a series of coincidences, one of which is a meeting that takes place in the ladies’ toilet in the Grosvenor Hotel. They seem unlikely friends with Thea initially taking the upper hand and Denise following her lead, prompted as much as anything by an incident involving an exploding freezer drawer.  However, the dynamic subtly changes as their road trip progresses. Suddenly it’s Denise who is taking charge as a result of a new-found confidence and who encourages Thea to open up about her true reasons for making the trip.   As Lillian, Denise’s mother, later observes, ‘They were chalk and cheese but somehow the combination worked’.

I found Thea’s motivation for embarking on the road trip easier to understand. She’s running away from things she can’t – or doesn’t want to – face, trying to persuade herself that what she’s doing is for the good of others and not just a reaction to her own fears. It’s an act of desperation whereas with Denise it felt more like an act borne out of a general discontent.

The road trip includes some fun scenes. My favourite was their trip to a Rage Room, the existence of such a thing being completely new to me.

The three women in the book – Denise, Thea and Lillian – are all interesting, well-developed characters. I particularly liked the portrayal of Lillian as an older woman living an independent lifestyle. The men in the book – Thea’s ex-husband, Marc, and Denise’s husband, Simon, play minor roles and neither are particularly attractive characters. Simon, in particular, seems to want a wife who will fulfil the role of housekeeper and administrator rather than that of life companion or lover.

Although I wasn’t completely convinced the epilogue was necessary, I enjoyed the way the book deftly explored the nature of female friendship and tapped into that feeling we’ve probably all had at some point – wouldn’t it be great to just run away?

I received a review copy via Readers First.

In three words: Engaging, insightful, heart-warming

Try something similar: Three Women and a Boat by Anne Youngson

Caroline BondAbout the Author

Caroline Bond was born in Scarborough and studied English at Oxford University before working as a market researcher for 25 years. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Leeds Trinity University. She lives in Leeds with her husband. Caroline has three adult children. Thea and Denise is her fifth novel. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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#BookReview The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz

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The Sentence is DeathAbout the Book

“You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late…”

These, heard over the phone, were the last recorded words of successful celebrity-divorce lawyer. Richard Pryce, found bludgeoned to death in his bachelor pad with a bottle of wine – a 1982 Chateau Lafite worth £3,000, to be precise.

Odd, considering he didn’t drink. Why this bottle? And why those words? And why was a three-digit number painted on the wall by the killer? And, most importantly, which of the man’s many, many enemies did the deed?

Baffled, the police are forced to bring in Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, the author Anthony, who’s really getting rather good at this murder investigation business.

But as Hawthorne takes on the case with characteristic relish, it becomes clear that he, too, has secrets to hide. As our reluctant narrator becomes ever more embroiled in the case, he realises that these secrets must be exposed – even at the risk of death…

Format: Hardback (384 pages)            Publisher: Century
Publication date: 1st November 2018 Genre: Crime

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My Review

The Sentence is Death is the second book in the author”s crime mystery series featuring former Detective Inspector turned private investigator Daniel Hawthorne, and his often hapless sidekick, one Anthony Horowitz. I’m a huge fan of the series and, in fact, I’ve read all the other books – The Word is Murder, A Line to Kill and The Twist of a Knife. This one completes the set. It’s also one of the books on my list for the #NetGalleyNovember reading challenge having been languishing on my NetGalley shelf for four years.

I always imagine Anthony Horowitz chuckling away to himself as he writes these books because of our narrator’s constant grumbling about how he would much rather be writing fiction than, in his role as Hawthorne’s biographer, dutifully documenting the progress of the investigation, and how he wishes he could include scenes that would be more exciting for the reader. ‘Sadly, none of these possibilities were available to me. I was stuck with the facts. My job was to follow Hawthorne’s investigation, setting down his questions and occasionally trying, without much success, to make sense of the answers. It was really quite frustrating. It wasn’t so much writing as recording.’

Horowitz longs to find out more about Hawthorne, more than just that he likes constructing Airfix models, belongs to a book club and is a chain smoker. He’s also intrigued by Hawthorne’s past, convinced there is some secret to do with Hawthorne’s dismissal from the police force, and eagerly collecting any scrap of information. Hawthorne’s plain-speaking and non-PC views also concern him. After documenting one particular conversation, he protests ‘I can’t put that sort of stuff in the book… People won’t like it… They won’t like you’.

Horowitz acts as a kind of Dr Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes, even if Hawthorne is rather scathing about the abilities of Conan Doyle’s fictional creation. Anthony is always one step behind when it comes to spotting the clues that will lead to the identity of the murderer. Actually, that’s a bit unfair; he often spots the clues but reaches a completely wrong conclusion about what they mean.  From time to time he gets a little disgruntled at Hawthorne’s unwillingness to share his thoughts on the case. ‘Whenever Hawthorne saw anything or worked something out, he deliberately kept it from me as if the whole thing was some sort of game.’

Each of the book’s cast of characters at one point or another appears to have the motive, means and opportunity to have committed the murder of Richard Pryce. As Horowitz innocently observes, ‘It was almost as if they were queuing up to be suspects’. There are the usual red herrings and false trails beloved of crime novelists, as well as cast-iron alibis than turn out to be anything but. Horowitz also comes up against the formidable DI Cara Grunshaw who is determined to beat Hawthorne to an arrest and doesn’t much care what she has to do to achieve it.

Alongside the investigation, there are references to the author’s work – his Alex Rider series, his Sherlock Holmes novels and his TV drama Foyles War – but these are balanced by his self-deprecating observations. There is also some gentle poking of fun at the snobbery of the literary establishment. And I suspect the author had a lot of fun writing the excerpt from a Game of Thrones-like fantasy novel.

The Sentence is Death is a clever, witty and thoroughly entertaining murder mystery.

Try something similar: A Three Dog Problem by S. J. Bennett

AnthonyHorowitzAbout the Author

Bestselling author Anthony Horowitz has written two highly acclaimed Sherlock Holmes novels, The House of Silk and Moriarty; three James Bond novels, Trigger Mortis, Forever and a Day and With a Mind to Kill; the acclaimed bestselling mystery novels Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders and the Detective Hawthorne novels, The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, A Line To Kill, and the latest A Twist of Knife.

He is also the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, and responsible for creating and writing some of the UK’s most loved and successful TV series, including Midsomer Murders and Foyle’s War. In January 2022 he was awarded a CBE for his services to literature.

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