Tag: Reviews

My Week in Books – 17th April 2022

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MyWeekinBooksOn What Cathy Read Next last week

Monday – I shared an extract from historical novel Until We Meet by Camille Di Maio. 

Tuesday – I published my review of The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey, an inventive retelling of the story of Pinocchio. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Authors I Haven’t Read, But Want To. 

Wednesday – I published my review of historical novel The Lost Boy of Bologna by Francesca Scanacapra as part of the blog tour. WWW Wednesday is my weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading. 

Thursday – I published my review of historical novel The Physician’s Daughter by Martha Conway. 

Friday – I shared my review of crime mystery The Fall by Rachael Blok as part of the blog tour.

Saturday – Indulging my other love – gardening – I took part in the #SixonSaturday meme with a few highlights from my horticultural week.

New arrivals

The Rebel's MarkThe Rebel’s Mark (The Jackdaw Mysteries #5) by S. W. Perry (Corvus)

Elizabeth’s reign is reaching its winter and England’s old adversaries are fading. But in a world on the brink of change, showing any weakness can be fatal…

1598. Nicholas Shelby, unorthodox physician and reluctant spy for Robert Cecil, has brought his wife Bianca and their child home from exile in Padua. Welcome at court, his star is in the ascendancy. But he has returned to a dangerous world.

Two old enemies are approaching their final reckoning. England and Spain are exhausted by war. In London, Elizabeth is entering the twilight of her reign. In Madrid, King Philip of Spain is dying. Perhaps now is the time for one last throw of the dice.

Elizabeth has seen off more than one Spanish attempt at invasion. But still she is not safe. In Ireland, rebellion against her rule is raging. And if Spain can take Ireland, England will be more vulnerable than ever.

When England’s greatest living poet, Edmund Spenser, sends Robert Cecil an enigmatic and mysterious plea for help from his Irish fastness, Cecil dispatches Nicholas to investigate. Soon he and Bianca find themselves caught up not just in bloody rebellion, but in the lethal power-play between Cecil and the one man Elizabeth believes can restore Ireland to her, the unpredictable Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Greenwich ParkGreenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (Raven Books)

Helen has it all…

Daniel is the perfect husband.
Rory is the perfect brother.
Serena is the perfect sister-in-law.

And Rachel? Rachel is the perfect nightmare.

When Helen, finally pregnant after years of tragedy, attends her first antenatal class, she is expecting her loving architect husband to arrive soon after, along with her confident, charming brother Rory and his pregnant wife, the effortlessly beautiful Serena. What she is not expecting is Rachel.

Extroverted, brash, unsettling single mother-to-be Rachel, who just wants to be Helen’s friend. Who just wants to get know Helen and her friends and her family. Who just wants to know everything about them. Every little secret…

The CompanionThe Companion by Lesley Thomson (eARC, Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Sally Robinson was obsessed with family tradition. That’s why, on a scorching August day, she dragged her family out for a picnic on Dedman’s Heath. Sally imagined her picturesque children posing against the purple heathers and flowering yellow gorse of the South Downs: an envy-inducing post for her facebook page. Instead, the perfect mother and her perfect family were murdered. By a man who had murdered before, and will do so again.

DI Toni Kemp, of Sussex police, must unravel a case which has shocked the county to its core. What she discovers will lead her to Bedford Hall, a grand country mansion, long ago converted into flats. Here in the middle of nowhere, where statues dot the lawn and peacocks scream in the bushes, six long-term residents have seen more than they should. But this is a community who are good at keeping secrets…

The Fire KillerThe Fire Killer (DI Barton #5) by Ross Greenwood (eARC, Boldwood via NetGalley)

When DI Barton is asked to investigate a seemingly innocuous fire that kills, he believes it’s either children fooling around or a worrying racially motivated crime.

As he delves deeper into the case, he soon realises that there is a history of similar blazes spread out over many years, all within a close area. And after an idea is suggested by pathologist Mortis, Barton suspects he has the arsonist’s motives wrong.

When a night worker comes forward with a tip, Barton narrows down the suspects. Yet all of them act suspiciously and he knows for sure that one or more of them are lying. And when a huge house blaze shocks everyone, Barton fears the killer has lost all control.

Who is The Fire Killer? What will be next to burn?

How To Save a LifeHow To Save a Life by Clare Swatman (eARC, Boldwoon via NetGalley)

One night in December, twenty-two year old Ted Green makes his way to Waterloo Bridge determined to end his life. Lonely, despairing and utterly hopeless, it seems the only choice to make.

That same night in December, Marianne Cooper is running away from a party. Having found her boyfriend in a passionate clinch with someone else, Marianne can’t get away fast enough. But as she makes her way along London’s South Bank, a figure catches her eye on top of the bridge. Then she sees him, a man ready to jump.

When Marianne saves Ted’s life, this night in December becomes one they’ll never forget, but as Ted watches Marianne leave in a black taxi, all he can think is he should have asked her name.

A Ration Book VictoryA Ration Book Victory by Jean Fullerton (eARC, Corvus)

In the final days of war, only love will pull her through . . .

Queenie Brogan wasn’t always an East End matriarch. Many years ago, before she married Fergus, she was Philomena Dooley, a daughter of Irish Travellers, planning to wed her childhood sweetheart, Patrick Mahone. But when tragedy struck and Patrick’s narrow-minded sister, Nora, intervened, the lovers were torn apart.

Fate can be cruel, and when Queenie arrives in London she finds that Patrick Mahon is her parish priest, and that the love she had tried to suppress flares again in her heart.

But now in the final months of WW2, Queenie discovers Father Mahon is dying and must face losing him forever. Can she finally tell him the secret she has kept for over fifty years or will Nora once again come between them? And if Queenie does decide to finally tell Patrick, could the truth destroy the Brogan family?

Requiem in La RossaRequiem in La Rossa (Daniel Leicester #3) by Tom Benjamin (ARC, Constable)

In the sweltering heat of a Bologna summer, a murderer plans their pièce de résistance…

Only in Bologna reads the headline in the Carlino after a professor of music is apparently murdered leaving the opera. But what looks like an open-and-shut case begins to fall apart when English detective Daniel Leicester is tasked with getting the accused man off, and a trail that begins among Bologna’s close-knit classical music community leads him to suspect there may be a serial killer at large in the oldest university in the world. And as Bologna trembles with aftershocks following a recent earthquake, the city begins to give up her secrets.

On What Cathy Read Next this week

Currently reading

Planned posts

  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Capsarius by Simon Turney
  • Book Review: Fortune by Amanda Smyth
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Mr Bunting At War by Robert Greenwood
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer
  • Blog Tour/Book Review: Mailed Fist by John Foley

#BlogTour #BookReview The Fall by Rachael Blok @AriesFiction

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Fall by Rachael Blok. My thanks to Sophie at Ransom PR for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy. Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Rachel at Rachel Read It.

The FallAbout the Book

The wind is cold this high up. The man shouts out, but nobody hears. The cathedral roof has caught his fall, but it will not hold him for long. The night is dark. And it is such a long way down…

On Good Friday, the verger of St Albans cathedral was supposed to be preparing the Easter service. Instead he discovers a man lying dead, fallen from the famous fifty-foot-high spire. Did he jump, or was he pushed?

For DCI Maarten Jansen, it’s a simple case of suspected suicide. Until a stranger, Willow, who witnessed the jump, prompts a deeper investigation into a long-buried past, involving a mental hospital, a pregnant woman, and fifty years of silence. As Willow’s own family history entwines with the case, Jaansen starts to wonder how everything is connected.

Format: Hardback (400 pages)      Publisher: Head of Zeus
Publication date: 14th April 2022 Genre: Crime, Mystery

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My Review

The Fall is described by the publishers as a ‘literary thriller’ but don’t let the word ‘literary’ put you off because the writing is no less accessible than a typical contemporary crime novel. The ‘literary’ element is perhaps the fleeting references to Paradise Lost, Milton’s epic poem telling the biblical story of the ‘Fall of Man’ (the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden). Paradise Lost is a text that means a lot to Willow Eliot. Her grandmother, Nonie, read it to her when she was young and some very early drafts of Paradise Lost form part of the exhibition she has organised. I’m not sure if I’m reading too much significance into it but there are also a number of characters in the book with names drawn from the Bible – Michael and Gabriel (who were both archangels), Joel, Noah and Martha.

The first part of the story unfolds quite slowly and is narrated from the points of view of Willow Eliot, one of the witnesses to the verger’s fall from the roof of the cathedral, and DCI Maarten Jansen, the police officer in charge of investigating the case. Although The Fall is the fourth book in the author’s series featuring DCI Maarten Jansen it can easily be read as a standalone (as I did). In fact, those who don’t have much time for police procedurals can be reassured this doesn’t form a major element of the book. It’s much more about buried family secrets that gradually emerge.

Every so often another point of view interrupts the modern day story, that of a young girl named Alice. Set in the 1960s, hers proves a very powerful and emotional story that touches on the stigma attached to mental illness and neurological conditions at the time, and the harsh and often ineffective treatments sufferers were subjected to.  I thought this was the most compelling element of the book and it also forms another connection to the subject matter of Willow’s exhibition.

Running alongside the police investigation are preparations for the marriage of Willow’s identical twin sister, Fliss, to Sunny, one of the detectives in Jansen’s team.  I have to say I admired Willow’s patience with Fliss who seemed to me entirely self-absorbed and prone to temper tantrums I didn’t think could just be put down to wedding day nerves. Although I appreciate the author was seeking to explore the notion of the special bond between twins – for reasons which will become apparent – personally I could have done without this element of the story. Fliss’s antics are one of the reasons why Willow seems to spend remarkably little time attending to the exhibition she has organised although it does provide a key to the eventual solution to the mystery.  Along the way, the author skilfully directs the reader’s suspicions in the direction of just about every character.

St Albans Cathedral makes a suitably atmospheric setting for the book and I’m sure I won’t be the only reader prompted to search for images of the building, especially its tower and roof. (To save you the trouble, you can visit the cathedral’s website here where you can access a 360 degree tour of many of the parts of the building mentioned in the book.)

The Fall is a carefully constructed crime novel set in an interesting location that offers plenty of surprises in the closing chapters.

In three words: Intriguing, well-crafted, engaging

Try something similar: After the Storm by Isabella Muir

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Rachael BlokAbout the Author

Rachael Blok grew up in Durham and studied Literature at Warwick University. She taught English at a London Comprehensive and is now a full-time writer living in Hertfordshire with her husband and children. Her thrillers Under the Ice, The Scorched Earth and Into the Fire have been widely acclaimed.

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