Tag: Reviews

#BlogTour #BookReview #Giveaway The Custard Corpses by M.J. Porter @rararesources

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The Custard Corpses Full Tour BannerWelcome to the first day of the blog tour for The Custard Corpses by M.J. Porter. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and to the author for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Jo at books_for_the_shed and Lynn at Ellesea Loves Reading.

WinIf you like the sound of The Custard Corpses, then I’m pleased to say there’s a giveaway with a chance to win one of two copies of the book. Enter via Rafflecopter here.

Giveaway terms and conditions

  1. Open to entrants aged 18 or over.
  2. Worldwide entries welcome.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize

The Custard CorpsesAbout the Book

Birmingham, England 1943. While the whine of the air raid sirens might no longer be rousing him from bed every night, a two-decade-old unsolved murder case will ensure that Chief Inspector Mason of Erdington Police Station is about to suffer more sleepless nights.

Young Robert McFarlane’s body was found outside the local church hall on 30th September 1923. But, his cause of death was drowning, and he’d been missing for three days before his body was found. No one was ever arrested for the crime. No answers could ever be given to the grieving family. The unsolved case has haunted Mason ever since.

But, the chance discovery of another victim, with worrying parallels, sets Mason, and his constable, O’Rourke, on a journey that will take them back over twenty-five years, the chance to finally solve the case, while all around them is uncertainty, impossible to ignore.

Format: ebook (225 pages)               Publisher: N/A
Publication date:  21st March 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Mystery

Find The Custard Corpses on Goodreads

Purchase links
Amazon UK
Link provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Ever mindful of the murder on his patch that remains unsolved and determined to one day provide the answers the victim’s family crave, as well as to bring the culprit to justice, Chief Inspector Sam Mason leaves no stone unturned when new evidence puts a completely different slant on the case.  Is there a link between the murder of Robert McFarlane and that of another murdered boy? If so, what could it be and what is the significance of the curious modus operandi of the killer?

Much like custard, as the plot thickens a series of fortunate discoveries lead to a painstaking search for clues and a delve into the past as Mason and his assistant, Constable O’Rourke, try to piece together the often flimsy evidence gathered at the time. With no recourse to modern forensic techniques, it’s down to good old-fashioned paper and pencil, and searches through dusty archives (all fuelled by plentiful cups of tea) that eventually provide Mason and O’Rourke with the breakthrough they have been looking for. But what they discover is more disturbing than they might have imagined.  I’ll admit I found some of it unexpectedly macabre.

The plot of The Custard Corpses is certainly ingenious and, of course, custard is delicious. However, given the nature of the victims, it isn’t what I would describe as a ‘cosy’ mystery.

In three words: Ingenious, intricate, suspenseful

Try something similar: The Ghost Tree (A Betty Church Mystery #3) by M.R.C. Kasasian

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About the Author

M.J. Porter writes: “I’m an author of historical fiction (Early English, Vikings and the British Isles as a whole before the Norman Conquest) and fantasy (Viking age/dragon-themed). I’ve recently written a relatively modern mystery novel set in 1943. I was born in the old Mercian kingdom at some point since 1066. Raised in the shadow of a strange little building, told from a very young age that it housed the bones of long-dead Kings of Mercia and that our garden was littered with old pieces of pottery from a long-ago battle, it’s little wonder that my curiosity in Early England ran riot. I can only blame my parents! I write a LOT. You’ve been warned!”

Connect with M.J. Porter
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The Custard Corpses

#BookReview Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller

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Now We Shall Be Entirely FreeAbout the Book

One rain-swept February night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain’s disastrous campaign against Napoleon’s forces in Spain.

Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind – he cannot talk about the war or face the memory of what happened in a village on the gruelling retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he sets out instead for the Hebrides, with the vague intent of reviving his musical interests and collecting local folksongs.

Lacroix sails north incognito, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer are on his trail, with orders to kill. The haven he finds on a remote island with a family of free-thinkers and the sister he falls for are not safe, at all.

Format: Hardcover (421 pages)          Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 23rd August 2018   Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Now We Shall Be Entirely Free on Goodreads

Purchase links
Amazon UK
Link provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is the third book from my NetGalley November reading list. You can find out more about the challenge here.

The book has two strands that run in parallel. The first is Lacroix’s long journey north from his house in Somerset via Bristol, the home of his sister Lucy, to the Hebrides. It’s a journey he makes without much thought of a particular destination; it’s more about avoiding being recalled to service in the army and trying to escape the memories that haunt him. Only towards the end of the book will he reveal the nature of those memories to a confidante to whom he has become close. In the course of his journey, Lacroix experiences both the best and worst of humanity, experiencing violence but also the kindness of strangers. Eventually he arrives at a remote island in the Hebrides where he is given shelter by the Frend family, comprising Emily, her sister Jane, and their brother Cornelius. One of the themes running through the book is damage – physical, mental and emotional – so it’s notable that Emily is losing her sight and Cornelius is plagued by dental pain. John himself has been left partially deaf due to the illness he suffered on his return from Spain.

The second storyline involves Corporal Calley who has been given a mission by a mysterious individual to track down and kill Lacroix as part of a cover-up of atrocities committed in the war. Calley is the most relentless of adversaries; he’s cruel, brutal and entirely without mercy, committing some horrific acts along the way.  As he closes in on his prey, there is an increasing air of menace, especially since Lacroix is unaware of Calley’s mission.

At the end of the book, although some elements of the story are resolved others, in the manner of a sea fret, are left opaque for the reader to reach their own conclusion about.

Now We Shall Be Entirely Free is the first book I’ve read by Andrew Miller and I can now understand why his writing has been the subject of so much praise. At times, it’s poetic in nature. One passage that especially sticks in my mind is from a scene in which two characters finally come together in an act of intimacy. ‘A mutual falling, the grief of appetite. And in between the touching, the tender manoeuvres, the new knowledge.’  

I received a review copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley. I alternated between reading my digital copy and listening to the audiobook version skilfully narrated by Joe Jameson.

In three words: Lyrical, intense, moving

Try something similar: The Redeemed by Tim Pears

Andrew MillerAbout the Author

Andrew Miller’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997. It won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like A Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award 2011, The Crossing and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset. (Photo/bio: Publisher author page)

Connect with Andrew
Website | Goodreads