Molly's Millions

by Victoria Connelly


Molly’s Millions is Victoria Connelly’s fourth book, and even though one of her books has already been made into a film, this is her first book to be published in the UK.

The bright pink cover is the first thing that attracts with this book. The second is the beginning of the first chapter where you’ll be drawn into a fun, fast-paced romantic comedy that leaves you with a smile on your face and a feeling that although Molly makes choices that we might not automatically make, they were definitely the right ones.

When hard up Molly Bailey wins £4.2 million in the lottery, rather than go on a mad spending spree, she packs up her terrier pup, Fizz into her ancient yellow Beetle and sets off on a road trip. With few plans, an unsuspecting miserly family who she knows would be horrified by her actions and would want to stop her giving away her money at all costs, and a determined journalist chasing her, she has to use her wits if she is to stay one step ahead of them.

Intent on being the one to discover the next big story, Tom Mackenzie has a companion of his own when his ten-year-old daughter is left with him by her mother. He becomes absorbed by Molly’s motives behind her generosity and, helped by tip-offs and grateful benefactors, manages to stick to her trail.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this wonderful book and can imagine it would make an excellent film too.

Reviewed by Debs Carr

The Sleeping Doll

by Jeffery Deaver

The Sleeping Doll is a crime thriller, the first one featuring Special Agent Kathryn Dance, whose speciality is interviewing suspects and using kinesics to read their body language. Anyone who's seen the TV series Lie To Me with Tim Roth will know the sort of thing I'm talking about.
I found this to be a fascinating new approach to crime fiction - new to me, anyway. The plot, as I've now come to expect with this author, was very tight and had plenty of unexpected twists and turns. You do expect there to be some twists, but you'll never second guess what they are.
Despite the engaging plot and story development, I found the overall pace to be a bit slow. This was particularly noticeable near the beginning, once the excitement of the initial events wore off (I won't spoil it by saying what happens). Later on it picks up and then accelerates even further towards the end. This more than made up for the earlier dip.
Although the book is subtitled "Introducing Kathryn Dance", Deaver fans will have met her once before in The Cold Moon, one of the Lincoln Rhyme novels. Rhyme makes a brief cameo in The Sleeping Doll as well.
That said, The Sleeping Doll feels like a spin-off and slightly inferior to the Rhyme series. Perhaps, given time, the Dance series will gain the same status. A disappointment for me, and it's a relatively small one, was that the supporting cast seem rather two-dimensional compared with the well-developed main characters. The principal criminal, Daniel Pell, was particularly well drawn. A very nasty piece of work but scarily believable!

Reviewed by Captain Black

Book news - Man Booker Prize

The shortlist for the Man Booker prize 2009 has just been announced:

The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt
Summertime - J. M. Coetzee
The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
The Glass Room - Simon Mawer
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

More details can be found here.

Cut Short

By Leigh Russell


This is my kind of book; intelligently written, gripping crime fiction.

The crime, and its detection, are at the heart of the story, but rather than just being plot-driven, the novel is also notable for its large cast of well-drawn characters.

The intricacy of the plot relies on a delicate placing of events and characters. Nothing is wasted and nothing feels out of place.

There is an extra something – almost undefinable – that lifts Cut Short above the run of the mill. In particular, it has a clever and unexpected extra plot strand which leads to a genuine surprise at the end when it is eventually revealed. This lifts it above the ordinary and makes the story both poignant and haunting, providing a truly memorable read.

This novel also has great atmosphere and sense of place. The reader really gets to know the place where it is set and that knowledge adds depth to the plot. It really matters to the protagonists where certain events happen – and so it matters to the reader as well.

The characters do not exist just to further the plot, but are vividly painted and memorable. The young girls who become victims are not just victims – they are real people with reasons to be grieved. DI Geraldine Steel is a gripping main character who increases the reader’s empathy and interest in the plot. I also really enjoyed the skilfully created character of DCI Kathryn Gordon and the realistic interaction between Geraldine and other members of the investigating team.

I’m sure that, like me, you will enjoy Cut Short and look forward to Leigh Russell’s forthcoming books Road Closed and Dead End.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt

The Warrior's Princess

by Barbara Erskine


Anyone who has read any of Barbara Erskine’s previous books will already be familiar with the skilful way she interweaves the present, the far past and the supernatural, and this novel is no exception.

When Jess, a young English teacher, wakes one morning to realise she has been drugged and raped at her London flat, a combination of fear and shame impel her to take refuge in her sister’s cottage on the Welsh Borders. Her sister, coping with problems of her own, is staying with friends in Rome, so that Jess is in the house alone, albeit with the reassuring – if unsettling - presence of a burly opera singer at the neighbouring farm.

It turns out that the house is haunted by the spirit of a young girl, Eigon, daughter of Caractacus, a British tribal king injured in battle by the Romans. Before the family were captured and taken to Rome, Eigon suffered her own horribly traumatic experience, and her spirit latches onto Jess in their shared pain.

Jess’s attacker comes to the cottage to seek her out. To escape him, and also to follow Eigon’s story, she joins her sister and their friends in Rome, but there is no easy way out. More malevolent spirits from the days of the Romans have been awoken by the turbulent emotions surrounding her, and her attacker is still on her trail. The web is quickly spun, from which Jess’s growing obsession with Eigon’s fate prevents her extricating herself, despite the ever more desperate efforts of her friends, including a Tarot reader, Carmella.

This isn’t a ‘literary’ novel, and doesn’t pretend to be. But it isn’t trashy, either, and makes a good, solid holiday read. Barbara Erskine is arguably the mistress of this type of story, and readers of her previous book ‘Daughters of Fire’ will recognise a couple of characters from that slipping into this.

As the plot became more and more involved and, frankly, dark in places, with extra twists towards the end, I found myself getting annoyed whenever my reading was interrupted. By my reckoning, that’s a recommendation.

Reviewed by Rebecca Holmes

Tender

by Mark Illis


Bookersatz readers will have heard of the Just One Book campaign devised by independent publishers Salt to save them from financial meltdown. Salt publish mostly poetry and short stories. I read both, but have quite a bit of each on my To Be Read pile and find I get through novels more quickly. So for my Just One Book, I chose one of the few novels published by Salt.

I was surprised to find that Tender is a short book. I haven’t actually counted the words – even I am not obsessive enough for that – but I would guess the total is around 50,000. And yet it’s a family saga, covering 30 years in the life of the Dax family: Ali and Bill, and their children Sean and Rosa. I wouldn’t have believed it possible to fit a saga into such a short book without leaving the reader feeling short-changed, until I read Tender.

The structure is unusual. Each chapter is from a different viewpoint, almost like a self-contained short story – but not quite. The characterisation is excellent, and I very much enjoyed the strength of Illis’s observational powers. The plotting is gentle, with no enormous drama or cliff-hanger endings. The book tells the story of an ordinary family, yet Illis draws out their uniqueness in such a way that the narrative is compelling. I read the book in a single sitting because the development of the characters, and the relationships between them, drew me along. Illis moves smoothly between dialogue, description and internal monologue, and between close-up, mid-range view and full zoom. He is a very skilful writer and I found Tender a pleasure to read.

The production of the book is also pleasing. The cover seems a little flimsy, but the paper used for the printed pages is a good weight, the text is large and well laid out, and I didn’t spot a single typo which is unusual for this ex-professional proof-reader (see ‘obsessive’, above).

So, if you want to support Salt Publishing, but don’t fancy poetry or short stories, I would strongly recommend buying Tender.


Reviewed by Queenie

One Apple Tasted

By Josa Young

As you read this novel, you’ll love spending time in the company of Dora Jerusalem, Guy Boleyn and the rest of the large and well-drawn cast.

The quirky and inspired story takes us backwards and forwards in time, and right across the world to India and back. Each era and each place is lovingly created with delicious detail.

Josa Young’s powers of description really bring the narrative to life. In one scene Dora is dressing for a pivotal moment in her life and the description is so vivid that I found myself thinking, ‘But she’ll never be able to drive in those shoes!’ For me, that level of involvement is a sign of a truly gripping novel.

Josa Young’s background in magazines such as Vogue shines through in the stunning visual quality of the writing. As well as the scene involving Dora, mentioned above, there is a scene involving the young Hilly and Thirza dressing for a ball which is so beautifully drawn that you will be able to see the girls walking in to the room and feel all heads turning to look at them as clearly as if you were there.

The plot of ‘One Apple Tasted’ is complex, and carefully takes threads from different times and generations in order to weave them into a satisfying whole. It is essentially a love story, but with a long-hidden mystery at its heart.

Dora and Guy, and their relationship are pivotal to the novel, but Josa Young takes as much trouble drawing all the other characters and breathing life into them. In particular I loved Hilly, Uncle Eric and Emma Vane, but every character – however minor – earns their keep in the story.

As the story powers towards the end it is genuinely impossible to put down. The intrigue around Dora’s relationship with the troubled Guy Boleyn leads the reader through the novel and as we’re taken back in time more and more layers peel back to reveal the true complexity of the past.

Expect to be on the edge of your seat as you read the last few chapters of this skilfully structured novel, and whatever you do, don’t miss out on reading this one.

Reviewed by Helen M Hunt