Category: Crime

‘Five Minds’ – Guy Morpuss

From the moment I’d seen the teasers about Five Minds appearing on Twitter, I was eagerly awaiting my opportunity to read this. I’d trawled Morpuss’s website and played the games (I struggled to even think about which option I’d go for). Eventually I struck lucky and was granted access by NetGalley to read this before publication. All I had to do was write my honest thoughts. That sounds straightforward, but having just finished Five Minds my mind seems incapable of coherent thought!

So, let’s look at what we are told beforehand…

Five Minds is set in an alternate future. In an attempt to control the Earth’s growing population lifespans are carefully monitored, and people are made to choose their life at seventeen. Some become workers…they are educated for the next five years and then take their chance as to what comes next. Some become andis…their minds are uploaded into a body requiring little physical maintenance. They are granted a lifespan of eighty years. A few become hedonists. This group have wealth and are granted free choice…but they die at forty-two. The last group are, perhaps, the hardest to understand. The schizos. Five minds are merged in one body, each having control of it for a four hour period in the day. Each mind is granted a lifespan of twenty-five years, and the host can be updated regularly. Their life ends after the fifth mind has had their twenty-five years.

Our focus is on one schizo group, or commune. Alex, Dan, Kate, Sierra and Mike have been together for some time. They regularly compete in the Death Parks, underground competitions allowing people to try and win additional time. When Kate is offered the chance to win an obscene amount of life, she takes it. Unfortunately, it results in one of their group disappearing. No one seems to know what’s happened, but all too quickly it becomes apparent that someone does…and until this person is caught, the commune is at risk.

The concept of a group under threat isn’t new. But the idea that the murderer could well be one of the minds within the commune lends it a chilling feel. As soon as the murder element comes to the fore it becomes a very different style of book to read. I was gripped, and found myself wholly immersed in the story as I tried to work out who was behind it and how – or if – they would succeed.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and Viper books for letting me read this early, and thank you to Guy Morpuss for a fascinating debut that makes me wonder what on earth could come next.

 

‘That Weekend’ – Kara Thomas

That Weekend hooked me from the outset…Claire wakes up, bloodied, in a wood, with no recollection of recent days. She is rescued, taken to hospital and we immediately wonder what happened. It’s clear she has suffered, but the fragments of memory she has of the night suggest there is more to this. Of course there is!

Claire was with her best friends, Kat and Jesse. They are nowhere to be found, and soon things head into what feels like a fairly typical mystery. The FBI are called to search…wealthy family are desperate for news, and the media whip up a frenzy to suggest Claire knows more than she lets on.

Before long we are getting flashbacks so we learn a little more of the dynamic between these three, and what might have happened. The book is split into clearly defined sections and – at least initially – we are led into fraught scenarios, desperate to piece things together.

I found it quite frustrating to be in the position of not knowing more than Claire, waiting to learn what had happened.

There were so many possibilities, and I think I was convinced of the guilt of at least three characters. The truth was more complex than I imagined, and though this was interesting it did feel somewhat skimmed over in order to move the story on. However, it was a great story with characters who were easy to empathise with, even if they weren’t particularly likeable..

 

‘The Thursday Murder Club’ – Richard Osman

The Thursday Murder Club are a group of four older friends who, thanks to a determination to keep their minds in tip-top shape, have a weekly meeting to mull over old police cases. They have to call themselves the Japanese Opera group so nobody disturbs them, but they are a hoot.
Elizabeth is, without a doubt, their leader. Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim may all be getting on in years, but they have a glorious dogged determination (perhaps, bloody-mindedness) to get to the bottom of crimes unsolved. They use their resources – not always legal – to investigate.
When the body of a local developer is found in the kitchen of his home, the police are keen to know what has happened…but The Thursday Murder Club have taken it upon themselves to also try and work out what happened.
Watching this group run rings round the police as they unearth secrets was great fun. Of course it might not be wholly plausible, but it was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.
As the story progressed it became clear there was a lot more going on than we’d been told initially. There are a series of mysteries, some stretching back years, and it was fascinating to see how the group and the police put their heads together to solve the various strands.
A very pleasant surprise, and I am already looking forward to reading the second. I’m pretty sure that now the group is established, the murder element will move to the fore and be more of a feature. I can’t wait!

 

‘The Family Tree’ – Steph Mullin

Sending off your DNA and learning you were adopted would be a shock for anyone. But when you’re contacted by the FBI because your DNA matches someone in their files…that would haunt you.

Liz is our main character here, and when she gets this news she is – understandably – reeling. She wants answers about her family and, of course, we want to know what the connection is.

What Liz gets told is that her DNA is a match for the person they think is the Tri-State killer, a person of interest for over forty years. He takes pairs of young women, keeps them for nine months and then kills them. According to the FBI the results hint strongly at a link between Liz’s family and this person.

Getting to know someone you’ve only just met is tough at the best of times. Knowing you were adopted because your mother was a drug addict makes it harder to ask questions. When you suspect your kindly new uncle might be responsible for over twenty murders…what do you do?

There were moments in this that were genuinely terrifying. Reading about the girls taken leant a chilling personal element to the story…and I was ready for all manner of bizarre occurrences to allow this to play out.

What I wasn’t remotely prepared for was the ending! Talk about a surprise. That creeping ominous sense that this was not over had the hairs on the back of my neck prickling…

I’m hugely grateful to NetGalley for granting me access to this before publication.

 

‘Exit’ – Belinda Bauer

A cleverly plotted mystery that had me scratching my head at regular intervals, and smiling by the end. Given the subject matter, that’s no mean feat.

Within Exit there’s a large cast of characters, all of whom are pertinent to the story though it’s not always clear how. Stick with it though as all is revealed.

Our primary focus is the pensioner Felix Pink, a rather staid man who has a good heart but who – after the deaths of his son and wife – has lost his way. Partly to alleviate the suffering of others, and out of a desire to do good, Felix has signed up to be an exiteer. A curious idea, but this is a group of people who go to sit with someone who is terminally ill and wants to commit suicide in order to oversee their exit from this world to ensure there are no legal implications for family members. Whatever your view of this practice, I was captivated by this story the moment Felix and new girl Amanda end up on a job with the wrong man dead. What went wrong?

The investigation into this was great fun to follow. From Felix’s panic over the implications of breaking the law and the mundane matters of who would look after his dog when the police came to take him away to the much darker reasoning behind who might be responsible for the set-up I was desperate to find out exactly what had happened. Characters who seemed good were not; characters who I doubted were very much more positive than I’d considered. Throughout, I was guessing as to who was behind this obvious set-up and getting it very wrong.

Felix was a character it was hard not to warm to. His developing relationship with Skipper (the man they didn’t manage to kill) was heart-warming, and there were so many little scenes within this to love. Our final image of Felix waving Skipper off lent a lovely circularity to the book and I was quite in awe at the level of plotting that must have gone into the creation of this novel.

My only question after finishing the audiobook was about the slip…what did Calvin do?

 

‘The Searcher’ – Tana French

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this prior to publication. A very different, slower-paced, read to those by French that I’ve read before but it has a curious charm. It took me a while to attune myself to its rhythms, but once caught up it was hard to not want to learn more.

Our main character, Cal, is an American ex-cop who’s moved to a remote Irish village. He wants a peaceful life, but finds himself caught up in a situation he can’t walk away from.

Young Trey comes from a local family not known of for their good decisions. Trey’s brother went missing earlier in the year, and Cal is curious enough to do some searching. Of course he gets himself caught up in some strange shenanigans, and those around him harbour a few secrets of their own.

We do get answers, though not quite what we expected. Cal makes some curious decisions and in spite of the bleak subject, there were some positives to this. Rural idyll it might not be, but it certainly showed a charm of its own…

‘Innocent’ – Erin Kinsley

A book with so many shades of grey it really was hard to know where this was going to end.

Our story begins at a lavish summer wedding celebration. Our focus is on the guests, one of whom is a well-known celebrity. Tris Hart is the presenter of some familiar shows, and something of a local hero in Sterndale, the quiet town he lives in with his second wife, Izzy, and their young daughter. We see Tris playing his role well during the evening celebrations, and there is a little concern when he is accosted by someone he knows who wants to discuss their past. Next thing we know Tris is found injured near the hotel pool and is rushed to hospital where he’s taken to intensive care.

From the outset we know we’re dealing with a story that is about finding out who tried to kill Tris. During the course of the investigation we learn some of the secrets that the people of Sterndale have been hiding. It seems there are many with something they would rather people didn’t find out, and as the police dig deeper we start to build our own picture.

We do get our answers, but there’s a lot of misdirection and extra detail to burrow through in order to learn our truth. The sheer size of the cast, and the number of strands involved, did lessen the impact slightly for me but I enjoyed the fact that we built up a fuller picture of our flawed main character and came to understand them better as details were revealed.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this prior to publication in exchange for my honest opinion.

 

‘The Octopus’ – Tess Little

 

The Octopus is one of those novels that I have to say felt elusive as I was reading. I’m grateful to the publishers and NetGalley for letting me read it before publication, but having just finished it my thoughts are muddled to say the least.

My overwhelming thoughts after finishing this focus on the character of Richard. This is the character who is found dead the morning after his fiftieth birthday, seemingly of a drug overdose, where only eight people were in attendance. One of them must have been responsible, but who? As we learn more about Richard and his character, I think I can safely say every single one of them had reason to want the guy dead. He was a bully, lauded by Hollywood but vile to everyone around him unless they danced to his tune. Parallels with some real-life characters are clear, and while we are told his childhood was not particularly happy it doesn’t garner enough sympathy to excuse his general unpleasantness.

The construction of this book kept us somewhat in the dark regarding the true nature of the character of Richard. We begin with the party and the slow introduction to the people invited. We see things primarily through the eyes of Elspeth, Richard’s ex-wife, but it isn’t long before we start to realise that she has her own complicated story – and this is certainly intriguing, but we’re made to wait for it.

The party scene is elaborate, allowing us the chance to see how Richard interacts with each of the characters. Also introduced at the party is the character of Persephone, Richard’s pet octopus, who seems to represent his desire for control over others. The way he admires her and flaunts her to others exemplifies his attitude to those in his life. At one point Elspeth considers the octopus could have been the killer – what happens to this creature later in the novel certainly made me consider the cost to all involved of their relationships with this odious man.

This is a crime that does get solved, but in the process we uncover other more unsettling crimes that have been overlooked, ignored and even enabled by the reluctance of others to voice their concerns.

The Octopus is a book that did not leave me with many positive feelings at the end. I found it absorbing, but it was certainly not one I could say I enjoyed as it made me so angry at times.

 

Describing this as a thrilling read is something of a misnomer, but it is most certainly the kind of clever story that reveals itself slowly and which had me hooked from the outset.

We’re told that a mathematician, Grant McAllister, published an article that explored a clear set of rules to which detective stories must adhere. Based on this idea he published a book called The White Murders, a series of seven short stories examining these theories, but has not written anything since. A recluse, living on a remote Mediterranean island, so it is naturally exciting to learn that an editor is visiting Mr McAllister with the view to publishing a new copy of his work.

Our editor, Julia Hart, is the character who frames this story. We’re told she is sent to help Mr McAllister to edit his work so she reads each story aloud to him before they discuss it. The repetitive structure to this shouldn’t work, but it does…and is central to the success of The Eighth Detective.

What we learn after the first story reading is that each of these seven stories includes some unusual detail. It doesn’t necessarily affect the story, but there is something in each that seems incongruous- and we know it’s important, though we’re not sure to what.

As we listen to the individual stories and Julia’s discussion of them with the author, it is clear that each inconsistency is a clue. I was desperate to work this out and found myself eagerly taking apart each of the stories within the story to try and establish which element had been altered.

I was expecting something odd – and we can tell from quite early on that the title of the book is important (both the fictional book and the book we’re reading) – but I felt like the author had performed an amazing sleight of hand when we finally had the reveal.

This was a clever book, and one which would certainly stand up to rereading and closer examination. I enjoyed it immensely and even though some of the coincidences/tricks used were not wholly plausible and I would have liked to see the characters within our present story fleshed out a little more fully, I enjoyed this so much it has to be a five star rating.

I’m very grateful to the publishers, Michael Joseph, and NetGalley for letting me offer my thoughts on this prior to publication and I will certainly be getting my own copy of it to reread in the not too distant future.

‘Dark Waters’ – G.R. Halliday

 

In our second encounter with Detective Kennedy we have another puzzling crime, that goes beyond the worst thing you can imagine, and we learn a little more about this character and her backstory.

This took a little time to come together as the strands were so varied. Two mutilated bodies are found, and nobody can be sure if they’re linked, but the methods used on both bodies is eerily similar. Alongside this, we have a young woman (Annabelle) visiting the Highlands who is caught in a horrific crash when she swerved to avoid a young girl on the road. There’s also Scott, a Canadian tourist, who gets scared by some hostile behaviour towards him and then he meets a similarly awful fate which is linked to the mysterious appearance of a young girl immediately beforehand.

For a long time we switch between Annabelle’s experience waking up chained in a room and the investigation being led by Monica Kennedy. This lends a disconcerting quality to the book, where things take a long time to really get going. We know every detail will be relevant but there was almost a ‘real time’ quality to this that meant things didn’t happen at an implausibly rapid pace.

This is not one for the squeamish, and I was appalled at the levels of depravity shown by some of the characters in the book. Once again, I found myself curious to get more information about Detective Kennedy and what motivated her – though the little glimpses we get are certainly developing my idea of a wonderfully complex character.

A gritty read, but well worth it. Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication in exchange for my honest thoughts.