Category: Mystery

‘Such Pretty Things’ – Lisa Heathfield

Heathfield’s adult debut is definitely in the vein of Henry James, and the emphasis on creepy dolls is enough to send chills down my spine. It offers thrills aplenty and yet didn’t always work for me.

After an accident involving their mother, Cara and her brother Stephen are sent to live with their aunt and uncle. They’ve never met, and yet are thrust into the bosom of their mother’s childhood home. Things are different, and though each looks forward to the experience it soon becomes clear that things will not go as either side hoped.

A rather languid start sets up the oppressive atmosphere in the new home. Cara and Stephen are expected to follow their aunt’s rules. Though she desperately wants them, nothing prepares her for the reality of children. The noise, the capriciousness and the conflict from someone trying to assert their own will on a situation. They never meet their uncle, but his presence is felt through the rules enforced.

Cara fights their new reality. She becomes increasingly upset. Stephen, desperate for a mother’s love, is more willing to adapt his behaviour.

As the children adjust to their new home we are given details that indicate that their aunt is struggling with her mental health after suffering with the miscarriages/deaths of her five pregnancies.

After what seems like a long time, we start to see things unravel in spectacular fashion. Genuinely creepy at this point, and it would have been great to have seen this element introduced earlier/perhaps offering a little more background to their lives. By the time we’re privy to what’s happening, it’s too late to do anything other than look on in horror and wonder how such a thing could happen without anyone being alerted to the oddness of the situation.

Thanks to NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication.

 

‘The Last House on Needless Street’ – Catriona Ward

Immediate response on finishing…wow! Not at all what I expected when I picked it up. Wrong-footed, completely, but I like that. Fascinating subject, encouraging me to feel empathy for characters I was resistant to feel positively towards. Hard to review without giving details away…highly recommended.
I’d seen some cracking reviews of The Last House on Needless Street, and there is a definite buzz developing about this book. Sometimes, that puts pressure on a book to live up to your expectations…but in this case, I think it surpassed all thoughts I had about it.
We’re told little about the story. It’s a story about a serial killer, with part of the story narrated by Olivia who happens to be a cat. Olivia lives with Ted, a man who harbours secrets and who happens to live near a lake where a young girl disappeared years earlier. The young girl’s sister, Dee, is convinced that someone knows more about her sister’s disappearance than was revealed at the time. Thanks to her own investigations, she ends up moving next door to Ted, who she thinks is key to discovering the truth.
From the opening pages it’s clear we’re dealing with some characters who are keeping secrets. I was convinced that we were dealing with something quite straightforward…and I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Within a short space of time I found myself captivated by what I was reading. At times, I found myself second-guessing events and desperate for answers as things didn’t go as I expected. As the story developed and we learned further details I found myself developing a highly emotional reaction. It was all too apparent that things were not at all as they seemed.
I really did not expect to have such a sensitive portrayal of such a dark and disturbing subject. This was masterfully presented, and informative in a way that cannot be underestimated. As soon as I’d finished I found myself wishing desperately to be in the enviable position of starting the book again with no idea of what I was about to encounter. I’m insanely jealous of everyone who gets to pick this up for the first time, and I can’t wait to discuss this with others.

 

‘Lost in the Never Woods’ – Aiden Thomas

 

Lost in the Never Woods takes something we see as familiar and offers us a distorted version of that world.

It’s been years since Wendy Darling and her brothers went missing in the woods near their home. Wendy returned, with no memory of what happened in the time she was away, and since then she experiences crippling anxiety whenever she thinks of the woods.

A fairly regular teen, Wendy volunteers at the local hospital. She loves telling stories to the kids, and her stories often feature the irrepressible Peter Pan and tales of his daring. Recently she’s been obsessively drawing images of a young boy, Peter, and a tree.

On her way home one night Wendy almost runs over a boy. There’s an immediate attraction on her part…and when it’s clear that he knows her name, Wendy begins to think that perhaps Peter Pan is not the boy of her dreams. He exists, and he says he needs her help.

Children are going missing and Peter needs Wendy.

What follows is strange.

Slowly, Wendy and Peter risk everything in their quest to find the missing children and restore order to Peter’s Neverland.

This is a coming of age story with a pinch of magic. For those who dream…

‘The Lamplighters’ – Emma Stonex

The Mystery of Flannan Isle is a poem that has always unsettled me. The idea of three men disappearing from a locked lighthouse, a table laid for an uneaten meal and two stopped clocks is unnerving. The remoteness of the lighthouse setting and the effect of such enforced loneliness seems the perfect make-up for something tragic. The knowledge that what happened might never be known means the story is ripe for imagining.

In The LampLighters Emma Stonex takes the bare bones of this story, transposes them to a remote Cornish setting and goes to town in allowing us to consider what might have taken place.

The mystery is definitely one you want answered, but (rather surprisingly) I’m not at all disappointed by the ambiguity of the ending. A myriad of possibilities are offered, all plausible, and it seems fitting that we remain unsure right to the end.

Stonex splits the narrative between the view of the keepers and their partners. We are given an insight into their lives before this unexplained tragedy and the effect of such an experience on those left behind. We learn the minutiae of life in such a remote setting, and the routines that are adopted to make such a life bearable. Along the way we also learn some less palatable truths about each of those involved in this story.

I end the story no closer to knowing what happened, but I found myself caught up in its telling. Thanks to NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication.

 

‘Amari and the Night Brothers’ – B.B. Alston

Amari and the Night Brothers is a book I’ve seen a few reviews on in the last few weeks, and though it’s firmly marketed as middle grade it will appeal to older readers too.

Our main character is Amari Peters, a young girl all too used to being judged because she comes from the wrong side of town. Her brother went missing and nobody has any idea whether he is alive or not, but Amari firmly believes that he was part of a secret organisation.

With our character set up, it doesn’t take long before we’re learning – along with Amari – of the existence of a whole new world. In this world, the supernatural and human co-exist and nobody has to hide their special skills.

Thanks to her brother Amari is offered a place at the summer camp run by the Bureau. Amari sees this as an opportunity to finally learn the truth about her brother-but first she has to master the challenges set if she is going to succeed in her mission to become a junior agent.

Learning about the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs at the same time as Amari was great fun. There was – I have to say – a very definite sense of being able to predict the general setting and character details, but though there was a sense of familiarity to the general details, there was a freshness to the specifics that completely won me over.

Amari is a quietly courageous character, a good friend and determined to see the best in people. She makes mistakes, but learns from them. She wants to help others and she has some of the best experiences (though they are pretty terrifying when you read them).

Having bought this for myself, I’ve just bought a physical copy to share with students in school and it’s on the list of bedtime stories to share with my ten year old. Loved it!

 

‘Last One to Die’ – Cynthia Murphy

When Niamh heads to London for a summer drama programme she could not have imagined the events that she’d get caught up in.

Upon her arrival at the rather grotty hostel she’s due to stay in, a young woman asks if she’ll swap rooms. Niamh does. Later that night the girl in her original room is killed. On her first day, a student tries to befriend her. That night, she’s attacked. And so begins a pattern of accidents/attacks…their one common strand is that the girls all look like Niamh.

Naturally, this is a creepy situation. Unlike most, Niamh doesn’t head home the moment these weird things happen – instead, she tries to get on with her course and the work placement at a Victorian museum.

Without giving anything away, what Niamh uncovers is a story that started a long time ago. In the cold light of day, it’s all preposterous…but you can (with a little will) overlook this as you’re reading.

Focusing on Niamh’s perspective means we don’t get to join all the dots quite in time. Some elements really do stretch the bounds of credibility, and our resolution felt like a bit of a damp squib after a bold start.

 

‘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 Lost Village’ – Camilla Sten

Finishing this with the wind whistling in the woods outside my home, I confess to feeling more than a little jittery at the thought of this story.

The Lost Village focuses on a mystery that has puzzled people for years…a village where all 900 inhabitants mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace of their presence. The only person found when someone later entered the village was a young baby. A grisly scene met the people who rescued the baby – the body of a woman who had been stoned to death in the village square. Of course, people want to know what happened.

In the present day we have filmmaker Alice whose grandmother used to live in the village. She received letters from her family when she first moved, but had no idea what happened to them. She shared stories about village life with Alice, so this is very much a personal journey.

This personal involvement leads to what can best be described as a blinkered passion. Alice has spent years dreaming of making a film about the village and documenting what happened. She manages to track down the daughter of the baby found in the village (this isn’t a spoiler, though this fact isn’t shared with all the cast who journey to the village to shoot material to secure backing for their film).

From the moment they arrive in the village, Alice and her crew sense something eerie about the place. Of course, their unease starts to grow and we’re never quite sure whether the mysterious noises and sightings are products of unsettled minds or something more threatening.

As the story progresses the growing unease is well-captured. When it becomes clear they are trapped in the village it doesn’t bode well. This claustrophobic sensation is increased as Sten cuts into our present story with the narrative of incidents in the village leading up to the disappearance. The threat is real…and once this is clearly established it became (for me) scarier but also enabled me to develop some empathy for the characters who I wasn’t unduly concerned about initially.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for giving me access to this prior to publication.

 

‘The Sanatorium’ – Sarah Pearse

A remote setting in the Swiss Alps sounds idyllic, but the trip Elin Warner takes to the luxury hotel sited there turns out to be anything but.

Elin is a detective. After a traumatic incident in the course of duty, Elin has been experiencing flashbacks to an incident in her childhood that resulted in the death of her much loved younger brother, Sam. She is struggling to function, and has taken time out of work. This has been the perfect opportunity to confront some of her demons…the visit to Switzerland is to celebrate the engagement of her older brother.

Upon arrival we sense conflict. Elin and her brother clearly have unresolved issues, and from other narrative accounts interspersed with Elin’s story we know that this hotel is not as pleasant as it seems.

The site of an old sanitorium, the history of the place is tinged with darkness. When an employee of the hotel goes missing it becomes worrying. When an avalanche occurs, leaving the staff and odd guests stranded, things take a more sinister turn. Then a second body is discovered and it’s fair to say all hell breaks loose.

Someone is playing a very dangerous game, determined to take their vengeance on someone for something they resent. We are given a number of options for possible suspects, but Elin throws herself into this investigation with reckless abandonment. All around her, people are injured or killed…but still she determines to play the hero and sort this out (because she has to make up for something she wishes she’d done a long time ago).

We do eventually see Elin get the satisfaction of solving this, but at what cost? The revelation seemed to be a jump just a little too far to feel fully plausible, and my lack of engagement with Elin herself made this hard to really feel overly happy about. Things seemed to be over, but then came that weird tagged-on ending suggesting that perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to accept everything the author had presented us with. I have my suspicions of the identity of the mysterious watcher in the carriage, but it seemed so at odds with everything else that I’m not sure what to make of it.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication. It had some high points, but felt just a little too jumbled to work effectively.

 

‘The Once and Future Witches’ – Alix E. Harrow

Once upon a time there were three sisters. They shared a bond like no other, but their father was wicked and turned them against one another. The elder sisters left, each feeling they had been wronged, leaving the younger alone with their father until she could take no more of his dominance. She runs, and finds her way to a new town.

The three Eastwood sisters – James juniper, Agnes Araminta and Beatrice Belladonna –  reunite very early on. They are very different characters, but they are united in their determination to have a world where they can be in control of their destiny. They want everything they are denied on account of their gender. So, how do they propose to get it? Through witchcraft.

This story explores attitudes to female emancipation and developing gender roles, mixed in with a fascinating account of practising witchcraft and magic.

Nobody in this is quite what they seem. Some of the elements of the book are fantastical to say the least, but I loved the three sisters and their respective struggles to live the life they choose.