DICK FRANCIS - SLAY RIDE (1970)

Synopsis/blurb...

David Cleveland is looking forward to Norway. A change of scenery, an old friend and a straight forward looking case. An English jockey has gone missing, and so have the racecourse takings. It all looks so simple until a dead body turns up... unannounced.

The racecourse Committee fields questions like some Norwegian Politburo and the only answers Cleveland gets are violent ones... from a gang of professional killers.

So, with maverick Marxist Erik Lind playing minder, he constructs a trap for his would-be assailants... with himself as bait.

'Francis at his best... with plot and character beautifully interwoven, sex and violence, revelation and mystery superbly blended'  - Sporting Life

Years ago I hoovered up a load of Dick Francis books from a local charity shop. I had visions of reading them all - 50-odd. At the time, I had a passing interest in horse-racing and most (all maybe) of his books are immersed in this world. Well in the eight years since, I've read exactly two! Dead Cert and Pursuit were both enjoyed in 2013.

Eight years on my interest in horse racing has waned, but I did enjoy this book.

Norway, racing, a missing jockey and a concerned wife, stolen money, an investigator and an investigation, attempts on life of said investigator, a near drowning and an escape, a continued pursuit of answers, and a fresh impetus to the case when the corpse of the jockey is discovered. Some of the action and events take place back in England as well.

A month of two on, a lot of the details have vanished from the memory banks, but I can recall liking the main character, David Cleveland. He tries to do his best for the missing man's wife and she has his sympathy. I liked how a misunderstanding with a neighbour was ironed out and a friendship formed and I especially liked his dogged persistence in getting answers for himself and the reader!

Great setting. I never knew that they had horse racing in Norway and that British and Irish jockeys travelled to compete over there. Bearing in mind this was published in 1970, I wonder if it is still a thing today.

The pace is not full on pedal to metal, but neither does it hang about. There are plenty of characters we meet along the way, though not so many we lose track of them. The story does have some interesting twists before the outcome, and they were far from anything I could have predicted at the outset. 

The Sporting Life quote on my book blurb nails it - 'plot and character beautifully interwoven, sex and violence, revelation and mystery superbly blended'

Overall I really enjoyed it. So three down - 40-something to go. 

4 from 5 

Read - December, 2021

Published - 1970

Page count - 304

Source - owned copy

Format - paperback

STEPHEN BENTLEY - DILEMMA (2018)

Synopsis/blurb...

When you are undercover, many want to kill you.

Sicilian Mafia, Thai Mafia, even the CIA, they all want you dead.

Join undercover cop Regan in this emotion-packed roller coaster of a thriller.

Steve Regan is back and this time he’s alone and undercover in a seedy area of Thailand on the trail of a Texan expatriate, Les Watkins, the biggest drug smuggler in South East Asia.

Using himself as the bait, Regan attempts to score a $50,000 deal with the Thai mafia to get closer to his target.

As he finds himself embroiled deeper into the operation, Regan suspects Watkins may be connected to Regan's nemesis, ruthless Mafia boss Carlo Vitale, who has fled the United States following a triple bombing and assassination of three crime family heads.

Besides staying alive, Regan has other problems when he suddenly finds himself facing the worst dilemma an undercover cop can face.

Dilemma is an edgy, suspenseful tale with twists and turns plus a sprinkle of romance.

Though Book 3 in the Steve Regan Undercover Cop series, it can be read as a standalone book.

If you are a Reacher or Tom Clancy fan, this book is for you.

I think it might be a bit of a stretch comparing this to Lee Child's Jack Reacher books. At best, it was tolerable, even ok, but by no means amazing or memorable.

The main character is Steve Regan, an undercover cop. Bentley has written 3 or 4 books with Regan as his main protagonist and its a series I've come at ass-backwards. Rivers of Blood which follows this was enjoyed back in September. In Dilemma we switch further back in time to Regan in Thailand trying to set up a sting on some American mafia-types.

Undercover work, Thailand, the sex trade, drug deals, mafia involvement, police corruption, romance, an encounter with an old adversary,  danger, violence, close scrapes, death, revenge and new beginnings.

Lots going on. Not the worst book I've ever listened to, but as before the narrator had a tough time with the different accents. Most of them come across as fake and exagerrated, like a 70s third rate stand-up comedian telling unfunny dated jokes in a working man's club. Maybe I'm being over-critical. If the dialogue has been enunciated in his normal English accent, I'd have been picking fault at that as well.

The storyline was ok, if a little basic and predictable. Good guy vs bad guys. Regan is a defender of law and order, women's virtue and he loves his mum. He doesn't like people badmouthing the bar girls and his mama-san. He has frequent doubts over his mission and fears the temptation of going rogue. He just comes across as a little bit two-dimensional and by extension a little bit unbelievable. Most of the other characters are cut from the same cloth.   

Read better, read worse. An okay filler book which marked time before something a bit more satisfying.

3 from 5

Read - (listened to) February, 2022

Published - 2018

Page count - 144 (3 hrs 52 mins)

Source - Audiobooks.com freebie    

Format - Audible

JASON BEECH - KEEP THE MOTOR RUNNING (2022)

 

Synopsis/blurb ...

A stolen bag. A murderous boyfriend. A chase across New Jersey. This is one screw-up she's determined to escape.

Tempest Stanley lives a life controlled by her drug-dealing boyfriend, in a crummy house squeezed onto a New Jersey jughandle. The lover puts his thumb on the Englishwoman’s visions of American thrust and glamor - until he hits her. Furious, she bursts free with a haul of his product and jumps into her lovely neighbor’s car one hot morning.

The man next door is sympathetic, but he’s a family man, and does not want to get involved. But Tempest is desperate. Her ex is a sociopath, with blood on his shirt and guns all over the house ready for use at a moment’s notice. This is her chance to escape, to prove her family back home wrong, to live life. And she cannot help but rope the only man she trusts into her escapade.

Tempest must play a game of cat and mouse on the streets and highways of New Jersey as the drug dealer hunts them for the kill, and her trust in humanity is tested to the limit.

Keep the Motor Running is a fast-paced chase novel, violent, funny, noirish, and full of heart. Can Tempest make it back to England with her life intact and the cash to live it?

A busy book with events (unless my memory is actually worse than I think it is) pretty much taking place over the course of a day. (Apart from the bit at the very end.)

A drug dealer, Czech Downes pushes his woman, Tempest Stanley too far and she heads for the hills (proverbially speaking) along with a bag full of his cash and product, unwittingly involving her neighbour, Karl Lankester in her break for freedom.

What follows is Tempest's bid to cut free from Czech's control and convert drugs to cash; Czech's attempts to recover it, put Tempest in her place and keep his crew of dealers in line, without alerting his higher-ups and Karl's attempts to land a job, avoid upsetting his wife (not easy with an interfering mother-in-law), and maybe get a cut of the score himself, which will enable him to stave off his creditors and keep his motor running.

Dark and light, at times bleak (domestic violence is never funny) and by turn humorous (eg. an encounter at a filling station which provides some unwanted attention). Plenty of violence and action and victims - both deserving and innocent.)

Great characters, each with their own agenda and goals. Interesting dynamics at play particularly between Tempest and Karl. One minute they're on the same page and sharing a dream of a brighter future, albeit separately. The next, they're at each other's throats on the next move to make.

A madcap road trip of a book, an underdog tale, a tale of revenge and payback, a novel populated by the oppressed and those down on their lucks but not yet totally defeated.

Pace, story, character, setting and outcome. All ticks in the box.

4.5 from 5

I've put off reading Jason Beech for too long. I hope to correct that oversight soon with another one of his books. Keep the Motor Running is his fifth novel (I think.) 

  

Read - January, 2022

Published - 2022

Page count - 278

Source - review copy from Book Sirens

Format - Kindle

SEAN O'LEARY - GOING ALL THE WAY (2021)

Synopsis/blurb...

Travis is the night manager at the Cross Motel in Sydney’s notorious late-night district, Kings Cross. His life takes a drastic turn after a sex worker is brutally murdered on his shift.

Having broken up with his girlfriend and lost his dream of becoming a professional AFL player, Travis's life is in shambles. With the police breathing down his neck and his ex-girlfriend asking him to find her missing partner, Travis has got his plate full, and more.

His search takes him to Melbourne, where he also has to find two missing girls. Travis realizes there's only one way out: find the people responsible and bring them to justice. But can he make it out alive?

Lean, mean, down and dirty and my kind of book. 

A dingy motel and a dead prostitute and our main character - the night manager, Travis Whyte finds himself jobless and possibly in the crosshairs of a killer. Unless he turns the tables and finds him first. Chuck in a bit of aggro from the cops as well.

A bent cop - Olsen; missing people - Katya, Perry and Billy; a PI gig; another dead body - Billy; organised crime connections and shady lawyers; a new job - albeit somewhat temporary; an ex-girlfriend - Ahn; a new woman in his life - Babus; drug connections; nightclubs; tourist abductions; Russian crims; a dead protege - Paul; Sydney; Melbourne; football; backstory; a ruined career; family; an investigation; a pursuit and a bloody climax.

I really liked the main character, Travis Whyte. He's no saint but he's on the side of the angels. I liked his independence and his loyalty to his friends. I liked the quest for justice of whatever kind was available. He had the option of turning away from the hunt for the killer and having a relatively sane, ordered life but didn't have it in him to select the easy option. I think I was frustrated temporarily by him with this choice, but if there's one thing about making a character believable it's got to be the old adage - to thine own self be true. Travis couldn't have gone down any other road. 

Fast-paced, sleazy, violent. O'Leary doesn't just show you the seedy sights of two of Australia's most famous cities, he drags you down into the gutter along with the losers, deadbeats and addicts that populate this engrossing tale. I needed a bath with a wire brush and Dettol once I was done with this one.

4.5 from 5

Excellent narration from Dan Schaumann, which after some initial reservations really grew on me as the tale unfolded.

Sean O'Leary's Wonderland was enjoyed recently. His next collection - Tokyo Jazz and Other Stories will be devoured soon. 

Read - (listened to) January, 2022

Published - 2021

Page count - 260 (4 hrs 30 mins)

Source - review copy from author

Format - Audible

ADAM MAXWELL - ROCKDOWN IN LOCKDOWN (2022)

 

Synopsis/blurb...

Violet Winters was a master criminal. A one-woman crimewave. Until lockdown happened. Now she’s stuck in the house catching up on box sets and ordering crap off the internet.

And then she finds out about The Lakehouse. A former rehab facility, the residents have been thrown out and replaced with a roll-call of some of the most dangerously stupid celebrities in this hemisphere all indulging in a torrent of excess while the rest of the world cowers in their beds.

And that doesn’t sit well with Violet.

At the centre of the The Lakehouse is a vault and inside… the combined riches of every one of these over-privileged idiots. Violet hatches a cunning plan to pull off an audacious robbery and begins by planting a man on the inside.

But when does anything ever go to plan?

With a social media starlet hell-bent on revealing Violet’s identity to her millions of followers and a deranged MMA fighter on their trail things rapidly go from bad to worse.

If she can pull off the world’s only socially-distanced heist, it will be the stuff of legend.

If she can’t she might very well end up floating face-down in the lake.

Rockdown in Lockdown is the latest book in the Kilchester series. It mixes high-octane heist shenanigans with sharp, surreal wit.

Rockdown in Lockdown was a fast-paced, fun-filled romp, just right to lift a dose of the January blues. It's Adam Maxwell's latest Kilchester caper and having enjoyed three previous entries in the series I had high hopes for this one.

Our heist is targeted at an exclusive, underwater facility currently host to a sheltering cabal of the rich and famous. Lucas is our man undercover; Zoe, our technology wiz with drones and gadgets. Violet is the ringmaster and Katy the muscle. Barry is... err, Barry (Ok, I forget his role.) The victims of the crime are unlikable, which makes it a lot easier to side with our band of well-meaning villains. Dello, the social media queen is the nasty one in the piece. Shes uses everyone in her orbit. Hagan, an MMA champion is her latest cuckold. His encounter with Katie is pivotal and epic.

Maxwell also touches on some of the more annoying traits experienced in lockdown .... hoarding, shortages, selfishness, isolation and mental health. Here the selfish get their comeuppance eventually, though not without a few scares and setbacks along the way. Loneliness is overcome by friendship and support and a strong sense of camaraderie among our Kilchester crew of Violet, Zoe, Katie, Barry and Lucas. The author also manages to have some fun at the ridiculousness of celebrity culture and the obsession with social media, likes and popularity.

Lots to like. Humour, action, a catch-up with familiar characters, a sense of topicality and a really entertaining and slightly different from the usual heist. 

4 from 5

Adam Maxwell has been enjoyed before.      

Come on Steal the Noise (2019)
Kill it with Fire (2018)
The Dali Deception (2016) 
The Defective Detective: Murder on the Links (2011)
Dial M for Monkey (2006)

Read - January, 2022

Published - 2022

Page count - 218

Source - review copy from author

Format - Kindle

2 BY PETER TURNBULL

A couple from an untried author, Peter Turnbull and a series which goes back to the 80s and has been likened to Ed McBain's work. Gotta be good hasn't it?

Fantastic Fiction tells me that Peter Turnbull has written over thirty novels in his writing career. (Actually he's had 47 titles (published.) 

His debut was Deep and Crisp and Even (1981). This was the first in the 10 book long P Division series of which Fair Friday and Big Money are #3 and 4.

He has a twenty-five book long series featuring Hennessey and Yellich as well as another series and half a dozen standalone novels. 

It's strange that with this fantastic body of work behind him, I had never actually heard of him until recently.

Fair Friday (1983)

Bill McGarrigle was about to join the ranks of the unemployed. He would have done if he had not been brutally beaten up in a Glasgow back alley.

Before he died, he had given the men of P Division enough to go on to start a full murder investigation. But it was the annual summer holiday - and the heat was bringing all the rats out of their holes with a vengeance...

PETER TURNBULL

'Scotland's answer to Ed McBain' TLS

'This author is adding cubits to the British police procedural with each new book' OBSERVER

Big Money (1984)

The Post Office Raid was a criminal's dream - and a policeman's nightmare. The rovvers were a superbly professional team, the job went like clockwork, and the police had virtually nothing to go on. But with big money at stake, the officers at P Division knew they would be working a twenty-six hour day until they cracked the case. Their only clue was related to an unsolved mystery already two years old. Yet the truth was frighteningly close to home...

'Another brilliant novel of police procedure... confirms Peter Turnbull is amongst the foremost thriller writer' GRIMSBY EVENING TELEGRAPH

'Procedurals can hardly come more authentic' SUNDAY TIMES

J. B. STEVENS - THIS WILL NOT END WELL (2021)

Synopsis/blurb...

A collection of violent, exciting, and funny short stories. All of these stories were featured in prestigious magazines.

"In This Will Not End Well, J.B. Stevens achieves what so many crime fiction writers aspire to do: expertly mixing grit and humor and violence into something close to grace.”

—Nick Kolakowski, author of “Love & Bullets”

A smattering of short stories from author J. B. Stevens which served as a decent warm-up for his longer collection - A Therapeutic Death (dropping 4th February from Shotgun Honey)

We had ...

The Airport Hilton...

A bar, a grifter and a mark. Worth the price of admission on it's own (Ok, ignore the fact that the e-book was free). A cracker of a tale. Definitely an Eric Garcia/Matchstick Men vibe (see also film of the same name starring Nicolas Cage - both are excellent).

 

The Fighting Squid...

'...a chubby Mark Ruffalo made some poor choices at the aquarium' 

The Tooth Fairy Deserves Peace... 

Easter Bunny, Sasquatch, unicorn horn powder, eleves, Tinkerbell and more of the same... in truth not my vibe TBH

Bobo and the Knife...

Short, sharp, violent - a knife, a circus, a dead clown, the end

A Good Friend...

A bar, man meets woman. 

She laughed and pulled Danny close. He felt the heat of her body. For the second time that evening, they forgot the pain of being alive.

Things aren't quite what they seem.

I downloaded this twice as I was hunting for a refresher on the stories to cobble together this micro-review and on the second occasion the opening story had changed from The Airport Hilton to A Good Friend. Both were the standouts in their own versions of the collection, both gave off a similar vibe of cons and marks which is one of my favourite tropes in the genre.

Overall I enjoyed this taster offering or at least 3 out of 4 of them (or 4 out of 5). 

I would say I'm looking forward to A Therapeutic Death from the author, only I've subsequently read and enjoyed it prior to assembling this piece. Watch this space. 

J. B. Stevens knows what he's doing with his stories. 

4 from 5  

Read - January, 2022

Published - 2021

Page count - 30 (maybe 40)

Source - copy from author's website

Format - Kindle