ANDREW BARRETT - THE LIFT (2015)

Synopsis/blurb....

The Lift is a stand alone Eddie Collins short story of about 30 pages. 

CSI Eddie Collins embarks on another ordinary day. But the people he meets in a lift prove that you should never make assumptions, never let preconceptions sway your judgement. And never let down your guard.

If you like fast-paced crime thrillers with raw emotions and characters that reach out of the book and grab you by the throat, you’ll love Andrew Barrett’s Eddie Collins series.

My reading having dropped off a cliff the past couple of months, a short sharp injection was needed to try and spark some life back into me. Andrew Barrett's The Lift assisted in that aim.

Eddie Collins is a series character from Barrett, with four novels and a couple of shorter pieces featuring Eddie. Collins is a CSI and on his way to a high rise flat to collect some evidence. Two other characters, an older gentleman and a reluctant youth are his companions in the lift.

Inevitably the lift breaks down and our tale unfolds. Conflict is in the air.... tension, fear, a desire for justice, family, negotiation, a shared history and ultimately violence and an unforeseen outcome.

I did enjoy this one. There's a twist in the tale, which with stories of this nature is probably compulsory. Not that I enjoyed it any the less. I'll be reading more from Barrett with Eddie Collins in the future.

4 from 5

Andrew Barrett has his website here.

Read in June, 2018
Published  - 2015
Page count - 51
Source - purchased copy (probably a freebie)
Format - Kindle

JOHN MEAD - THE HANGING WOMEN (2018)

Synopsis/blurb.....

Jack Stevens discovers the bodies of two women, Philomena Blackstaff and Mary Walsh, tied together and hung by their ankles in a position resembling the symbol for treachery as depicted on tarot cards. Though retired and now wealthy, Stevens is an ex-sheriff and involves himself in the subsequent investigation.

As a result of Jack ‘stealing’ Philomena’s diary and his association with the Pinkerton detective agency, it is discovered that Mary Walsh worked undercover for the Pinkertons, investigating the Knights of Labour (the fastest growing workers’ rights movements in America of the late 1800’s). The women had been working together, tracing the man who was selling guns and dynamite to the more extremest factions of the workers movement. This led them to Ruby’s, a secret ‘nightclub for deviants’, where Stevens and Inspector O’Leary believe the pair fell foul of the man they were looking for, gang leader Joseph Mannheim.

With the May 4th Haymarket riots and bombings looming, Stevens must uncover the truth about The Hanging Women before it’s too late.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of historical mysteries but was pleasantly rewarded when taking a punt on this book from John Mead.

Set in mid-1880s Chicago, a couple of women are discovered strangled and hanging upside-down in the dock area. The man who discovers the bodies, Jack Stevens is an ex-lawman and our main character, as he effortlessly inserts himself into the investigation.

I quite enjoyed the investigation of the murders, with the back-drop of a period of social unrest in Chicago. We have the involvement of the Pinkertons, some competing criminal gangs, some rich and influential Chicagoan families and the growing influence of a worker's rights movement. I must admit, at times I was slightly confused by the number of characters introduced to the fray, with their rivalries and connections with each other. Most of them had history with Stevens or his wife, Martha.

Stevens himself is a larger than life character, at times more interested in his next glass of whisky, as he is in bringing the culprits to task. He's a borderline alcoholic, prone to blackouts and memory loss, unfaithful, fearless, intelligent, loyal and foolhardy. His past history as a lawman, earns him respect from the detective leading the investigation. Hostility with one of the Pinkerton agents involved in the case, also adds a bit of flavour to the mix. Not everyone is Jack's biggest fan. At times, just when you think Stevens is a lush and incapable of functioning properly, he surprises you with his insight and ability to acquire useful information. Not a man to be under estimated.

Plenty of drink, a dash of politics, family tensions, grief and loss, a bit of bible-thumping, a visit or two to a house of ill-repute, a jewel robbery, some inter-racial same gender exhibitionism, some cross-dressing and infidelity, a Russian lothario, inevitably some additional crimes and an increasing body count and a low-speed pursuit on horseback, before a climactic gunfight to rival that at the OK Corral. Lots to like.

Ticks in a lot of boxes and quite a quick read once I got into it.

The Hanging Women is John Mead's debut novel. I'd be interested in reading more from him in future, time allowing.

4 from 5

Read - June 2018
Published - 2018
Page count - 248
Source - review copy from author, via Rachel's Random Resources
Format - paperback

SIX FROM THE FATHERLAND

Another six from the stacks of the unread and a half dozen from Germany.....

Julie Zeh, Dan Vyleta, Zoran Drvenkar, Nele Neuhaus, Ferdinand Von Shirach and Hans Keilson

Zoran Drvenkar - Sorry (2011)

My wife read and enjoyed this one a few years ago, but I haven't gotten around to it yet!

Four friends, all approaching their thirties, are plumb out of luck in Zoran Drvenkar's electric thriller. Kris, an aspiring journalist, has just been fired. Tamara has just given up custody of her daughter to her former lover. Wolf's girlfriend died of an overdose. And Frauke's mother has been committed to an asylum. They're a disaffected band of losers, until one drunken evening when they hatch an improbable idea: everyone behaves deplorably to someone without apologizing, so why not start an agency that does the apologizing for them?

The agency, called Sorry, becomes a runaway success. Working with corporations that have mistreated employees and businessmen who have wronged others, Sorry visits injured party after injured party offering the right apology and the right financial compensation. And it's not long before the friends are living the good life. But it all crashes to a halt the day Wolf visits a new client and finds her gruesomely murdered.

What follows is a sequence of horrific events, an intense, brutal game of cat and mouse in which the meaning of 'sorry' is taken to its most extreme.

Julie Zeh - Eagles and Angels (2003)

Bought on spec to assist with a crime fiction alphabet challenge - Markus Zusak and Dave Zeltserman weren't enough on their own!

Jessie is dead. She shot herself while on the phone with Max. And now grief-stricken Max, a UN lawyer, is forced to reevaluate everything about their relationship - including what Jessie, a drug dealer's daughter, was hiding. Embroiled with the drama of the Balkan drug trade and the shortcomings of international law, Eagles and Angels is a sophisticated riddle of a novel where mass murderers and civil war heroes exist in a bizarre symbiosis, and where nothing is as it appears. Wunderkind author Julie Zeh is the winner of the German Book Award and the Bremen Forder and the Rauriser Literature Prizes.

Nele Neuhaus - Snow White Must Die (2013)

Another impulse buy after seeing a few rave reviews about it.

On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious traffic accident: A woman has fallen from a pedestrian bridge onto a car driving underneath. According to a witness, the woman may have been pushed. The investigation leads Pia and Oliver to a small village, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer.

On a September evening eleven years earlier, two seventeen-year-old girls vanished from the village without a trace. In a trial based only on circumstantial evidence, twenty-year-old Tobias Sartorius, Rita Cramer's son, was sentenced to ten years in prison. Bodenstein and Kirchhoff discover that Tobias, after serving his sentence, has now returned to his home town. Did the attack on his mother have something to do with his return?

In the village, Pia and Oliver encounter a wall of silence. When another young girl disappears, the events of the past seem to be repeating themselves in a disastrous manner. The investigation turns into a race against time, because for the villagers it is soon clear who the perpetrator is - and this time they are determined to take matters into their own hands.

An atmospheric, character-driven and suspenseful mystery set in a small town that could be anywhere, dealing with issues of gossip, power, and keeping up appearances.

Ferdinand Von Shirach - The Collini Case (2012)

Another one that has received high praise from most who have read it.

From one of Europe's bestselling writers comes a spellbinding and utterly compelling court room drama, which will stay with you for a long time. Ferdinand von Schirach's The Collini Case has been at the top of the German charts since publication and will be loved by all fans of Bernhard Schlink and John le Carre

A murder. A murderer. No motif.

For thirty-four years Fabrizio Collini has worked diligently for Mercedes Benz. He is a quiet and respectable person until the day he visits one of Berlin's most luxurious hotels and kills an innocent man.

Young attorney Caspar Leinen takes the case. Getting Collini a not-guilty verdict would make his name. But too late he discovers that Collini's victim - an industrialist of some renown - is known to him.

Now Leinen is caught in a professional and personal dilemma. Collini admits the murder but won't say why he did it, forcing Leinen to defend a man who won't put up a defence. And worse, a close friend and relation of the victim insists that he give up the case. His reputation, his career and this friendship are all at risk.

Dan Vyleta - Pavel & I (2008)

A dash of espionage in post-WW2 Berlin

Set during the winter of 1946, one of the coldest on record, "Pavel and I" mines post-war Berlin's messy terrain through the lives of two characters: Pavel, an American soldier who stays on after the war, and Anders, a German orphan. Their paths cross when an ailing Pavel seeks medicine on the black market for his failing kidneys. Anders follows Pavel home with thoughts of stealing from him, but ultimately stays on to help nurse him back to health. A friendship of mutual need and genuine tenderness develops. When a dead Russian spy is delivered to Pavel's frozen apartment, Pavel and Anders find themselves caught in the beginnings of a Cold War conspiracy of epic proportions. Complete with a secret love affair between Pavel and the German mistress of a menacing British military official, and peopled with pimps, prostitutes, Russian and English spies and a Lord-of-the-Flies-style gang of child thieves, "Pavel and I" is a unique, breathtaking noir novel.

Hans Keilson - The Death of the Adversary (1959)

Loved his book - Comedy in a Minor Key - on the blog here.

Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II and first published in 1959, The Death of the Adversary is the self-portrait of a young man helplessly fascinated - obsessed - by an unnamed 'adversary,' whom he watches rise to power in 1930s Germany. It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of Hitler's gathering menace but in its hero's desperate attempt to discover logic where none exists. A psychological fable as haunting as Badenheim 1939, The Death of the Adversary is a lost classic of modern fiction.

2 BY JOHNNY SHAW

Two this week from another author whose books I like the sound of, I then go and buy and then promptly forget about - Johnny Shaw.

To date Shaw has five published books with a sixth The Upper Hand due out next month.


Floodgate is a standalone, as is 2012 release Big Maria - a novel which won the Anthony Award in 2013. Dove Season and Plaster City precede Imperial Valley in his Jimmy Veeder Fiasco series.

Johnny Shaw has his website here.






Floodgate (2016)

Andy Destra is a mostly honest cop in the most notoriously corrupt and crime-ridden city in America: Auction City. After discovering explosive information that reveals corruption within the highest levels of the police department, Andy is kicked off the force, framed, and disgraced, left to wage a lonely one-man crusade against conspiracies he can't prove.

Andy's investigation plunges him into a blackly comic maelstrom of one-armed gang members, slick pickpockets, criminal syndicates, hired mercenaries, escaped convicts, sewer dwellers, and one sinister ice cream truck. At the same time, he must contend with a mystery closer to home: the true identity of his parents, his most unshakeable obsession. Understanding their past may be the key to Auction City's future as it teeters on the brink of chaos.

If Andy can't solve this case, the Floodgate will fail...and his city will burn.



Imperial Valley (2017)



Jimmy Veeder has finally settled down, completing his dramatic transformation from hell-raiser to family man. With his new wife, Angie, and eight-year-old son, Juan, he lives the quiet life. No trouble, no problems.

Or so he thought. But this is Jimmy Veeder's Fiasco, after all.

The night after his wedding, Jimmy is lured right back into a world of danger and mayhem when childhood friend Tomas Morales, the current crime lord of Mexicali, turns up on his doorstep offering information about the whereabouts of his son's grandfather, for whom Jimmy has been searching for years.

Jimmy and Angie head to Mexico - one part honeymoon, one part expedition to find Juan's grandfather - accompanied by old pals Bobby Maves and Griselda.

The trip immediately careens into chaos when they find themselves shadowed by thugs, shot at by cartel soldiers, and forced into a confrontation with a violent, volatile drug lord. The fight spreads from Sinaloa back to Jimmy's doorstep, putting everything Jimmy cares about directly in the crosshairs.

GRAHAM SMITH - WHEN THE WATERS RECEDE (2018)

Synopsis/blurb.......

When a car is pulled from raging floodwaters with a dead man in the front and the decapitated body of an evil woman in the boot, Cumbria’s Major Crimes Team are handed the investigation.

The woman is soon recognised, but the man cannot be identified and this leads the team and their former leader, Harry Evans, into areas none of them want to visit.

Before they know it, they’re dealing with protection scams and looking for answers to questions they didn’t know needed to be asked.

Another case for the Major Crimes Team with former DI Harry Evans working as a consultant to the force. When the Water Recede was a solid police procedural. We have a couple of dead bodies in a car recovered from flood water, one drowned whilst on his way to dumping the body of the woman in the boot.

I did like a lot of elements in this one. There's the close knit nature of the team, with the added awkwardness of Evans' former charges answering to a new boss, Campbell while the old boss hovers close by. Evans wrangling the consultancy gig by exerting some undue pressure on the new DI. Shouldn't cops or even former ones be above a bit of blackmail? There's also a bit of workplace politicking in the background with other elements resentful of the continued involvement of Evans in police work when to all intents and purposes the bad egg had been moved on.

There's more personal stuff going on. I learned a bit more about the death of Janet Evans and how Harry is coping with his grief and opening up to some sort of life after his bereavement. There's also a big cloud hanging over Lauren, with a persistent suitor who won't take no for an answer. This strand was semi-frustrating as the author teased the reader for a while before releasing the nature of Lauren's worries. I did like the way the personal over-lapped into the workplace. Who doesn't sometimes take their problems with them into work? That said, Lauren is aware of the danger of distraction from the investigation.

Local colour also adds to the flavour. The Cumbrian region and Carlisle in particular has suffered horrendously in the past decade of more with intermittent but repeated flooding, affecting thousands of residents. Smith shares his sympathy for the victims and his frustrations at the inability of the authorities to tackle the issue and make future occurrences a lot less likely.

The investigation itself is interesting. A lack of identification of our corpse bearer stalls the team and the frustration felt is palpable. Other strands of criminality come to the fore and are investigated, including multiple missing persons, before a break in the case, brings a rapid conclusion to bear. There was a bit of unlikely coincidence at play in the resolution, which didn't bump me out of the story, but which I wasn't completely convinced by. I wasn't thrown by the case ending quickly, I guess when things break open there's an inevitable urgency and speeding up of events. It was more the way a character was in the process of scratching an itch with the very same person responsible for our nefarious deeds, while the rest of the team were back at base rapidly joining up the dots.

All in all - a fast pacey read, albeit one read at a snails' pace (life interfering with my reading unfortunately). Definitely a series I will be returning to in the future. Lots to like here.

4 from 5

No Comment, an earlier Major Crimes/Harry Evans book was read and reviewed here.

Graham Smith has his website here.
Catch him on Facebook here and Twitter -  @GrahamSmith1972 

Read in May/June 2018
Published - 2018
Page count - 260
Source - review copy from Rachel's Random Resources as part of the blog tour
Format - Kindle

MAY 2018 - READING LIST AND PICK OF THE MONTH

Ha - May was the crappiest reading month in a long while. New house - with DIY and gardening duties disrupting me no end. At least a lot of the jobs accomplished are one time only thingies - so I remain optimistic that June sees some natural order returning to my favourite leisure activity.

3 books read in the month, though 4 on the go are simultaneously - nearly finished, almost finished, barely started and about halfway.

No 5 STAR read in the month, but if I had to choose one to read again it would be Ian Ayris and One Day in the Life of Jason Dean

The three were.....


Ian Ayris - One Day in the Life of Jason Dean (2012) (4.5)

Nanci Rathbun - Cash Kills (2014) (3)

Chris Roy - Her Name is Mercie (2018) (4)


More trivia for my own amusement ....


3 reads from 3 different authors,

2 of the 3 were new-to-me authors, Chris Roy and Nanci Rathbun

Gender analysis -  2 male authors, 1 female

3 authors read, 1 is English, 2 hail from the US,

All 3 of the reads were fiction - 2 novels - maybe 1 novel and a novella and a collection of short stories.

All of the books were published in this decade ....1 from 2018, 1 from 2014, 1 from 2012 -  a familiar cry - whatever happened to me reading older books?


One of the reads were pre-owned. The other two - one came from the author and one from a publicist, as part of a blog tour I signed up to.

Favourite cover? Chris Roy's Her Name is Mercie

Second favourite – One Day in the Life of Jason Dean from Ian Ayris

My reads were this long 108 - 261 - 164

Total page count = 533 (1022 in April)....... a near 500 page decrease

2 were Kindle reads, and 1 was a PDF file


0 < 50,
0 between 51 < 100,
2 between 101 < 200,
1 between 201 < 300,
0 between 301 < 400,
0  > 400 pages

Nanci Rathbun  and Cash Kills was the longest read at 261 pages

Jason Dean's One Day in the Life of Jason Dean was the shortest at 108 pages long

By definition Chris Roy was the middliest!

SIX SLICES OF ITALIAN CRIME

I have a bad habit of buying books and never reading them. I cannot hand on heart recall when I last read any Italian crime fiction though it's not for lack of opportunity.

Six from the stash.....

Carlo Lucarelli, Niccolo Ammaniti, Gianrico Carofiglio, Massimo Carlotto, Giampiero Rigosi and Andrea Camilleri

Massimo Carlotto - Bandit Love (2010)

I've read Carlotto previously, before the advent of the blog - The Fugitive - which may be a true biography or a ficitionalised account of his incarceration by the Italian justice system.


Massimo Carlotto has been described as "the reigning king of Mediterranean noir" (Boston Phoenix), "more noir than even the toughest American noir" (Josh Bazell, author of Beat the Reaper), "about as gritty as they come" (The New York Times), and "the best living Italian crime writer" (Il Manifesto). Here, making his American debut, is Carlotto's most famous and beloved serial character: ex-con turned private investigator Marco Buratti, a.k.a The Alligator.

Closing the door on a crime ridden past, Marco Buratti plans to spend the rest of his days in the darkness of a seedy nightclub sipping Calvados and listening to the blues. But things don't quite work out as he planned: though he may be through with his past, his past isn't through with him. When his gangster friend, Beniamino Rossini's girlfriend is kidnapped, Buratti is forced to investigate a case of international drug dealing. He will be thrown headfirst into the underworld he had struggled to escape. Here, new and old criminal organizations collide and innocent bystanders are as hard to find as straight cops.

Marco "The Alligator" Buratti is not only one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary crime fiction but also the ideal vivisector of a world in which criminals hold all the cards.

Carlo Lucarelli - Carte Blanche (2006)

Not tried Lucarelli's work yet, though there's a couple on the pile.

"Carlo Lucarelli is the great promise of Italian crime writing."-La Stampa 

April 1945, Italy. Commissario De Luca is heading up a dangerous investigation into the private lives of the rich and powerful during the frantic final days of the facist regime. The hierarchy has guaranteed De Luca their full cooperation, just so long as he arrests the "right" suspect. The house of cards built by Mussolini in the last months of WWII is collapsing and De Luca faces a world mired in sadistic sex, dirty money, drugs and murder.

Gianrico Carofiglio - The Past is a Foreign Country (2007)

Ditto Lucarelli..

An intense and superior psychological thriller in which Carofiglio takes his readers deep into Patricia Highsmith's Ripley territory. Winner of the coveted Premio Bancarella. 

1989, Bari, southern Italy. Giorgio is a 22 year old model student, living a conventional middle-class life. Dangerous, fascinating and slightly older Francesco is also a student, but far from a model one. Giorgio is only vaguely aware of Francesco until one evening their paths cross and Giorgio is sucked into Francesco's world. 

Giorgio becomes Francesco's pupil and learns to cheat at cards. In return, he will get lots of money, sexual adventures, luxury. Their gambling exploits take them from luxurious villas to low dives, their victims ranging from rich industrialists to human flotsam. Giorgio enters a world where his own image of himself starts to fragment, revealing someone he no longer recognizes: someone who both scares and attracts him. 

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Chiti of the carabinieri is investigating a series of brutal rapes in Bari. A shocking dénouement draws together the two strands of the story in a wholly unexpected way and brings a catharsis for both Giorgio and Lieutenant Chiti.

Andrea Camilleri - The Voice of the Violin (2003)

Another author, I've tried before with the first in his Montalbano series read a good few years back.

Inspector Salvo Montalbano, with his compelling mix of humor, cynicism, and compassion, has been compared to Georges Simenon's, Dashiel Hammett's, and Raymond Chandler's legendary detectives. 

In this latest novel, Montalbano's gruesome discovery of a lovely, naked young woman suffocated in her bed immedi-ately sets him on a search for her killer. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer, now disappeared; an antiques-dealing lover from Bologna; and the victim's friend Anna, whose charms Montalbano cannot help but appreciate. But it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist who holds the key to this murder.

Niccolo Ammaniti - Steal You Away (2006)

Batting 0 from 3 with Ammaniti. Bought three and promptly forgot about them.

In swampy Ischiano Scalo, where the adults are all losers and the children dream of escape, meek little Pietro is tested to destruction by the school psychopath, and is betrayed by his parents, his favourite teacher and, in his most self-fulfilling act, himself. As Pietro struggles against the bullies and revels in his friendship with Gloria (the prettiest and richest girl for miles), his lonely teacher, Flora, devotes herself to her catatonic mother, until Ischiano's one glamorous son returns to seduce and forget her. In the painful aftermath, Pietro's attempts to escape his own crushing sense of failure lead him to destroy everything he holds dear in one futile moment of hurt and anger. Through the eyes of a desperate boy and a self-aggrandising small-town Don Juan, Ammaniti gradually reveals his cast of grotesques, from idiot policemen to self-obsessed would-be starlets, terrified headmasters to lustful janitors. With charm and irony, he exposes the grand dreams and sad realities of these ordinary people living extraordinarily ordinary lives.

Giampiero Rigosi - Night Bus (2006)

Only published novel I can see from this author, which given my reading track record is probably just as well.

Leila is young, beautiful and a hustler. She makes her living drugging and robbing her clients - before or after bed, whichever is easier. Things get complicated when she ends up with a document at the centre of a plot of political blackmail. In an atmosphere of intense paranoia two secret service operatives, a goon hired by the blackmailer and the police all pursue Leila for the document and a suitcase full of dollars meant to be the pay-off. She joins forces with Francesco, a bus driver and gambling addict on the run from the Bear, a terrifying debt collector. Suitcases and blackmail notes change hands at a frenetic pace against a background of torture and murder.