MICK HERRON - THE MARYLEBONE DROP (2018)

Synopsis/blurb.....

A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information.
It’s also what happens just before you hit the ground.

Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone café, he knows he’s witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly for MI5, he sets in motion a train of events that will alter lives.

Story Locale: London, UK

Another short offering from Mick Herron and a reappearance of a few characters previously encountered in The List. Herron sits comfortably in my current top ten favourite authors list.

80-odd pages long with a further 30 or so introducing the full length novel London Rules.

Really, really enjoyable, and a fantastic couple of hours reading which has me wanting to pick up something longer by him.

I liked the chain reaction of events set in place by the witnessing of a drop by a retired spy. Unintended consequences indeed and an outcome which ends well for a couple of our participants and not so swimmingly for others. In some ways its a frightening reveal of the power held by intelligence services with their ability to re-arrange and destroy a life with a couple of key strokes. Yeah I know it's fiction, but it does set you thinking.

I enjoyed glimpsing the hierarchy within the service: the woman at the top, the arrogance and stupidity of the one currently on the way up, the skill, ambition and cunning of the agent in the middle and the existence of the messenger boys or pond life running errands and doing scut work at the bottom.

John Bachelor is the latter. Career going nowhere, and dimly regarded in the service, hanging onto his job, in fear of the axe, a personal relationship ended which currently sees him residing in the back of his vehicle. Probably not a situation too dissimilar to many in modern day society - only a couple of absent pay cheques away from homelessness. I was rooting for him. Down but not out and still possessing enough wit and chutzpah to prevail, for now at least. I'm hoping he reappears in future works from Herron and that the author deals him a kinder hand. I live in hope.

5 from 5

Mick Herron is the author of about a dozen novels, including five in his Slough House series, of which this forms a tasty add-on.

Slow Horses was reviewed here. Dead Lions here.


Read in July, 2018
Published - 2018 (later this year)
Page count - 112
Source - Edelweiss early reviewer site, courtesy of publisher Soho Crime
Format - Epub file

 

MARK RAMSDEN - DREAD: THE ART OF SERIAL KILLING (2015)

Synopsis/blurb....

Mr Madden, Dickens enthusiast, muses with his beautiful and bohemian prisoner on possible endings to the famous author’s unfinished final mystery. 

Mr Madden, spy, infiltrates a far right nationalist group in order to set up the thugs for something far more serious than their usual boozy street fights. 

Mr Madden, serial killer, sculpts his Candidates into bizarre and macabre artworks within the bare walls of his dungeon workshop.

And if he is to keep one step ahead of the police, the secret service and his own gory instincts, Mr Madden is going to have to find the answer to the one question that hangs over all our heads:

What would Charles Dickens do? 

A short book read approximately three weeks ago, so some precied thoughts, before memory dims any further.

Another one from the Number 13 canon and a slightly strange tale featuring twisted grief, Dickens, Edwin Drood, dungeons, Rochester, more than a splash of torture, revenge, murder, prostitution, drug use, some kinky sex, undercover espionage, a couple of coppers. Oh and a rather unlikely romance.

I was scratching my head at the beginning, particularly with the frequent references to Dickens' unfinished work. By the end I was loving life. Strange, macabre, funny, clever, riveting, off-beat, graphic, violent, bizarre..... you just have to kick back and go where the author takes you.

I didn't necessarily warm to Madden our main character, but in Ramsden's hands he's never less than entertaining and interesting company. His captive turned companion seemed to think so.

Dread was my first taste of Mark Ramsden's work and I'd be interested in any further adventures with our Mr Madden should he dish out a follow up. I'm probably not minded to visit his earlier novels though.

4 from 5

Read in July, 2018
Published - 2015
Page count - 130
Source - review copy received from publisher
Format - kindle


Dread has been recently republished along with the other Number 13 Press titles by Fahrenheit Press

2 BY J.D. RHOADES

A couple from US author, J.D. Rhoades this week



I've read one book from J.D. Rhoades years ago - The Devil's Right Hand which is the first in his Jack Keller series - loved it then promptly ignored the next couple sitting on the pile.

Rhoades has subsequently written two more in his Keller series, a couple in another series featuring Tony Wolf and Tim Buckthorn and five standalone novels. His latest Fortunate Son is published next week.

I'm not quite sure why I seem to find an author I enjoy, grab a few books by them (sometimes more than a few), then promptly forget them. It seems to happen a lot.

Bullet-scarred redneck noir is my kind of thing!

He has a somewhat inactive blog here, a more active Facebook page here and is on Twitter - @JD_Rhoades

Good Day in Hell (2006)

From a skillful writer rapidly becoming the master of engrossing, bullet-scarred redneck noir comes another thrill-a-minute Southern suspense novel full of atmosphere and action. Bail enforcement officer Jack Keller is doing a skip trace on a young woman from the right side of the tracks who somehow got involved with the wrong kind of man. But Laurel Marks's history doesn't matter to Jack-she's wanted on a parole violation, and his paycheck depends on tracking her down.Meanwhile, Keller's girlfriend, sheriff's deputy Marie Jones, is called to the scene of a grisly murder-a gas station owner has been shot point-blank in the face, and his teenage stepson, plus the cash from the register, is missing. But something in the back of her mind tells Marie not to jump to conclusions. . . .When a bloody, merciless killing spree starts in a church on the other side of the county, it seems impossible that Keller's skip and Marie's murder/kidnapping case could be related. But the local media is soon involved, and the mess they make of the situation soon reveals just what Keller, Marie, and every other peace officer in the state of North Carolina doesn't want to believe: three people are viciously angry, incredibly well armed, and they're ready to strike again at any time.Good Day in Hell cements the reputation of author J. D. Rhoades as edge-of-your-seat suspense and nonstop action radiates from the first paragraph to the final page.

Safe and Sound (2007)

Jack Keller works in fugitive apprehension, and never feels more alive than when hes hunting down a skip. But when a young girl goes missing, and Keller finds out that the father is an AWOL member of the armys elite Delta Force, he knows immediately that this case will be anything but fun and games. Keller is a Gulf War vet who knows his way around the Armys red tape, but the psychological scars from his experiences in the gulf have only just started to recede enough for him to lead a normal life. No one is sure how immersing himself in the kidnapping case will affect him, least of all his girlfriend Marie, whos counting on Jacks recovery if they are going to have any future together. But a young girls life hangs in the balance, and a group of ex-Delta commandos seem to be the key to finding out where she is. For Jack Keller, its an easy decision: consequences be damned, hes going after the girl.

JULY 2018 - ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY - 6 OF THE BEST!

No book embargo in sight, 6 more onto the TBR pile.....

Paul D. Brazill - Last Year's Man (2018) - review copy

Paul D. Brazill - new book, nuff said

A troubled, ageing hit man leaves London and returns to his hometown in the north east of England hoping for peace. But the ghosts of his past return to haunt him. 

Last Year’s Man is a violent and blackly comic slice of Brit Grit noir. 

Matt Coleman - Juggling Kittens (2016) - purchased

Can't remember how this one caught my eye. A Goodreads friend subsequently read it and rated it 1 from 5. I reckon I'll get on better.

Ellis Mazer is a soon-to-be father, a first year English teacher, and a directionless twenty-something entering the directionless 2000-somethings. Violence provided by the backdrop of 9/11 feeds Mr. Mazer's seventh graders the essay fodder that almost makes his job bearable. Then, when a little girl disappears from her rural Arkansas mobile home, teaching writing turns into a layup drill. 

Soon after that, however, Spencer—trailer trash with more ring worms than friends—stops coming to school. Ellis discovers that he may be the only person who even notices, much less cares. What begins as a good-natured attempt to deliver some make-up work tumbles headlong into a quest deep into hillbilly noir in an attempt to verify that there is still some good in what appears to be a crumbling world. 

Ellis is pitted against a preacher’s son whose sociopathic tendencies have seeped into the fabric of small-town life, and he is partnered with The Drew—full-time assistant principal, part-time private detective—who wears both his old coach’s whistle and his monotonous family life like veritable Albatrosses. He explores each dark crevice of backwoods Arkansas as both a literal nightmare of gothic possibilities and an analogous depiction of his inner struggles with adulthood.

Reluctantly, Ellis comes to the realization that Spencer’s disappearance is directly linked to whatever happened to that little girl. Unfortunately, others have made the same discovery. Somewhere in a stack of ungraded essays, Spencer has revealed the horrific truth behind the brutal murder and burial of a six-year-old girl. And it doesn’t much feel like anyone wants that truth to emerge. Even Ellis is unsure of how much he cares. He only knows that in order to believe in his ability to be a husband or father, for some reason, he must find Spencer. 

Among the swirling depravity of society, the crippling panic of impending parenthood, and the mounting scrap heap of seventh grade essays, one Arkansas town sees two kids go missing. Ellis Mazer only wants to find one of them. And if he can pull that off, he might not ever become a good teacher, but he might at least become a good person.

Masaji Ishikawa - A River in Darkness (2018) - purchased

Hat tip to my son, who read this recently and was moved by this one man's tale. A bit of hard-hitting non-fiction, I thought I'd try for myself.

An Amazon Charts Most Read and Most Sold book.

The harrowing true story of one man’s life in—and subsequent escape from—North Korea, one of the world’s most brutal totalitarian regimes.

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

In this memoir translated from the original Japanese, Ishikawa candidly recounts his tumultuous upbringing and the brutal thirty-six years he spent living under a crushing totalitarian regime, as well as the challenges he faced repatriating to Japan after barely escaping North Korea with his life. A River in Darkness is not only a shocking portrait of life inside the country but a testament to the dignity—and indomitable nature—of the human spirit.

T.R. Pearson - Eaglesworth (2018) - purchased

Not read too much from Mr Pearson, but what I have I've liked - East Jesus South

A small Virginia town, long since bypassed by the interstate, has but two claims on historical significance -- a plaque marking the route where General Longstreet's army retired from a defeat and a near derelict Georgian mansion called Eaglesworth. The house sits on a hilltop, neglected and weathered, until an outlander rolls in to bring it back to life. The lively story of the sordid secrets the renovation reveals is told by a pack of local barflies, a ragged bunch of half-cocked civic boosters and gossips who give us history as seen through the bottom of a shot glass. 

Funny, bittersweet, and glancingly philosophical, Eaglesworth is a fanciful biography of a place, a latter-day slice of the Old Dominion that the Sage of Monticello would hardly recognize.

Cody Goodfellow and J David Osborne - The Snake Handler (2017) - purchased 

Can't not want to read something with a title like that. I'm slightly reminded of Harry Crews and A Feast of Snakes


Let he who is without sin… COME GET SOME. 

All his life, Reverend Clyde Hilburn has fought to protect his downtrodden flock in the tiny town of Palestine, West Virginia from the evils of the modern world. To that end, he has held a monopoly on not only their souls, but also their thriving drug addiction. 

But times have changed, and forces larger than him have moved in to take control of both the church and the flow of narcotics. 

When he suffers a lethal bite from a rattlesnake someone placed in his mailbox, a dying, venom-addicted Clyde has only hours to undo a lifetime of sin, avenge his own murder and save his godforsaken town from the human monsters he’s unleashed. 

THE SNAKE HANDLER

Scott Adlerberg - Graveyard Love (2016) - purchased

Joins Jungle Horses on the Adlerberg TBR pile.


Thirty-five-year-old Kurt Morgan lives with his mother across the street from a graveyard. He becomes obsessed with a red-haired woman who visits the graveyard often, watching her through the telescope in his room, wondering whose grave she visits like clockwork. Meanwhile, his mother pressures him to write her memoir. She wants her book finished, and soon. Among these three - Kurt, the graveyard visitor, and Kurt's mother - a twisted triangle develops, with each person pursuing their specific obsession at all costs. Set one cold winter in upstate New York, Graveyard Love is a dark and atmospheric thriller that explores the far reaches of the human psyche. 

“Another masterful, twisted, deranged tale from the scrambled, fevered brain of Scott Adlerberg, who leads the reader through the dark and winding canyons of a functioning psychopath and makes his personal horror seem normal.” 
— Les Edgerton, author of 
The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping and others 

“The ghosts of Cornell Woolrich and Edgar Allan Poe haunt the pages of this atmospheric thriller. Voyeurism, obsession and death — Alfred Hitchcock would have loved it.” 

— Wallace Stroby, author of the Crissa Stone series

JULY 2018 - FILMS + TV

Pretty rubbish month numbers-wise, with a holiday in the middle of it, the World Cup and some continuing DIY and house arranging projects interrupting one of my leisure pursuits ....

The Handmaid's Tale Season 2 

Scary as anything and we are only up to about the fourth episode as life interfered with viewing. Hopefully we'll get it all viewed during August, with less distractions pending. I'm intrigued about what is going to happen. I've got a copy of the book for a read at some point, as I'm always interested in comparing one format to the other. I don't know if the book covers both series or if this is an original departure. Either way, it's compelling viewing.

From Wikipedia...,

The Handmaid's Tale is an American dystopian drama web television series created by Bruce Miller, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. It was ordered by the streaming service Hulu as a straight-to-series order of 10 episodes, for which production began in late 2016. The plot features a dystopian future following a Second American Civil War wherein a totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called "Handmaids", into child-bearing servitude.

The first three episodes of the series premiered on April 26, 2017; the subsequent seven episodes aired on a weekly basis every Wednesday. In May 2017, the series was renewed for a second season which premiered on April 25, 2018.

The Handmaid's Tale has received widespread critical acclaim and its first season won eight Primetime Emmy Awards from thirteen nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, becoming the first series on a streaming service to win an Emmy for Outstanding Series.It also won Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Drama and Best Actress for Elisabeth Moss.

In May 2018, Hulu announced that the series had been renewed for a third season.

World Cup 2018

Football, football and more football. France were worthy winners, though I was rooting for Croatia in the final. England did well without setting the world on fire. Was I the only one who though Harry Kane was anonymous in the knockout stages? As per usual Gary Lineker was smug and annoying, I think I find only Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr and Russell Brand more irritating. Oh and Jack Whitehall ....

Wheelman (2017)

I did initially wonder if this was based on a Duane Swierczynski book from a decade or more ago, though after viewing it I don't believe so. None of the title credits reference it and my hazy recollection of The Wheelman is of a different plot and characters. This wasn't amazing but I did enjoy it. Most of the action takes place in the car and Frank Grillo is pretty good at catching and holding your attention. Best film ever? No, but I was happy enough and entertained for 90 odd minutes. I've seen Grillo before in The Grey with Liam Neeson and my kids have seen him in one of the Purge films.

From IMDB......

A getaway driver for a bank robbery realizes he has been double crossed and races to find out who betrayed him.

GRANT NICOL - THE MISTAKE (2015)

Synopsis/blurb....

Everybody makes mistakes. 

A mutilated body is found on a lonely street in Reykjavík. Detective Grímur intends to see that justice is done. 

Kjartan Jónsson vows that his daughter’s killer will be punished. And that the punishment will fit the crime. 

Prime suspect Gunnar Atli desperately needs to prevent his own dark secrets from coming to light. And he’s not the only one. 

Fine lines separate truth, justice and vengeance. Put a foot wrong, and any one of them could be making the biggest mistake of his life. 

In Iceland, the winter shadows grow long...

"A tense and atmospheric Nordic Noir. Another belter from Number Thirteen Press." -Paul D. Brazill (author of Guns of Brixton and A Case of Noir)


One of my favourites so far from the Number 13 canon of novellas. 

A trip to Iceland, a dead girl, a confused witness-cum-suspect who is not entirely truthful, an angry father and a detective who is trying to make sense of it all.

Setting, pace, plot, characters, resolution - all here in spades and all done and dusted in a couple of hours intense and engrossed reading. Apparently 164 pages long but it seemed to positively fly by, so I'm unsure of the accuracy of the page count.

Secrets, history, estrangement, power, control, arrogance, prostitution, family, death, revenge, justice, mental health, violence and sadism all combined in a splendid mix.

4.5 from 5

The Mistake was my first taste of Grant Nicol's work but not my last. Another three Grimur Karllson detective mysteries are out there - On a Small Island, A Place to Bury Strangers and Out on the Ice.

Read in July, 2018
Published - 2015
Page count - 164
Source - purchased
Format - kindle


The Mistake was the third in Number 13 Press's collection of 13 publications. Fahrenheit Press has recently re-issued or is in the process of re-issuing all of them.

ALEX SEGURA - SILENT CITY (2016)

Synopsis/blurb....

"The new George Pelecanos is here." — Son of Spade

Pete Fernandez is a mess. He's on the brink of being fired from his middle-management newspaper job. His fiancée has up and left him. Now, after the sudden death of his father, he's back in his hometown of Miami, slowly drinking himself into oblivion. But when a co-worker he barely knows asks Pete to locate a missing daughter, Pete finds himself dragged into a tale of murder, drugs, double-crosses and memories bursting from the black heart of the Miami underworld - and, shockingly, his father's past.

Making it up as he goes and stumbling as often as he succeeds, Pete's surreptitious quest becomes the wake-up call he's never wanted but has always needed - but one with deadly consequences. Welcome to Silent City, a story of redemption, broken friendships, lost loves and one man's efforts to make peace with a long-buried past to save the lives of the few friends he has left. SILENT CITY is a gritty, heartfelt debut novel that harkens back to classic P.I. tales, but infused with the Miami that only Alex Segura knows.

Silent City is the first in Alex Segura's Pete Fernandez PI series and also his debut novel. With some of the subsequent offerings in the series starting to stack up on the device I thought it was time to get acquainted with his work.

Fernandez is a barely functioning newspaperman. His star shone brightly for a while, but is now on the wane. Personal issues have overwhelmed him. The recent death of his father and the break up of his relationship with his fiancee, Emily has him seeking permanent solace at the bottom of a bottle. That Emily is still a presence in his life may or may not be helping him. To be truthful, I found him irritating. The whole alcohol thing, drinks after work, no stop bottom, oblivion beckoning, that crappy next morning feeling and next day repeating the cycle, kind of irked me and was tiresome. When he pulled his head out of his arse, he wasn't too bad company. Intelligent and capable when compos mentis I'm hoping in future books he gets a handle on his problem. It'll be a short love affair with the series if he can't. 

Pete gets asked to check into the disappearance of another journalist Kathy Bentley at the paper, by the girl's estranged father, another newspaper legend who Pete admires. Somewhat surprisingly he accepts and is quite dogged in his efforts to track her down. Kathy is working on a story regarding a Miami hitman who has been plaguing the city for years, or so the urban legend goes. The authorities don't admit to it and the Miami police - allegedly corrupt and complicit have no interest in pursuing any sort of investigation into the killer. Pete's dead father was a cop and had his own theories on the killer - the typical one case that haunts the cop scenario.

Initially I kind of felt the premise for Pete's involvement was weak, but as the story unfolded and it became clear that Fernandez was being used as a patsy it made sense.

Miami, a killer, newspapermen, personal issues, alcohol, bereavements - from death and the ending of a relationship, job jeopardy, childhood friendship, cop father, cop father's partner, urban myths, Florida Keys, current friendships, restaurants, bars, more death, more bereavement and more guilt and responsibility, criminality, conspiracies and lots more besides.

Once I was sold on the story line, I did enjoy it. There was a decent pace and flow to the narrative and a fair few twists and reveals. By the end of the book I was grudgingly enjoying Pete's company. I'm a big fan of US PI fiction and big city settings and can't remember my last visit to Miami in my reading.

Eventually - my kind of story, but it was touch and go for a while.

Overall 3.5 from 5

The subsequent series entries are Down the Darkest Street, Dangerous Ends and Blackout.

Read in July, 2018
Published - 2016
Page count - 304
Source - purchased copy
Format - Kindle