ANDREA CARTER - TREACHEROUS STRAND (2016)

Synopsis/blurb....

A woman's body washes up on a remote beach on the Inishowen peninsula. Partially clothed, with a strange tattoo on her thigh, she is identified as Marguerite Etienne, a French woman who has been living in the area.

Solicitor Benedicta 'Ben' O'Keeffe is consumed by guilt; Marguerite was her client, and for the second time in her life Ben has failed someone who needed her, with tragic consequences. So when local sergeant Tom Molloy dismisses Marguerite's death as the suicide of a disturbed and lonely woman, Ben cannot let it lie.

Ben uncovers Marguerite's strange past as a member of a French doomsday cult; she escaped 20 years previously, but not without leaving her baby daughter behind.

Disturbed by what appears to be chilling local indifference to Marguerite's death, Ben pieces together the last few weeks of the French woman's life in Inishowen. What she discovers causes her to question the fragile nature of her own position in the area, and she finds herself crossing boundaries both personal and professional to unearth local secrets long buried.

Busy times, both work and life so I'm lagging a bit behind on my blogging, I'm kind of struggling to recall too much about this one which was read in the early part of February. I suppose that in itself tells a tale - a book I enjoyed but one which wasn't particularly memorable.

A French woman who had been living locally - here a remote coastal part of Ireland, turns up dead in a suspected suicide or drowning. Our main character, a nosy solicitor - Ben O'Keefe - who had just been engaged by the dead woman to represent her, feels she has failed her and starts digging.

Small community with secrets, a rushed funeral, an indifferent daughter, a strange religious cult, a romance - on-off-stalled, jealousy, an unofficial investigation of sorts - more sort of blundering around asking people questions, a few suspicious characters, family histories, a trip to Scandinavia, the shadow of events from book one in the series, some danger to our main character throughout the book and eventually answers and a resolution.

Nothing that annoyed me or bumped me out of the book. I liked the setting of the Inishowen peninsula - it's remoteness and the small community. The main character was a bit annoying but not overly so. When she was in jeopardy I was an onlooking rubbernecker, I wasn't breaking out in a cold sweat fearing for her safety, but I was interested to see what happened next. There's a few twists and turns as the book unfolds, you find yourself suspicious of a few individuals in turn. The resolution was cohesive, set against all that had come before.

Overall, a decent read, but one that doesn't have me rushing to find the earlier book in the series, nor the next one by the author.

3 from 5

Read - February, 2020
Published - 2016
Page count - 320
Source - originally an Edelweiss book courtesy of Oceanview Publishing who have brought this one back into print. A computer death meant I had to buy a copy to finish
Format - 50% ePUB read on laptop, 50% paperback
   

LAWRENCE BLOCK - THE CANCELED CZECH (1966)

Synopsis/blurb......

Presenting EVAN TANNER—the first series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain’s sleep center, Even Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world’s languages (he’s fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world’s lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge. And, most important, time to do his dreaming while he’s wide awake.

THE CANCELED CZECH is Tanner's second adventure. A key figure in the Nazi puppet regime of Slovakia is in jail in Prague's Hradcany Castle, and the mysterious US spymaster who thinks Tanner works for him sends our lad to rescue the man. Not surprisingly, the Slovak has an obnoxious personality; he also suffers from catalepsy. Tanner, using his contacts and working his magic, does what he's asked to do—but with a poetic twist that only Evan Tanner could think up.

Another European adventure behind the old Iron Curtain for reluctant spy, Evan Tanner. A Slovak Nazi needs rescuing from his imprisonment in a Prague Castle so that the Americans can hopefully gain access to his files concerning like-minded dunderheads secretly working towards the establishment of a Fourth Reich.

Persona non-grata in this part of the world after his previous exploits, Tanner poses as an American tourist travelling around Europe. All to no avail, dodging secret police, jumping from moving trains, hiking through the night, sleeping in barns on a circuitous route to Prague, picking up a knockout sex-mad Aryan goddess along the way; Tanner discovers he's not the only man seeking Janos Kotacek, encountering some radical Israeli members of The Stern Gang.

Allied with his partners, all with different agendas for Kotacek, Tanner works with and against his cohorts taking advantage of a torch and his charge's catalepsy to outwit everyone and save the day, but not necessarilly the loathsome Slovak.

Fun, action, light hearted humour and a bit of sex (non-graphically depicted), as well as some pithy observations on the political map of Europe and the state of nations, I really enjoyed it. Tanner is great company and however tight the scrape he's in you do always know that Block is gonna get him out of it.

I enjoy the quirks of character - his inability to sleep and his grasp of multiple languages as well as his use of a myriad of contacts through his membership of a multiude of subversive and frankly strange organisations. I like his free spirit and his ability to improvise and decide the outcome of his mission, irrespective of his master's wishes.

Two down, six to go.

4 from 5

The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep was enjoyed previously. Tanner's Twelve Swingers is next.

Read - (listened to) February, 2020
Published - 1966
Page count - 186 (6 hr 56 min)
Source - Audible download code from one of the author's assistants
Format - Audible

STEPHEN SCARCLIFFE - PURE ANGST (2018)

Synopsis/blurb......

As bad blood threatens the old order, a restless new generation rise from their fathers’ shadows, ready to stamp their own identity on the city streets… 

Billy “Curtains” Wright overcomes a dysfunctional home life by winning the respect of the local Muirhouse gang, before rising to a key position within Edinburgh's ecstasy scene. After falling for Lyndsay, a privileged girl from the other side of the tracks, his underworld ambitions are called into question. He accepts a contract to kill a dangerous rival before finding more than he bargained for, forcing him to confront his brutal childhood and the father he wants gone. 

George “The Bull” Donaldson was the hardest in the playground, then the streets of Muirhouse. Now he’s a debt collector for his heroin kingpin father. After being taught a cruel lesson, he partners up with best pal Billy, but when family tensions erupt tough choices have to be made. 

After being dragged into the middle of a feud between the uncle who mentored him and the father who just walked free from jail, Sean “Preemo” Donaldson is forced to choose a side. A letter from his estranged mother reopens old wounds and he contemplates the unthinkable.

As each man arrives at his own perilous crossroads, what path will he take? 

Pure Angst is a gritty crime fiction novel set within 80’s and 90’s gangland Edinburgh, and one of its roughest housing estates. It charts the changing face of the drug scene, from a heroin and AIDS epidemic to the explosion of MDMA and rave culture…

Another trip to the seedy side of Edinburgh, this time thirty years ago and immersion into the world of criminality ..... drug culture, raves, the new drug in town - ecstasy, heroin, coke, weed, protection rackets, local taxes, imprisonment, battles for influence and territory, debt collecting, fights, beatings, murder, death, bookies, pubs, clubs, parties, chippys, security, football hooligans, casuals, fashion, police, rivalries, inter family feuding, friendships and a battle between the generations, with the old order struggling to keep the young pups in line - and with a bit of love and romance among the chaos. It's a busy book for its length - a shade over 200 pages.

I quite enjoyed the Scottish vernacular employed by the author. It does help set the scene and adds a layer of authenticity as to the novel's origins. I liked the different characters, with the thread of friendships and family histories, the disputes and resentments, the evolution of the relationships and the evolving loyalties.

There's a grittiness to the novel, there's more than a bit of violence, but never really excessive for the world the author is depicting. Brutality is strength, compassion and understanding is weakness, particularly in the eyes of Dougie, sitting at the top of the tree. There's a journey for the younger main characters - Billy, George and Sean as they forge their own paths,trying to escape the shadows of their parents.

Pure Angst is the first of an intended trilogy. I wouldn't discount seeing where the story goes next. (Raging, the second book came out a few months ago.)

4 from 5

Read - March, 2020
Published - 2018
Page count - 214
Source - review copy courtesy of Story Origin
Format - ePUB read on laptop

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET: Q IS FOR...... QUARRY, QUINLAN, Q ROAD

The journey goes on......

Q is for......

Quarry by Bill Pronzini - the 19th book in his long-running Nameless PI series
I've read maybe the first dozen or so in the series, so this one whenever I get back to it isn't too far ahead of me.

Quarry (1991)

Publisher's Weekly
Pronzini's ( Breakdown ) brisk, efficient, action-packed mystery is set on the earthquake-ravaged San Francisco waterfront and in the now-arid salad-bowl country to the south. Here the Nameless Detective hunts for a methodical, brutal stranger who is pursuing withdrawn Grady Haas, 31, daughter of rancher Arlo Haas, the detective's old friend. Secretive Grady won't tell why she has suddenly left her job as an insurance adjuster specializing in marine claims and returned to the Salinas Valley . Nameless finds that her San Francisco apartment has been thoroughly tossed. All he has to go on are the three claims Grady had been investigating and her ex-boyfriend's savage beating by a stranger seeking Grady's whereabouts. Nameless may lack a moniker but he's full of character, describing himself as a ''throwback--the kind of man who hates progress, mistrusts technology, and never quite feels comfortable in any place where he can't see or touch some small piece of the past.'' Still haunted by the horror described in Shackles (1988), in which he was chained for three months to the wall of an isolated mountain cabin, Nameless now must endure a new ordeal, being locked inside a burning building. The book's exciting final scene nicely plays on the title's double meanings.

Q is for......

Quarry again!

Quarry is also the lead man in a series by Max Allan Collins.

I've enjoyed the first few ..... Quarry, Quarry's List, Quarry's Deal - Quarry's Cut will be the next one up

Quarry's Cut (1977)

6 from a series of about 15!

When a hitman shows up at retired gunman Quarry's refuge, who is the target? Is it Quarry? Or is the assassin on a different mission--and if so, can Quarry foil it for revenge and profit?


Q is for.....

Quinlan - author Patrick Quinlan.

I read a few from Quinlan a long time ago (before I blogged) and enjoyed them -  Smoked (2006), The Takedown (2007), The Drop-Off (2008).

I've kind of lost track of his books after 2009's The Hit - one I still have to read.

The Hit (2009)

A gripping and twisting treat of a novel for fans of Tarantino and Elmore Leonard. Handsome ladies' man Jonah Maxwell is working as a bounty hunter for El Gordo (the Fat One), who picked up his nickname from an admiring prostitute. Gordo has a plan: to catch a runaway felon who's worth $250,000 to the City of New York. The guys are in hot pursuit of Davis Foester, a social misfit with a bad habit of murdering little old ladies, and a gift for his pursuers, when they come across Tyler Gant -- Vietnam vet, weapons expert and secret serial killer. Foester is working on a murderous plot for Gant, and the attentions of Jonah and Gordo are seriously unwelcome. Trailing Foester to Key West, the two are set for a violent showdown on a houseboat on storm-tossed seas. Not just their own lives but those of Tyler Gant's countless targeted victims are at stake...

Q is for....

I was hoping for a location book something from either Quebec, Queensland or Queens in New York but I struggled to find anything in my collection that i could readily lay my hands on. Pretty sure I have something from Louise Penny somewhere that would have fitted the bill. Ditto John Farrow. I'll settle for......

Q Road by Bonnie Jo Campbell - maybe more general/literary fiction the crime or mystery, but nevermind

Q Road (2002)

Welcome to Q Road, in Greenland Township, where the old way of life is colliding with the new. On the same acres where farmers once displaced Potawatomi Indians, suburban developers now supplant farmers and Q Road (or "Queer Road," as the locals call it) has become home to an unlikely mix of people. The neighbors include a sixth-generation farmer and his rifle-toting child bride, an evangelical bartender, a tabloid-reading agoraphobe, a philandering window salesman, and an asthmatic boy who longs for the love of a good father. These folks all smell the pig manure from the Whitby farm and share the same grand views of the Kalamazoo River and the oldest barn in the township--until one disastrous October afternoon.

Bonnie Jo Campbell's first novel combines offbeat humor, eccentric characters, and unique insights into modern rural America, where family traditions have flown the coop and only the cycle of the seasons remains. At the heart of this tale are three characters so integrally connected and devoted to the Harland farm that they might not survive anywhere else; their lives, their livelihoods, and their sometimes violent love for one another are all rooted in the soil of this square mile.


Previous Alphabet entries.....

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - A IS FOR.... AX, ABBOTT, ABERDEEN

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - B IS FOR ....... BOSTON, BIRD, BONES

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - C IS FOR.........CAPE TOWN, CONFIDENCE MEN, CROSS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - D IS FOR ....... DETROIT, DISHER, DEAD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - E IS FOR ....... EDINBURGH, EXCESS, ELLIS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - F IS FOR ....... FLORIDA, FRANCIS, FLOATERS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - G IS FOR ....... GALWAY, GUNS, GRAFTON

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - H IS FOR ....... HAMBURG, HAMMETT, HIDDEN RIVER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - I IS FOR ....... ICE, ICELAND, IZZO

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - J IS FOR ....... JAPAN, JACK CARTER. JELLO SALAD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - K IS FOR ....... KING, KOREA, KEEPER

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - L IS FOR ........ LE CRIME, LEONARD, LOS ANGELES 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - M IS FOR ........ MIAMI, MACKAY, MUCHO MOJO 

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - N IS FOR ........ NORWAY, NISBET, NEMESIS

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - O IS FOR ........ OWEN, ONE NIGHT STANDS AND LOST WEEKENDS, OXFORD

CRIME FICTION ALPHABET - P IS FOR ........ PARKER, PHILADELPHIA, PAYDIRT

2 BY JOSEPH KNOX

A couple from highly regarded British author, Joseph Knox.
Confession time, I've not read him yet, but plan on starting reading him soon.

























These are the first two featuring Detective Aidan Waits. There's a third book now which has recently been published - The Sleepwalker. Time to pull my finger out!

The author's website is here 















The Siren (2017)

We still live in a world where you can disappear if you want to. Or even if you don't.

Detective Aidan Waits is in trouble

After a career-ending mistake, he’s forced into a nightmare undercover operation that his superiors don’t expect him to survive. The target? Zain Carver, an enigmatic, mesmerising criminal who lures young women into his orbit - young women who have a bad habit of disappearing.

So when the teenage daughter of a prominent MP joins Zain, everything changes.

Before long, Waits is cut loose by the police, stalked by an unseen killer and dangerously attracted to the wrong woman.

How can he save the girl, when he can’t even save himself?

The Smiling Man (2018)

From the acclaimed author of Sirens, damaged Detective Aidan Waits returns in a mind-bending new thriller that will have everyone asking, "Who is the Smiling Man?"

Aidan Waits is back on the night shift, the Manchester PD dumping ground for those too screwed up for more glamorous work. But the monotony of petty crimes and lonesome nights is shattered when he and his partner are called to investigate a break-in at The Palace, an immense, empty hotel in the center of the city.

There, they find the body of a man. He is dead. The tags have been cut from his clothes, his teeth have been filed down, and even his fingertips have been replaced...and he is smiling.

But as Waits begins to unravel the mystery of the smiling man, he becomes a target. Someone wants very badly to make this case disappear, and as their threats escalate, Aidan realizes the answers may lie not only with the wealthy families and organized criminals connected to the Palace, but with a far greater evil from his own past.

To discover the smiling man's identity, he must finally confront his own.

LAWRENCE BLOCK - THE THIEF WHO COULDN'T SLEEP (1966)

Synopsis/blurb......

Introducing EVAN TANNER—the first series character created by Lawrence Block, bestselling author of A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES...

Ever since a shred of shrapnel did a number on his brain’s sleep center, Evan Tanner has been awake 24/7. This gives him more time than your average underachiever. Time to learn the world’s languages (he’s fluent in Basque, but has trouble with Chinese). Time to embrace the world’s lost causes and irredentist movements (The Flat Earth Society, the League for the Restoration of Cilician Armenia, the Society of the Left Hand). Time to write term papers theses for students with more money than knowledge. And, most important, time to do his dreaming while he’s wide awake.

THE THIEF WHO COULDN'T SLEEP is Tanner's first adventure. It finds our insomniacal hero on a mission to recover a hoard of gold coins, stashed fifty years ago in a house in Balekesir by the city's Armenian community. Promptly jailed by the Turks, Tanner escapes and plays hopscotch across the map of Europe, pulling strings, slipping across borders, and, almost incidentally, formenting a revolution in Macedonia.

Well, these things happen...

Lawrence Block again and this time in the company of his adventurer and spy Evan Tanner. Tanner here is on the hunt for some lost Armenian gold.

Istanbul jails, Shannon airport, Irish attics, a shooting in Dublin and some secret papers, an eccentric Madrid hairdresser, drugs and make-up, Spanish hay carts, Andorra, France, Italy, a Bulgarian priest, Yugoslavia, Macedonian uprisings, bed hopping, illicit border crossings, treasure hunting, untrustworthy partners, 800 mile road trips, Syria, Beirut, a Washington cell, government agencies and finally freedom and a new freelance gig.

A light hearted fun read as Tanner falls in and out of scrapes and the odd bed, while criss-crossing Europe on the strength of a tale recounted by an old Armenian woman back in New York. I really liked the tale with the cast of odd-ball characters Tanner met along his journey. As a character I like the quirk of his never being able to sleep. It does give him the opportunity to get the jump on some his less trustworthy associates. I also like his ability to speak multiple languages, another asset when encountering strangers in strange lands.

I think what also struck me was the Block's observations regarding Yugoslavia and the different nationalist identities of portions of the population, along with the rivalries, tensions and mistrust of each other. It's almost as if he had a crystal ball which predicted the break-up of the artificial state of Yugoslavia. The horrors of the Balkan wars of the early 90s and the subsequent details which emerged of ethnic cleansing, genocidal massacres and war crimes aren't easily forgotten. Tanner's Europe is the one I grew up in and is very different from the world today. 

Overall I really enjoyed it. There's humour, action, scrapes - some believable, some far-fetched, and the great company of an easy going, likable main protagonist. I'm going to enjoy more of Evan Tanner's adventures in the next month or two.

4 from 5

Read - (listened to) February, 2020
Published - 1966
Page count - 224 (5 hr 33 min)
Source - Audible download code from one of the author's assistants
Format - Audible 

PETER RITCHIE - MAXINE'S STORY (2019)

Synopsis/blurb....

Maxine Welsh works the streets of Leith, her world collapsing beneath the weight of addiction and mounting debt. A meeting with her only friend leads to a series of incidents that open up new possibilities until her life is threatened and events spin out of control.

Police, gangsters and friends old and new all play their part in another story of crime and its consequences set in the world of the bestselling Detective Grace Macallan series.

First published as a novella in 2015, this revised and extended edition follows Maxine’s journey beyond the streets of Edinburgh in a gritty, poignant tale of hope and redemption.

A cracking tale from Peter Ritchie which exposes the seedy underbelly of life walking the streets and selling your body to feed a drug addiction - trapped in a relentless cycle of misery, isolation and a loss of self worth. When Maxine Welsh hits rock bottom - in debt and at the mercy of a vicious low level pimp there's two ways the story can go - death or the only other way - up!

In a nutshell......friendship, luck and kindness, as well as a sabbatical south away from the stresses and temptations of Edinburgh see Maxine begin to rebuild her life. Homesick and returning to Edinburgh, her life gets back on track, but not without a few twists and turns along the way. Hmm... more than a few actually.

It's hard to do the book justice. It's portrayal of life on the margins with limited choices and very little hope for the future is tough reading at times. The friendship with another street girl Connie and an older pub owner, Logan provide some relief and a sustenance and brighten the gloom. The evolving relationships between the three are an important aspect of the book. There's a generosity of spirit about them that, instead of diminishing through years of suffering hard knocks, flourishes and is keenly illustrated through the adoption of another waif and stray from Glasgow - the hapless Bobo.

I enjoyed the setting, the dark side of Edinburgh and Leith - the streets, the pubs, the cafes and the spots the tourists don't get to see. I liked reading about the rogues and chancers and low lives that rumble through the book with their plots and schemes for money, drugs, influence and more importantly respect in a like-minded community of villains.

Family histories, schisms and back stories, bereavement, loss, love, support, humanity, recovery, decency run parallel with contrasting elements - anger, violence, revenge, and more than the odd character with psychopathic tendencies.

Excellent pacing, aided by an emotional investment in the characters which has you turning the pages. Decent length - just over 300 pages and a satisfying outcome.

5 from 5

This was my third time with Peter Ritchie's books and definitely not my last.
Our Little Secrets and Where No Shadows Fall have been enjoyed before.

Read - February, 2020
Published - 2019 (a shorter version appeared in 2015)
Page count - 316
Source - review copy received from Claire - publicist at Pascha PR
Format - paperback