It’s been a busy week. I’ve started more books than I’ve finished and bought more books than I’ve read. Anyway, here’s what’s been happening this week and what’s up next.
This week, I’ve been reading about crime in foreign places: a dark tale of murder and greed in the far north of Sweden, a puzzling discovery of human remains at a remote church on the Inishowen pennisula in Donegal and a psychokinetic murder in an alternative Lisbon. The three books were very different in tems of tone and storytelling style but the each kept me entertained.
‘The Colours Of Death‘ (2021) is the first of three books set in an alternative version of contemporary Lisbon where it has been known since the beginning of the twentieth century that a percentage of the population, referred to as ‘The Gifted’ in polite society, are born with telekinetic or telepathic abilities. Inspector Isabel Reis is Gifted and a homicide detective in Lisbon. She’s also very aware that the Gifted are treated as more of a threat than a treasure: assessed as children monitored throughout their lives and increasingly distrusted by ‘regular’ people. So, when a murder occurs that seems to involve the use of telekinetic powers, Reis understands the risk of backlash. A risk that increases when she finds out who was killed.
I loved how well thought through this book was. The murder mystery worked as an intriguing puzzle that escalated into a tense thriller but the plot also delved deep into how the Gifted were treated. I liked how Patricia Marques used Isabel Reis’s fears and her childhood memories to make the world of the Gifted feel real.
The pace of the book was unhurried, with Reis’ personality and history being revealed slowly as she investigates the secrets and lies that are wrapped around a murder apparently committed by an unknown and very powerful Gifted.
For me, the middle section of the book ran a little too slowly but the ending, which was action-packed and surprising, more than made up for that.
The Second Deadly Sin‘ (2012) is the fifth book featuring Recka Martisson, a prosecutor working in the far north of Sweden, having abandoned her high-powered job in Stockholm to come back to the village she was raised in.
The second deadly sin is greed and the book is dominated by the ugly actions and emotions that greed generates in people. It’s a dark book, even darker than the ones that went before it. It’s set in two timelines, the present day and the early twentieth century when what is now a quiet village was a booming mining town. Larsson pulled no punches in describing the violence, misogyny, and oppression of the poor in the booming mining town. Sadly, her descriptions of the present day show only a superficial improvement.
I find that I lose myself completely in these books, even when that means being mired in sadness and confronted with ugliness. I think the reason for that is that, in the face of it all, Martinsson manages to retain her empathy and search for a little happiness.
‘Death At Whitewater Church‘ (2015) is the first of six books set in Donegal on the Inishowen Peninsula and featuring local solicitor Benedicta ‘Ben’ O’Keeffe. She’s insatiably curious (nosey is how most people would describe it) and she’s from Dublin so she has to have the history of the close-knit local community explained to her as she digs into things that might be better left to the police.
This was a gentle if complicated mystery, calmly told but with some moments of great tension. I liked the sense of place and I admired Andrea Carter’s talent for realistic dialogue. The plot was a little more convoluted than was necessary but it provided a good introduction to Ben O’Keefe and the region that she’s now made home. I’ll be visiting her again sometime soon.
Yet again, I’ve bought more books this week than I’ve read, Sigh.
Anyway, I think they’re all interesting books. I’ve got a newly published Irish crime book that I’ve been waiting for, two slighlty cosy, slightly odd books that start new series, a continuation of an Urban Fantasy series, a Literary Fiction novel with an intriguing premise and a speculative fiction novel I’d normally have passed over but which comes highly recommended.
An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases.
After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients’ homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks.
When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime. But as she delves further into the mystery, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations – something she used to swear didn’t exist – has finally come for her…
I loved Gigi Pandian’s ‘The Accidental Alchemist‘. It was original, quirky and fun. Best of all, it had Dorian the gargoyle in it, who taught me the value of mise en place when preparing a meal. I’m hoping that Tempest Raj and the Secret Staircase mysteries will also delight and surprise me. If they do, then there are already another three books in print for me to read.
A big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets . . . and murder.
Cat Conway has recently returned to Port Ellis to work as a reporter at the Quill & Packet. She’s fled the tattered remains of her high-profile career and bad divorce for the holiday town of her childhood, famous for its butter tarts, theater, and a century-old feud.
One of Cat’s first assignments is to interview legendary actor Eliot Fraser, the lead in the theater’s season opener of Inherit the Wind. When Eliot ends up dead onstage on opening night, the curtain rises on the sleepy town’s secrets. The suspects include the actor whose career Eliot ruined, the ex-wife he betrayed, the women he abused, and even the baker he wronged. With the attention of the world on Port Ellis, this story could be Cat’s chance to restore her reputation. But the police think she’s a suspect, and the murderer wants to kill the story-and her too. Can Cat solve the mystery before she loses her job or becomes the next victim of a killer with a theatrical bent for vengeance?
Canadian small town amateur sleuth AND a theatre setting. How could I resist, especially when it was recommended by a reviewer I trust? I’m hoping this will be the start of a set of comfort read cosy mysteries.
After decades of dereliction and inner-city neglect, Barrack Street, Cork is finally being excavated. The work uncovers the skeletal remains of six men, scattered around the site, their hands and feet all bound, all clearly killed violently, but many decades, even centuries, ago.
When a seventh body is found, Detective Garda Alice McCann knows immediately this one is different. It’s female, for a start, and considerably more recent. Who was she? And who killed her?
Alice is determined to find the truth and bring the killer to justice – and, desperately seeking a way back to who she used to be, she also senses that this might be the case to do it.
But powerful forces are determined to stop her. Cork is small, with all kinds of hidden connections, and plenty of people who used to be friends, who now live very different lives… But their shared history unites them. And their secrets.
Catherine Kirwan is one of the new wave of Irish crime writers based out of Cork, along with Michelle Dunne and Amy Cronin. I was looking at starting her Finn Fitzpatrick series (three books so far, starting with ‘Darkest Truth’when I saw that she had a new standalone crime novel coming out, so i’m going to start there. It was published yesterday and I’ll get to it as soon as my wife is finished with it.
In the nineties Lydia was a teen pop star, posed half naked on billboards everywhere with a lollipop between her lips and no idea how to live, letting the world happen to her. Now, three decades later, Lydia is less and less sure that what happened to her was in the least bit okay. The news cycle runs hot with #MeToo stories, and a famous former lover has emerged with a self-serving apology, asking her to forgive him. Suddenly, the past is full of trapdoors she is desperately trying not to fall through.
Joyce, in middle age, has never left home. She still lives with her mother Betty. With their matching dresses, identical hairdos and makeup, they are the local oddballs. Theirs is a life of unerring routine: the shops, biscuits served on bone china plates, dressing up for a gin and tonic on Saturday. Nice things. One misstep from Joyce can ruin Betty’s day; so Joyce treads carefully. She has never let herself think about a different kind of life. But recently, along with the hot flushes, something like anger is asserting itself, like a caged thing realising it should probably try and escape.
Amid the grey skies, amusement parks and beauty parlours of a gentrifying run-down seaside resort, these two women might never meet. But as they both try to untangle the damaging details of their past in the hope of a better future, their lives are set on an unlikely collision course.
I’m trying this out because it was only book on the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist that interested me. I’m intrigued by the seaside setting and the idea of the two women being brought together by chance.
The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth – from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds – collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game – with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.
So, I hate the cover even more than I dislike the title and I regard LitRPG as an improbable oxymoron. And yet… I keep hearing that this is a fun read. And I liked the audiobook sample. So… I’m just going to pretend it’s called something else and has a beautiful cover.
Aileen has always been certain of a few undeniable facts – black raspberry is the only ice cream flavor that matters, vampires can’t be trusted, and her loyalty, once given, is unquestionable. When a late-night visitor shows up needing her help, she agrees without hesitation.
It’s not long before a pounding at her door reminds her that nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems. Now, with her friend missing, Aileen realizes her simple favor leads to consequences she cannot avoid as she finds herself drawn further into a world she’s done everything to escape.
As loyalties are tested, Aileen will need to decide how far she will go in the name of friendship. Because bodies are dropping, and the trail leads right back to one she holds dear. Will she stand fast in her beliefs, or will she be forced to betray another?
One thing is clear – her choice may lead to her salvation or her doom.
This will be my third visit with Aileen Travers. So far, I’ve enjoyed her slightly off-centre way of trying to stay at liberty in an authoritarian supernatural community that she was made a member of against her will. Actually that sounds like a fair description of the challenge faced by her entire generation.
This week, I’m reading books that combine Science Fiction and murder mysteries. I have a murder on a generation spacehip, a human and AI duo investigating crime in a near future England and a telephathically gifted detective working in an an alternative version of contemporary Lisbon.. It should be an exciting week..
When the body of a man is found crucified at the top of Mount Judd, DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock – the world’s first AI detective – are thrust into the spotlight with their first live case.
But when they discover another man dead – also crucified – it appears that the killer is only just getting started. When the Future Policing Unit issues an extraordinary warning to local men to avoid drinking in pubs, being out alone late at night and going home with strangers, they face a hostile media frenzy. Whilst they desperately search for connections between the victims, time is running out for them to join the dots and prevent another death.
‘Leave No Trace’ (2024) is the second book about featuring the partnership between DCS Kat Frank and AIDE Lock. The first book, ‘In The Blink Of An Eye‘ in January and thought it was wonderful. I’m hoping this one will be too.
I’m looking forward to seeing where Jo Callaghan takes this unusual partnership. This story has the added appeal of being set at Christmas, always the perfect time for a murder or two.
A mind is a terrible thing to erase…
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.
Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…
‘Murder By Memoery’ (2025) is the first book in a new series of cosy mysteries set in space featuring amateur sleuth, Dorothy Gentleman. I’m hoping for something reminiscent of Mary Robinette Kowal’s ‘The Spare Man‘ with a whole series to follow up on.
A woman’s body is found in a river just outside of Lisbon. Inspectors Isabel Reis and Aleksandr Voronov identify the murder victim as Marta Nunes – a youth centre worker who, like Isabel, classifies as Gifted. Born with special abilities, the Gifted are often looked at with a certain level of suspicion.
In the search for her killer, Reis digs into Marta’s past. She soon discovers that she is connected to a number of missing women. All young, all telepathic Gifted, all vanished off the face of the earth.
Marta might have been helping these missing girls, or she might have been hurting them. But Inspector Reis needs to find the truth about who killed Marta and why, and she needs to find where the missing girls go. Because some of them might still be alive out there . . .
This is the second book about the telepathically gifted Inspector Isabel Reis. I was so enthused by the ending of the first book in this series that I decided to read the next one straight away.
Mike Finn's Fiction 