Book Review of Breakneck Point by T. Orr Munro

 * * * * *

A thriller with two heroines and several villains

I am giving a five-star recommendation to a novel which I found difficult to read at times. Why? Well, because it gives an insight into a criminal justice system which has evolved to an unscientific state where it is normally only capable of detecting and convicting stupid people. Now, criminologists patiently tell us that most criminals are amazingly stupid. The trouble with that little factoid is that huge numbers of completely innocent persons are also a bit stupid at times, which means that they are all too easily convicted by a system which, by and large, does not believe in clever criminals, let alone scientifically-minded ones, and whose own concept of “forensic science” revolves around a determination to introduce “single particle evidence” to increase, rather than improve, the conviction rate, ignoring that it’s an axiom of science that a single particle proves nothing. A conviction rate bolstered by wrongful convictions can only be improved by being reduced.

This novel is difficult to read at times because the primary villain is a clever and calculating necrophiliac murderer who lies, skilfully and also sadistically in pretty well every conversation he joins and the minor villains are senior police officers who apply Lardarse’s Razor to every conundrum, whereby the conclusion that leads to the path of least thought and effort is always reached. The tension in the plot, and there’s a lot of it, derives from the way the clever necrophiliac interacts with institutionally-irrational senior police officers to constantly ratchet up the scale of the disaster afflicting the primary heroine and several other innocents. And this strikes a chord with me, as it will with many other readers, because you cannot live in the modern world and not know, or know about, policemen like this. There is also a well-drawn secondary villain whose most devastating tactic against those victims he seeks to destroy is to marry them. He, too, will strike a chord with many readers. It’s the grains of truth which make this novel both compelling and uncomfortable.

The author knows her stuff and she knows the Devon landscape the story is set in. She knows terrifying truths about teenage girls and isn’t afraid to tell them. The story is well-told but not gently told. The solution is as shocking as it is surprising, but it is well crafted around the limitations of the senior investigating officer.

 

Breakneck Point by T. Orr Munro is published in the UK by HQ on the 14^th of April 2022.

Book Review of The Christie Affair by Nina De Gramont

 

* * * *

A novel take on the disappearance of Agatha Christie.

This is a well-crafted novel based on a real-life mystery where the truth is unknown to anyone in the present day. As such the author can do more or less as she likes and her chosen course is an interesting one, showing the way that women tend to form alliances in stressful situations rather than making enemies. This is true, sometimes; it may even be true quite often, but it’s definitely not always true.

It will also be controversial in that the story suggests that Irish independence was, if not built on hypocrisy, far too tolerant of hypocrisy and injustice from the outset and for decades afterwards, right up to the nineteen seventies and in some cases beyond. Single mothers had fewer rights than criminals and institutions for them genuinely were worse than jails. The author tries to soften the blow by pointing out that England and the United States also had institutions of equivalent function, but these were never quite as bad, never had such a complete grip and certainly did not endure for anything like as long. Although, anyone seeking the Roman Catholic Church at its absolute worst on this particular subject in the 20^th century should look to Franco’s Spain and Galtieri’s Argentina and not Ireland.

This is a mystery story where the usual moral certainties have been altered: the men who have survived the Great War, even those in high authority, are perfectly willing to fudge the truth and even break the law in order to minimise actual harm while the “fallen” women are willing to break the law in order to obtain justice for themselves and their children, whether the latter are lost or dead. Crimes against humanity make other crimes seem perfectly reasonable.

This novel deals kindly with Agatha Christie whilst possibly taking liberties with the unknown facts, but it deals kindly from a 21^st century viewpoint. Which is why I can’t give it a five-star recommendation.

The Christie Affair by Nina De Gramont is published by Pan Macmillan (Mantle) on the 20^th of January 2022.

Book Review of Daughter of the Sea by Elisabeth J. Hobbes

* * * * *

A romantic fantasy set in a recognisable Yorkshire landscape.

In the early nineteen-nineties, a famous commissioning editor proclaimed that his reading of the future fiction market was for “Erotica in a horror/fantasy landscape.” Thirty years on, this novel turns his specification upside-down.

The author allows herself only one fantastical premise (and this is a very traditional one) in that some individuals can be two different species and change forms at will, or according to their need. Pretty much everything else is solid and decently-researched eighteen-nineties Yorkshire. The landscape of this novel is born of observation and not fantasy. The local industry is correct (there was an episode of “Landscape Mysteries” by the Open University about this!) and we even see how pawnbrokers of the time manipulated prices to avoid the legal requirement to auction high-value unredeemed goods.

There are a couple of erotic scenes amidst all the Victorian morals, but while these are fantastical, they are not perverse.

The characters, regardless of species-shifting, are believable and the heroine’s heart versus head dilemma is complicated by the fact that her heart goes a bit in both directions, as does her head. There’s also a clear divide between being thoughtless or limited in scope and actual cruelty: both occur in the story but the author does not confuse the two.

The stories within this story question whether happy endings are real, but the real question is what is the heroine prepared to do for her happy ending and how does she even define “happy?”

Daughter of the Sea by Elisabeth J. Hobbes is published by Harper Collins “One More Chapter” on the 20^th of December 2021.