Book Review of Death Watch Cottage by T. Orr Munro

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(Review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

 

 Murder mystery where victims, killers and motives proliferate.

In this novel, there’s no whittling-down of suspects, either for murders or police corruption and attempts to pervert the course of justice.

The heroine is a Cornish crime scene investigator, who finds several pieces of significant evidence to do with a number of possibly separate cases, starting with what looks like an accidental death of an environmental campaigner in the splendidly ambiguous “Death Watch Cottage”, whilst going through an extremely bad time as a soon to be homeless single mother with a teenage daughter and with accusations of professional misconduct and even corruption flying in more than one direction. All of which makes it very hard to correctly understand the true, or the full, significance of anything until it has all been found, and even then the proper context is supplied by a single crucial but not very noticeable fact mentioned outside of the active investigation itself.

And even when the investigator has solved all the known crimes to her own satisfaction and their housing issues to her daughter’s satisfaction, there’s a twist still to come when her thoughts turn to a mystery connected with the same Death Watch Cottage from several years before the killing which triggered her investigation.

The rich list of suspects includes: a property developer, a different sort of environmental campaigner to the deceased, a possible gang of anti-second home vandals, an adulteress, a bullying police inspector, a publisher of illegal voyeuristic pornography and a teenage porn addict with an online handle of “Tate Boy” and a diminishing list of friends. The puzzle is not so much to sort out the innocent from the guilty as to match the offenders to the correct offences, which is really quite absorbing for the reader.

Death Watch Cottage by T. Orr Munroe is published in the UK by HQ on the 26^th of March 2026

Book Review of The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley

  

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The history of a friendship.

 

(Review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

The saving grace of any nostalgic novel stretching across the Blair years ought to be that it does not mention Mr B at all, so score one for the author there.

A younger literary woman works, intermittently, for a magazine mostly edited by an older man, with whom she gets on very well. Quite what the magazine “Sequence” actually publishes is never quite clear; what matters is the politics of producing it! Quite why she is so tolerant of and loyal to her erstwhile boss becomes clear as she remembers some of her past relationships, which range from the abusive to non-sinister weirdness. And the (completely unproductive) two-year reign of “Shove” Halfpenny as editor of Sequence will strike a chord with people in almost any industry or other field of endeavour with experience of those born to executive privilege who rise relentlessly up the ladder regardless of the wrecked enterprises they leave in their wake.

The attractive thing about this book is that there’s no real rancour about the bad stuff, merely observation and endurance. The point of this book is that you have to get through the bad stuff because what you value, forever, are the people and places who get you through.

That may even be why the bad stuff has to happen: to smoke out those who actually care.

 

 The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley is published in the UK by Picador on the 2^nd of April 2026.

Book Review of Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo (translated by Joheun Lee)

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(Review based on a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley UK)

 

Both a thriller and a study of obsession and modern-day idolatry.

This is a novel (based, apparently, on real incidents) about four women (two are young, two middle-aged) with an obsession in common, or as it turns out, different obsessions with an object in common, which happens to be a highly popular young male Korean pop star, who is perhaps a one-hit wonder or very nearly so.

This leads to their working at cross-purposes as they work together. At the same time, almost everyone else with any relationship to the pop idol in question is likewise plotting in some direction or another and most of those who aren’t plotting at all, swiftly fall victim to the plots. Although most of the outcomes in this novel are tragic, the kidnap of the pop idol by the four women does at least save him from what his manager sees as a neat (and very final) solution to the dangerous levels of obsessive behaviour exhibited by other fans, especially when it leads to violence against his colleagues and he could well be next!

The company’s chairman, though, is greatly impressed by the enterprise and inventiveness of the young female fans and thinks they are more talented than their Western or Japanese counterparts and they would be an asset to Korea if they had something more important to do, such as resisting an invasion or overthrowing a domestic dictatorship. And although all this is set in South Korea, more than one of the characters sees North Korea as a possible escape route back towards a simpler way of life, more in keeping with Korean tradition than the present-day South Korea.

This is not an idea likely to appear in any non-fiction published by or for South Koreans, however “free” the country might be according to the official narrative. There are very few countries in the world, let alone the Far East, where the idol of constant change in the name of “progress” can be safely questioned and to worship it is the only really safe course of action in most societies these days. What makes it a fantasy is that the North is just as obsessed with its own version of “never ending progress” as the South.

The boy pop star, is indeed an idol as well as a vulnerable and wickedly-exploited young man, he is also Korea, North and South, and even beyond that, the boy is the wider modern world, secretly desperate for a less frantic direction.

Spoiler alert: he is presumed dead, but narrowly survives and is found washed up on a beach by a young woman who decides a young man with nothing at all, not even a memory of who he is, is just what she is looking for. Obsession destroys, love redeems.

Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo is published in the UK by Picador on the 5^th of February 2026.