Review Roundup: Bussi, Moore, Parsons, Patterson & Ellis, Roberts, Walters

Here are seven reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, all have appeared on the blog since last time*.

*I am trialling a new approach at the moment in that all reviews will appear on the Euro Crime blog rather than being separate files as part of the Euro Crime website. I feel this will give the reviews more exposure and make them more findable in a search engine. The reviews will usually appear daily ie Monday to Friday, with occasional weekend postings, and roundups will appear on Sundays. The website will continue with bibliographies etc, the only change is that the reviews will be on the blog.

I'd be interested in any comments about this new approach.

You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page and follow on Twitter, @eurocrime.

New Reviews

Craig Sisterson reviews Michel Bussi's After the Crash tr. Sam Taylor;

Ewa Sherman reviews Margaret Moore's Broken Chord set in Italy;

Amanda Gillies reviews The Slaughter Man by Tony Parsons;

I review Part One and Part Two of  James Patterson & David Ellis's Murder House;

Amanda also reviews Mark Roberts's Blood Mist, the first in a new series


and Michelle Peckham reviews Minette Walters' The Cellar.




Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, along with releases by year.

Review: The Cellar by Minette Walters

The Cellar by Minette Walters, May 2015, 256 pages, Hammer, ISBN: 0099594641

Reviewed by Michelle Peckham.
(Read more of Michelle's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Muna is a young fourteen-year-old girl living in Mr and Mrs Songoli’s house. She is somehow ‘adopted’, not allowed to leave the house, illiterate, and thought not to speak English, but only Hausa. Mrs Songoli (Yetunde) describes her to the police as her brain damaged first born, who finds it hard to learn.

The police are in the Songolis’ house, because their youngest son, ten-year-old Abiola, has failed to come home from school. Strangely, when Abiola went missing, but before the police arrived, Yetunde discretely moved Muna’s mattress out of the cellar, and moved her into a room with a proper bed and a window.

Muna, too frightened to speak, listens to Mr and Mrs Songoli telling the police lie after lie about their missing son and their life together, while Muna’s thoughts tell the reader what has really been happening, uncovering the lies, and revealing all that she wishes she could say. She would really like to tell the police that she needs their help, because she was stolen when she was just eight years old, and she just wants to go home, but she doesn’t know who her parents are or where she is really from. But somehow, she cannot say a word.

The investigations continue, and the external influences of the police presence start to give Muna a strange sort of courage and boldness. Despite intensive searching, Abioloa is not found, and eventually the police leave. But the change in Muna’s behaviour continues, and this heralds the start of the decline and fall of the remaining Songolis: Yetunde, her husband Ebuka and their thirteen-year-old son Olubayo. All of which is somehow helped by the evil influence of the devil in the cellar.

The story mostly unfolds from Muna’s thoughts and observations on life in the Songoli household. The reader gradually discovers the appalling treatment meted out to her over the years, and the stark contrast between her demeaning treatment and life of fear and deprivation, with the extravagant, amoral lifestyle of the Songolis. The devil in the cellar is laughing and wants revenge. Muna responds by taking action. A short intriguing story, clearly commenting on the upsurge in ‘slavery’ that often makes the news, with a few genuine surprises along the way. Recommended.

Michelle Peckham, September 2015

Crime Writers contribute to Imagined Lives

A new exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery this week called Imagined Lives, the accompanying book has been available for a couple of weeks. The authors involved in this imagining of lives for unknown portrait subjects include crime writers John Banville (aka Benjamin Black), Alexander McCall Smith and Minette Walters as well as non-crime writers Tracy Chevalier, Julian "Downton Abbey" Fellowes, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton and Joanna Trollope.

You can read an extract from False Mary (which is the cover on the book below) written by Alexander McCall Smith on the NPG website.

Eight internationally acclaimed authors have invented imaginary biographies and character sketches based on fourteen unidentified portraits. Who are these men and women, why were they painted, and why do they now find themselves in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery? With fictional letters, diaries, mini-biographies and memoirs, Imagined Lives creates vivid stories about these unknown sitters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Chameleon's Shadow out in paperback

The latest title from Minette Walters, The Chameleon's Shadow, is now out in paperback.

The PanMacmillan website has a longish extract. I couldn't put it down when I read it earlier this year.

New Reviews

Here are this week's new reviews and a reminder that there's just a couple of days to enter March's competition:

Latest Reviews:

Geoff Jones reviews the newest in the Trish Maguire series by Natasha Cooper, A Poisoned Mind, calling it "well plotted and entertaining";

Maxine Clarke reviews The Cipher Garden by Martin Edwards, the second in his Lake District series, this one being a "variant on the classic "locked room" mystery";

Maxine awards "ten out ten" for the latest book in paperback by Nicci French, Losing You which revolves around a mother's frantic effort to find her missing daughter on a small island;

Fiona Walker provides the first Euro Crime review of Nemesis by Jo Nesbo and sums up: "A brilliant thriller rife with violence and vengeance, it may be lengthy but you won't want it to end";

Sunnie Gill reviews the third book from Ed O'Connor Primal Cut and suggests it's perhaps for readers who prefer "a walk on the dark side"

and I review the latest from Minette Walters The Chameleon's Shadow which will be on my list of favourite reads at the end of the year.

Current Competition (closing date 31 March):

Win a copy of A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley (UK & Europe only)

(geographical restrictions are in brackets)

BBC2 Crime Writing Series (for "celebrities")

Will the reality show madness never end...From Digital Spy:

Brendan Cole is to star in a new reality show which teaches celebrities to become crime writers.

The Strictly Come Dancing regular will join former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie and four other stars in BBC Two's Murder Most Famous.

The group will be given writing tasks while being taught how to solve crimes with help from psychologists and police.

Best-selling author Minette Walters has signed up to be a mentor on the show and will have the power to oust a celebrity at the end of each day.

The winner will pen their own crime novel to be published by PanMacmillan on next year's World Book Day.

Murder Most Famous will air on BBC Two over five afternoons in March.

I had assumed the Cole being referred to in the Digital Spy headline was Martina!

Minette Walters Event - 11 May, London

I've had an email from the promoter of the event and the talk is likely to include Minette Walters speaking about "how she became interested in murder and violence, where she gets inspiration for her books and why she is intrigued by 'ordinary' characters facing situations of trauma that lead to responses that surprise not only the readers but the characters themselves."

Event details from the Connecting Conversations website:

Friday 11th May 2007 at 7-8.30pm at The Henry Thomas Room, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 (nearest tube Holloway Road, Picadilly Line)

Crime Writer Minette Walters talks to Psychoanalyst and Forensic Psychiatrist Cleo Van Velson.

Minette has been described as the Queen of British Crime Fiction and her work has been translated into 26 languages. Her first novel THE ICE HOUSE won the CWA John Creasey Award in 1992, her second THE SCULPTRESS won the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the third THE SCOLD'S BRIDLE the CWA Gold Dagger Award.

Dr Cleo Van Velsen is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Forensic Psychotherapy. She is also an Adult Psychoanalyst. She works fulltime in the NHS being based in a medium secure unit in inner-city London . She is interested in the understanding and treatment of men and women who commit acts of violence. Linked to this is her interest in the way that violence can be understood through film, novels, etc. She is a co-editor of a textbook on Forensic Psychotherapy and contributing editor to the recent Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis.

Bookings Tickets £12/ £6 concessions (inc glass of wine).

Tel 020 7388 8822 or via www.thebloomsbury.com. Booking fee applies.

Minette Walters' next book is 'The Chameleon's Shadow' out in September. A full list of her titles and links to reviews and her website can be found on her Euro Crime bibliography page.