{"id":6790,"date":"2016-04-20T11:30:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T11:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6790"},"modified":"2016-04-25T11:27:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-25T11:27:27","slug":"april-crime-round-up-by-n-j-cooper-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6790","title":{"rendered":"April Crime Round-Up by N.J. Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Spare Me the Truth by C. J. Carver<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Zaffre Publishing<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

A Cast of Vultures by Judith Flanders<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Allison & Busby<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

Tastes Like Fear by Sarah Hilary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Headline<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by HarperCollins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

A Dying Breed by Peter Hanington<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Two Roads<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brave women under serious threat are a feature of all but one of this month’s novels, but they are much more interesting than the over-familiar fem-jep subgenre in which a \"\"<\/a>sexually disturbed psychopath kidnaps, rapes, mutilates and murders vulnerable women.<\/p>\n

C. J. Carver is one of the rare women writers who can deliver unremitting pace in her fiction.\u00a0 Spare Me The Truth <\/em>begins with an intriguing scene:\u00a0 Dan Forrester, driving instructor, good father, and survivor of the serious breakdown that followed witnessing his baby son’s death, is stalked by a good-looking middle-aged woman who seems to know a great deal more about him than she should and threatens his young daughter.\u00a0 At the same time, PC Lucy Davies has been banished to the provinces from the Met after a screw-up.\u00a0 And the stalker’s GP daughter becomes the subject of horrible blackmail.\u00a0 The three stories clash, dovetail and clash again, involving the reader in high adventure and emotional excitement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Judith Flanders deals in less dramatic affairs in the bookish world of editor Sam Clair and her CID lover, Jake, but there are danger and high tension here too, and some thoroughly nasty villains.\u00a0 Sam lives to read, both for work and pleasure, but she also has discriminating taste in all life’s other pleasures as well.\u00a0 This first-person narrative is so witty and elegant that reading it is like being in the company of a highly civilized friend.\u00a0 Arson, lying, and the persecution of various well-meaning but inconvenient individuals are all convincing but, for me, less important than Sam’s take on life.\u00a0 Even when she’s more or less hanging by her fingernails from a tree in Kew Gardens while escaping gun-toting thugs, her comments on what is happening are thoroughly entertaining.<\/p>\n

Sarah Hilary’s Tastes Like Fear<\/em> edges closer to traditional fem-jep but avoids the traps in a story about disappearing teenage girls and their desperate parents.\u00a0 The appealing DI Marnie Rome, who was introduced in Someone Else’s Skin<\/em>, becomes involved when a fleeing girl causes a fatal car crash.\u00a0 But even Marnie’s investigative skills and courage fade in comparison with those of the surviving sister of one of the victims.\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 Hilary’s depiction of 13-year-old Laura Beswick, Loz, is heartbreaking and convincing.\u00a0 This pacy, easy-reading novel is lifted by its perceptive examination of the distress of girls who don’t believe they fit their allotted space in the world and the agony of the parents who try to make them understand how deeply they are loved.<\/p>\n

Andrew Taylor’s persecuted woman is Catherine (Cat) Lovett, unhappy inhabitant of her uncle’s house in London at the time of the Great Fire in 1666.\u00a0Her father is on Charles II’s hitlist as one of the worst of the regicides who presided over his father’s execution.\u00a0 All she wants to do is avoid a forced marriage to her revolting, greedy cousin and be allowed to produce architectural drawings of the great buildings and replanned city that must arise after the Fire.\u00a0 She first encounters Taylor’s hero, James Marwood, whose father is also persona non grata<\/em> at the Restoration court, during the Fire itself.\u00a0 At this stage he believes she’s a fragile boy and when the flames set fire to her clothes, he beats them out with his own cloak and loses it when his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 runs. <\/strong><\/p>\n

When bodies of men are found around the ashes of London with their thumbs tied together behind their backs, Marwood is commissioned to investigate.\u00a0 Delving into the reasons why they might have earned the hatred of the killer, he discovers a lot more about his own family and comes into contact with Cat once again.\u00a0 She has an urge to self-determination that will endear her to twenty-first-century readers and an almost kick-ass predilection for violence, which provides a nice balance to Marwood’s fundamental gentleness.<\/p>\n

Very little gentleness is on offer in Peter Hanington’s first novel, A Dying Breed<\/em>.\u00a0 This deals with William Carver, a foreign correspondent of a type familiar from the fiction of writers such as Graham Greene and John le Carr\u00e9.\u00a0 Carver drinks vastly, rarely washes, has seen far too much horror and has no patience with careerism or bureaucracy.\u00a0 Given that he works for the BBC he encounters plenty of both but is well able to circumvent them.\u00a0 Hanington himself worked for Radio 4’s Today<\/em> for many years and obviously knows \"\"<\/a>the world about which he’s writing.\u00a0 The action in the novel moves from Broadcasting House to Afghanistan, when a tailor’s shop is bombed while a powerful customer is being fitted for new clothes.<\/p>\n

Carver is too good a hack to accept the official accounts of what has happened and why, but his recalcitrance and atrocious treatment of his producer, Vivian, force his bosses at home to send out a replacement, Patrick Reid, with orders to control him.\u00a0 Patrick, who is on his first assignment abroad, is a charming if apparently weedy fellow, who has no chance of making Carver do anything he doesn’t want.\u00a0 Soon Patrick is kidnapped by unknown locals.\u00a0 Hanington’s description of his terrified journey across Afghanistan and delivery into the hands of the notoriously brutal General Doushki is magnificent. \u00a0Altogether this is a beautifully written account of myriad deceptions and mortal dangers in a country that has been at war with itself and the outside world for generations.\u00a0 And in the end there is gentleness here too.\u00a0 This is a terrific novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by N.J. Cooper<\/p>\n

Hanington’s description [ in A Dying Breed<\/em>] of Patrick’s terrified journey across Afghanistan and delivery into the hands of the notoriously brutal General Doushki is magnificent. Altogether this is a beautifully written account of myriad deceptions and mortal dangers in a country that has been at war with itself and the outside world for generations. And in the end there is gentleness here too. This is a terrific novel […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6790"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6805,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions\/6805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}