Fans of Peter James and his bestselling Roy Grace series of crime novels know that his books draw on in-depth research into the lives of Brighton and Hove police and are set in a world every bit as gritty as the real thing. His friend Graham Bartlett was a long-serving detective in the city once described as Britain’s ‘crime capital’. Together, in Death Comes Knocking, they have written a gripping account of the city’s most challenging cases, taking the reader from crime scenes and incident rooms to the morgue, and introducing some of the real-life detectives who inspired Peter James’s characters.
Whether it’s the murder of a dodgy nightclub owner and his family in Sussex’s worst non-terrorist mass murder or the race to find the abductor of a young girl, tracking down the antique trade’s most notorious ‘knocker boys’ or nailing an audacious ring of forgers, hunting for a cold-blooded killer who executed a surfer or catching a pair who kidnapped a businessman, leaving him severely beaten, to die on a hillside, the authors skillfully evoke the dangerous inside story of policing, the personal toll it takes and the dedication of those who risk their lives to keep the public safe.
My thoughts:
I seem to be enjoying quite a bit of non-fiction at the minute and this is another that joins the ranks of interesting factual reads.
Graeme Bartlett was a high-ranking officer in Brighton and Hove and recently retired, but during his service, he became friends with Peter James. This is an account of the interesting jobs he came across during his career. Written with Peter James, they have linked the real life stories of Roy Grace’s career, linking books up with locations or types of cases mentioned.
The mixture of cases in the book holds something of interest for everyone, from fraud to murder, drug problem changes and public order policing. What I particularly enjoyed about it though was how Graham interspersed his own real life through the pages. As his career progressed, we learned how his home life was progressing, including some very difficult personal moments that I thought was incredibly brave of him to share.
In this book you will learn about real-life policing, the fantastic camaraderie, interesting real-life cases including photographs and if you’re a Peter James fan you’ll enjoy linking the real places with the fictional stories, and you’ll learn about the man behind the stories as there is a character in the James’ books based on Graham Bartlett.
I enjoyed this so much I became a bit melancholy about my old job, but as I tweeted Graham and told him this, he reminded me I was wearing my rose-tinted glasses. It’s always easy to think fondly of the past, but policing in today’s climate when the cuts are digging deep and morale is low, is a hard job to do. I loved it while I was there, but I love what I do now. Read this and get a real insight to policing.
Under the streets of London there’s a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.
Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.
My thoughts:
This has been on my To Be Read pile for a long time and was one of my top five anticipated reads of 2016, which you can find listed Here. I love Gaiman. I think he is a master storyteller.
Neverwhere didn’t disappoint. It wasn’t entirely as I expected. I think I was expecting it to drop straight into the strange, but it didn’t. It firmly based itself in the real world before falling down the rabbit hole that was Neverwhere. This lent it a more believable feel. Richard was a normal, average, everyday working male and it was only circumstance that had led him into the situation he found himself in.
I really liked Richard and I liked his reactions to what was happening, to him and around him. Yes, it was the bizarre, but because of the initial setting of reality, it didn’t seem completely beyond the realm of possibility in some strange way as he took it in his stride. I loved the descriptions and quirkiness of it all. And I loved Richard’s humour around it.
It’s a brilliant use of having an everyday setting for a fantastical story. And the fantastical characters were just a delight. So well drawn, you could absolutely imagine them. Though there were two particular characters you really wish you didn’t have to imagine them as they were quite odious.
A fabulous read and I can see why people have always raved about Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. I now join those ranks.
Hamish Wolfe is no different. Locked up for the rest of his life for the abduction and murder of three young women, he gets countless adoring letters every day. He’s handsome, charismatic and very persuasive. His admirers are convinced he’s innocent, and that he’s the man of their dreams.
Who would join such a club?
Maggie Rose is different. Reclusive and enigmatic; a successful lawyer and bestselling true-crime writer, she only takes on cases that she can win.
Hamish wants her as his lawyer, he wants her to change his fate. She thinks she’s immune to the charms of a man like this. But maybe not this time . . .
Would you?
My thoughts:
OK, today we have more book love. But, would you be surprised to hear that considering the author is Sharon Bolton? I adored her previous standalone book, Little Black Lies, as you can see in this Post. Daisy In Chains is equally as stunning a read. And another of my holiday reads. I really did get to read some great books as I lay about in the sun this year. I made some good choices.
I adored reading about Maggie Rose. She is a strong female and has her own distinct sense of self that I was envious of. She had the courage to wear her hair blue and not care what people thought. She was self-assured and confident and she wasn’t taking any demands from Hamish Wolf or his fan club.
Hamish Wolf, in prison for the murder of several young women was once a well-respected doctor and there are people who believe his innocence. He’s an interesting character. You never quite know how to take him, which makes the writing absolutely brilliant.
And then you have the investigating detective on the case Pete Weston and his team, who are the middle of Maggie and Hamish. They are trying to make sure their case is still tight in case Maggie does decide to take his case, but they seem to have a good working relationship as Maggie is wooed by the project to support Wolf’s appeal.
The characterisations are solid and believable and really draw you in. The story is a complex web which will leave you guessing until the last-minute. I mean – does a book like this end with him being guilty or innocent? It really could go either way and you need to read it to find out…
You won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough to find out what on earth is happening, though.
An absolutely fantastic read.
With thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my copy.
From the Sunday Times top ten bestselling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world’s most under-appreciated forces: shame. ‘It’s about the terror, isn’t it?’ ‘The terror of what?’ I said. ‘The terror of being found out.’ For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us – people who, say, made a joke on social media that came out badly, or made a mistake at work. Once their transgression is revealed, collective outrage circles with the force of a hurricane and the next thing they know they’re being torn apart by an angry mob, jeered at, demonized, sometimes even fired from their job. A great renaissance of public shaming is sweeping our land. Justice has been democratized. The silent majority are getting a voice. But what are we doing with our voice? We are mercilessly finding people’s faults. We are defining the boundaries of normality by ruining the lives of those outside it. We are using shame as a form of social control. Simultaneously powerful and hilarious in the way only Jon Ronson can be, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is a deeply honest book about modern life, full of eye-opening truths about the escalating war on human flaws – and the very scary part we all play in it.
This edition includes a new chapter about Jon Ronson’s own public shaming, encountered thanks to the publication of this book.
My thoughts:
I can’t rave about this book enough. No matter how much I have raved about any book on this blog, this is one book I think everyone must read. And I kid you not, with that bolded out statement. I am deadly serious. If you’re using social media, then you need this book in your life and you need to read it quickly before you keep typing into your tweet stream or Facebook feed. It’s that important.
This book scared the living daylights out of me.
I was already aware of the power of social media before I read it. It was one of the reasons I picked it up from the shelf in the bookshop. I’d heard about it and had an understanding of where it was coming from.
We’re a society using public shaming to control people/organisations/governments. To make change happen. It can be for the good. But when directed at a single individual, it can be terrifying.
Have you ever heard of someone who has hurt a friend on social media by their words or actions and then gone on to castigate them for it, making it public so others can see the error of their ways? Or have you seen a wrong doing already circling and shared the tweet or Facebook post, sharing the outrage?
It’s this simple act. You/me, a single person, who makes the whole monster. A monster who is uncontrollable and who, actually, the offending person, really doesn’t deserve that level of anger. Yes, they may be an ignorant idiot, but fired from their job? Don’t kid yourself.
One guy in this book was at a conference, sat with a friend, he made a remark that could have been taken as sexual innuendo (to his friend) about the slide on the screen in front of them (a dongle joke – it was a tech conference). A woman sat in front turned around, took his photo, indignantly tweeted it and it went viral. He lost his job.
It’s that easy.
Was he wrong? I don’t know, maybe if she was really that offended, then he should have thought about how loud he was speaking or if it was an appropriate place etc, but did he deserve to be publicly shamed and lose his job? Absolutely not.
Now, you may say you wouldn’t tweet something like that, but this weekend I saw a Facebook post where a woman was rude on a plane. She’d been rude to a family who had a child with an invisible illness (autism). She’d said can they shut that kid up. A few times I believe. Yes, she was rude. – But, the family took her photo (side profile) and shared a Facebook post saying they hope she was sleeping well because their daughter was distressed and in the hospital, hashtag autism (because obviously that was going to get more shares – cynical, me?) It had, when I saw it, 106 thousand shares on Facebook.
Did that rude woman deserve her photo and this story to be this big because she was so rude? Some would say so. But what if she was invisibly ill? And it was giving her a bad day? And now she has this. And what if she actually loses her job because she works in a place where she needs to be polite and her employer sees it? The family, if they felt like voicing outrage could have simply created the s
The family, if they felt like voicing outrage could have simply created the same post but without the photo and it would have had the same impact for them, the same sense of outrage and disgust that they felt someone had behaved badly to them and their daughter, but adding the photo and potentially identifying her adds a whole other realm to it.
I once read and shared a blog post where an invisibly disabled woman wrote an open letter to another woman who had tutted at her for using a disabled toilet. It was an amazing blog post. She was using a colostomy bag that was full to bursting and the other toilets were full and if she hadn’t rushed into the disabled toilets there could have been a real mess (if I remember it correctly). A powerful post, identifying a problem in society, without the need to publicly castigate the specific individual.
Our actions have consequences.
Where we think we are sending one tweet in support, we are actually building a momentum, an avalanche, a deluge that sweeps away the person at the other end. It completely washes them away.
Yes, Twitter is great for getting big organisations to listen to the masses, but not to target an individual. It smacks of playground bullying in the extreme.
Really, I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s fascinating. And not just about how you can affect the lives of others, but also how people are watching what you tweet…
This is an interesting TED talk by Ronson on one of the topics in this book.
I’m going to start a Sunday round-up of all the posts that I’ve created in the week previous. That way, you can catch up with any you may have missed.
It’s been a strange week. I’ve been away for most of it – Monday-Thursday, and yet, I managed to post all 5 weekdays. It’s not something I usually do.
Being away for two weeks holiday has shown me that when I was at home, I manage my time quite poorly and if I want to, I can be quite productive, without it causing me any problems.
I enjoyed getting up in the early morning and grabbing a peaceful hour before everyone else was up and doing some work while I could access the pool WiFi with no problems. The view was wonderful and the temperature perfect. Then I’d spend all day reading and doing holiday stuff when everyone got up and in the evening when my energy was drained, I’d do another hour of work in bed.
I was on top of my emails even though I had my out of office assistant on, my blog was running better than usual, I finished the first draft of my novella, I nearly wrote the synopsis of my next book (I didn’t quite finish it) and I read 11 books. And I had a fabulous holiday.
And within all that, I have come home with a renewed enthusiasm to organise my life so I can achieve more without feeling stressed out about it because I certainly didn’t feel stressed out while I was there. I know it’s a better and more relaxing environment and there aren’t the trials and tribulations of everyday life when you’re on holiday, but I do think I can achieve this. I’ll post more about it in other posts.
In downtown Chicago, a young woman named Esther Vaughan disappears from her apartment without a trace. A haunting letter addressed to My Dearest is found among her possessions, leaving her friend and roommate Quinn Collins to wonder where Esther is and whether or not she’s the person Quinn thought she knew.
Meanwhile, in a small Michigan harbor town an hour outside Chicago, a mysterious woman appears in the quiet coffee shop where eighteen-year-old Alex Gallo works as a dishwasher. He is immediately drawn to her charm and beauty, but what starts as an innocent crush quickly spirals into something far more dark and sinister than he ever expected.
As Quinn searches for answers about Esther, and Alex is drawn further under the stranger’s spell, master of suspense Mary Kubica takes readers on a taut and twisted thrill ride that builds to a stunning conclusion and shows that no matter how fast and far we run, the past always catches up with us in the end.
My thoughts:
This is Kubica’s third novel and it is the third novel I have loved.
I’m currently on holiday (flying home today) and I’ve had a wonderful time catching up with my TBR pile as you may have been able to tell. I still have a few great books to talk about. Laying in the sun reading has been blissful and it’s a time when I always seem to read Kubica’s next novel.
There are two narratives in Don’t You Cry. That of Alex, a small time boy of 18, who lives at home with his drunk of a father, being the adult of the house, and Quinn whose Chicago roommate suddenly goes missing one night.
You think you know how the two narratives are bound together, but you are never quite sure. However, it never seems to matter because the story is just beautifully told. It’s not a fast-paced “page-turner” but a real honest look at people, their lives, emotions, hopes, dreams and fears, and it pulls you into the pages and holds you in its spell. You love the frailty of Alex and how he admits to his first kiss and how it all went wrong with the telescope. You love the drive of Quinn to stay in that place in the world where she fits and she can be a better friend to someone she cares about.
And, Don’t You Cry – well, it had me crying! Luckily I think I was in my room by that point and not laid around the pool otherwise, it would not have been a good look for me.
Another highly recommended Kubica novel. Awaiting the next one for next years holiday!
It was the job she had dreamed of since childhood. But on her very first day, when an unnerving encounter drags up memories Sophie Greenwood would rather forget, she wonders if she has made a mistake. A fatal mistake.
What is her ambitious young assistant really up to? And what exactly happened to Sophie’s predecessor? When her husband and daughter are pulled into the nightmare, Sophie is forced to confront the darkest secrets she has carried for years.
As her life begins to fall apart at work and at home, Sophie must race to uncover the truth about her new job…before it kills her.
My thoughts:
I reviewed Mark’s last book, Follow You Home, Here, not too long ago and I’d loved it. So when he asked if I wanted an advanced reader copy of The Devil’s Work I obviously jumped at the chance.
I wasn’t disappointed.
It is an entirely different read but it still has Mark’s unique style about it. His voice. He has an ability to keep you turning the pages, wanting to know more all the time. He holds back, just teasing the story along. Keeping you engrossed but at the same time, without you quite realising it, not giving you enough to fill you.
The Devil’s work follows two timelines for our protagonist Sophie. The current timeline set in 2015 where she starts a new job in a publishing house (how great to see a novel set in the book world!) and one several years earlier when she was a young and insecure woman at university. You realise that of course, these two timelines have to converge at some point but you can’t quite figure out how that will come about, so, you have to keep reading.
But, in the meantime, she really is quite anxious by events that are occurring in her new dream job that she doesn’t feel quite so dreamily about now. It starts fairly small and innocuous (though maybe not for other people) and gradually has her feeling extremely nervous and worried about her life.
With the two running timelines, I enjoyed seeing that Sophie had actually grown into an adult and wasn’t still the same person she’d been at university, just at a different time. Mark had made her a fully drawn and well-rounded character.
As the timelines start to converge, the page turning gets to erratic levels as you just have to know how things are going to play out.
It’s another great read from Mark Edwards and I have to thank him and the publisher for my advance copy.
The mega-talented creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away With Murder chronicles how saying YES for one year changed her life―and how it can change yours, too.
With three hit shows on television and three children at home, the uber-talented Shonda Rhimes had lots of good reasons to say NO when an unexpected invitation arrived. Hollywood party? No. Speaking engagement? No. Media appearances? No.
And there was the side-benefit of saying No for an introvert like Shonda: nothing new to fear.
Then Shonda’s sister laid down a challenge: just for one year, try to say YES to the unexpected invitations that come your way. Shonda reluctantly agreed―and the result was nothing short of transformative.
In Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes chronicles the powerful impact saying yes had on every aspect of her life―and how we can all change our lives with one little word. Yes.
My thoughts:
This is absolutely going on one of my best-of 2016 list already.
It’s that good. In fact – You must go out and buy it right now.
But, you have to buy it as an audiobook, to get the most out of it. Yes, you heard me right. I’m turning into a bit of an audiobook junkie aren’t I? Who’d have thought it. But I am.
And I’ll let you into a little-known secret. If you are an Amazon Prime customer and you haven’t previously tried Audible then you can get 3 months of Audible for free, on trial before paying for their subscription service. Which, I now think is well worth it – but that’s a whole other post, which I will probably do another day. But, for you Amazon Prime customers who are already making the most of the 1 terabyte of storage and year free delivery, this more than adds to that annual fee making it seem as if you are stealing from them! Just go to your Prime bar in your browser, search for 3 month audible trial and you will find it.
Anyway, back to the book! If you don’t know who Shonda Rhimes is, she is an amazing writer who, as described above pens the US television shows, Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How To Get Away With Murder and more recently, The Catch. She also wrote Private Practice. She is relentless. And her work is so character driven I am obsessed with it. Listening to the audiobook, it’s like she’s personally talking to you, telling you about her life, how her year of yes came about. And if you’re a writer this will resonate with you so much. She used to turn down so many invitations. Until one day her sister called her out on it. She preferred to stay out home in her mismatched pajamas, writing. But after her sister’s words, she decided she would say yes to all invitations for a year. The other bonus material for an audiobook is when she does talks for universities or other such occasions, they have been recorded and instead of the text of her talk being in the book, with the audiobook, you get the live talk broadcast directly into your ears!
Not only is this an autobiography about Shonda’s life and how transformative it was for her, it’s insightful and you will find yourself nodding along with it or simply recognising traits you maybe hadn’t realised you had.
She roars with pride at being a working mum and not being able to do it all. Telling the world that if she pretended she could, then she would be doing so many people a disservice. She has help and she so desperately needs that help. She’s not ashamed to say that.
She talks about her writing, about writing characters in the LGBT community and the Black and Asian communities, in disabled communities. She is angry that people think she is spotlighting them, when she is merely normalising on screen what is happening in our society.
She is an amazingly strong woman and this is an audiobook I will definitely listen to again and one that will make me sit down at my laptop and start typing some more.
If you’re a writer in need of some inspiration or an inspirational read then this is for you. If you’re anyone in need of inspiration or an inspirational read, then this is also for you!
In a pulls-no-punches essay intended to provoke rational discussion, Stephen King sets down his thoughts about gun violence in America. Anger and grief in the wake of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School are palpable in this urgent piece of writing, but no less remarkable are King’s keen thoughtfulness and composure as he explores the contours of the gun-control issue and constructs his argument for what can and should be done.
King’s earnings from the sale of this essay will go the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
My thoughts:
I bought this book on Audible . It only took 45 minutes to listen to. It’s not a long read.
It is a hard-hitting read, though. King pulls no punches.
What did shock me about this was something he says about one of his own novels and gun crime. The story around it is unbelievable, particularly for a writer to listen to, and his response, measured.
Though, his response is not measured when he relays an argument he read online that a woman posted about why semi-automatic weapons should be kept. Her argument being that they are simply tools, like a spoon.
A spoon. Yes.
This isn’t a completely anti-gun rant. King admits to having his own registered weapons. But, he makes solid arguments for tight control and even talks about people who have accidentally shot family members believing them to be burglars. So I have to wonder if I actually heard him correctly when he said he owned some. (It’s not him narrating.)
From a UK resident perspective and in light of very recent events, this made for a strong read/listen and if you are interested in this topic and you like King, I’d recommend reading how he views this volatile topic.
She’s been lost since she was a baby, abandoned in a suitcase on the train from Paris. Ever since, she’s waited in station lost property for someone to claim her. It’s been sixteen years, but she’s still hopeful.
In the meantime, there are mysteries to solve: secret tunnels under the station, a suitcase that may have belonged to the Beatles, the roman soldier who appears at the same time every day with his packed lunch. Not to mention the stuffed monkey that someone keeps misplacing.
But there is one mystery Martha cannot solve. And now the authorities have found out about the girl in lost property. Time is running out – if Martha can’t discover who she really is, she will lose everything…
My thoughts:
I adored this book.
Martha Lost is 16 years old and has never stepped foot outside Lime Steet Station. She’s a foundling. A phrase I’d never heard, meaning someone who has been abandoned and found by someone at birth. She believes that if she steps foot outside of Lime Street Station it will collapse in on itself.
Her world is extremely narrow and yet she is a beautiful soul.
Wallace has done an absolutely magnificent job of creating Martha and her world without making it feel twee. You want to read on, you want to know what happens to her. To her friends. And even though you know Lime Street Station couldn’t possible collapse if she set foot outside, you hold your breath, because – could it?
It’s set in the 1970’s heatwave and it’s magical, beautifully drawn and I didn’t want to put it down. I didn’t want Martha Lost’s world to end.
It’s a book I’d highly recommend if you fancy a change from all the death and destruction of the crime reads.
With thanks to the publisher, author and NetGalley for my copy. I’m thrilled to have been able to read it.
Fans of Peter James and his bestselling Roy Grace series of crime novels know that his books draw on in-depth research into the lives of Brighton and Hove police and are set in a world every bit as gritty as the real thing. His friend Graham Bartlett was a long-serving detective in the city once described as Britain’s ‘crime capital’. Together, in Death Comes Knocking, they have written a gripping account of the city’s most challenging cases, taking the reader from crime scenes and incident rooms to the morgue, and introducing some of the real-life detectives who inspired Peter James’s characters.
Rebecca Bradley 