A ghostly tale of mystery, intrigue, murder and eccentric royals.

If you enjoy ghost stories, you will enjoy this one by Tim Roux, a masterfully told tale about a reluctant psychic named Paul Lambert, a ghost named Alice,  assorted other ghosts, and a chateau inhabited by an eccentric British Earl (the Earl of Affligem), his family, a mob of hangers-on and the chateaux’s original royal family, who do not enjoy the crowd and all their noise at all. And if all this isn’t enough to hold your interest, there is also a serial killer to catch

It’s Alice who is the most interesting ghost, because she falls in love with Paul (very frustrating for both)and badly wants to expose her killer. And this is where Roux does something very, very interesting: Alice, you see, is the young French woman Alice Picard in Tim Roux’s novel Little Fingers, who elopes with Mary to Spain and never returns. I’ve wondered whatever happened to Alice, and now I know. The chief suspect for her murderer is, she says, her ill-tempered and abusive father who was enraged at her because she had taken up with Mary. But Alice isn’t the only character from Little Fingers that shows up here. Retired police inspector John is also here.

If you’re looking for a ghost story that’s packed with ghosts and drama, pick this one up, take it home, and enjoy it.

One final comment: I’m not convinced that most of the characters in the novel aren’t really ghosts. That’s a mystery for you to solve.

An easy 5 star read. 

An honest cop with an attitude, a young woman in trouble, the mob, the feds, a dash of romance -- a winner!

I enjoy a good detective novel, and B. A. Morton’s “Mrs. Jones” is a gem. Detective Connell is an honest cop with an attitude about authority, a smart mouth and Irish charm.  Lizzie, aka Mrs. Jones is a young British woman in New York City on a mission she doesn’t understand who witnesses a hit-and-run her first day in town. When she and Connell connect with each other and the bad guys, a bought cop and the Feds, well, the story quickly becomes one I couldn’t put down until I’d finished it. I can see that B. A. Morton is going to become one of my favorite crime writers. I do like good crime novels with mouthy detectives.

I can hardly wait for the next one in the series, Molly Brown, which is due out sometime in 2012.

A very definite 5 star read.

Murder, village intrigue, pedophilia -- WHO is the villain?

“Little Fingers” is a truly remarkable novel. Opening as the main character Julia Blackburn is being interviewed by police Inspector John Frampton. “There is a serial killer out there. He is living in that brain of yours as an unrecognised memory, a shadowy computation, and he must be stopped.” Inspector Frampton is a doggedly patient man who must get at the truth and stop the killings going on in the village of Hanburgh. Julia is the most recent person to have seen recently murdered Tom Willows. He is determined to tease the truth from Julia’s mind. Who is this mysterious woman? He persists doggedly forward. “That is what makes you a policeman,” she says; “You have the mind of a drill bit.”

Life in the little village of Hanburgh was relatively tranquil until Julia Blackburn arrived and rented one of the largest houses in town. Who is she and what does she want from the people here?

There is Mary, Julia’s friend and lover; Mary Knightly, wife of George and adopted daughter of Dr. Beringer, local physician and pedophile. There is Samantha, whom Mary Knightly calls “a bastard daughter of a whore”. Not to be outdone, Samantha calls Mary Knightly “a jumped up little poisonous turd.” No love lost there. There is Brenda, waitress at the local pub, a fund of knowledge about everything going on in Hanburgh. Who is Julia Blackburn, and what is she doing here? It isn’t until late in the novel that we find out who the killer is, and why. The killer’s purpose? To exact revenge on the people who made or her life miserable when she lived in Hanburgh. But ... who is the killer? At one point in her interrogation with Inspector Frampton, Julia asks :”If I am the fall guy, who is the murderer?”

Julia belabors the Inspector’s ears with philosophical asides. “We do such trivial things with all that intelligence we have been lavished with. We could work towards a better world, towards making even the smallest of differences, and we waste our time worrying whether somebody of no importance likes us or not.” “We are not balanced. We go from peaceful intentions in peacetime to murderous ones in war. We are easily provoked to hatred by the simplest of cynical exploiters. We fall for the same trick a thousand times without recognising it... You would think that we would  have reached satiety with all that we cram our homes with and later take to the dump. Apparently not. Rather than counsel ourselves that enough is enough, we carry on accelerating our desires, and cheering on people whose only intent is to profit from them. We may be decent, but we are certainly stupid.”

Rather than distracting from the story, these monologues add to the picture of Julia’s mind. Is she ...? You’ll have to read the novel to find out. It’s a remarkable piece of fiction that you won’t soon forget. I certainly won’t.

A clear 5 star read.

Available in paperback and Kindle.

A wonderful, well-written novel with a surprise ending that's really a surprise

"Collin had the perfect life. He had a loving family and everything money could buy. A life envied by all. But Collin wasn't perfect. He had a secret, one that came with a price. A secret that could destroy his life and everyone in it."

So begins K. C. Hilton's remarkable novel. Not that it starts off with a bang, because it doesn't; it starts off as a very likable family story about two loving parents and their two sons. Then, all of a sudden -- Blam! -- it hits like a thunderbolt, and I was in for the ride. Whew! What's going on? What happened? There was nothing that was going to tear me away from this book until I found out. And I did, and so will you.

K. C. Hilton is a very skillful story teller and, in my opinion at least, it takes one to tell this kind of story, a story that could have been maudlin in less capable hands, but never does in hers. Interestingly, the significance of book's title "90 Miles to Freedom" may not hit you at first, as it didn't hit me. Then it appears and Collin's secret and its significance begins to dawn and build to a dramatic, gut-wrenching climax. Then K. C. Hilton delivers her surprise, about which I'll say nothing. You have to get there and read the book to catch its impact. I was awe-struck, and still am. Another one of the best reads I've had in a year filled with great reads.

When is your next book out, K. C.?

A very definite ***** book.

A good book that needs some work

The story opens on 23 October 1935 as hard-boiled private eye Errol Black is tucking into a nice, bloody porterhouse steak. Then someone walks into the restaurant and begins shooting and his dinner with partners Dyke Spanner and Terry Shadow is blown all to Hell. So are Terry Shadow and the two intended victims, notorious mob boss Dutch Schulz (who lives for 23 hours) and one of his henchmen.

The story then shifts to 1945 and the mid-town Manhattan offices of Black and Wentz Detective Agency where we find Errol Black alone in the office doing paperwork. The door opens and a beautiful young woman named Claudia walks in seeking help. She suspects her fiancé of cheating on her. Is she trouble, or isn’t she? Young, beautiful, flirtatious and naive, she’s just the kind of gal hard-boiled detectives fall for. I kept warning him off, but of course he didn’t listen, In spite of his personal failings, he’s good at his craft of detecting, the case is an interesting, convoluted one, and he finally solves it after many convoluted twists and turns. Living happily ever after is a different matter for a hard-boiled,PI, but we already knew that when we started. The many-splendored thing called love is something that eludes hard-boiled guys. Black Shadows is an enjoyable read and I’m glad I read it.

That said, would benefit greatly from some further editing. The story Begins in 1935 with the shoot-out, then shifts to 1945. Though it appears to remain in that year, it isn’t clear: reference is made to an article written in the 1960s; a two-foot thick solid steel door is opened by touching a red button on a keypad on the wall; Errol Black takes Claudia out to celebrate her birthday on July 3,1940; and soft rock is heard on a radio. And I am confused.

Other problems are as follows: A South American man can’t understand a man who is talking to him because he has a poor grasp of Guatemalan. (There is no such language.) In several places the names of two Chinese characters -- Wang and Ping -- are mixed up, once in the same paragraph. As Black is talking with Ping, Ping’s name suddenly changes to Wang. In another place Weeny Jung Ping is called “Weeny Wang”; this should to have been caught (or explained), but wasn’t.

One of the more interesting characters in the novel is Dutch Schultz’s half-brother, “known colloquially as The Portly Gangster,” a cultured, hugely overweight, vain, and greedy man who has spent his life looking for a blue diamond, said to have been Dutch Schultz’s. No matter how hard I try, “the portly gangster” isn’t a likely colloquialism in Big Apple or New Jersey criminal or popular culture of that day. “Fats”, “Fatty” or “Fatso” yes, but “The Portly Gangster”? I can see someone like Margery Allingham using it, as it fits the upper middle class British culture she wrote about back in the 40s, 50s an 60s.

So ... as good a novel as I think Black Shadows is, I can only give it 3 *** . If someone can show me that I’ve gone terribly wrong, I’ll be happy to change my rating. I look forward to seeing some more of Simon Swift’s work.

An unforgettable, can't-put-it-down novel by a first rate writer

Sheila Doherty, Philomena (Phil) Maguire and Mary Branagh: you'll remember their names long after you've finished this wonderful first novel by award-winning Irish poet Gerry McCullough.   
Romance, thriller, political intrigue and murder mystery, Belfast Girls  is the story of modern Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic where drugs and drug gangs have infiltrated every level of society as they have everywhere else. 

Sheila, Phil and Mary are the kind of characters that stick in your mind and bring you back for further visits. They just stick with you. I know I'll be back to get to know them better in the weeks and months to come. 


Gerry McCullough is one fine writer. I look forward to her next novel.

A definite 5 star read.

A fascinating paranormal tale of romance, mystery, adventure and love

"I'm a Bringer. It's what I do, and have done since I've existed. I'm here to guide, to make humans feel as comfortable as possible through their ... transition from being alive to just being."

Bringers, who are not human, have only one purpose, and that is to accompany recently deceased humans to the gates of Heaven. This Bringer's name is Lucyna. She's been doing her job for millennia. Everything has gone smoothly until she is sent to bring Max to his eternal home. The problem is Max's son, James, who is devastated by his father's death. "I'm not asking for much," says Max; "Just every now and then check in on him, make sure he's doing okay." It seems like such an innocent request, one that she has been asked thousands of times before and has always gently but firmly refused. But for some reason, this time is different. The difference is Max's son, James. It's not just his emotional devastation; it's a mysterious light that emanates from him that gives her a powerful emotional jolt.

Who is this James, and why, for the first time in her existence, is she so drawn to him? Acceding to Max's request could jeopardize her existence. But she cannot resist the urge to find out who James is and why she is so drawn to him. This is the emotional core of this fascinating tale, and it kept me turning pages until I reached the last word on the last page.

Part mystery, part adventure, part romance and just plain fun, The Bringer is a book you will enjoy and return to. It's a clear 5 Star read.

The Dance of The Pheasodile

 

Tim Roux: The Dance of the Pheasodile. Night Publishing (UK) through CreateSpace, May 2010. Paperback and Kindle editions.

In the opening scene, architect Keith McGuire wakes up to find himself swinging upside down outside the plate glass window that wraps around the lawyer’s office where his wife is a partner. It is freezing cold and he’s bumping up against the glass. His wife and her coworkers, aghast, are staring at him and snapping photos. He has no idea how he got here, who is flying the chopper, who his tormentors are, or why they are tormenting him. He is, as he says in the opening sentence “in a bit of a predicament.” Dangling upside down and naked under a helicopter flown by unknown maniacs is only part of the story. Looking up at his body, he sees the body of a stranger. His body is long, lean and well-muscled; this one is stubby, hairy and out of shape.

I was hooked. I couldn’t put the book down.

Successful architect Keith McGuire has a happy life with wife Chrissie and their two children Ella and Mark for fourteen years … until he goes in for a hypnotherapy session to try and recover some childhood memories. Then the fun begins. Emerging from his hypnotherapy session, he finds himself in the office of a therapist named Brenda Starbright in Hull, a northern city where he’s never been. Worse, he is no longer Keith McGuire; he is Harry Walker, a thug, ne’er-do-well, con man and nemesis to his wife Fran, son Tommy and sister Kathy. What has happened to Keith? And the real Harry? Has Harry …? The thought of Harry inhabiting his body and his home and job gives him the chills.

Part romance, part paranormal crime thriller, it is a wonderful read. There are laugh-out-loud scenes in this book, some chilling ones and some very poignant ones. I won’t say more, because I don’t want to give too much away in this intriguing, funny and well-told story.

 I give it a AAA+

A truly sensational crime thriller

Daniel Birch, “Get Some”: Night Publishing, available in paperback and Kindle on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

If you like Ian Rankin or Stieg Larrson, you will love "Get Some", the new crime thriller by Daniel Birch. Set in the mean streets of Hull, England, it is the story of two friends, one a lawyer the other a wounded veteran of the Iraq war, and the Hull underworld. It is a page-turner. One of the protagonists, Tommy, reminds me of Lisbeth Salander, the young woman in Larrson's "Millennium" trilogy: smart, focused, a troubled childhood, trauma and absolutely not one to be trifled with when wronged. And Tommy has definitely been badly wronged by two of his British Army buddies in Iraq who sold him to insurgents for heroin.

One indication of how good a writer Daniel Birch is: "Get Some" was a runaway best seller at this spring's well-attended Hull Book Exposition in Hull, England.

Once you pick this up, you will not want to put it down until you've finished it. I can't wait to see what new stories he's got in the pipeline.

Waiting A While For Greeneyes

Marian Van Eyk Mcain's novella is an intriguing little emerald gem. Mystery, mysterious, sci-fi (or is it?), intriguing, Ms. McCain has woven a wonderful little tale that leaves you wondering "Who (or what) is "Greeneyes" exactly.

Have you ever participated in an experiment and then begun to wonder whether it was a wise decision? It sounded so intriguing that you couldn't resist, especially when it's proposed by a woman you've never met, a woman who acts as if she knows you, but for the life of you you don't remember who she could be. 

Starting from there the story gets really interesting, as expected. But who is she? And just when the story seems to come to an end ... does it? 

This is one of the most intriguing little tales I've ever read. There is magic in it and in the telling. I keep coming back and back to it to see what I missed the first few times. There's got to be ... 

One last comment, and that's about the book's format and size. I remember when paper back books fit in one's shirt pocket. That's why they came to be called "pocket books". This is a genuine pocket book that fits nicely in my shirt pocket. It's published by the UK-based publisher Leaf Books, and is available from amazon.com and, more conveniently and more readily available, from The Book Depository, http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ which ships to over 90 countries worldwide with no charge for shipping. For a complete catalog of Leaf Books, go to www.leafbooks.co.uk.