Books you don't want to miss
A couple of really brilliant reads this month that I want to share
Hello and welcome to Making Crime Pay! I’m Nicki Thornton - I’m an author. I share my creative journey here and what I am learning along the way. I pass on my love of books by sharing what I am reading and review them so you can enjoy them too. I visit schools and other places to encourage a love of reading and help writing be more fun!
My latest novel is The Floating Witch Mystery, about three determined children, an eccentric witch and the world’s best magical detective who will stop at nothing to save everything they love. If you would like to hear me read the opening chapter you can head here.
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Nicki
Here are a few of my latest favourite reads, as promised.
Everyone on this train is a suspect - Benjamin Stevenson
This book was an utter delight from start to finish. I want to tell you what I loved about it.
Firstly, it is about a group of writers on a train journey for a literary festival. So it is a perfect set-up for a traditional closed circle of suspects murder mystery. It is also part homage to Murder on the Orient Express, so that gets a vote from me. Plus it is a really good whodunit - very important. Plus takes a lot of very funny sideswipes at the world of crime writing.
You could call this the perfect combination. It certainly reeled me in!
Here’s a bit from the blurb:
The program is a who's who of crime writing royalty:
the debut writer (me!)
the forensic science writer
the blockbuster writer
the legal thriller writer
the literary writer
the psychological suspense writer.
But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.
Or commit one . . .
But how do you catch a killer, when all your suspects know how to get away with murder?
The perfect crime novel?
I can recommend this if you are seeking a thoroughly entertaining story, a good mystery and enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, yet plays fair with the reader (and no annoying twists that appear from nowhere).
Why it’s good from a writing perspective as well as a reader’s
Where this book takes risks is with the narrative voice, which break the fourth wall (clever). So the main character addresses to the reader because he knows he is in a novel. Which could be annoying or cheesy, but really is rather brilliant.
It follows on from Benjamin Stevenson’s first book Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, the story of a wannabe crime writer, Ernest Cunningham, who actually writes books about writing crime fiction and gets caught up in a real murder.
In this follow up, Ernest’s story continues. He has become a successful crime writer after the success of the first book.
A crime writer turns sleuth
Ern is invited to a crime writing festival aboard a legendary train. He was keen to meet one of his crime writing heroes on board, only to discover that morning the crime writing hero left a one star of Ernest’s book on Good Reads review: (ghastly!)
Ern needs to write a second book, is suffering writer’s block - until he gets involved in another murder on the train.
This idea of a character having an alter ego of the writer who is also talking to the reader about writing the book sounds like it might be confusing to read, right? But Benjamin Stevenson pulls it off brilliantly and it is such an original read, plus very funny.
One of my favourite lines is: ‘I’d already far surpassed my desired number of moving vehicles to stand on top of - the ideal number being zero - but, much to my personal disappointment and the disappointment of anyone making a movie out of this book on a tight budget, for the second time that day I pulled myself out of a window.’
It reminded me a little of the Anthony Horowitz’s brilliant Horowitz and Hawthorne series. And if you haven’t read those - better get your reading skates on, because I have more books to recommend!
It is difficult to write a proper comedy thriller that is both thrilling and funny. And Everyone on This Train is a Suspect does both exceedingly well.
Paranormal murder mystery
I would be pleased in any month to find one book I’ve really loved - even better, I have found two I want to recommend.
Grave Expectations is the story of Claire, who has the ability to see ghosts . . .
Claire is haunted by the ghost of her teenage best friend, Sophie - although this is far from a scary haunting, Sophie is still her best friend. The pair work together so Claire can scratch out a living as a medium. But Claire discovers, people have certain expectations when they visit a medium.
“The truth was that Claire was not a very good medium. The only part she was good at was that she could genuinely see and talk to dead people, but as it turned out, that bit was the last important.
“Attempts to do genuine ones usually ended in disappointment and bad reviews on Tripadvisor. Really, punters just wanted something they could tell their friends about.”
Claire feels they would have been more successful and Sophie would have put on a better show if she had died and become the ghost. Sophie certainly thinks Claire cannot do anything right without her.
But it turns out that being able to see ghosts is useful if you want to solve a murder.
A fine balance
When Claire visits a big house for a seance she encounters a distressed ghost, unable to move on after death, and in such a state, unable to communicate its name, although it seems clear its related to a body buried in the grounds.
You may think being able to talk to the recently dead might make for a short crime fiction story, but what I particularly liked about this story was that the crime angle was so well done.
Grave Expectations is not simply a whodunit - the ghost doesn’t know what happened to it, so Claire and Sophie have a lot to work out. They need to find out who was killed, when and why, so the ghost can move on.
There aren’t as many books with an afterlife detective as there seem to be television series. But one of the things I enjoyed about this book is how it explored the complex relationship between Claire and the teenager haunting her who has been unable to grow up.
Alice Bell uses Sophie and her views to comment on modern life and grapple with the sensitivities of a murder investigation and how it affects those left behind and uses comedy wonderfully to explore some big and dark themes, allowing for some really poignant moments along with some pithy commentary.
Writing a blend of page-turning mystery, humour, great characters and some snappy one liners and social commentary is a high wire act and I am full of admiration for Alice Bell. It also had me guessing the whole story right until everyone was gathered for the summing up moment.
No surprises this was a Radio 2 Book Club pick and also gets a recommend from Ben Aaronovitch on the cover as the best-known current paranormal crime writer . . . and if you haven’t yet read any Ben Aaronovitch’s books, you definitely need to get those reading skates on.
I shouldn’t go without sharing latest thoughts of my crime fiction reading group.
Domestic servant tropes in crime fiction
The Housemaid, Freida McFaddon, was my latest crime fiction book group choice and one that got far more thumbs up than is usual from my group (have I mentioned before they are very picky)!
The domestic help character is an evergreen (and currently very popular) crime fiction trope, so we were keen to dissect what makes these stories so gripping. Maybe it’s the power imbalance of a servant, living in someone else’s house, doing their bidding, yet learning their secrets. What goes on behind closed doors is always fascinating. And how learning secrets can change the power balance. Oh yes, plenty of conflict and gothic potential. Even in a modern-day setting you can see the roots in classics such as Jane Eyre.
The Housemaid makes the most of all those elements by giving us more than one perspective so you can see the action from several points of view and who might be manipulating who unfurls.
We thought this might also be popular as it also draws neatly on a second current vogue of crime fiction - stories that refuse to see women as helpless victims. So it plays and weaves really well into current crime fiction trends of women fighting back.
We thought it was easy to understand why this has been such a popular book; a bestselling book that has spawned two sequels – and managed to please my bookgroup!
Final note - The best Crime Novel of the Year list is out. You will be hearing more about this I feel sure. There are already negative thoughts at the lack of writing diversity on this list, and perhaps the need to appeal to a broader range of readers? But if you want to, you can go and check it out for yourself.
Thanks for reading
Let me know what you’ve enjoyed
Nicki