BOOK MARKS
TECHNICALLY the third book in a series, The Detective’s Secret stands comfortably alone and will attract new readers to Thompson’s previous work. Stella runs a cleaning company and does a little detective work on the side, following tentatively in her father’s footsteps.
Together with her friend and Underground train driver, the peculiar Jack, she finds herself taking on a case where a man has apparently committed suicide by flinging himself beneath a tube train.
As Stella tries to deal with an unexpected family revelation, she attempts to piece together what led to the man’s death.
Meanwhile, the ever-watching Jack finds a new home in an old water tower where he can survey the city unnoticed.
It’s a cleverly-plotted, compelling read.
– Terri Dunbar-Curran MAGGIE lives a careful life. She lives alone in a small town. Every year she embarks on a walking trip somewhere in the world. She has secrets, but no friends who know them.
On her return from one of her trips, a young woman catches her eye in the toilets at the airport and frames the word “help” to her. There is something about Anja that makes her take action. Anja is apparently being stalked by a sex slave trafficker and Maggie’s intervention gets Anja out of his clutches and into the British government system.
Except that Anja’s arrival has far-reaching consequences. Anja asks through the police if she can meet Maggie, and Maggie finds herself agreeing. In a stealthy tale, the reader is allowed to find out more and more about what has made Maggie into the pitiful and shamed woman that she is.
– Jennifer Crocker
BACKTRACK Tessa Niles, R326
Panoma Press
FOR more than 30 years Tessa Niles performed as a backing vocalist with some of the most iconic music artists of the time. Names like Eric Clapton, Sting, Robbie Williams, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Annie Lennox, George Harrison and many more.
Niles certainly has a story to tell and Backtrack, her autobiography, is a totally delightful “froth on the cappuccino” account of her highly successful career and her off-mic life.
This is not a sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll book. Tessa comes across as a totally professional singer who found satisfaction in providing excellent vocal backing for great performers. When she retired, it wasn’t to seek a solo career. Backtrack is an unpretentious account of life in and out of the spotlight and a good read.
– Julian Richfield BLOOD BENEATH THE SKIN Andrew Wilson, R492
Panoma Press
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN was a much acclaimed British fashion designer and couturier. Early in his career he worked at Givenchy and later founded his eponymous fashion label.
He earned four British Designer of the Year awards and received a CBE from Queen Elizabeth. He committed suicide in 2010, the day before his mother’s funeral.
McQueen the man and his designs were certainly not for general “all ages” consumption and the book is certainly not for either prudes or the sensitive.
McQueen was that rare combination of genius and pathos.
The cover note describes the book as: a contemporary fairy tale infused with the darkness of a Greek tragedy.
I found it a fascinating read, even though at times I winced at the subject matter.
– Julian Richfield AS USUAL, DeMille has a good plot with the Russians back as foes, punchy dialogue, credible characters and lots of action.
It starts on a slow Sunday with detective John Corey watching a diplomat’s manoeuvres, which take Corey from the kind of party on Long Island that you only see in movies to a large-scale search for what will definitely not bring about a quiet end, a nuke and its potential explosion at the bottom of Manhattan which, as he notes, will make the survivors envy the dead.
Naturally the sarcastic and self-assured Corey survives, but will he survive the investigation into his unorthodox conduct? What about the sharp and not-so-green rookie or his FBI wife Kate?
The only sure thing is that since Corey is alive there will be another book!
– Shirley de Kock Gueller MEMORY, a young Zimbabwean albino woman, is condemned to death for a murder she didn’t commit but to which she later confessed.
Hoping to find extenuating circumstances for an appeal, her new lawyer urges Memory to write down her story.
Starting with a first-hand account of how her parents sold her off at the age of nine to live with Lloyd, the murder victim, she fills notebooks with observations of her life.
Her writing evokes a keen sense of time and place as she recalls her childhood in the township and her more privileged life as Lloyd’s protégé, against the background of Rhodesia’s transition into Zimbabwe.
Her story is interspersed with anecdotes of her time in prison, its deprivations and her fellow inmates, are described with wry humour.
– Linda Curling