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Jul 15, 2013

Thoughts on The Tenth Witness

Rosen's prequel to All Cry Chaos comes out in September and they'll be a full review then. Tenth Witness is about Nazism simmering over a quarter century after the end of WWII. One of the characters says that she 'looks at white haired men in the street and wonders what they did during the war' and she doesn't mean that in a good way.

The thing that Rosen brought home to me is that we are all prejudiced (sometimes unconsciously) against something, even Henri the main character. Characters you are supposed to feel sorry for one minute are spun less sympathetically by the next words that come out of their mouths and their motivations.

The persecuted are not above persecuting others. It's a lesson we still haven't learned.

Book cascade

Regular readers of this blog know that I have this knack of reading one book after another on similar subjects. It started with Rose Under Fire, set in a Nazi concentration camp, that was rapidly followed by The Tenth Witness, the sequel (prequel actually) to All Cry Chaos and there will be more thoughts on that in the next post and now I'm reading Norwegian by Night which is out now and one of my colleagues loves the characters so much she's vowed not to read anything else for a week.

Apart from that the story for Ms Scarlet just took off, I'm nearing 150 usable manuscript pages.

Arcs for this week are The Edge of Normal by Carla Norton and Bitter River by Julia Keller.

Jul 2, 2013

Preservationist and happy Birthday Dambusters

I finished and blurbed The Preservationist last week I don't want to give too much away, lets just say it plays with your perception, full review when it comes out in October.

Reading Rose Under Fire has put me on to The Dam Busters by James Holland (November) the true story of Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb. Released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Dambusters raid, it is packed full of all the things you didn't see in the movie my dad loves so much. I know two guys who are going to be getting this for Christmas.

Jul 1, 2013

Homecoming, Carsten Stroud

Six months have passed in the town of Niceville and the town is as weird as ever. The bank robbers still haven’t been caught, people are still going missing. Kate and Nick have become legal guardians of young Rainey Teague. Kate has been having weird dreams about the plantation that used to stand in Niceville and Abel Teague, a very bad man indeed…

Stroud’s mash-up of small town life, feuding families, wry narration and horror gives you a follow-up to Niceville that you might not want to read after dark, there had better be a sequel.

Last Word, Lisa Lutz

Izzy Spellman returns, maybe for the last time.

Staging a hostile takeover of the family firm of Spellman Investigations is one thing, managing a sartorial revolt by the employees is quite another for Izzy. Her parents turn up for work in their pajamas, her mother says she’ll teach Izzy the accounting system, when hell freezes over. Things are so bad that Grammy Spellman is answering the phones!

In the meantime there’s an investigation into Divine Strategies an accounting firm that Izzy’s billionaire friend Edward Slayter is looking to acquire. Slayter’s illness is getting worse, and the FBI think Izzy’s embezzling money from his company. Can Izzy stay out of jail and prevent a couple more life changing hostile takeovers?

A Dangerous Fiction, Barbara Rogan

Can you hear me now?

Literary agent Jo Donovan, widow of famed writer Hugo has stepped into her mentor Molly’s shoes. Running a literary agency in New York city is a far cry from Jo’s hard-scrabble background but she’s going to need that toughness because when a would be writer turns stalker things can fall apart really fast.

Jo weathers the attacks on her agency, is gifted an attack dog by a client and protected by her staff, but has the stalker turned killer? Clients, friends, staff, no one is safe and the police investigation brings Jo another piece of her past, Tommy Cullen now working NYPD homicide, could he have pulled strings to get Jo’s case?

Silent Wife, A.S.A Harrison

Jodi and Todd live in a swanky Chicago highrise. She is a therapist whilst he’s in construction. Their relationship is a carefully constructed façade. He cheats, she knows and does nothing. Then along comes Natasha Kovacs and Todd starts thinking with his balls. Jodi’s perfect life is about to be wrenched from her grip by a knocked-up bimbo, and she’ll do anything to keep it, anything.