BLACK-EYED SUSANS by JULIA HEABERLIN

BLACK-EYED SUSANS

BY JULIA HEABERLIN

THE BLURB:-

I am the star of screaming tabloid headlines and campfire ghost stories. I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans. The lucky one.

Left with three other girls in a grave shrouded by black-eyed Susans, Tessa alone survived, her testimony helping to put a killer behind bars. Now, sixteen years later, he is about to be executed. But Tessa feels no relief. Because someone is planting black-eyed Susans outside her window. Someone is sending her daughter sinister messages. And there's a lawyer telling her the man about to be put to death is innocent.

Which can mean only one thing: the wrong man has been sentenced, the real killer is still out there and Tessa might not be the last black-eyed Susan...

THE REALITY:-

Another book that took me a long while to read, due to circumstances. I have taken on more hours at work which equates to less reading time, a busy Christmas kicked in followed by an ear infection, eye infection and food poisoning and a then sick partner due to his blood poisoning. I also seem to have acquired family issues to deal with. Anyone who knows me knows that bad blood has existed from myself towards my (much older) brother for thirty-five years, and they will also know why. But now, I'm finding that the main finger of blame is shifting elsewhere- and it's pointing directly at my late parents. Also, common sense is forcing me to take control of the situation in a more than just emotional way.

I never really knew what a black-eyed Susan was until I read this book (it is some kind of daisy.) As a child, I had a “Big Book Of Things To Make And Do” and one of the projects was a pattern for Black Eyed Susan- a teenage doll. The book is stuck in my brother's house, but now I'm going to be making contact with him I might be able to see it once again. By the way, I never got round to making the doll. Anyway, enough of my personal vagueness, here's to the review.

As I took so long to read this book (not because it was awful- it was great- but I just didn't have the time to make it un-putdownable) I have already forgotten certain components, such as how Terrell came to be convicted and sentenced to death in the first place. A racist imprisoning? Probably. This book certainly doesn't shy away from such issues, including visiting the “death house” where the executions take place and whether capital punishment should be abolished or not. This is certainly a meaty and moving read and not for the faint hearted.

Fans of Kathy Reichs would like this novel as it deals with examining bones to try and put a name to the victim using modern forensic technology. All of the characters are interesting and some more than sinister- Lydia, Tessa's friend certainly arouses suspicion and you kind of get the idea that she's something to do with the Susan killings early on in the novel and Effie is also another person who gives cause for concern. Are they guilty as I have just charged them? I won't spoil the surprise!  Tessa is one hell of a survivor and a big WOW to her for picking her life up and not going totally insane.  The lives and houses of her Texas friends and family, and also the geography of the state,  are descriptively depicted and give a really good background to the novel, helping you to create the scenarios in your mind.

This book is well written and clearly laid out, so you know where you are and what is going on from the distinct chapter headings. The story moves along swiftly and all of the components come together like a jigsaw. It's towards the end, however, where the chapters get shorter that the book really picks up pace, towards the kind of finale that was definitely not immediately obvious, so here's to the author for creating an unpredictable yet very, very interesting conclusion. Cleverly atmospheric (what is it about black and yellow together? Those black-eyed Susans on the cover look sinister!) with more than a touch of reality, this book is a must for all crime thriller entusiasts.

DANCE WITH ME by VICTORIA CLAYTON

DANCE WITH ME

BY VICTORIA CLAYTON

THE BLURB:-

Viola Otway, young, romantic and with little formal schooling, has been sent out into the world by her guardian to earn her living. But her lack of education and experience are no disadvantage for her job at the Society for the Conservation of Ancient Buildings, otherwise known as SCAB.

Viola and her boss are sent to access Inskip Park, a huge house with an incredible facade and domes like Brighton Pavilion. The roof leaks, the walls drip with damp, the food is terrible and the servants distinctly odd- but Viola is enchanted. She loves everything about the house, the garden, and the peculiarly eccentric Inskip family- particularly Jeremy, the handsome, lazy and utterly charming son and heir.

Five days later, Viola returns to London having made some life-changing decisions. Even an unexpected marriage proposal fails to deflect her from her declared purpose: to acquire an education...

THE REALITY:-

An utterly charming upper-class comedy romp, which is tailor made for fans of Four Weddings And A Funeral. Although it's not that easy to work out which era this novel is set in, somewhere in the middle it states that these events take place during the unbelievably hot summer of 1976. Other reviews have stated that they cannot work out out heroine Viola's age- it mentions quite clearly that she is nearly twenty-one just a short way into the novel.

I took a long time to read this book. That's not because it was boring, but simply because I seem to have had so much going on in my life in the past few months; from a holiday, to trying to sort out builders and repair dates for my ruined cellar stairs, to job problems (i.e. the one I have is not exactly up to scratch and the company itself is not my cup of tea.)  But when I did pick it up properly it was thoroughly engaging and clearly written by someone who knows their stuff where art is concerned. It's always good to learn something new from a novel. The author also has an excellent grasp on the English language and I managed to learn a few new words (no, not swear words!) and also saw a few seldom used words creep in, which is great for descriptives.

Nothing was totally predictable about this work (apart from, maybe, who Viola ended up romantically ensconced with) and the characters were certainly colourful with some great and often hilarious traits. Inskip Park was brilliantly depicted and certainly made for a gripping base to the story and I especially found Lady Inskip's story moving and loved her youngest son, Nicky.

With superbly interesting, flawed, and often clumsy characters you can really feel for (including a villain who has seemingly played a hand in corrupting almost everyone at Inskip Park) and laugh-out-loud word play, juxtaposed with a comic take on the lives of the aristocracy, I would certainly recommend this light-hearted book as a summer read (even though I read it as the nights pulled in!)

BUTTERFLY MULES AND FORBIDDEN PINK STRAPPY SANDALS...

The pink strappy shoes were found in a dress agency in Southend but it was closed, aaarrrggghhh! They were only £15, my size, and held prisoner behind the window.

But the charity shop next door had these butterfly mules going for £4 and, as they were in my size, I think it was meant to be- look at the lovely diamante toe detail and the mirrored heels. Fate shoved me in the right direction!

I wouldn't have minded checking out the pink court shoes in the top photo as well but hey, it wasn't meant to be and I already own at least two pairs of pink shoes anyway. Whoever is in charge of these things made the correct decision for me!

MYLENE KLASS PURPLE BOLERO AND MAD HATTER'S TEAPOT...

I found this on sale at Bodgers of Ilford (a gem of a store, despite its unappealing name.)  They do some really individual items here, interesting things I've never found in more conventional department stores.

This little bolero, from the Mylene Klass range, was only a tenner.

I love the ruched detailing on the shoulder and, unlike the model, I like to pull my shrugs skin tight.  Well, I would- slutbox supreme is the way to go!

I'm also adoring this weird and wonderful Queen of Hearts flat teapot, reduced from £25 to £12.50.  This definitely looks like something the Mad Hatter would utilize at one of his parties!  I'm not one to generally bother making tea in a pot but am tempted to buy this as it will go perfectly with my kitchen decor and will serve as an ornament at worst.

Or, maybe I'll start behaving like a lady and this will inspire me to make tea properly...

(An update on the above- my SuperDean treated me and it was reduced even further, to £6.25...result!)

When I visited the Stranger's Hall, a museum in Norwich, the Mad Hatter was hosting his tea party in the garden...

And when I visited Margate, we had to pop into The Mad Hatter's Tea Rooms for a cup of coffee...

It appears that there are people in this world who are odder than I am!!!!

THE FATE OF KATHERINE CARR by THOMAS H. COOK

THE FATE OF KATHERINE CARR

BY THOMAS H. COOK

THE BLURB:-

Since the murder of his eight-year-old son, George Gates has written local stories for the town paper. A former travel writer, once he specialized in writing about places where people disappeared, sometimes individuals, sometimes whole societies. Since the tragedy, he plays it small and safe.

The he hears about Katherine Carr, a woman who vanished twenty years before. She left nothing behind but a few poems and a bizarre story. It is this story that spurs Gates to inquire into its missing author's brief life and tragic fate, an exploration that leads him to make surprising discoveries about his own life.

THE REALITY:-

Weird. Definitely bizarre. It was one of those novels that forced me to go back and read sections, as I finished it and thought, 'What the fuck was that all about?!' This may have been my fault, as I bought the book from Poundland (yes, really!) and it took me a long time to read it, maybe because I've got a lot of other, stressful, things going on in my life. Following the floods that affected East London on election day, my cellar ended up under two feet of water and the bottom three stairs down into it were washed away, warranting a totally new staircase. As my electrics are down there, this is a serious problem.  I have my quotes and am now putting the matter to the insurance company. Also, Newham council have been on at me, as part of their “clean up Newham” campaign to erect a new fence at the front of my property and I have had trouble lining up a reliable builder. This is a fucking joke- maybe Newham council should think about cleaning up the people- such as the drug dealers that deal at the dead end at the back of my property and the prostitute who works the corner and who apparently lives in a garage opposite- first.

Rant over, now back to the review. I did a lot of picking up and putting down with this novel but found the thread easy to follow. The writing seemed a bit “out there” and, whimsical and... touched. You did question what drugs the author was on when he wrote this! It was a novel that was very unsettling, tackling nasty subjects such as the real horrors of society and the kind of dangerous sicko bastards who commit appalling crimes. It was all there in the detail, and that detail made for a very uncomfortable read. I learnt about various “lost societies” and, whilst it is always good to learn new things from a novel, the were very depressing things.

There is more than one story interlinked here, as you read George's story and also Katherine's writing and there's also another tragic character who George befriends via his work- Alice, a little girl with a penchant for crime stories. Alice is dying from progeria. Such disheartening subjects. The writing is good, though, and the stories do kind of come together at the end although you have to read between the lines as nothing is ever explained fully to the reader. I think it was the man who owned the meat market who attacked Katherine (though it could have been his never-revealed employee.) It looked like she disappeared rather than died, and I think she was the person in the yellow jacket who let George know that Teddy's death had been avenged. And I think Hollis Traylor killed little Teddy.

This is a story about vengeance, and passing on and teaching others the ability to do so, as Maldrow does to Katherine, and Katherine does to George. And the story ends with George seeking vengeance with Mr. Mayawati- another dreg of society, or so it would seem- and nothing is ever quite what it seems with this book.

A strange story. Maybe it was because I read the final thirty pages at one in the morning, but I had to go back and re-read sections to clarify things. Would I read more by this author? Maybe. But I wouldn't rush to do so,. Unnerving and unsettling.

LOOSE GIRL by KERRY COHEN

LOOSE GIRL

BY KERRY COHEN

THE BLURB:-

“There is a new boy I like. I see him every other day when our classes let out at the same time. He has long, dark hair and unbelievably beautiful eyes. Almost immediately I can feel the energy between us, the promise of something to come.”

Kerry first noticed the power she had over the opposite sex at the age of eleven. By the time she was in her teens she was obsessed by boys, and soon she needed sex just to feel alive.

Sleeping with countless partners, Kerry's misguided search for love was getting out of hand. But would she ever find what she really needed?

THE REALITY:-

This didn't come across as a diary of a sex addict- I've read before about the desperation involved with using sex like a powerful drug and that tipping point where the addiction begins to control the addicted- that obsessive crave whilst searching for the next fix and total breakdown when denied it. Rather, this came across as a journal of a thoroughly normal young woman's sexual conquests!

Maybe that came from being brought up in a small town. It was the kind of place where eleven year old girls think they are pregnant by an eighteen year old “boy”; the kind of place where a fourteen year old girl has a baby and there are six possible candidates for the position of father; the kind of place where a fifteen year old girl keeps a sex diary listing the twelve or thirteen boys she has fucked, with boxes ticked for fellatio, cunnilingus, anal, a bit of finger etc; the kind of place where a twelve year old loses her virginity and, a couple of years later, takes out a group photograph of her male "friends", pointing, laughing and boasting about who she's been out with, got off with or just plain shagged.   This, sadly, is all true.  Although with the latter female, I've always thought that half the fun with regard to having sex is the boasting about it afterwards. A bit blokeish, me!

When I moved to London, in my early twenties, I was surprised how innocent and decent the girls were when it came to sex. Maybe it's because, in the provinces, there is nothing much to do and no future to plan other than getting married and having babies. And with that comes too much focus on the former experimentation and exploration. I'm glad I don't have a teenage daughter. If I'd had a child, I would have made sure I did the preliminaries at an early age; those being making sure the poor little mite had such a bigged-up sense of self esteem that she didn't feel the need to validate her worthiness via the media of sex. The peer pressure to perform at an earlier and earlier age is absolutely colossal (and depressing.) It was there when I was at school and, like autobiographical Kerry in the book, my parents had to take a large share of the blame where my particular behaviour was concerned. Like Kerry, I also noticed my power over the opposite sex at the age of eleven. I won't tell you how- it's rather freaky and for my next novel. Like Kerry, I also used sex as a weapon, although for her it was to shore up her shattered sense of worthiness and for me it was an act of rebellion and sticking one in the eyes of my verbally abusive and morally self righteous parents, and getting my own back on certain vile boyfriends. One teenage suitor in particular was a nasty, jealous, insecure, possessive bastard who wasn't fit to even be in my presence. I stayed with him because I was young and innocent and didn't know any better. But to this day I haven't cheated on someone as much as I cheated on him. And I'm proud of it! I'm not sorry that I lowered myself to get him and my parents back! It shows that I thought very little of them, which is exactly how they deserved to be thought of! But it's not necessarily a good way to behave and thankfully I grew out of it and raised my standards. Kerry's parents must take some share of the blame in the novel. They both come across as too hedonistic and the boundaries seem to be blurred where sex is concerned. For instance, Kerry's mother touching Kerry's sister Tyler's breasts and mentioning that it can feel quite nice when a man does it. Or Kerry's dad getting into bed with teenage Kerry just for a cuddle, because he needs comfort. Neither of them are perverts, but uuurrrggghhh! That's too much familiarity.

I was glad that this book was only 300 pages long and that the writing was well-spaced, as it meant it was over quickly. It didn't seem that great. What I would have loved to have read were gory descriptive details laid out there, such as who had a walloping big penis and who was hung like a toddler; who was a fantastic shag and who was a jackrabbit who came in two seconds flat. This had all the power to be humorous but just came across as a bit depressing. I also found it hard to relate to some of Kerry's situations and choices as Americans always seem to be so well-off in comparison to us British. Their standard of living is certainly better than ours. The book did, however, make the very good point that a lot of young women use sex as a means of attracting attention.  Again, parents wise up and do your job properly, then maybe youngsters won't feel so inclined to seek emotional fulfillment outside of the family home.  This is probably a book a teenage girl would find enjoyable but for me it was just okay and nothing more.

CROSS BONES by KATHY REICHS

CROSS BONES

BY KATHY REICHS

THE BLURB:-

An orthodox Jew is found shot dead in Montreal, the mutilated body barely recognizable.

Extreme heat has accelerated decomposition, and made it virtually impossible to determine the bullet trajectory.

But just as forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is attempting to make sense of the fracture patterning, a mysterious stranger slips her a photograph of a skeleton, assuring her it holds the key to the victim's death.

The trail of clues leads all the way to the Holy Land where, together with detective Andrew Ryan, Tempe makes a startling discovery- but the further Tempe probes into the identity of the ancient skeleton, the more she seems to be putting herself in danger...

THE REALITY:-

This was The-One-That-Got-Away... It was the only Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan novel that I hadn't read the whole way through and that's because when I first gave it a go, about eleven years ago, I had to put it down as it started to drag and, although the hardback remained in my collection for some time, I could never bring myself to pick it up again. It actually put me off the Temperance Brennan series- after being given Deja Dead, the first of its ilk, I then couldn't wait to read the novels and bought them in hardback fresh after their release. But it was some four years before I resumed reading the paperback versions of the series. I wanted to give this one another try, though, so when I saw it sitting in a charity shop...

I'm glad I did! I remembered the jist of the story but not the finer points and found this gripping and easy to read, if a bit heavy with technical details- at times you do have to concentrate on the text. I found the part where I had previously given up and it's around chapter 34, 388 pages in. The talk of the occupants of the Jesus tomb just got too damn confusing and a bit dreary. But this time I ploughed through and it led to a cracker of an end. Inconclusive? A bit, but not disappointing. It was possibly the only way this novel could have ended.

The characters were a good mix and well described and I loved the locations of Montreal and the Holy Land. Reichs really made the culture, customs and everyday lives of the latters' occupants come to life.

I'm very glad that Tempe's relationship with Andrew Ryan is in full swing in this book. I love the details surrounding her private life and think that she and Ryan are meant for each other. This book has been likened to The Da Vinci Code and called a “lukewarm” version.  Now there's another book I put down and gave away. My ex-partner found it on a skip (lots of good things can be found in skips!) and gave it to me, but I read about half a dozen pages then left it alone, despite its absolutely fantastic reviews. It's another novel I will look out for on my charity shop trawls...