Categories
2017 Thriller

The Night Visitor by Lucy Atkins

  Source: Free review copy received from the publisher

Five words from the blurb: historian, author, beetles, research, atmospheric

The Night Visitor is an intriguing story about the dysfunctional relationship between an author and her researcher. The story is told, in alternate chapters, from each of their perspectives and becomes increasingly gripping as their dislike for the other grows.

The book was a bit like a cross between The Behaviour of Moths and Notes on a Scandal, but with beetles instead of moths and authors instead of teachers. The scandal was of a different type too, but I won’t reveal more for fear of spoiling the end.

The writing was slow at first but quickly became compelling – I especially loved the sense of unease and tension that was created. It was fantastic that the reader could see both sides of the story and how they misinterpreted the actions of the other.

She pretends to be kind, reasonable and morally upstanding but when it comes to protecting her own interests she is capable of anything.

The lies and deception quickly escalated and neither of the women was likable, so avoid this book if prefer to become friends with the people you’re reading about. But, if you like to investigate the darker side of humanity, this is a memorable story packed with vivid scenes. I found a few of the plot points at bit too convenient but was willing to forgive these as the overall story was quite clever. I think it will be a big hit with book groups as it was easy to read and brought up lots of different discussion points.

Recommended to anyone looking for a psychological thriller with some interesting facts about beetles!

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Categories
2016 Crime Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club Thriller

Lie With Me by Sabine Durrant

 Source: Free review copy received from publisher

Five words from the blurb: truth, friendship, island, murder, memory

Lie With Me is the best thriller I’ve read in years! It was so compelling and clever that I’ll be pushing it into the hands of every friend who asks me for a book recommendation this year. Follow birrongsurialpacas for more reviews or recommendations.

The story begins with Paul, a struggling author, meeting an old friend in a bookshop. They arrange to meet at a party and Paul decides to re-integrate himself with this successful friendship group in order to gain enough favours to solve his spiralling financial problems. Paul lies about his success to impress everyone at the party, embellishing details about his life. His plan appears to work when he finds himself being invited on a holiday to a small Greek island, but unfortunately everything goes wrong when the group gets caught up in the investigation of a murder that took place on the island many years ago.

Paul was a fantastic character. He was cruel and manipulative, but it was easy to see why he acted in this way. By the end of the book I even had some sympathy for him – I love books that can make me feel that way about such an evil character.

‘It’s hard, isn’t it, living with privilege? She gestured to the flat, the art work, the items of mid-century furniture, the shelves of books. ‘Do you ever feel guilty at how easy it all is, how much people like us have been given on a plate by our parents?’
I felt another tight spasm in my chest, a need to tell her how it wasn’t, what a struggle it had been not to lead the life of my parents, how I had always hated the smallness of their ambition, their willingness to settle with meekness and mediocrity.

The plot was very well structured. It was a bit slow in the beginning, but I was impressed by the layers of detail and way everything escalated. By the last third I was so engrossed I couldn’t put it down, finishing it in one late night sitting.

This book isn’t perfect, but the clever plotting and beautifully flawed characters make up for any deficiencies. I’ll be thinking about the issues raised in this book for a long time.

If you’re after a gripping thriller to read on holiday this year, I highly recommend Lie With Me.

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Categories
1950s Books in Translation Thriller

The Darkroom of Damocles by W.F. Hermans

The Darkroom Of Damocles Translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke

Five words from the blurb: occupation, Holland, assassinations, traitors, impossibility

The Darkroom of Damocles is set in Holland during WWII. It centres on Henri, a young man who is approached and asked to perform a series of assignments. These become increasingly dangerous, but his loyalty to the British is unwavering and he puts his job above relationships with his own family. Henri only starts to question his actions when the war ends and he begins to discover the truth behind the secrets of war. This leads the reader to question whether there can ever be a “right” side to take in a conflict situation. 

This book was very readable. Much of it felt like a fast-paced spy novel, but as it progressed it was increasingly possible to see the depth and complex moral issues that the author was trying to address. 

Unfortunately I felt the book was too long for its plot. There were several sections in the middle where I lost interest and I wish that some of these had been edited out. I’m not normally a fan of spy novels so I think this probably contributed to my boredom as after a while one chase scene seemed very much like the next:

Osewoudt turned round, the pistol in his trembling fist almost level with his eyes. He positioned himself with one foot forward while keeping watch on the door to the kitchen, which was slightly ajar. He couldn’t see into the kitchen because the door was at right angles to the passage. He should have left it open, he now realised. He listened intently, but could hear only the muffled sound of Lagendaal’s footsteps approaching.

Luckily the ending made up for some of excessive middle section. I was impressed by the way everything came together, but I was hoping for a greater emotional impact than I found.

I’m pleased I’ve read this Dutch classic, but I wish it had been half the length.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

Though The Darkroom of Damocles is full of action, it was the parts where nothing was happening that I liked best. The Asylum

The action is thrilling, the detail grounded and real, the prose (and the exceptional translation) deceptively simple and fluid. Lizzy’s Literary Life

It’s a book to make you think, and go on thinking for some time after you’ve put it down. Fleur in her World

 

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation Thriller

I’m Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti

I'm Not Scared Translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt

Five words from the blurb: Italian, village, children, discovery, scare

I bought a copy of this book a couple of years ago after seeing several bloggers rave about it. For some reason I expected it to be chilling and so avoided reading it until I could do so in daylight hours. This was unnecessary as it was a much less scary than I anticipated.

The book is set in a small Italian hamlet where six children have the freedom to explore the surrounding countryside. One day nine-year-old Michele is dared to enter a derelict house on the outskirts of their village and is shocked by what he discovers there.

The story was narrated by Michele so was much simpler and faster paced than I expected it to be – I flew through the entire book in just a few hours. There was something wonderful about the childhood innocence of the narration, but it also frustrated me. I felt I was being pulled along too quickly, forced to almost skim the words instead of slow down and think about the difficult issues that were being raised.

‘Papa! Papa!’ I pushed the door and rushed in. ‘Papa! I’ve got something to…’ The rest died on my lips.
He was sitting in the armchair with the newspaper in his hands looking at me with toad’s eyes. The worst toad’s eyes I had seen since the day I had drunk the Lourdes water thinking it was acqua minerale. He squashed his cigarette-end into his coffee cup….
Papa drew in air through his nose and said: ‘Where have you been all day?’ He looked me up and down. Have you seen yourself? What the hell have you been rolling in?’

The book has been described as a ‘literary sensation’ and I think that is the wrong term. I’m Not Scared is a more mainstream piece of fiction and is the type of book I’ll be pushing into the hands of a wide variety of friends. It is particularly good for showing that translated fiction needn’t be difficult or boring.

Some people might find the ending frustrating, but I was impressed by the suspenseful nature of it and the way it forces the reader to think about the book for much longer than they would if everything was tied up neatly.

Overall I found this to be an entertaining read, but it lacked the depth to be considered outstanding.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

 …a gripping read with strong emotional impact. Medieval Bookworm

The ending went beyond ambiguous to just plain lacking. Carpe Librum

If you intend to read this book make sure you’ve got a few clear hours to do so, the storytelling is so rich and vivid you won’t want to abandon it until the final, devastating climax is reached. Reading Matters

 

Categories
2011 Thriller YA

Mice by Gordon Reece

Mice

Five words from the blurb: bullying, women, timid, shattered, control

Ignore the weird romance-like cover, this book is a dark, fast-paced thriller. Many bloggers raved about Mice on its release four years ago, but I never got around to reading it. Then last week I was looking for a light, but gripping read and stumbled across my copy. It was a perfect match for my mood and is great for a slightly creepy Halloween read.

Mice begins with fifteen-year-old Shelley being bullied at school. Shelley and her mother are both quiet people, unwilling to make a fuss. They silently endure the jibes of others and many people abuse their good nature. Then one day they are woken in the night by a burglar and they face the difficult decision of whether or not to fight back for the first time in their lives.

Mice is a clever book. On the surface it is a gripping read, packed with twists and turns, but underneath it raises many interesting questions about whether we should always stand up for ourselves. It also has some good observations about how we interact with others:

All I could think was that no matter how close we are to someone else, there are limits, frontiers between us that we just can’t cross, things that touch us so deeply they can’t be shared with anyone else. Maybe, I thought, it’s what we can’t share with others that really defines who we are. 

The subject matter was dark, but not oppressively so – it’s a great introduction to scary books! Some elements of the story required the reader to suspend their disbelief, but I didn’t mind as these were necessary to build a more interesting plot. I also found some of the symbolism a bit heavy-handed, but overall the writing quality was quite good.

The characters were well drawn and I especially loved the interaction between the mother and her daughter. There was a real emotional connection between the two and the reader quickly becomes involved in their dilemmas.

This wasn’t great literature, but it was an entertaining plot driven novel. Recommended if you’re looking for a quick, engaging read.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

I found this a gripping, unputdownable read, one which I devoured in one sitting. Lovely Treez Reads

Some nice dramatic scenes are unfortunately let down by obvious concepts and ideas. A little more showing and a little less telling. Sam, Goodreads

Thought provoking and reading like something that could easily have been torn from the front page of a newspaper – this is great fiction and I shall certainly look out for Graham Reece’s next one. Books and Writers

 

Categories
1970s Thriller

The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand

Five words from the blurb: plague, death, dreams, Apocalypse, grows

I had never read any Stephen King (I was too scared), but then Sandy persuaded me that I’d be OK with this one, despite the apocalyptic premise. She was right, but I’m afraid I read this about 15 years too late. I think I’d have loved The Stand if I’d read it in my early twenties, whilst going through a Crichton binge, but my reading tastes have changed since then and I found it lacked the depth I crave today.

The Stand started really well, with a wonderfully tense scene involving a man escaping from a secret government facility after an accident released a deadly strain of the flu virus. Unfortunately this man carried the virus with him and it spread quickly, wiping out almost everyone in America. 

I loved the first 60 pages of this book, but after that it began to get repetitive. Too many characters were introduced and I didn’t enjoy reading about every one of them dying. There was a frustrating inevitability to it all so after about 400 pages I began skimming through the chapters. The same problem was repeated with the nightmares and so I decided to give up and read the wikipedia summary!

There were many great passages and the writing quality was higher than I expected it to be. 

Glen was both amazed and heartened by their willingness to talk, and by the charged atmosphere of excitement that had taken over the dull blankness with which they had begun the meeting. A large catharsis, long overdue, was going on, and he was also reminded of sex talk, but in a different way. They talk like people, he thought, who have kept the huddled up secrets of there guilts and inadequacies to themselves for a long time, only to discover that these things,when verbalized, were only life sized after all. When the inner terror sowed in sleep was finally harvested in this marathon public discussion, the terror became more manageable…perhaps even conquerable.

There was a wonderful 400 page book trapped in this 1700 page epic and I think I’d have loved The Stand if it had focused on just two or three people. The drama was spread too thinly for me as it took several hundred pages to get to the next interesting plot point. As a younger person I’d have had the patience to enjoy this flabby, meandering plot, but I’m afraid that I’ve read too many books that have dealt with the subject in a more powerful way – not many books can stand up to comparison to Blindness by José Saramago

It’s a shame that my first King read wasn’t more positive, but I’m glad I’ve now experienced his writing. 

DNF

Do you think I’ll have better luck with any of his other books or are they all similar in style?