Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty, page 13

Trusting Skylar by Susan Stoker #BookReview

Former military operative Carson “Bull” Rhodes hasn’t dated seriously since he and his teammates left the army. Since then he’s opened Silverstone Towing—which is a front for his other job: hired killer. When kindergarten teacher Skylar Reid calls for help while stranded on the side of the interstate, the attraction is instant. The problem is Bull’s career has jaded him. Skylar’s innocent, and he wants to keep her that way.

Cautious by nature, Skylar never expected to fall in love with her tow truck driver. Even so, once Bull reveals what he really does for a living, she’s not sure she can handle it. When Skylar faces threats that have nothing to do with Bull’s job but are just as deadly, the stakes are higher than ever.

With the help of the Silverstone team, Bull will use everything he’s learned over the years to bring the woman he loves home—because the alternative is unthinkable

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Title: Trusting Skylar | Author: Susan Stoker | Series: Silverstone #1 | Publisher: Montlake| Pages: 318 | ISBN: 9781542021340 | Publication date: 1st December 2020 | Source: NetGalley

As a reader I like to sometimes try books from genres I don’t normally read. Romantic suspense is just that, so when I saw ‘Trusting Skylar’ on NetGalley I thought I’d give it a go. If nothing else, it confirmed to me why I don’t normally read romantic suspense. On its own terms it’s not a terrible book, it’s just a its own terms aren’t ones that interest me.

Romantic suspense is a fairly broad category and ‘Trusting Skylar’ fits into the “tough military operative falls in love with a normal gal” niche within it. Susan Stoker specialises in this sort of thing, having penned series with titles like ‘SEAL of Protection’, ‘Delta Force Heroes’, ‘Mountain Mercenaries’ and ‘Ace Security’. She’s written a tonne of books (there are 21 in the ‘SEAL of Protection’ series alone), so there’s market here. I’m guessing the books have a similar setup to ‘Trusting Skylar’, which is the first book in a series of its own, ‘Silverstone’.

It must be said that the cover of ‘Trusting Skylar’ is remarkably dull. Many of Stoker’s other books have the kind of covers that make me want to buy them even though I didn’t like this one all that much.

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The story here concerns ex-special forces hero Bull and his team of buddies who run a towing company in middle America, whilst also occasionally going on international missions funded by the FBI to kill terrorists. The book opens with a pretty entertaining military sequence that reads a lot like something from a Gold Eagle book.

After that the romance part gets going and my interest levels nose dived. Bull meets Skylar, a kindergarten teacher with a nice ass and a heart of gold who only sees the best in people. He tows her car and acts weirdly protective of her then asks her on a date. We then get a couple of hundred pages of them spending time together. They talk to each other a lot and Bull continues being overly protective. They also talk to other people about their feelings and stuff a lot. Then, after a respectable amount of time dating, they have hot sex. Then after that there is some more suspense stuff which I won’t spoil.

Now romantic books aren’t really my thing, so I may be way off the mark here, but I thought the thing that makes a romance is the “will they, won’t they” tension of the story. In ‘Trusting Skylar’ the only things that cause that tension are Skylar being a bit nervous as she hasn’t had much luck with guys in the past, and Bull worrying about telling her he kills people for a living. At no point was I at all worried that they wouldn’t get it on.

The suspense part, after that entertaining start, is pretty lacking too. The end is kind of exciting, but it’s a hell of a long time coming and you have to wade through a lot of boring conversations to get to it. But the book wasn’t written for me, so who am I to judge. If this is your kind of thing, give it a go.

2/5

Thriller Corner: Death of a Citizen by Donald Hamilton #BookReview

Somebody opened my coffin that night in the middle of a cocktail party. I’d been all but dead these 15 years, turned into a household pet by a wife and kids.

But now the girl whom I’d known by the code name Tina had walked back into my life — and 15 years of settled, complacent living slipped away. I was back in that time when our world had been savage and alive, when I had been a lethal young animal trained to kill in cold blood — and she had been my partner.

And I knew that I was ready to follow her again to the depths of that private hell we had shared.

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Title: Death of a Citizen | Author: Donald Hamilton | Series: Matt Helm #1 | Publisher: Titan Books| Pages: 240 | ISBN: 9780857683342 | Publication date: 12th February 2013 (originally published 1960)| Source: Purchased

‘Death of a Citizen’ is the first of the Matt Helm novels, of which there were 27 between 1960 and the early 1990s. Helm is sometimes considered to be the American equivalent of Fleming’s James Bond. He’s witty, quite happy to slip between the sheets with whatever women are available, and able to spring in to action whenever required.

What makes his first outing work as well as it does is the setup. Rather than being a super spy, Helm starts the book as a rather boring, middle class, middle aged man. He’s a writer (of westerns), a loving husband and a devoted father to three children. He’s also, it turns out, a former agent who tore things up in wartime Europe fifteen plus years before. When he bumps into a female agent he worked with during the war at a suburban party, his settled life is turned upside down and he finds himself wrapped up in a world of intrigue and violence again. It feels a bit like the Geena Davis movie ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight’, only with a (slightly) more realistic take on things and a nice 60s vibe.

Helm is a really entertaining hero and narrator. Somewhat in the hard boiled mode, but less misanthropic. Hamilton manages to make him fun to read without being ridiculous; and believable without being to dry and dull. He’s more Travis McGee than Jason Bourne and all the better for it in my opinion.

This is more a tale of intrigue and double crosses than it is violence, but when it kicks into action it does so with a bang. There’s plenty of sex too, and while there isn’t any danger of the book passing the Bechdel test, the main female character is just as confident as Helm and gives as good as she gets. ‘Death of a Citizen’ was an entertaining introduction to Helm and sets things up well for the rest of the series. Good thing too as I just bought them all…

4/5

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley #BookReview

Only eight years after serving out a prison sentence for murder, Socrates Fortlow lives in a tiny, two-room Watts apartment, where he cooks on a hot plate, scavenges for bottles, drinks and wrestles with his demons. Struggling to control a seemingly boundless rage–as well as the power of his massive “rock-breaking” hands–Socrates must find a way to live an honourable life as a black man on the margins of a white world, a task which takes every ounce of self-control he has.

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Title: Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned | Author: Walter Mosley | Series: Socrates Fortlow #1 | Publisher: Serpent’s Tail| Pages: 208 | ISBN: 9781852427023 | Publication date: 1997| Source: Purchased

Shockingly, I think I’ve only read two other Walter Mosley books. The first was the Easy Rawlins prequel ‘Gone Fishin’’, which I read years ago. The second was ‘Down the River Unto the Sea’, which I read earlier this year and reviewed here. Neither of those books came even close to preparing me for the brilliance of ‘Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned’. It’s a staggeringly good book.

What makes it great is hard to put your finger on. Partly, it’s the structure: it’s a series of short stories about the same character that come together into a book that doesn’t necessarily have the narrative arc of a novel, but is just as satisfying a whole.

 Partly, it’s the protagonist: Socrates Fortlow is fantastic character. An ex-con determined to go straight and make a new life for himself in Los Angeles after decades of incarceration. He strides through the stories like a force of nature. His moral code is unshakeable and the violence within him constantly feels in conflict with his zen-like calm and wisdom. He reminded me a little of Ogami Ittō, the vengeful but strangely peaceful samurai hero of the ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’ manga series. Fortlow is far from innocent, but his struggle for redemption is inspirational.

And partly it’s Mosley’s searing analysis of racism in America. He covers the LA riots, the inherent bias of the justice system, the civil rights movement and the casual bigotry of the dominant society. Fortlow and the other characters represent the struggling underclass of the modern world. Living hand to mouth in a city famous for its millionaires, and pulling themselves through each day through sheer force of will.

Taken together these parts make for an incredibly good book. The prose has the terse punchiness of the best crime fiction, the sense of place is superb and Socrates Fortlow is the most memorable hero I’ve met in years.

5/5

Pulp Paperback: Gannon – Blood Beast by Dean Ballenger #BookReview

Terror came over Hibbs’ handsome face. He tried to tell the two hoods that he had just been joking about paying the 78 thou, but no words came out of his bollixed larynx. His eyes protruded with fright, but he could see no out in the darkened parking lot.

Veetch grabbed Hibbs’ right ear and pulled it out from his head. Suddenly he sliced it off.

“I’m giving it back,” Juice said, taking the ear from Veetch and holding it between his thumb and forefinger because it was leaking. “Maybe a doc can glue it back on. But next time the parts we slice off won’t be glueable.”

He shoved the ear into a pocket of Hibbs’ expensive jacket. “Next time, pal, it’ll be your ____!”

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Title: Gannon – Blood Beast | Author: Dean Ballenger | Series: Gannon #3 | Publisher: Manor Books | Pages: 191 | ISBN: N/A | Publication date: 1974 | Source: Purchased

In many ways ‘Blood Beast’ is an archetypal pulp fiction novel. It’s short, derivative, slightly idiosyncratic and way more entertaining than a lot of more mainstream popular fiction. It’s also brutal, offensive, laugh out loud funny (without meaning to be) and weirdly memorable.

It’s the third book in the ‘Gannon’ series by Dean Ballenger. Obviously I’d rather have started with book one, the brilliantly titled ‘Blood for Breakfast’, but these books are rarer than hen’s teeth and beggars can’t be choosers. The books detail the adventures of Mike Gannon, a modern day Robin Hood. That’s the publisher’s description, not mine, I’d call him a low rent Mike Hammer with less charm and more gore than the original.

In ‘Blood Beast’, Gannon is helping a young woman whose been framed for embezzlement by a wealthy businessman. The businessman isn’t the biggest problem though, that’s the ruthless gangsters his son has built up huge gambling debts with (leading him to commit the aforementioned embezzlement). The book opens with a phenomenal scene where a bunch of hoods attack Gannon and the woman he’s in the middle of screwing and is then mostly told in flashback leading up to that point.

The plot is pretty much irrelevant though, merely an excuse to string together scenes of two-fisted action, torture and sex. All of this told with frequently bizarre cod-hardboiled prose. Lines like “Hibbs’ unease came out like his pipes needed a lube job” are common and eyes are routinely referred to as “orbs”. Ballenger also has a habit of repeating phrases in dialogue, a technique that is amusing at times but quite effective.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr Donato,” Juice said, “but I have some news which is not good news.”

And…

“It’s on account of a loan I made which caused a bunch of things to happen I had no idea would happen.”

It’s in the scenes of violence that Ballenger really lets himself go though, and these are no doubt what drew the reader to the book in the first place. This is not a world where bullets leave neat little holes, they’re more likely to result in dismemberment.

Since Costigan was holding the Wembley, his hand got included, the .357’s dum-dum ricocheting through his hand, exiting with pieces of bone and muscles, then slamming into his elbow, exiting from it in a shower of what had been the bones in Costigan’s elbow joint.

Perhaps not a book for everyone then, but if you like your crime fiction cheap and nasty and you can stomach the inevitable misogyny and racism of 70s pulp, then this might be one you want to check out.

3/5

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead #BookReview

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

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Title: The Nickel Boys | Author: Colson Whitehead | Publisher: Doubleday | Pages: 213 | ISBN: 9780385537070 | Publication date: 16th July 2019 | Source: Purchased

There’s this thing where when a writer is respected enough, their books transcend genre. So, Murakami’s ‘1Q84’ isn’t science fiction, Bret Easton Ellis doesn’t write horror, and Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Nickel Boys’ isn’t a crime novel. Call me old fashioned, but when a book Is set in a reform school, features multiple injustices, jail breaks and a decades old mystery, I’ll shelve it alongside Mosley and Lehane.

‘The Nickel Boys’ isn’t any old crime novel, it’s a truly great one. In its hero, Elwood, it has a memorable and sympathetic protagonist. The narrative spans several decades, focusing on his incarceration as an adolescent in a juvenile reformatory, the Nickel Academy, in the 1960s, but also covering his later life. It’s based on a real institution, which makes the shocking acts of cruelty that are meted out on the Nickel boys all the more shocking.

I’ll confess that I wasn’t a huge fan of Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad’, but this book has made me want to read everything else he’s written. It’s a beautifully structure book, the flitting between eras allowing him to tease out the story’s mysteries and examine the echoes of the characters’ mistreatment on their adult lives. It has a searing sense of justice, but also of realism. The world is a fucked up place and whilst racism in the USA isn’t as horrific today as it was in the 60s, there’s still a long way to go.

What impressed me most of all though was the prose. At just over 200 pages the book is brilliantly sparse, always easy to read but full of impact. Whitehead never overplays his hand, knowing just how much to say to land a gut punch, without every making the reader weary. The result is a book that is memorable, moving, funny and gripping. Most of all it has real power. It left me angry but hopeful.

5/5

Lockdown by Peter May #BookReview

London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed. 

At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. 

D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first – the virus or the killers?

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Title: Lockdown | Author: Peter May | Publisher: Quercus | Pages: 399 | ISBN: 9781529411690 | Publication date: 16th June 2020 | Source: Purchased

‘Lockdown’ is a hard book to classify. Written in 2005 but only published this year, it’s a whodunnit set in an imaginary London that has been locked down following an outbreak of bird flu that has killed thousands. If it had been published in 2005 it might have been marketed as science fiction (or at least speculative fiction) and indeed it didn’t make it to the shelves then because Peter May’s publishers felt the setting lacked credibility. Fast forward to 2020, of course, and it all feels normal. In fact, I suspect May’s previously reluctant publishers couldn’t get this oven ready lockdown thriller out quickly enough.

The book’s hero is gruff, tough Scots cop Jack MacNeil. It’s his last day on the London Metropolitan police and he’s investigating the discovery of a child’s skeleton on the sight of a new hospital that’s being hastily erected to cope with the thousands of flu cases needing treatment. London is in complete lockdown, the streets deserted and normal life on hold. Helping Jack in his investigation is a brilliant, disabled forensic scientist.

May had clearly done a lot of research and conjures up an eerily familiar picture of a locked down city. The bird flu in his book is more lethal than Coronavirus, meaning the government action taken to contain it is stronger, with armed soldiers on the streets. Many other elements ring true though, there are illegal raves, the Prime Minster has caught the virus, the army are delivering food to people. Jack is still able to get a decent haircut somehow, but I’ll let that slide.

Given that it is set in 2005 rather than 2020 and features a different virus, the book ends up feeling like an alternative history thriller akin to Robert Harris’s ‘Fatherland’ or Len Deighton’s ‘SS-GB’. As is common with this kind of book, the investigation ends up going to the heart of the matter. The plot can feel a bit formulaic at times, but it’s a formula that works and it kept me gripped. As a mystery, it ends up relying perhaps a little too much on fortuitous coincidences rather than actual detective work but it’s still efficient and enjoyable.

Jack and Amy are engaging leads and there’s an excellent villain in Pinkie. Like his namesake he’s determined, chilling, seemingly unstoppable and yet strangely sympathetic. In the second half a new character, Dr Castelli, introduces some needed humour as the plot rattles along to genuinely thrilling conclusion.

‘Lockdown’ is a winner then, even if it took the terrible events of 2020 to get it into bookshops. It’s gripping, convincing, humorous and moving.

4/5

Thriller Corner: Domino Island by Desmond Bagley #BookReview

Bill Kemp, an ex-serviceman working in London as an insurance investigator, is sent to the Caribbean to determine the legitimacy of an expensive life insurance claim following the inexplicable death of businessman David Salton. His rapidly inflated premiums immediately before his death stand to make his young widow a very rich lady! Once there, Kemp discovers that Salton’s political ambitions had made him a lot of enemies, and local tensions around a forthcoming election are already spilling over into protest and violence on the streets. Salton also had friends in unexpected places, including the impossibly beautiful Leotta Tomsson, to whom there is much more than meets the eye. Kemp realises that Salton’s death and the local unrest are a deliberate smokescreen for an altogether more ambitious plot by an enemy in their midst, and as the island comes under siege, even Kemp’s army training seems feeble in the face of such a determined foe.

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Title: Domino Island | Author: Desmond Bagley | Publisher: HarperCollins| Pages: 320 | ISBN: 9780008333010 | Publication date: 16th May 2019 | Source: Purchased

Desmond Bagley is one of those authors I was very aware of as a child. My dad was a fan of his books, as was my grandad. His books lined their shelves along with the works of authors like Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes and Clive Cussler. Bagley’s book ‘High Citadel’ was one of the first books for adults that I read, but it was Cussler that I too ended up becoming an avid reader of.

‘Domino Island’ has been published recently as a “lost” Bagley book. It’s a manuscript he wrote in the 1970s and submitted to his publisher, but which never made it to the shelves because it didn’t fit the market at the time. This edition contains an interesting piece on Bagley and the history of ‘Domino Island’, or ‘Because Salton Died’ as it was originally titled.

Unlike most of Bagley’s books, which are adventure or espionage thrillers, ‘Domino Island’ is, for most of his length at least, a whodunnit. The hero, Bill Kemp, is an investigator for an insurance company who travels to a Caribbean island to investigate the death of an important businessman, David Salton. Once there he uncovers an unsurprising web of corruption, as well as Salton’s beautiful widow and equally attractive mistress.

The mystery elements are entertaining enough, as Kemp learns of the turbulent politics on the island and understands Salton’s place in them. It’s in the final third that the book really comes into its own though. Bagley slips back into more traditional thriller mode once the truth behind Salton’s death is revealed and Kemp begins a race against time to stop the killers. The action comes thick and fast and is genuinely gripping. It’s certainly given me an appetite to read more of Bagley’s books.

What’s lacking from ‘Domino Island’ is any real flavour of Caribbean life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it was written by a Caucasian Englishman in the 1970s, it’s an incredibly white book. Despite it’s setting, there are no black characters of note, the focus being instead on well-meaning whites who are trying to make things better for the locals. That’s disappointing, but doesn’t detract from the expert thriller writing of that final act.

3/5

Pulp Paperback: The Sniper by Jack Cannon #BookReview

Alongside Thriller Corner, I’ve decide to start another strand within the site where I’ll review books from the pulpier side of the street. OC

THE CRIMINALS DIDN’T TAKE THE STREETS OVERNIGHT. ONE BATTLE WONT WIN THEM BACK. JOE RYKER IS A COP FROM THE OLD SCHOOL. HOMICIDE IS HIS JOB. MURDER IS HIS LIFE. AND HE’S READY TO STRIKE… As sirens wail in the heat of the city night, an over burdened police department is up against a crime wave that’s spreading like blood from a sliced artery. The Sniper is one man with a rifle, choosing his victims at random, killing with the cold skill of a pro. Detective Sergeant Ryker is going in after him – into the sleaze and decay, into the night. Somewhere in the panic-stricken city the killer and the cop will come face to face – and a last deadly battle will be raged…

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Title: The Sniper | Author: Jack Cannon (aka Nelson DeMille) | Joe Ryker #1 | Publisher: Grafton| Pages: 224 | ISBN: 9780586204511 | Publication date: 24th January 1991 (originally published 1974) | Source: Purchased

‘The Sniper’ is a far better book than it has any right to be. Originally published in 1974, it’s a quick and nasty cop thriller about a brutal, nihilistic cop hunting a deadly sniper. The fact that it came out a few years after ‘Dirty Harry’, a cop thriller about a nihilistic cop hunting a deadly sniper, is probably no coincidence. It was the first published novel by author Nelson DeMille, who is best known for writing fat espionage thrillers that you might call Ludlumesque if they weren’t better than most of Ludlum’s output. He obviously decided the weightier books were better for his career, as they kept his real name and ‘The Sniper’ and its four sequels were reissued under the unlikely pseudonym Jack Cannon. He obviously still had some fondness for the books though, as he took the time to update them for the 90s reissues. This review is of the 90s edition of ‘The Sniper’.

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The main draw of the book is the anti-hero cop at its centre. Joe Ryker is a scumbag who will stop at nothing to catch his prey. In between times he takes cheap sex where he can get it and drinks cheap liquor. He cares about justice rather than the niceties of the law. So determined is he to catch the villain in this book (a crazed Vietnam veteran sniping blondes) that he spends large parts of the book smeared in dog faeces. DeMille knows what a dick Ryker is and seems to delight in putting him through as much pain and degradation as possible.

The result is a book that feels like it wants to shock readers into enjoying it. Watching Ryker at work is a guilty pleasure, whether he’s beating up suspects or threatening witnesses. DeMille is a good enough writer that he keeps things taut and interesting, even if the plot lacks originality.

4/5

The Coast to Coast Murders by James Patterson and JD Barker #BookReview

Michael and Megan Fitzgerald are siblings who share a terrifying past. Both adopted, and now grown — Michael is a long-haul truck driver, Megan a college student majoring in psychology — they trust each other before anyone else. They’ve had to. Their parents are public intellectuals, an Ivy League clinical psychologist and a renowned psychiatrist, and they brought up their adopted children in a rarefied, experimental environment. It sheltered them from the world’s harsh realities, but it also forced secrets upon them, secrets they keep at all costs.
In Los Angeles, Detective Garrett Dobbs and FBI Agent Jessica Gimble have joined forces to work a murder that seems like a dead cinch. Their chief suspect is quickly identified and apprehended –but then there’s another killing just like the one they’ve been investigating. And another. And not just in Los Angeles — the spree spreads across the country. The Fitzgerald family comes to the investigators’ attention, but Dobbs and Gimble are at a loss — if one of the four is involved, which Fitzgerald might it be?
From coastal California to upstate New York, Dobbs and Gimble race against time and across state lines to stop an ingenious and deeply deranged killer — one whose dark and twisted appetites put them outside the range of logic or experience.

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Title: The Coast to Coast Murders | Author: James Patterson and JD Barker | Publisher: Little, Brown and Company| Pages: 560 | ISBN: 9780316457422 | Publication date: 21st September 2020 | Source: NetGalley

Einstein famously said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By that measure, in my dealings with the work of James Patterson at least, I’m fucking nuts. Admittedly, I quote liked his first few books. ‘Along Came a Spider’ came along in 1993 at the height of the serial killer boom and I enjoyed it. I liked the next few Alex Cross novels as well. But then Patterson decided to turn himself into a brand and it all went wrong. I think that Tom Clancy was the first author to do this with the ‘Op Center’ books, the model being that the famous writer has just enough input into a book to justify their name being on the cover, but someone else provides the words. Given the number of ‘James Patterson and…” books there are, Mr P is clearly a heavy smoker. He must be to have built up enough fag packets to write plot outlines on before chucking them at whatever up and coming scribe his publishers have found him that week.

To my eternal regret I’ve read a lot of these books. The first five or so of the ‘Women’s Murder Club’ series, a number of the earlier standalones and the first of the ‘Private’ books. They were all crap. What’s worse I have a shitload more either on my Kindle or in my attic book hoard. I bought the first TEN of the ‘Private’ books in a Kindle deal. SOMEBODY STOP ME.

I think what pulls me back to them, like a moth to a flame, is the same thing that has made them so shamefully popular. They promise a quick, gripping read that will keep you flipping the pages and won’t tax the brain too much. The fact that they generally fail to deliver on all but the last of these things is something I forget every time I see one in a charity shop or a Kindle deal. The blurbs suck me in and I line myself up for another disappointment, Charlie Brown style.

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So OF COURSE when I saw there was one of these damn books on NetGalley I requested it. And INEVITABLY it was dreadful. The opening is intriguing (guy finds body in his bathtub, police arrest him, turns out she was his girlfriend although he has no memory of her), but the book completely fails to explain that mystery in a credible or satisfying way. Perhaps Patterson ran out of room on his fag packet. The result is frequently ridiculous, never that interesting and completely uninvolving. It’s also over 500 pages long FFS.

Reader, I read this one so you don’t have to, so please don’t.

1/5

Truth Be Told by Kia Abdullah #BookReview

ARE YOU READY TO START THIS CONVERSATION?
Kamran Hadid feels invincible. He attends Hampton school, an elite all-boys boarding school in London, he comes from a wealthy family, and he has a place at Oxford next year. The world is at his feet. And then a night of revelry leads to a drunken encounter and he must ask himself a horrific question.

With the help of assault counsellor, Zara Kaleel, Kamran reports the incident in the hopes that will be the end of it. But it’s only the beginning…

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Title: Truth Be Told | Author: Kia Abdullah | Publisher: HQ | Pages: 384 | ISBN: 9780008314743 | Publication date: 3rd September 2020 | Source: NetGalley

‘Truth Be Told’ is in many ways an excellent novel, and it’s certainly an admirable one. I’d not heard of Kia Abdullah before I saw this on NetGalley, but I’ll definitely be reading more by her. She tells an emotionally complex story, avoiding easy answers, and in doing so delivers a book with a lasting impact.

The plot is straightforward – at an exclusive boy’s school one teenage boy rapes another. The novel follows the victim and perpetrator through the investigation and trial, the main character being Zara, an assault counsellor assigned to the boy who was attacked.

What sets the book apart from others is the incredibly even-handed approach Kia Abdullah takes. To have written a novel about rape where the reader feels sorrow for the attacker as well as the attacked is no mean feat. She does it through careful characterisation. Every major player in the book is convincingly human. Flawed, in some cases tragically so, but sympathetic too. There is an intricate series of relationships between the characters, one that builds up subtly as the book unfolds so that it’s only at the end that you really appreciate it.

The context is key here too. Male rape isn’t a subject that gets examined much in crime fiction and it is done sensitively and effectively here. What’s more, the victim is a Muslim, as is Zara the counsellor and there is a great deal of discussion of Muslim (and indeed western) attitudes to masculinity. That really is the central theme of the book, even when Abdullah is writing about the counsellor’s relationship with her father it’s there.

For all the deep themes it’s a very readable book. It’s gripping throughout, largely because it’s unclear until the end how things will turn out. The courtroom scenes have real punch, but it’s the quieter moments of introspection that have the most impact. The result is a compelling, moving and at times shocking book.

4/5