So the Doves

by Heidi James

When an award-winning journalist is accused of fabrication and crimes against national security, nothing in his life makes sense, including the disappearance twenty years ago of his best friend. When a body is discovered in a Kent orchard, he begins to question everything he has ever believed to be true.

Genres: Mystery

262 pages, Paperback

Published September 14, 2017

About the author

Heidi James was born in Chatham, Kent. (also home to Billy Childish and Charles Dickens) She has a PhD in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing.

Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Somesuch Stories, Dazed and Confused, Flux, Galley Beggars and Mslexia, as well as in the anthologies The Loose Cannon, Writing from the Edge and Turpin’s Cave.

Her novella The Mesmerist's Daughter (published by Neon Press in April 2015) won the 2015 Saboteur Award for Best Novella and she was a finalist for the Cinnamon Poetry Collection Prize. She was awarded the Sophie Warne Fellowship in 2008.

She lives in London with her family, including two rescue dogs, Rose and Jay.

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the record, I was on to something, the St. Clair bank and their links to terrorist organisations; that was real. I say was, because it isn’t now. Now it’s a poorly researched article written in bad faith, for the moment at least. And Melanie? I was seventeen when she disappeared, a kid. She was a figment of my imagination. No one really saw her, not even me. She wasn’t real, I mean she was, she was flesh and blood – alive; what I mean is she became a story, a myth, a series of actions and consequences folded into my own history. That was my fault. Nothing ever really goes away; isn’t that another law of physics? Entropy. A material version of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, atoms reorganised, reconfigured, but never totally destroyed? There’s only so long before a new version of truth reveals itself, the skeletons in the wardrobe rattle and clack and the body is discovered. And there’s always a body, dead or alive. Every story needs a body.

Bluemoose Books is an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, which describes itself as a “‘family’ of readers and writers, passionate about the written word and stories, [who] delight in finding great new talent.”

Marcus is an investigative journalist for a UK newspaper – having built his reputation on a serendipitous trip to Paris on the night of Princess Diana’s death, he consolidates it with helping to break the MP expense scandal and most recently with a story involving a UK private bank which is illegally funding arms deals with the apparent complicity of the government. He is asked by his editor to lie low by covering a story in his childhood home town – a body uncovered during the excavation of a high speed line joining the Channel Tunnel. Initially he is lead to believe that there is some form of political angle but this seems to quickly fall away and Marcus is lead to reflect on his teenage friendship with Melanie some 20 years previously.

Marcus having being expelled from a private school after his love letter to another schoolboy was discovered joins the local comprehensive and, fearing bullying, instead strikes up a (to him as well as everyone else) unlikely friendship with Melanie – a sassy, intelligent but truant playing girl from a broken home.

The two initially bond over their musical tastes – but form a stronger bond, Melanie seeing Marcus (whose homosexuality she quickly recognises) as non-threatening and also with an aspirational education and lifestyle, Marcus envious of Melanie’s apparent confidence and fearlessness (despite it being clear that Melanie is in fact terrified of something).

The story alternates in short chapters between: a first person account of the current murder reporting, which quickly is accompanied by an apparent unravelling of Marcus’s arms dealing expose; and a third party account (effectively as remembered as best as he can by the present day Marcus) of the events 20 years earlier – events which culminated in the disappearance of Melanie (then found some time later apparently murdered abroad- although there seems uncertainty about this).

Over time the stories and the two mysteries – and their bodies (to refer to the opening quote) one dead and one possibly dead and possibly alive – converge, causing Marcus to question both what he believes about his past and what he believes about his present.

This book is I think best described as something of a literary murder mystery, one with a strong sense of place (the Medway towns of Kent), a strong musical drive (Marcus and Melanie bond over their love of early Grunge – particularly Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Nirvana’s brilliant debut “Bleach”) and one which is also an examination of how past experiences shape individuals, but how over time individuals also come to shape and reimagine/reinterpret those past experiences.

I used to trust the details. I collected them like rare objects or signs of revelation. It was a habit I picked up as a kid, nothing everything around me, listing the particulars of surroundings, people, sounds and smells … recounting them to myself. It stopped me paying attention to how lonely I felt. That was how I worked, how I wrote, focussing on the small, seemingly incidental details and let them reveal the facts, let the details build the story, report everything you see and hear, inoculate yourself from bias. I believed I was doing good, something vital; something to make it right, to atone. I still collect details, but I don’t trust them. Actually better to say that I don’t trust myself to interpret them, so they just collect like a film of dust and obscure what should be clear.

[WndyJW · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book got me out of reader’s block. It’s a mystery and more. The first mystery is why Marcus Murray, nationally recognized, award winning journalist, is sent to his hometown by his editor to cover the discovery of a body. Why such a local story for the journalist who just uncovered massive fraud in a multinational company? Marcus doesn’t understand it, but he goes and takes advantage of the time to visit his mother. Naturally, his years in his hometown come back to him, including the mysterious disappearance of his best friend, Melanie when they were just 17. As the stories unravel and pieces of the past get wrapped up in the present, perhaps even with his expose of the massive and powerful international corporation, Marcus is forced to examine himself, his motivations, and his memories. Was he a good friend to Melanie?
The mysteries kept me turning the pages, I read the book in one sitting, but what makes So the Doves special is Heidi James’ insights and observations on memory, identity, friendship and love. Ms. James is a wise woman and very good writer.

I recommend this book from Bluemoose Books and look forward to Heidi’s next book.

[Jackie Law · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We are a tale we tell ourselves: editing, adding, mythologising, and of course we do it to each other too.”

So The Doves, by Heidi James, is an intelligent murder mystery set in Medway, Kent. Its protagonist is Marcus Murray, an award winning journalist working for a prestigious London newspaper that has just published his impeccably sourced exposé of an influential, international organisation. Marcus uncovered the company’s involvement in illicit currency trades leading to government arms deals in the middle east. He considers himself a good guy but has opened a Pandora’s Box, and he too has an Achilles heel.

When Marcus’s boss sends him to cover the story of a body found near his old home town he is irritated at being set a task he now considers beneath him. Staying with his elderly mother in his childhood bedroom, memories of a life changing teenage friendship, the ending of which he has long suppressed, return. When he realises that he has been removed from London to enable his newspaper to protect itself, he must decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for the principles on which he has built his life and career.

The story jumps between 1989 and the present day. As fifteen year olds, Melanie Shoreham befriends Marcus when he moves from his fee paying school to the local comprehensive. He basks in the reflection of the image he builds of Mel, never truly understanding what her life has entailed.

“Were they really so different? Maybe they were and maybe he believed that if he could only figure her out, emulate her – her gestures, her attitude – then maybe he could be invincible, extraordinary, like her.”

In the present day Marcus strikes up a friendship with one of the detectives on the local murder case. Marcus is wary of relationships and cannot trust the motives of his new lover, initial perceptions bolstered by his view of the flat where they go to have sex.

“His place was neat and stylishly bland, like a flat in those estate agent brochures. Everything matching, and revealing nothing about the owner except that they have no taste of their own.”

Marcus cannot tell if his wariness is due to his growing paranoia, the innate ability be believes he has to read others, or a hangover from the teenage memories now crowding his days.

“The brain sees what it wants to see, looking for patterns and the familiar, what we know. Perhaps that was it? We’re trapped in the wireframe of our memories, building our present from old images.”

All but cut off from his London life, Marcus’s refusal to capitulate brings the trouble generated to Kent. Even now he is unsure of what is real and what he is constructing to excuse his increasingly volatile behaviour.

An undercurrent of foreboding slowly rises to the surface. Marcus struggles to maintain his veneer of studious truth-seeking which is gradually being peeled away. The fictions he has created which pass as memory have enabled him to live with his selfishness and failings. He was not proud of his behaviour then, and must now confront the fact that he may be no better decades later.

When the timelines come together, after the police investigation uncover links, Marcus is forced to remember events leading up to the last time he saw Mel. He revisits the past, but powerful forces are reinterpreting what is known to suit their own ends.

This is an evocative study of memory and the stories we create to shape how we regard ourselves. Its razor sharp percipience is in places discomfiting but this never detracts from the tension of the storytelling.

“Memory, if we’re honest, is a servile , biased little beast, delivering up half-remembered scenes that cast, at the very least, a flattering light over even the worst moments. […] We hunt like toothy little animals for patterns, for meaning, scurrying about gathering our special tales to line our nests and keep us warm at night.”

Artfully told this tale demands that the reader question their core perceptions of themselves. It is a disturbing, compelling, ultimately satisfying read.

My copy of this book was provided gratis by the publisher, Bluemoose.

[Emma B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern Literature - of friends, family and relationships

A body is found in Marcus's home town, and Marcus is sent to report on it by his paper. This thrusts him back into the history of his childhood as accusations fly, tensions rise and mysteries deepen.

This is a beautifully written book focussing on Marcus, who has gone to live with his mother whilst he reports on the murder, and his friend of 20 years before, Melanie. The story is told in alternating chapters, 1989 and the recent past, but the story flows smoothly as the author develops her characters, and explores their complex home issues and developing friendship.

Marcus, as an adult, find his life and career in turmoil as his big story of corruption is brought into doubt by the people he has exposed. His young life was also difficult as he hid parts of his character and attracted attention from the school bullies. Through both timelines unwanted challenges are faced and unexpected friendships made. The social issues Marcus did not understand when he was young become clearer, and mysteries of the past become evident - including Melanie's disappearance.

The pace of the book is good, and fast, and the last few chapters are totally riveting as the reader races to find out what happened. Although some difficult themes are explored, this is a beautiful book - not only in the writing, but also in the positive power of friendship.

At the back of the book is a website where "Questions for Book Clubs" can be found.

Definitely a 5*s from me because of the involving writing style, strong story line and complex social issues which made me sit back and think . Loved it!

Note: There is one graphic sex scene, its short and can be skipped without missing any of the storyline.

[Anni · Rating 3 out of 5]

With two timelines in alternating chapters, this is both a murder mystery and a study of how memory can deceive and distort the truth. Revisiting his teenage friendships, whilst investigating a crime in his old home town, a journalist finds his perceptions of the past challenged by the guilt and shame of the memories he had suppressed. The depiction of time and place is very evocative to anyone who has lived through the late eighties.

Reviewed for Whichbook.net

[Lucy Logan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe this is a me problem but the ending left me with more questions than answers

[Shannon]

i won this book on goodreads giveaway.beautiful written book.

[AngryGreyCat · Rating 2 out of 5]

So the Doves involves a journalist called back to the area where his mother lives to report on a body that has been discovered. The body’s discovery is initially thought to have some political implications or perhaps be linked to a missing policeman. As Marcus has returned to the scene of his youth, the story alternates between present day, and 1989, when Marcus was a child expelled from his posh school and the disappearance of his friend, Melanie.

The child Marcus and the story line told through his eyes is a little naive or vague, I suppose it is to highlight that our memories from childhood are not exactly as things really were. Perhaps we don’t really understand every thing that was really happening around us and as such our recall was not accurate and our judgement of events can be called into question. The modern day story involves Marcus’s career and his big expose that has been cast into doubt. It also concerns his relationship with his mother and his relationships in general. I don’t really want to say anything more because this is a layered book with the reader needing to make inferences and connections as they go along. The themes explored most obviously throughout are memory, guilt, shame, and secrets.

[Andres Kabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fast enjoyable read. Well written with a bit too much extended dialogue for my taste and the plot offered no revelations. Look forward to the author's next one.

[Pete · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. Kept me completely captivated, and was completely engrossed in the world of the book while I was reading it. Loved it.

[Ian Mapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of surprised this book is not more widely read. Just 58 ratings here and 12 reviews (at time of writing).

My library copy was pristine - I was the first to uncover the mysteries between the covers. Not least the fact that the first 16 pages were printed twice. Wondered if this was a gimmick or a printing error. Two much Inside #9 going on this week for me not to think I was being hoodwinked.

This is beautifully written split time narrative - concerning Marcus and Mel. In the current time, Marcus is a journalist, who has made a scoop concerning arms dealings/government cover ups. Back in the late 1980s - he was coming to terms with coming out, suffering at the hands of bullies and striking up an intense friendship with the oh to cool Mel.

His current assignment sees him sent back to his home town in the Estuary Kent - where a body has been discovered and Mel has long disappeared. Marcus is back to face his adolescence, his home town and his mother.

The split time narrative works well - and the late 80s period held far more interest for me than the current mystery - which of course, Marcus was involved with but I cannot provide too many spoilers, as the story developed a far too gently and I wasn't fully engaged with it.

The coming together didn't fully work for me.

Enjoyable and enough for me to keep a look out for future work by the author.

[Ellie Hawkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fans of cold case thrillers will find much to enjoy in this book. For me, once more, it was the beauty of the prose that had me hooked, and the brilliant way that James shows the divide between Marcus as he is now and Marcus as a teen. Shifting between the first and third person for the same character is not as easy as it sounds, and I was in awe of how effectively James uses the technique here. As someone who has a terrible long-term memory, my past often feels like someone else’s story, and I guess for this reason, it resonated extra strongly with me!

Melanie is a fascinating character, not someone I can compare to other characters off the top of my head – she is resolutely her own person, and her friendship with Marcus is so carefully and beautifully explored. As the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place, and the drama ramps up, it becomes harder and harder to tear yourself away from the page. The ending feels exactly right, extremely satisfying but with enough of an ‘opening out’ to move the story beyond these characters.

[Mayfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read this. While the plot felt a little bit like an ITV miniseries the telling was handled with James’s characteristic wisdom, philosophical foreshadowing, and controlled release of detail. Unhappy lives unfold, joy comes in moments delivered by other people, meaning is sought and suppressed and lost and let go. “The seductive powers of determinism” become “there’s only so long before a new version of the truth reveals itself”, and memory is derided as “a servile, biased little beast”. In one scene, Melanie reads an argument that a sacrificial scapegoat is not a victim but a willing participant demonstrating God’s love. But James is not so blunt as to have this passage give the lie to Melanie’s theme: “you’re all telling yourself a story because you need the illusion of meaning. But it’s just patterns, sequences that we think we recognise and then name…Why can’t they be kind anyway, no matter what the facts are?”

[Gabrielle Jarrett · Rating 2 out of 5]

"We live in an alternative-facts world. Honestly." So the Doves begins. And so it ends, a compilation of alternative facts. Melanie and Marcus are the protagonists. Melanie's maturity at seventeen, along with her wisdom is striking. Marcus seems to remain similar to his high school self even thirty years later. The story flows nicely between the high school time and current time, telling and re-telling alternative facts. The plotting kept me reading in the search to discover if Marcus was losing his mental health. I did not feel satisfied after the read. Perhaps because he was not a likeable character in terms of kindness, courage, honesty, or choices. I would call it mystery-lite.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially this seemed like a simple story told with two parallel time lines, but as it unfolds the characters develop and become more engaging, eliciting stronger responses from the reader.
Ultimately the reader has to use inferencing skills to tie up all the ends of the story, but this doesn’t detract from it.
I found it a compulsive read, and was quite surprised by how my feelings about Marcus kept changing.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that, upon reading, creeps up on you - I wasn't sure whether to keep going after three or four chapters. But glad I did. A tale of teenage angst, love, hurt, pain told in alternating chapters by a lonely, alienated high school boy who finds one friend - an alluring, fascinating girl his age. As an adult, a journalist, he revisits his mother and gets pulled back into incidents that happened - and that he barely understood, or misunderstood, as a kid. Worth reading.

[Αλέξανδρος · Rating 4 out of 5]

Literary crime fiction! Great book by an author not accustomed to crime fiction. It has a slow start but after a few revelations through the main character's parallel story in the past the story held my attention! Every hint is hidden between the lines and the details on the relationships between the people in the story. Great back story as well for the home towns of the characters. Everyone that liked crime series such as Broadchurch and the Killing, they will love this book.

[bookblast official · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout the narrative, their relationship fuels both plot and character development, as we are drawn into the action, and tied to their fate. By means of a series of strong scenes, then and now, we are drawn into their sharply contrasting worlds and emotional landscapes.

Reviewed on The BookBlast® Diary 2017

[Dai Reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well told tale well written. A taut psychological, almost Kafka-like mystery, flitting from present day to a time some decades before, which gradually unwinds. A protagonist with issues that he is, in many ways unwittingly, coming to terms with.
I am grateful to have received this book as a 'Giveaway'

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

So the Doves is everything I hope for when I pick up a book. The tempo between past and present is beautifully balanced as well as gripping. I love the characters. They are real and truthful.

Brilliant and inspiring.

[Paul Vernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this; it's a beautifully written book. The characters are well developed and the story kept me hooked.

[Nina-Marie Gardner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delicious read. I basically devour Heidi's books, the writing is sublime. Such a fun, perverse mystery with characters you can feel banging around inside your head long after the book is finished.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book, both a detective story and a personal story, intense and dark, and it all wrapped up so well at the end. Loved the music references too.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvellous read. Wonderful writing.

[Cristie Underwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author wrote a thriller that started with a bang and just kept going! The twists kept coming, so I couldn't put it down. I cannot wait to read more from this author!