Review: THE HEIGHTS, Louise Candlish

• 
  this edition from my local library
  
• published by Simon & Schuster 2021
• 432 pages
• ISBN 978-1-4711-8349-2

Synopsis (publisher)

There is nothing as powerful as a mother’s love. But will Ellen’s put her whole family in danger?

Ellen Saint is just your average mum. Devoted to her family, she’s no different from any other mother who wants the best for her kids. But when her teenage son Lucas brings a new friend home, cracks start to appear in Ellen’s perfect family life.
Kieran Watts isn’t like Lucas. He’s rude, obnoxious and reckless, and Ellen can only watch in despair as her son falls deeper under his influence.
Then Ellen’s whole world implodes and she embarks on an obsessive need to get revenge.

There is nothing you won’t do for your children – even murder . . . 

My Take

From the back cover:

The Heights is a tall, slender apartment building among warehouses in London. Its roof terrace is so discreet, you wouldn’t know it existed if you weren’t standing at the window of the flat directly opposite. But you are. And that’s when you see a man up there—a man you’d recognize anywhere. He may be older now, but it’s definitely him.

But that can’t be because he’s been dead for over two years. You know this for a fact.

Because you’re the one who killed him.

I must confess that it wasn't the publisher's blurb that got me into this one, but the stuff from the back cover.

This intriguingly structured novel requires the reader to exercise those "little grey cells" to solve all the mysteries - and there is more than one. There are several voices in this novel, so do take notice of anything that helps you distinguish one from another. 

We hear most of the story from "the horse's mouth", beginning in September 2012, when a 16 year old disadvantaged boy, Kieran Watts, joins Lucas Gordon's class at Foxwell Academy, and attaches himself to Lucas like an evil limpet. From that point, in Ellen's own words, it is just one disastrous mistake after another.

And from my point of view, Ellen Saint is far from your "average mum".

My rating: 4.6

I've also read

• 5.0, THE OTHER PASSENGER
• 4.7, OUR HOUSE
• 4.8, THE ONLY SUSPECT

Review: IN DARK WATER, Lynne McEwan

• 
  This edition available on Kindle from Amazon
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08ZD85G57
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Canelo Crime (June 24, 2021)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 330 pages
• #1 in DI Shona Oliver Crime Thriller series
  

Synopsis (Amazon)

Beneath the surface lie deadly secrets...

DI Shona Oliver agreed to move to Dumfries with her ex-banker husband when their teenage daughter got in with a bad crowd in London. As a Glasgow native, she’s back on home turf.

Living on the shores of the Solway Firth allows Shona to continue as an RNLI volunteer, and a call out to recover a woman’s body indicates foul play. Police in Cumbria take the case but links back to Scotland keep Shona’s team involved. As they investigate, reports of people trafficking and a spate of thefts from local shops compete for attention with a large scale drug bust. But Shona’s work may all be in vain when those close to her threaten to tear the case apart – and ruin Shona in the process.

An unforgettable debut novel by a Scottish crime writer to watch, for fans of Val McDermid, Marion Todd and Lin Anderson.

My Take

 In DI Shona Oliver we have a very likeable Scottish detective, with all the qualities we require from a true leader. 'Wee Shona' shows herself resourceful, at the same time as persistent and empathetic.

There are lots of twists and turns in the plot, and quite a number of strong characters. A credible read.

I look forward to the second in the series DEAD MAN DEEP.

My rating: 4.7

About the author

Glasgow-born Lynne McEwan is a former newspaper photographer turned crime author. She’s covered stories including the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the first Gulf War in addition to many high profile murder cases. Her DI Shona Oliver series is set on the beautiful Solway Firth which forms the border between Scotland and England, and where Shona is also a lifeboat volunteer. Lynne is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing programme and splits her time between Lincolnshire and Scotland.

Review: THE DINNER PARTY, Rebecca Heath

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book on Libby by my local library
  
• Published 03 Jan 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing
• Extent     416 pages
• ISBN     9781804546109

Synopsis (Publisher) 

The new exciting thriller by Rebecca Heath, author of THE SUMMER PARTY. A dark and twisty domestic thriller set in a seemingly idyllic suburban neighbourhood, where family secrets are best kept buried...

FOUR COUPLES.
Summer 1979. In the idyllic suburban neighbourhood of Ridgefield, Australia, during a scorching heat wave, four couples gather for their weekly dinner party.

AN ORDINARY EVENING.
When Frank Callaghan checks on the sleeping children, he finds an empty crib where his four-month-old daughter Megan should be sleeping. The party-goers swear they didn't see anything but each of them has something to hide.

THE BEGINNING OF A NIGHTMARE.
Forty years later, a stranger knocks at the Callaghan's door. She claims to be their missing daughter. And she's holding the blanket she was wrapped in the night she disappeared.

Shocked, the Callaghans must finally confront how well they know their neighbours, and ask themselves:
Where has Megan really been all this time?

My Take

There is so much to like about this novel, not just that it is by a South Australian author, or that it is right in the time frame of my own life.

The action begins in 1979 with the disappearance of a 4 month old baby while her parents are at a dinner party in a neighbouring house. 40 years later 'The Callaghan Baby Podcast' is investigating what is now a forty-year-old cold case, bringing together investigative evidence from when the disappearance happened, police reports, a coronial investigation, interviews with suspects, family and neighbours both then and now.  The author combines that with other voices, particularly that of Billie, the adult daughter of baby Megan's sister.

This made the structure of the novel very complex, and quite challenging for the reader, but a staggering achievement. So much of the book rang true for me.

The family is marking the anniversary of Megan's disappearance with a family gathering when there is a knock at the door: a stranger is standing on the doorstep.  

Little by little, elements of the mystery are revealed and the reader is asked to assess evidence.

Highly recommended.

My Rating: 5.0

About the Author
Rebecca Heath studied science at university, worked in hospitality and teaching, but she always carved out time to write. She lives in Adelaide, Australia, halfway between the city and the sea with her husband, three children and a much-loved border collie. She spent her childhood summers at a remote beach. Her first novel is THE SUMMER PARTY

Review: THE GLASS HOUSE, Eve Chase

• 
  This edition on Kindle (Amazon)
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07VRY3DBN
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (May 14, 2020)
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 393 pages 

Synopsis  (Amazon)

The truth can shatter everything . . .

When the Harrington family discovers an abandoned baby deep in the shady woods, they decide to keep her a secret and raise her as their own.

But within days a body is found in the grounds of their house and their perfect new family implodes.

Years later, Sylvie, seeking answers to nagging questions about her life, is drawn into the wild beautiful woods where nothing is quite what it seems.

Will she unearth the truth?

And dare she reveal it?
_______

'The Glass House is not really about a murder, or a creepy house, but about families - the ones we're born into, the ones we make and especially the ones we flee' New York Times 

My Take

This novel has a fascinating structure with parts of the story in the past and parts in the present. Sylvie has known for most of her life that both she and her sister have been adopted, but now her mother has had an accident and is in a coma, and her daughter is pregnant, and there are things that Sylvie just doesn't know.

I think the reader knows more than Sylvie does, but even so there are t's to crossed and i's to be dotted, and so this book is really a many stranded mystery. As the book progresses things begin to fall into place, with some real surprises. Nevertheless I thought there was a bit of a struggle to tie everything off at the end.

My rating: 4.3

I've also read

• 4.8, THE WILDLING SISTERS
• 4.8, THE BIRDCAGE
  

Review: ABSOLUTION, Caro Ramsay

• 
  This edition an e-book on Kindle at Amazon
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B091H15B8W
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Joffe Books crime thriller, mystery and suspense (April 14, 2021)
  First published 2008
  
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 390 pages
• #1 in Anderson and Costello series

Synopsis (Amazon)

Meet your next favourite Scottish detectives: DI Colin Anderson and DS Winifred ‘Freddie’ Costello.

A serial killer is stalking Glasgow.

A woman is found dead in her own home. No sign of forced entry. But she is posed as though on the cross. Ripped open and bled to death. With a blistering of chloroform round her mouth and nose.

She’s not the first victim found like this.

Detectives Anderson and Costello are on the case. But their boss, DCI Alan McAlpine, is unravelling before their eyes.

The past holds horrific memories for McAlpine. He last worked this beat some twenty years earlier, when he was assigned to guard a woman, faceless after a sadistic acid attack. He couldn’t protect her.

The past is resurfacing.
Three women are dead.

Can they stop a serial killer who’s terrifying the gritty streets of Glasgow?

A Scottish police procedural that will keep your pulse racing from electrifying opening to heart-stopping finish.  

My Take

This is actually not a new series, the first originally published in 2007, just recently published as an e-book, I think. I will certainly be checking up for more.

A serial killer is acting as a vigilante, targetting women who have betrayed others. So far three have been brutally killed, and there is no sign  that "he" is stopping.

It is a complex plot, with clues that seem to lead nowhere. In many ways this is a very solid police procedural. The ending will leave you wondering where the series is heading.

DETECTIVES ANDERSON AND COSTELLO MYSTERIES
Book 1: ABSOLUTION
Book 2: SINGING TO THE DEAD
Book 3: DARK WATER
Book 4: THE BLOOD OF CROWS
Book 5: THE NIGHT HUNTER
Book 6: THE TEARS OF ANGELS
Book 7: RAT RUN
Book 8: STANDING STILL
Book 9: THE SUFFERING OF STRANGERS
Book 10: THE SIDEMAN
Book 11: THE RED, RED SNOW

My rating: 4.5

About the author

Caro was born in Govan, on Glasgow's south side. A graduate of the British School of Osteopathy, she runs a large osteopath centre in West Scotland, treating animals and humans, and writes in her spare time.

Her first novel Absolution was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2008 and her second Singing to the Dead was longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2010. The third in the series, Dark Water, was published on 4 August 2010, and the fourth book The Blood Of Crows was published on 30 August 2012. Critic Cathi Unsworth in The Guardian opined that Ramsay's series "excels in sense of place, realism, plotting and caustic humour", describing it as "Bleak, black and brilliant".

Ramsay was the subject of a 2007 BBC documentary film, and appeared on STV show The Hour in 2010.

Review: THE BIRDCAGE, Eve Chase

• 
  This edition read as an e-book on my Kindle through Amazon
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08T6L6D24
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin (April 28, 2022
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 370 pages

Synopsis (Amazon)

When half-sisters Lauren, Flora, and Kat are unexpectedly summoned to the Cornish house where they spent their childhood summers, it's the first time they've dared return.

Because the wild cliffs and windswept beaches hide a twenty-year-old secret.

The truth about what they did.

Someone who remembers them lurks in the shadows, watching their every move.

And there are other secrets, even darker than their own, waiting to be unearthed . . .

My Take

This was a fascinating read, absolutely enthralling. Three half sisters are summoned by their father to the house in Cornwall where they used to meet every summer. He has things he wants to tell them.

They have recently met at the funeral of one of their mothers, but relationships are not easy.

Readers become aware that something occurred twenty years before that affected the family dramatically and we spend most of the book piecing that together. The author does a very good job of preventing us from learning the full truth too quickly, at the same time as giving us a picture of how things are now.  A mystery in the true sense of the word.

Highly recommended.

My rating: 4.8

I've also read 4.8, THE WILDLING SISTERS

About the author
Eve Chase is an internationally bestselling British novelist who writes rich, layered and suspenseful novels, thick with secrets, unforgettable characters and settings. Her latest novel, The Midnight Hour - 'Her best yet...I loved every word' - Claire Douglas - publishes June '24, in the UK. Other novels include, The Birdcage, The Glass House (The Daughters of Foxcote Manor, US) a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and Richard and Judy Book Club pick, The Vanishing of Audrey Wilde (The Wildling Sisters, US) which was longlisted for the HWA Gold Crown Award, and Black Rabbit Hall, winner of Paris' Saint-Maur en Poche prize for Best Foreign Fiction. She works in the Writer's Shed at the bottom of her garden, usually with Harry, her golden retriever.  

Review: THE MATCH, Harlan Coben

• 
  This edition made available as an e-book by my local library on Libby
  
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grand Central Publishing (February 7, 2023) 
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1538748290
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1538748299
  

Synopsis

After months away, Wilde has returned to the Ramapo Mountains in the wake of a failed bid at domesticity that confirms what he's known all along: He belongs on his own, free from the comforts and constraints of modern life.

Suddenly, a DNA match on an online ancestry database brings Wilde closer to his past than he's ever dreamed, and finally gives Wilde the opening he needs to track down his father. But meeting the man brings up more questions than answers. So Wilde reaches out to his last, most desperate lead, a second cousin who disappears as quickly as he resurfaces, having experienced an epic fall from grace that can only be described as a waking nightmare.

Was his cousin's downfall a long time coming? Or was he the victim of a conspiracy as cunning as it is complex? And how does it all connect to the man once known as The Stranger, a treacherous fugitive with a growing following whose mission and methods have only turned more dangerous with time?

 

My Take

No wonder I had problems understanding this book! I have just discovered that this is the second book in a series. I kept thinking that I had missed something. There were so many times where I went back and read a passage again and was forced into making guesses.

The book raised a number of interesting issues: reality TV programs that "play" with the emotions of participants/contestants; the use of DNA to trace relatives etc. That bit I appreciated. But there were really too many holes in my understanding for me to really enjoy reading the book.

My Rating: 3.0

I've also read

• 4.4, CAUGHT
• 4.3, DON'T LET GO
• 4.3, NO SECOND CHANCE
• 4.5, RUN AWAY
• 4.5, THE WOODS 
• 4.4, I WILL FIND YOU