Janet Gordon is married, retired, obsessed with her Westlake Terrier, Rollo – and books are her passion. She reads multiple books a week across all genres and reviews books for Rest Less.
This month’s round-up features The Night Caller series; Sisters of Sword and Shadow; The Brutal Tide; Unnatural Death; and Tackle.
Note: Prices can change often, so you may notice some variations on the providers’ websites. Prices and availability are accurate as of the 23rd of January, 2024.
Okay – so all the Christmas presents have been opened, eaten, and drunk and the decorations are packed away in the loft for another year and we’re left with a rain-sodden, wind-blown January.
We’ve just discovered that a tree that was quite small and sweet when we moved into our new build, is now looming over our garden at what looks like an alarming drunken angle, and we’re waiting for an emergency tree surgeon.
It’s sitting on the edge of a ditch (we back onto a footpath leading to Hatfield Forest). If it tumbles, it will take out our roof and the entire back of our house. It’s a little bit like living in a nightmare, to be honest…
The Night Caller, The Branded, and The Reckoning – all by Martina Murphy (Constable £9.99)
To calm myself down, I’ve been reading a wonderful series of detective novels by Irish author, Martina Murphy. Martina has written all kinds of novels from YA to light romances – all under different variations of her name – but, to my mind, this detective series is her best outing.
In The Night Caller, she introduces DS Lucy Golden and her sidekick Dan – and, just for a change, we’ve moved away from a hardened female Inspector to a more traditional male/female combo.
Martina Murphy has set this series in the wilds of Achill Island, which seems to be a land full of bogs, deserted houses, and abandoned buildings – not a bit like the Essex/Herts border where I live then! Achill Island is, we’re told, in County Mayo. To be honest, I’ve only ever been to Dublin, which is like London but full of Guinness.
The Night Caller deals with the murder of a popular young teacher who disappeared after a night out; while The Branded has Lucy and Dan investigating the discovery of a young girl’s body buried in a pink suitcase in a bog.
The Reckoning which is the third in the series has Lucy discovering a body in an isolated house near the Pier, only to be shocked to discover that it’s the sister of one of her school friends. Even worse, it would appear that another of her team, Ben, was the last to see her and is now Lucy’s chief suspect.
The interaction between Lucy, Dan, and the rest of the team – including Detective Inspector Cig – is wonderful, as are the police procedurals. There’s also a side story regarding Dan’s secret sexuality.
This is one terrific new addition to the crime libraries and I look forward to meeting Lucy and Dan in future outings.
Sisters of Sword and Shadow by Laura Bates (Kindle £4.99, Amazon £9.19, Simon & Schuster £16.99)
Are we all familiar with the Knights of Old England? Those glorious Knights in full armour and steeped in the days of chivalry – cue King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table etc. Yet, in a major new fantasy series is a group of women, known as the Sisterhood of Silk Nights, who’ve been trained to fight and vow to right the wrongs of men.
As a former medieval re-enactor and working with my husband – who played Sir Ralph de Montfichet – we performed all over the South East as the Swords of Chivalry. So, after dabbling in swordfighting, I saw how physically challenging it was.
One of my husband’s swords was over five feet in length (taller than me!) and weighed over six kilos, and I found it quite difficult to whirl it over my head.
I could only muster a couple of sword strokes before my wrists gave up, so the Sword Sisters must be quite strong and skilled.
But, author Laura Bates certainly knows her stuff, having trained with the Knights of Middle England where she learnt to ride, shoot arrows, joust, and swordfight. So, these women are brave, powerful, and breaking the mould of their time.
I saved a wonderful quote from the novel that stuck with me… “An interesting thing happens when a man is defeated in combat by a woman – he tells nobody”. Now ain’t that the truth?
There’s much to love about this historical female fantasy and you certainly don’t need to know how to swordfight to enjoy it.
The Brutal Tide by Kate Rhodes (Kindle £4.99, Amazon £8.27, Simon & Schuster £10.99)
I’ve always wanted to visit the Scilly Isles but somehow even when visiting Cornwall, I never managed to make a day trip over. And, so, the next best thing is visiting vicariously by reading about it.
The Brutal Tide is the sixth in the Ben Kitto series (and again we have a male/female detective combo).
Ben, who’s left the Met after a traumatic incident (read all about it in the first in the series Hell Bay) was transferred to the Scilly Isles, and is now Chief on Bryher – one of the smallest inhabited islands. There are around 200 inhabitants, all of whom are in some way related, friends with, or generally entangled with each other.
Ben is now living with Nina who’s expecting their first baby any day now, and there’s also Shadow, Ben’s four-legged furry wolfdog.
Life is great until a 20-year-old grave – complete with a skeleton – is uncovered on the site of the proposed new artistic centre and, at the same time, Craig Travis, an old-time gangster now on death’s door, makes his daughter vow vengeance on those who put him behind bars. And, of course, Ben is one of those.
Whilst quite happily investigating at a slow Scilly Isle pace, Ben is alarmed to find out that Travis’s daughter has ostensibly committed suicide. Well, her clothes and passport were discovered at the water’s edge, but her body is still missing. So Ben decides not to even think about it until his boss tells him that three of the undercover teams that helped put Travis away have been found dead.
A Bryher lockdown is put in place – not only to discover who murdered the unknown skeleton but also to protect Ben who’s now the only Travis member still alive.
This is the first Kate Rhodes novel I’ve read and I’m now about to download all the previous Scilly Isle novels – the others are set in St Mary’s and also St Agnes. Oh, and I’ve just discovered a new one published last October, so I’m off to download that as well!
Unnatural Death by Patricia Cornwell (Kindle £9.99, Amazon £9.99, Little Brown £22.00)
I’ve been following the Kay Scarpetta novels since Cornwall first started writing back in 1990 with Postmortem – the series that sparked many read-alike series.
Unnatural Death takes us into the world of cyber spy crime and, coincidentally, I’ve just binge-watched series two of Cobra where the UK is faced with a complete blackout of communications from a cyber attack.
To be honest, both the novel and TV series are frightening – faced with drone attacks, AI, and all manner of robot everything. And, to think we’re worried because when we Google something, ads for that very same thing pop up. I think that’s the least of our worries.
But in Unnatural Death, Cornwall is back to her unbeatable best form – cooking and detecting up a storm.
Tackle by Jilly Cooper (Kindle £10.99, Amazon £9.19, Bantam £22.00)
I’ve also been reading Jilly Cooper since she first began writing while working as a secretary in a very quiet office! Meeting somebody at a dinner party (they all went to dinner parties back then in Jilly’s world), she was invited to submit her writings for a newspaper column and, hey presto, Jilly Cooper – as we know her – arrived.
She first wrote a series of one-name romantic comedies – Emily, Imogen, Octavia, and so on, and then wrote a guide for married women, which was hopelessly out of date of course but very funny. And then she hit the big time with Riders, her best-selling bonkbuster featuring the legendary Rupert Campbell-Black, crammed with Jilly’s trademark double entendres.
Reviewing it at the time, I adored it, and still have the pretty thank you card that Jilly sent me. And now countless bonkbusters later, she’s back with Tackle.
Still featuring the priapic Rupert Cambell-Black – who’s now a grandfather but shows no sign of slowing down – another wonderful cast of characters has appeared, all focused on the failing football club Searston Rovers. And, this time, the fiercely competitive Cambell-Black, is being persuaded by his daughter Bianca to not only buy the Club but to sign up her superstar striker boyfriend.
Amazingly, hard-line Cambell-Black is still married to the gorgeous Taggie who’s about to undergo chemo – and, though he hates football, he becomes increasingly fond of his footballers during their climb to the top of the Premier League.
Now in her 80s, and made a Dame in the last New Year’s Honours, Jilly hopefully has many more years of writing ahead of her. And I’ve still got my first edition of Riders, published in 1985.
For further book and literature discussions, you might be interested in joining the thriving book club or short story club over on Rest Less Events.
Have you read any of these books? Or have you added any of them to your reading list? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.