My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

My Absolute Darling
By Gabriel Tallent
Published by Fourth Estate (12 July 2018)
I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher

Publisher's description

At 14, Turtle Alveston knows the use of every gun on her wall. She knows how to snare a rabbit, sharpen a blade and splint a bone. She knows that her daddy loves her more than anything else in this world and he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her with him.

But she doesn’t know why she feels so different from the other girls at school; why the line between love and pain can be so hard to see. Or why making a friend may be the bravest and most terrifying thing she has ever done.

Sometimes the people you’re supposed to trust are the ones who do most harm. And what you’ve been taught to fear is the very thing that will save you …

My verdict
My Absolute Darling traumatised me, resulting in very disturbed sleep. Not many books manage to do that. I'm not upset that I read it, as it was everything I expected it to be (though admittedly possibly worse), but this was the reason why I had put off reading it for so long.

This is a tale of love and survival in a brutal world, a coming-of-age novel involving a teenage girl who has had to grow up too soon. Turtle Alveston has a difficult and unusual life and a warped view of the world around her. But she knows that her father loves her and would risk everything to keep her safe.

This is a tough, challenging read - brutal, unsettling, raw and shocking yet also filled with vivid beauty and hope. The harshness is cushioned by plush descriptions of the Californian coastline and its fauna and flora. I wanted to turn away yet couldn't as the writing was too compelling, too addictive and too powerful.

My Absolute Darling is a thought-provoking read about victims and survival - a personal struggle of nature versus nurture and right versus wrong. But it won't appeal to everyone. You'll need a strong constitution - be prepared to read about a tough subject (graphic in places) and have your emotions churned and then shredded.

Little Darlings by Melanie Golding

Little Darlings
By Melanie Golding
Published by HQ (2 May 2019)
I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher

Publisher's description

THE TWINS ARE CRYING.
THE TWINS ARE HUNGRY.

LAUREN IS CRYING.
LAUREN IS EXHAUSTED.

Behind the hospital curtain, someone is waiting . . .

After a traumatic birth, Lauren is alone on the maternity ward with her newborn twins. Her husband has gone home. The nurses are doing their rounds. She can’t stop thinking about every danger her babies now face. But all new mothers think like that. Don’t they?

A terrifying encounter in the middle of the night leaves Lauren convinced someone or something is trying to steal her children. But with every step she takes to keep her babies safe, Lauren sinks deeper and deeper into paranoia and fear. From the stark loneliness of returning home after birth, to the confines of a psychiatric unit, Lauren’s desperation increases as no one will listen to her. But here’s the question: is she mad, or does she know something we don’t?

My verdict
Little Darlings is a very disturbing read and one that sent shivers up and down my spine. That's partly because of the subject matter (the disappearance of twin boys - every mother's nightmare) but also the unsettling nature of the writing and the plot.

Lauren is a typical new parent - exhausted and paranoid, worrying about her newborns at every moment and desperate for some sleep. She's convinced that someone is trying to steal her babies, after a bizarre, terrifying experience at the hospital, but no one will believe her. Is it really just a new mother's paranoia or is there something more sinister going on? When Lauren's babies go missing and are then found and returned to her, she's adamant that these aren't her boys at all. I certainly had no idea whether this was real or a fabrication of Lauren's fragile mind.

Little Darlings combines crime, fairytales and the supernatural. It's a slowburner, with great writing, and tension that escalates as the plot moves forwards. It taps into every emotion and is both terrifying and heartbreaking. The ending is slightly ambiguous - not enough to leave me hanging, but certainly with enough mystery to make me wonder, question and think.

BEST OF CRIME with Felicity McLean

Welcome to my latest BEST OF CRIME feature, looking at crime writers' top picks, from their favourite author and fictional detective to their best writing tip. 

Today I'm delighted to welcome 

FELICITY McLEAN

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

Who could go past that god of Gothic literature, Edgar Allen Poe? Poe is variously credited with inventing: the psychological thriller/the detective genre/science fiction/the name of the Baltimore Ravens NFL team. For my money you can’t go past Poe’s poem, ‘The Raven’, which is an elegy of undying devotion to those lost. Poe is the reason I exiled my pining protagonist, Tikka, to Baltimore. 

... FILMS/MOVIES

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, based on the 1938 novel by Dame Daphne du Maurier, and starring Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter. Tense, suspenseful; it’s everything Hitchcock does best. Intriguingly, the film deviates from the book in a major way (spoiler alert) when Rebecca’s death is revealed to be an accident, rather than murder at the hands of her husband. At the time, the Hollywood Production Code required murderers to be punished and so the murder plot was, ahem, killed off.

... TV DRAMAS
Stranger Things. Don’t think Netflix’s blockbuster sci-fi/horror/supernatural series constitutes crime? You tell that to the Demogorgons who are abducting children and imprisoning them in the Upside Down. 

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

We first meet Agnes Magnúsdóttir in northern Iceland in 1829, when she is condemned to death for her part in the brutal murder of two men. While she’s not entirely fictional (this true criminal is fictionalised in Hannah Kent’s brilliant debut novel, Burial Rites), she’s most certainly a killer, and for that she must die. 

Based on the last public execution in Iceland.

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus. Rankin is the UK’s number-one selling crime writer for good reason, and his hard-drinking, deep-thinking maverick Inspector Rebus is a perennial favourite. Linguistically, a ‘rebus’ is an enigmatic puzzle – the perfect moniker for Rankin’s inscrutable detective.

... MURDER WEAPONS

Few are better than the Bard when it comes to murder weapons, but even Shakespeare outdoes himself in Titus Andronicus when he has the titular Titus bake his enemies into a pie before serving them up to their mother. Bon appétit.

... DEATH SCENE

Is it cheating to say my favourite death scene is a scene where there are no deaths? 

The all-important ‘disappearance scene’ in the iconic Aussie novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, describes four Victorian-era schoolgirls vanishing into the sun-saturated scrub, their petticoats flouncing as they go. Accident? Murder? Suicide? Three of the four girls are never seen again, and the riddle of their disappearance is never solved.

Joan Lindsay’s beguiling mystery is something of a national obsession in Australia, with many readers believing the story to be true. It was the starting point when I wrote my own unsolved mystery novel, and the vanishing Van Apfel sisters owe much to those missing girls at Hanging Rock. 

... BLOGS/WEBSITES

My local indie bookshop introduced me to Story Grid which is a website, blog, book, podcast, in fact, it’s an entire bookish universe designed to guide a first time novelist through the process of writing their book. I wish I’d known about it when I started writing.

... WRITING TIPS

Read, read, and read some more. Almost everything I’ve ever learned about writing I discovered through reading. 

... WRITING SNACKS

From 5am to 5pm, I’m fuelled by espresso. After that I switch to scotch. 

About FELICITY McLEAN

Felicity McLean is an Australian author and journalist. Her debut novel The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is out now. She has ghostwritten six books, most recently Body Lengths, co-written with Australian Olympic swimmer, Leisel Jones. Her children’s picture book This is a Book! (no wifi needed) was published in 2017. 

Find Felicity McLean on her website and on Twitter - @FelicityMcLean

About THE VAN APFEL GIRLS ARE GONE

Publisher's description

Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, growing up in an isolated suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters - Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth - mysteriously disappeared during the school's Showstopper concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river.  Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved.

Now, years later, Tikka has returned home and is beginning to make sense of that strange moment in time. The summer that shaped her. The girls that she never forgot.

Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is part mystery, part coming-of-age story - with a dark shimmering unexplained absence at its heart.

The Van Apfel Girls are Gone was published by Point Blank Books on 6 June 2019.

Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.

BEST OF CRIME by Margaret Kirk

Welcome to my latest BEST OF CRIME feature, looking at crime writers' top picks, from their favourite author and fictional detective to their best writing tip. 

Today I'm delighted to welcome 

MARGARET KIRK

to share her BEST OF CRIME ...

... AUTHORS

Conan Doyle. Because Holmes is just such a perfect creation. His plots are clever, convoluted – and sometimes, frankly just a little OTT. But the genius pairing of Holmes and Watson laid the groundwork for countless ‘tec and sidekick duos, and got me into crime fiction from a very early age.

... FILMS/MOVIES

Silence of the Lambs. There’s so much that’s excellent in this film – the structure, the nuances, the atmospheric lighting, the acting of Foster and Hopkins. Truly a classic.

... TV DRAMAS

Happy Valley.  It’s no accident that so many ex-‘Job’ people have praised this series’ authentic feel – wonderful writing by Sally Wainright, faultless acting by Sarah Lancashire and the ensemble cast. Gritty, compulsive viewing.

... FICTIONAL KILLERS

Arya Stark. What, I can’t adore Holmes and still be ultra-contemporary? The traumas she’s endured have made her an implacable adversary, relentless in her need to avenge so many deaths. As the series’ end approaches, I suspect her days are numbered. But I’m still hoping she gets to cross one final name off her list …

... FICTIONAL DETECTIVES 

I’ve already had Holmes, so let’s go for Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie – down-to-earth, determinedly unglamorous. Insubordinate, determined, compassionate. The (still) largely male-dominated world of male ‘tecs definitely needs more Karens!

... MURDER WEAPONS

Toaster, from Helen Fields’ Perfect Crime. And gentlemen, you really don’t want to know which part of the male victim’s anatomy gets inserted into it …

... DEATH SCENE

Almost any of Stuart MacBride’s ingenious methods of dispatch would do here! But I’m going with the mass murder in the opening scene of Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes. Why? Because King takes time to introduce us to the victims, to make us start to like them … and then kills them off in the most brutal, most senseless yet sadly believable way. Murder victims shouldn’t be anonymous, they should leave an imprint on our minds. And that’s what happens here.

... WRITING TIPS

I love Twitter– where else can you get into conversation with so many people you know you’ll probably never come into contact with in real life? (Mind you, in some cases you might be quite grateful for that…) And for locations you really can’t visit but need to describe in detail, Google Earth is your friend.

... WRITING TIPS

Hmm. Try not to stare at a blank page or screen for ages – if you’re really not getting anywhere, get up and get out for a walk if you can. It’s amazing what a change of location does for the mental processes, and it does help to halt the, er, spread of writers’ posterior. Also, having a shower often works too – there’s something about the feeling of being cocooned in warm water and quiet that seems to give my thoughts the jump-start they need.

... WRITING SNACKS

Banned, after I saw some fairly horrendous snaps of me at last year’s Bloody Scotland! I will allow myself some fruit and quite a lot of tea and coffee, but that’s basically it.

About MARGARET KIRK

Margaret Kirk writes ‘Highland Noir’ Scottish crime fiction, set in and around her home town of Inverness. Her debut novel, Shadow Man, won the Good Housekeeping First Novel Competition in 2016. Described as ‘a harrowing and horrific game of consequences’ by Val McDermid, it was published in 2017 by Orion. Book 2 in the DI Lukas Mahler series, What Lies Buried, will appear in June 2019. Margaret is also the writer of several award-winning short stories, including The Seal Singers, which has been published in translation in Germany, and Still Life, which was broadcast on Radio 4 as part of the ‘Scottish Shorts’ series.

Find Margaret Kirk on her website and on Twitter - @HighlandWriter

About WHAT LIES BURIED

Publisher's description

A missing child. A seventy-year-old murder. And a killer who's still on the loose.

Ten year-old Erin is missing; taken in broad daylight during a friend's birthday party. With no witnesses and no leads, DI Lukas Mahler races against time to find her. But is it already too late for Erin - and will her abductor stop at one stolen child?

And the discovery of human remains on a construction site near Inverness confronts Mahler's team with a cold case from the 1940s. Was Aeneas Grant's murder linked to a nearby POW camp, or is there an even darker story to be uncovered?

With his team stretched to the limit, Mahler's hunt for Erin's abductor takes him from Inverness to the Lake District. And decades-old family secrets link both casesin a shocking final twist.

What Lies Buried was published by Orion on 3 June 2019.

Look out for more BEST OF CRIME features coming soon.

Click here to read more BEST OF CRIME features.

Wolves at the Door by Gunnar Staalesen

Wolves at the Door
By Gunnar Staalesen
Published by Orenda Books (E-book - out now; Paperback - 13 June 2019)
I received an Advance Reader from the publisher

Publisher's description

One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault … crimes that Veum himself once stood wrongly accused of committing.

While the guilty men were apparently killed accidentally, Varg suspects that there is something more sinister at play … and that he’s on the death list of someone still at large.

Fearing for his life, Veum begins to investigate the old case, interviewing the victims of abuse and delving deeper into the brutal crimes, with shocking results. The wolves are no longer in the dark … they are at his door. And they want vengeance.

My verdict
I loved Wolves at the Door - definitely my favourite Varg Veum book so far, despite the dark subject matter.

Just as in the previous book (Big Sister), I was hooked into the story from the very first page and couldn't drag myself away. This one follows almost straight on from Big Sister, so it's probably wise to read that one if you haven't done so already.

Yet again, Gunnar Staalasen has written classic crime fiction with a modern twist, concentrating on contemporary criminal activities and social issues within a complex multi-layered plot. The story is revealed slowly but surely through a gripping investigation. Private investigator Varg Veum is investigating what initially appear to be accidental deaths but are revealed to be linked together by child pornography and sexual assault charges. Veum was also arrested (wrongfully) at the time so fears that he could be next.

The writing is highly evocative with vivid imagery - all of the little details of what people wear, eat and drink bring Norway to life. I particularly love the main character's voice, with Varg Veum's wit and irony surfacing through the sharp dialogue and narrative, often prompting me to laugh out loud. Despite the humour though, my emotions were pulled in all directions - fear, sadness, worry and despair - with my heart pounding in certain scenes towards the end.

Yet another great outing for Norwegian private eye Varg Veum, and author Gunnar Staalesen. Bring on the next one!

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