WWW Wednesday (December11)

Hosted by Miz B at Should be Reading
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

I am currently reading Postcards from the Past by Marcia Willett

Siblings Billa and Ed share their beautiful, grand old childhood home in rural Cornwall. Their lives are uncomplicated. With family and friends nearby and their free and easy living arrangements, life seems as content as can be.
But when postcards start arriving from a sinister figure they thought belonged well and truly in their pasts, old memories are stirred. Why is he contacting them now? And what has he been hiding all these years? Amazon

I’ve nearly finished this one which is a gentler read than the last couple of books I’ve read!

I have finished The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood
click on the cover to read my review

Next I am going back to crime albeit mixed with some history with The Murder Tree by Alan Veale

Blurb

Chrissie Fersen desperately wants to know how she is connected to the death of a servant woman in Glasgow in 1862. Enlisting the aid of local librarian Billie Vane, she is determined to clear the name of the woman originally convicted of the crime. But her chief suspect appears to be alive and well – and it looks like he still has murder on his mind…
The Murder Tree introduces an unlikely pair of heroes: the American daughter of a wealthy businessman and a Manchester-born librarian working in Glasgow. Each have their share of domestic strife to deal with, while sharing a thirst to find out the truth about a 150 year-old murder. But deaths are still taking place today as far afield as New York, and trying to dig through the roots of this unique family tree becomes more hazardous than either Chrissie or Billie could have foreseen…
The Murder Tree is based on the true story of Jessie McLachlan, convicted of murder in 1862, but who famously accused an old man of the crime after being found guilty at her trial

.

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The Killer Next Door – Alex Marwood

Crime Fiction
3*’s

After reading and loving The Wicked Girls I pre-ordered my copy of The Killer Next Door some time ago…

The residents in No. 23 Northbourne, South London, are a mixed bunch of the forgotten and ignored before Collette turns up, she is the one resident that someone is looking for. Unfortunately for Collette her past keeps catching up with her, someone wants her silenced and has been relentlessly tracking her for three years.

The cloying atmosphere of London in a heatwave is the scene brilliantly captured as the repulsive, obese Landlord Roy Preece is persuaded to let out a room still partially full of the previous owner’s possessions to Collette. Meanwhile the others in the house each have their own secrets, the underage runaway, Cher, the kind elderly spinster Vesta, a political asylum seeker Houssein, the bore Thomas and the broken music teacher. The characters are wonderfully drawn, particularly Vesta and Cher as they battle to keep the events in No. 23 away from the prying eyes of the neighbourhood.

This book has the requisite serial killer, with an original aim but it also has multiple murderers and for me this was where I found I lost belief in the story. The dead bodies are mounting, the stench is thickening and the secrets are spewing out, but it stretched credibility to breaking point. For me there is a limit to how much horror one set of people can be reasonably expected to encounter. No car chases in this book but escapes on foot, on buses and trains and all manner of bloody encounters serve to keep the residents on their toes!

Apart from the plot and the characters there is some brilliant observations in this book from an author who clearly has an eye for detail ‘The social worker sits, sensible hair and sensible shoes and an air of New Labour sanctimony pouring off her, in the chair next to the girl.’ We never meet the family who live next door but their uniform of cardigans slung around their shoulders and their voices during a party tell us all we need to know. As the residents of No. 23 pull together they seem further than ever away from the aspirations of the neighbours.

So this book is a sum of its parts, many of them superb but for me it is ultimately the story that matters to me and this for me tried to cram to many unlikely events for me to continue believing in it.

The Killer Next Door Amazon UK

WWW Wednesday (December 4)

Hosted by Miz B at Should be Reading
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

The Wronged Sons by John Marrs has finally made it to the top of the pile.

This is a gripping book which I am really enjoying so thanks again Book Lovers Attic for pointing me in the right direction for this one.

The Wronged Sons Amazon UK

I have just finished The Murder Code by Steve Mosby.  Will Andy crack the murder code?

click on the book cover to read my review

The Murder Code Amazon UK

Published 3 December 2013

And for once there is no doubt at all about my next read which has been on pre-order for what seems like ages, but is out on kindle on 5 December 2013; The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood

I read The Wicked Girls, the author’s debut novel, by chance fairly soon after it was published and loved it so I have high expectations of this one.

Blurb

No. 23 has a secret. In this gloomy, bedsit-riddled South London wreck, lorded over by a lecherous landlord, a horrifying collection quietly waits to be discovered. Yet all six residents have something to hide.
Collette is on the run from her ex-boss; Cher is an underage children’s home escapee; lonely Thomas tries to make friends with his neighbours; while a gorgeous Iranian asylum seeker and a ‘quiet man’ nobody sees try to keep themselves hidden. And there for them all is Vesta, a woman who knows everything that goes on in the house – or thought she did.
Then in the dead of night, a terrible accident pushes the six into an uneasy alliance. But one of them is a killer, expertly hiding their pastime, all the while closing in on their next victim…
Amazon

The Killer Next Door Amazon UK

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• Review: The Wronged Sons by John Marrs (bookloversattic.wordpress.com)