JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Hiding Place by Jenny Quintana

Some houses have their secrets. But so do some people . . .

Abandoned as a baby in the hallway of a shared house in London, Marina has never known her parents, and the circumstances of her birth still remain a mystery.

Now an adult, Marina has returned to the house where it all started, determined to find out who she really is. But the walls of this house hold more than memories, and Marina’s reappearance hasn’t gone unnoticed by the other tenants. Someone is watching Marina. Someone who knows the truth . . .

Jenny Quintana’s The Hiding Place is a crime thriller about an abandoned baby in a share house, and that child’s search for the truth about her parents.

The Hiding Place switches between three POVs — Connie in 1964, and Marina and Eva in 1991. Marina, who was abandoned as a baby, moves into the house she was discovered in to try and find out who her parents were. Eva, her new neighbour, is an emotionally unstable, anxious woman with long-buried traumatic memories. Slowly, we come to understand how these three stories correlate, and why Marina was abandoned.

“The sky hangs low and claustrophobic and Marina loosens her collar despite the chill. She has an odd, prickling feeling as if she’s being watched, but the houses are as silent as they were last night, their windows shuttered — and when she looks back at number 24, there is no shift in curtains, no one looking out.”

There’s quite a large cast of characters in this novel — a lot of people moving in and out of the storyline — and Jenny captures each character and role with enough unique personality that makes it easy for the reader to follow. There are plenty of rooms in the house, and therefore a lot of threads for Marina to follow in her quest for the truth.

Jenny always crafts a premise that will entice readers. The abandoned baby is not the only crime to be uncovered in this novel, and Jenny captures a claustrophobic, eerie setting very well. What secrets and memories does this house hold? In a way, the house feels like another character in the book, holding on to its own secrets and slowly releasing them when necessary.

One of the things I love most about Jenny’s books is how she concludes her chapters. There’s either something reflective about the ending, forcing you to feel the emotion she’s working to transmit, or it’s a cliffhanger that forces you to keep turning the page because you want to see how that thread continues.

“Was Connie in desperate straits? She wasn’t sure. And perhaps she could solve the problem herself. She had heard that moving heavy furniture might bring on a miscarriage, or flinging yourself down the stairs. There were poisons that would flush the baby clean away.”

Admittedly, Marina does feel like the weakest character of the three. Eva’s personality immediately draws you in — she’s mysterious and plagued by childhood memories. You immediately want to know more. And your heart breaks for Connie. She’s hopeful and ambitious, but incredibly naive. And she’s very much in love. Marina’s search for the truth comes across a bit stiff at times, the storyline blocking her personality from shining. She comes across unfeeling, unemotional, devoid of compassion. She’s determined and I admire that, but I found her characterisation to be lacking.

Additionally, the ending was a bit of a letdown. For such a slow burn of a novel, I was expecting big twists or surprises — neither happened. Whilst some people withheld the truth, the circumstances around Marina’s birth and abandonment weren’t quite as enticing as I’d hoped.

“At school, when she had managed to get there, she had been silent and serene, unemotional, a remarkable musical talent. The bullies hadn’t understood her so had left her alone. At music college, she had taken on a similar persona, staying in her room at halls and avoiding communal areas like the students’ union and bar.”

An engrossing tale of long-lost secrets, The Hiding Place is the perfect rainy day read. Recommended for fans of crime, thriller and mystery. Readers of women’s fiction will also enjoy this.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Hiding Place
Jenny Quintana
April 2021
Pan Macmillan Publishers

The Silent Listener by Lyn Yeowart

Propelling the reader back and forth between the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s, The Silent Listener is an unforgettable literary suspense novel set in the dark, gothic heart of rural Australia.

In the cold, wet summer of 1960, 11-year-old Joy Henderson lives in constant fear of her father. She tries to make him happy but, as he keeps reminding her, she is nothing but a filthy sinner destined for Hell . . .

Yet, decades later, she returns to the family’s farm to nurse him on his death bed. To her surprise, her ‘perfect’ sister Ruth is also there, whispering dark words, urging revenge.

Then the day after their father finally confesses to a despicable crime, Joy finds him dead – with a belt pulled tight around his neck . . .

For Senior Constable Alex Shepherd, investigating George’s murder revives memories of an unsolved case still haunting him since that strange summer of 1960: the disappearance of nine-year-old Wendy Boscombe.

As seemingly impossible facts surface about the Hendersons – from the past and the present – Shepherd suspects that Joy is pulling him into an intricate web of lies and that Wendy’s disappearance is the key to the bizarre truth.

Set in rural Australia, Lyn Yeowart’s psychological thriller The Silent Listener follows the decades-long saga of the Henderson family, and the daily domestic abuse at the hands of Joy’s father George. Switching between the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s, the story is mainly told from Joy’s point of view, although in the earlier setting we do get a small glimpse into Gwen Henderson, before and shortly after she marries George.

Anxiety and fear bubbles beneath the surface of every chapter. The domestic abuse runs heavy through this tale, and at times is both descriptive and hard to swallow. Like many men in society, George is incredibly violent behind closed doors but to the outside world he’s a pillar of the community. After he’s murdered, neighbours and community members express deep sympathy to Joy for her father’s passing, and his funeral is expected to receive a massive turnout. Joy wishes everyone knew the truth about her father.

“I can’t believe he’s confessed. Just like that. I want to shake him, but I’m scared it will kill him, that his body will disintegrate into millions of fragments of dry skin and bone. And I’m not going to let him die that easily.”

I like to think all narrators are somewhat unreliable, but Joy is next level. Her memory of certain events is hazy, and her inner monologue portrays her as a calculating and intelligent, but unhinged. Her father’s violence breaks her as a child, and decades later, she’s still traumatised by what happened. She’s spent most of her life trying to find her brother, who fled the family when she was a teenager.

The chaotic structure of the novel and the surprise twist about her sister Ruth adds another layer to Joy’s unreliability. Just how much of what Joy describes is happening? How much can we trust her?

“Walking down the aisle wearing a borrowed wedding dress, Gwen thought about how quickly the two months had gone by since her first dance with George. But everyone got married quickly these days, at least in Willshire, thanks to the wars and the Depression. Everything was precarious, except marriage, which was forever. Especially, she thought, marriage to George Henderson.”

The Silent Listener captures a secluded setting. The Henderson farm is far enough from neighbours that no one can hear the children scream, and George chooses his friends wisely. Joy suspects people knew about the abuse, but chose not to do anything about it out of loyalty to George.

Lyn also captures the dense, isolated setting of rural Australia with ease. Her description evokes instant imagination in the reader. We can see the dilapidated houses, and the sparse farmland. The dam and its eels, and the danger of snakes. The method of burning rubbish, and the horrid smell that resulted. The one florist in town, and the long, sometimes hot journey into town for supplies once a week. Gwen really couldn’t leave George, even before she had children. She was trapped and George knew it.

“She wondered if the Felicities would go to Hell too, because as Joy knew all too well, it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than it was for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, no matter how hard they prayed or how much they thanked the Lord for their wonderful food.”

Lyn’s prose is swift and brutal, her sentences flowing seamlessly. This is a somewhat long read at 460 pages, but with more than one mystery to solve, there’s plenty to keep the reader hooked.

Visceral, gripping and seductive, crime thriller The Silent Listener is highly recommended. For fans of Jane Harper and Chris Hammer.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Silent Listener
Lyn Yeowart
February 2021
Penguin Random House Book Publishers

Fog by Kaja Malanowska

She thought she was done with the trances. She risked too much. Not just her own life, but also the lives of others.

When a young woman is found murdered in her Warsaw apartment, the investigating detectives—Marcin Sawicki and his new colleague, the talented but enigmatic Ada Rochniewicz—are under pressure to close the case quickly. But Ada’s powers of intuition have already got her into trouble once before. And the sexist police force is not on her side.

As the investigation proceeds, we meet the victim’s jilted lover, a mentally unstable working-class youth; her cleaner, a Chechen refugee in desperate circumstances; the man who broke her heart and joined a cult. And let’s not forget Ada’s eccentric sister, Kasia, nor her grumpy cat Albert-Amelia.

Getting to the truth becomes a darker and more complex matter than Marcin and Ada can imagine, as they confront a corrupt political and religious establishment. Translated by Bill Johnston.

Translated into English, Fog by Polish writer Kaja Malanowska is an enticing crime novel that investigates the murder of a young woman in her Warsaw apartment.

Written in omniscient third person, Fog has two protagonists — the secretive, blunt but intelligent Ada, and the brash, impulsive and overtly sexist Marcin Sawicki. They each bring different personalities, opinions and tactics to their detective work.

Whilst Marcin’s methods could be deemed questionable at times, even Ada makes mistakes in her career. As a team, they’re able to work together to solve the crime, uncovering all the layers to the murder that were not immediately obvious.

“Normally he was annoyed when fellow officers were talkative — it tired him to have to take part in a conversation, react to jokes. He knew he had a reputation as a curmudgeon and a loner. Today, though, with Ada, he felt bothered by the quiet.”

It’s hard to know whether this is compliment to Kaja or Bill, but the prose is exceptional. Particularly description around dialogue — describing Ada and Marcin’s interactions, facial expressions, movements in a way that conveys their characterisation really vividly.

There’s a lot of elements to this novel, between the characters and their secrets, the murder itself and how that evolves into something larger than anyone expected, but also the office politics in Warsaw and the secrets that Marcin and Ada’s colleagues are hiding. Whilst other reviews point out this might’ve been too many elements for one novel, I liked it. Fog is complex and layered, intriguing the reader and keeping them engaged throughout.

“She knew Sawicki felt uncomfortable in the presence of women, but that he would step out of their way rather than try to dominate. Why did this nice young woman with her broad, bright face and round eyes rub him up the wrong way? One moment more and they wouldn’t have got another word out of her.”

Fog is unnecessarily long — 400 pages, small font, small margins. The story did lull a bit through the middle, the intensity wavered, and I think a procedural crime story such as this could have progressed more succinctly. Ada’s ‘visions’ that are mentioned in the blurb don’t actually seem to have a large presence in the novel, and I think they’ve could’ve been cut from the entire story.

Additionally, some of the characters weren’t overly likeable. Even Marcin is a sexist, homophobic, judgemental character, and some of his outbursts didn’t seem overly authentic. The dynamic between him and Ada felt too much like Kaja was trying to establish ‘good cop bad cop’.

“He trailed after her, struggling to keep up; he was moving as if he were in a bubble. He stared at Ada’s back, resenting the fact that not once had she allowed her emotions to get the better of her. At the same time he was immensely grateful to her. His memory of the last hours blurred into a multicoloured haze, like a film projected too quickly.”

Compulsive and addictive, Fog is a procedural thriller that crime readers will devour.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Fog
Kaja Malanowska
March 2021
Text Publishing

City of Vengeance by D.V Bishop

Florence. Winter, 1536. A prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home, a death with wide implications in a city powered by immense wealth.

Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the Renaissance city’s most feared criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder: catch the killer before the feast of Epiphany – or suffer the consequences.

During his investigations Aldo uncovers a plot to overthrow the volatile ruler of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici. If the Duke falls, it will endanger the whole city. But a rival officer of the court is determined to expose details about Aldo’s private life that could lead to his ruin. Can Aldo stop the conspiracy before anyone else dies, or will his own secrets destroy him first?

Debut historical thriller City of Vengeance by D.V Bishop takes us to Renaissance Florence, 1536. Cesare Aldo is tasked with solving two murders — moneylender Levi, who was stabbed to death in his home, and cross-dresser Corsini, who was bashed to death after dark. The novel also explores the unrest in Florence, and the traitorous plan to overthrow Alessandro de’ Medici by his own cousin. Whilst fiction, this book is inspired by true events, which are detailed in the Author’s Note at the end.

Readers needn’t love historical fiction to enjoy City of Vengeance — you must merely enjoy crime and thriller stories. At its core, this is a book about two murders, and a lead detective trying to uncover the truth. Whilst the setting may feel vastly different, this novel follows a similar format to most police procedural tales.

“It took Strocchi hours to find a true address for Corsini. The Otto’s records revealed several arrests of him in recent months: petty theft, pickpocketing and indecent acts. But the accused gave a different address each time, forcing Strocchi to eliminate them all.”

D.V Bishop does well to paint the setting. I’m somewhat familiar with the Medici reign and felt like the author captured the atmosphere of the time — societal behaviour and attitudes— rather well. It’s clear that years of research went into writing this book, a lot of source material and perhaps reference books as well.

City of Vengeance explores political intrigue, betrayal, familial obligation and keeping secrets. Each major character has been crafted uniquely, their personalities differing significantly. We have more than one villain, and plenty of red herrings along the way to throw us off the scent of the murderer/s. Aldo in particular is a well-developed character. He is in charge of uncovering secrets, but at the same time, he’s hiding some secrets of his own.

“Aldo went to the door. It stood ajar but there was no splintering to the wood, and no damage to the bolt. That suggested Levi had let his attacker in — a debtor, maybe, or a rival? Or had it been someone closer to home? Killings in Florence were not infrequent and were usually personal, fuelled by family, love, hate or greed.”

Despite the book only taking place over a few days, the pacing slows in the middle and suddenly the novel feels very long. Four hundred pages wasn’t necessary for the scope of this story, and I’ll admit I groaned a little when I found out this was the first book in a planned series. Please, make the sequel more succinct!

Admittedly, the other gripe I had with the story were the similarity in names. Perhaps unavoidable when writing a story based on true events, but we had Cesare, Corsini, Cosimo and Cerchi. It took me about one hundred pages to tell them apart whenever they appeared in a scene together — some names starting with another letter would’ve been welcome.

“Levi had been anxious on the road back from Bologna, but not defeated. If what Dante said was true, something must have happened after Levi’s return to Florence.”

Energetic and intense, with enough intrigue to keep you reading. Recommended for readers of fantasy and medieval history.

Thank you to the publisher for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

City of Vengeance
D.V Bishop
February 2021
Pan Macmillan Book Publishers

Crackenback by Lee Christine

Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder of the Sydney Homicide Squad is on the hunt for notorious fugitive Gavin Hutton.

After months of dead-ends, the breakthrough Ryder has been hoping for leads him back to the New South Wales Snowy Mountains on the trail of the suspected killer.

Meanwhile, when an injured man bursts into the remote Thredbo lodge managed by Eva Bell, her first instinct is to protect her daughter, Poppy. The terrifying arrival of Jack Walker turns Eva’s world upside down as the consequences of Jack’s presence become clear.

With a killer on the loose, Jack Walker and Ryder are tangled in the same treacherous web – spun across the perilously beautiful Crackenback Range.

Suspense novelist Lee Christine returns with her latest novel set in the Snowy Mountains — Crackenback. Split between two storylines and written in third person POV, the hunt is on for an escaped murderer deep in icy terrain.

Half of the book focuses on Thredbo lodge manager Eva, whose life is upended when former lover Jack Walker turns up on her doorstep — injured, anxious, and forcing Eva and their daughter Poppy into hiding. Notorious killer Gavin Hutton is on the lease, and Eva and Poppy are his targets.

The other chapters in the book focus on Detective Sergeant Pierce Ryder, who is hunting Gavin. As the novel flicks back and forth between these two settings, events happen concurrently and Pierce and Eva’s lives inevitably collide as Gavin Hutton draws near.

“Eva squinted harder. What was it she could see down there? It was then she realised that it was a set of footprints, partially obscured by the fresh snowfall. They were leading from her front verandah to the trail to the Willy Wagtail. Or was it the other way round?”

Strengths lie in the police procedural aspect of the book, and Ryder’s collection of evidence. We follow Pierce as he interviews witnesses and close contacts, desperately trying to piece together Gavin’s whereabouts. It’s clear that great research has gone into this aspect of the novel to ensure authenticity.

Another strength is characterisation — Christine crafts characters we grow to love. We sympathise when they struggle, and we keep reading to find out how their stories will end. Quieter moments in the book allow for the characters to face unresolved conflict, adding a layer of depth to the book.

Once again, we finds ourselves deep within an icy, cold setting. It’s the perfect read to accompany a glass of red wine. I could feel the biting temperatures and I could picture the blocked, snowy doorways. I could sense the danger lurking beyond the dark, misty outdoors.

“Eva locked the door with a violent shiver. When guests were staying, she would leave it unlocked twenty-four-seven so they had unlimited access to the mountain bikes, skis and snowboards stowed in the equipment room next to the laundry.”

The only aspect of the novel that I didn’t love was the slow pace of the Eva/Jack storyline. He bursts into her home and their setting doesn’t change much for majority of the novel. It’s really just them hiding out, and whilst it was interesting at first, I did find myself getting a little impatient — perhaps a little bored. Even Poppy doesn’t really provide much of an obstacle for their safety, and sometimes I forgot she was even in the house.

I felt like the author was trying to establish more of a romance than a thriller in this setting, and I think there was definitely capacity for both. I would’ve liked it if Gavin reared his ugly head a little earlier on the novel, pushed them out of their hiding place sooner.

“In the lobby, she watched as Jack dug in his pocket for the key and unlocked the drawer. Poppy had gone from spinning the bear in circles to wheeling the chair around the lobby like a pram. How was it that their lives had changed so much in an instant? One minute, she’d been looking forward to the snow season and happily chatting to Bede about his son’s wedding, and the next…”

High stakes and a cracking mystery right until the end, Crackenback is recommended for fans of crime and thriller, but only if you’re also interested in romance. If romance isn’t for you, then this isn’t the series for you. Fans of Christine’s previous novel, Charlotte’s Pass, will be excited to see the return of a few familiar characters.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Crackenback
Lee Christine
February 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers