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2015 in Review: Books

30/12/2015

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The Best & Worst of the Books I Read in 2015

It is not always easy for me to find time to simply read for pleasure. Apart from writing my own books, I receive many requests from fellow authors every year to read and review their novels, which is usually, although not always, a pleasure. Fortunately, I managed to to find some quality reading time during my recent holiday to Cyprus and was able to indulge in my passion. 

In this blog, I thought I'd share my thoughts about the best and worst fiction I've come across in 2015. I have also included my most surprising book of the year and the one I was most anticipating.

My Favourite Book of 2015
The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

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What’s to say that hasn’t already been said about this novel? 

​It’s a brilliant book – and far, far better than its American rival, 
Gone Girl in which the two main characters are over-shadowed by their egos and the writer robs us of a satisfactory ending in order to set up the sequel. 

I don’t normally like present tense narration but Paula Hawkins is an expert in its use and skilfully draws you into the conflicted minds of her three female narrators. She takes the reader backwards and forwards through time and creates a palpable sense of tension as the narrations start to coincide and become chronological.
​
I liked the crazy, screwed-up characters in The Girl on the Train – especially Rachel – and the book came to a wonderful Karmic ending when the villain got it in the neck – literally.  

Biggest Literary Disappointment of 2015
And The Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini

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Khaled Hosseini really disappointed me with his novel, And the Mountains Echoed.  Hosseini is one of my favourite authors. I had this book on my Kindle for years and waited until I was on holiday and could savour it. I was devastated to find out that it had no plot.

And the Mountains Echoed
is a disjointed series of short stories which introduce dozens of characters loosely connected to a house in Kabul over a period of sixty years.  You need to take notes in order to keep track of who's who and the character’s random connections with each other. I abandoned the novel twice in frustration and confusion and only finished it because I thought that there would be an amazing ending where everything would suddenly become clear.

​There wasn’t and it didn’t. 

Most Anticipated Book of 2015
Go Set a Watchman - Harper Lee

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For me, the publishing highlight of the year had to be Go Set a Watchman by Harper Collins. To kill a Mockingbird is one of my all-time favourites and like millions of others around the world I waited with bated breath for the sequel.  Or was it a prequel? Or was it just a first attempt at fiction, discarded when the author realised she had the seeds of a far, far, bigger story in the rape trial of Tom Robinson seen through the eyes of a seven year-old child? Was it actually possible to follow To Kill a Mockingbird?

I adored parts of Go Set a Watchman and laughed out loud on my sunbed in Cyprus when I read about the further adventures of Jem and Scout. This was Harper Lee at her best. But the over-riding emotion I had when I’d finished the novel was sympathy for the author. This book left me with mixed feelings of disappointment and pleasure.  I have no idea, or not, if Lee was pressurised into releasing this novel against her better judgement but part of me wishes she hadn’t.

And part of me is glad that she did. 

Biggest Literary Surprise of 2015
Ramblin' Rose: The Boatwoman's Story
​
- Sheila Stewart

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I love this book. I read my mother’s copy many years ago and I picked it up again in 2015 to dip into as part of a research project for my current novel but found that I wasn’t able to put it down. Sheila Stewart gives Rose such a distinctive voice that you are hooked from the first page.
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Rose’s narrative is a fascinating, unsentimental account of the life (and death) of the men and women who worked ours canals during the first fifty years of the nineteenth century. It vividly recreates their culture, traditions, hardships and tragedies. But it also reveals the incredible love, pride and strong-bond between this close-knit, free-floating community who were isolated from land-locked Britain for generations.


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Article: Musings About Writing

21/12/2015

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Heaven...on a canal towpath

Today has been one of the most satisfying writing days I have ever experienced.
 
Last August, a dramatic finale for ‘The Sculthorpe Murder’ started to form in my mind. The full scene was sketched out with the help of my Dad out on his garden patio one hot, memorable night. We’d both had a bit to drink and giggled and laughed our way the process.

A few days later in Leicestershire, on another glorious summer day, I took a long walk down the tow path of the canal in Market Harborough.  I sat in the soft grass beside the still, green and opaque water watching the ducks and the narrow boats pass by and decided to commit the first tentative words of this scene to paper.
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Saunt's Bridge, Market Harborough Canal Arm
Today, the shortest and darkest day of the year, was the culmination of this creative process and a day I’d been looking forward to for months. I ignored the gloom outside and surrounded by three notebooks, with numerous Internet webpages open on my computer for further reference, I sat down and wrote 2,500 words, the final version of this momentous scene.

It’s dramatic, action-packed and scary.  It’s wonderful to finally release the tension, write something that has formed and reformed in my mind for so long and wind up the two sub-plots I’ve threaded like embroidery thread throughout this novel.

But it’s not quite ‘The End.’ Not yet. Lavender’s final words today were: “I think it’s about time we arrested the murderers of William Sculthorpe.”

And that, my friends, is what Detective Stephen Lavender and I will be doing tomorrow.
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News: 'The Sculthorpe Murder'

7/12/2015

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Latest News about 'The Sculthorpe Murder'

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My, I've sadly neglected this blog recently. Fortunately, I have the best of excuses. I have been hiding in my writing cave and am writing the final chapters of my latest novel, 'The Sculthorpe Murder.' I think that I have about 12,000 words to write before I finally type 'The End' on this first draft. I am determined to finish it by Christmas this year, so that I can enjoy the festivities with my family before I start the dreaded editing and rewrites in January.

This is definitely my most complicated mystery to date. Stephen Lavender is being run off his feet trying to track down the killers and untangle the complicated web of deceit than numerous characters have woven into their lives over the years -- and he has plenty of suspects to choose from when the time finally comes to make those arrests.


​It will probably be months before 'The Sculthorpe Murder' is published, but if you are desperate to know more about it, here is a brief description to whet your appetite: 

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Beneath the idyllic beauty of rural Northamptonshire, a vicious crime wave is sweeping the county. When an elderly man is robbed and murdered in sleepy Middleton, the beleaguered magistrates send for help from the Bow Street Police Office in London.

Detective Stephen Lavender and his dependable constable, Ned woods, answer the call but Lavender isn’t convinced that the murder of William Sculthorpe was prompted by greed alone. There’s mystery surrounding the old man and his family and the stench of revenge hangs in the air.

Meanwhile, Woods is struggling with demons of his own. Ghosts from his childhood haunt his nightmares and stalk him through the shadowy streets of Market Harborough and down the isolated towing path of the new canal.

Set against the political – and often violent – background of religious tension between British Catholics and Protestants, in an era where the new canal network was changing the landscape of Middle England for ever, Lavender must peel back the layers of deceit, uncover decades of simmering hatred and mistrust – and somehow haul his loyal constable out of the mire of criminal complicity.
​
This novel is a fictionalised version of real events.
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