Girl, 11 Amy Suiter Clarke

Girl, 11 is a crime novel about a serial killer who, twenty years before the book opens, murdered a number of women and girls without ever being caught. A methodical person with an obsession with numbers, the killer picks up young woman in descending age, keeps them for a period and then deposits their bodies for the authorities to find and their broken families to mourn. Most people believe the killer died in a catastrophic fire which also destroyed the body of the last girl he took.

True Crime podcaster, Elle, has long been fascinated by the TCK (the Countdown Killer), so when she starts to release a weekly podcast featuring a new angle on the investigation and interviews with the retired chief investigator, medical people, bereaved parents, it quickly becomes popular. But popularity isn’t necessarily a good thing and attract numerous trolls and personal threats as well. Yet, it seems as if Elle is on the cusp of learning the identity of TCK and, when someone about to give her crucial information is killed, she’s convinced the murderer has surfaced again.

Understanding how obsessed Elle is, there are those even very close to her that believe she’s allowing this to overtake her reason, putting herself and others in terrible danger. When someone close to Elle is kidnapped, she no longer knows whether she can trust her instincts. Is the killer back? Is it a copycat? Or is she torturing herself for other more personal reasons or worse, for none at all?

A clever, well-plotted book that segues between the first-person transcripts of the podcasts and third-person flashbacks and present day accounts, it’s a story of trauma, grief, incredible resilience and trust. 

A fabulous, fast-paced read that will keep the blood pumping into the wee hours.

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Falling by T.J. Newman

The moment I heard about this book, I was looking forward to reading it. Not only was the actual novel based on a sensational premise, but I loved the tenacity of TJ Newman that after 41 rejections, she still kept trying to get her manuscript published. Thank goodness she did and thank goodness for the foresight of the 42nd agent who recognized a great story and talent.

Falling has a terrifying set-up (and opening). It’s not spoiling anything to reveal the what drives the overall story as the blurb does the same thing. Basically, an experienced pilot is told to crash a laden commercial passenger plane or his family, who have been taken hostage, will die. If this sounds like the plot for an action movie (and it’s going to be) that’s because it is non-stop action from beginning to end. Furthermore, the book is deliberately  cinematic so its easy to visualise each and eery scene and character, particularly those of us familiar with flying (most of us) and the type of aircraft – an A320. The characters are well drawn, you have empathy for both the heroes and the villains, the latter being crafted in such a way that like some of the other characters, you understand their rage but not their ways of resolving it. And even though the American ra-ra is laid on a bit thick at times, and the story borders on sentimentality, it somehow fits. Newman worked for Virgin America for 10 years and this shows. readers are given insights into what goes on behind the scenes with cabin crew, in the cockpit and the relationship between these colleagues and their counterparts on the ground. This was so interesting and brings an authenticity to the story (I was going to write “implausible story” – not as a criticism, hell, it’s fiction, I’d watch a documentary if I wanted plausible. But ever since 9/11 and MH 370, what’s implausible has taken on a whole new meaning) and thus a very real frisson as well. 

I read this while in the throes of suffering (chills, fever, headache etc) from a Covid vaccination and I have say it was the perfect panacea. A page-turner par-excellence that made me grateful that, for the time being at least, flying isn’t high on the agenda. So, fasten you seatbelts, stow away your phone and other electronic devices, and prepare to take off with Falling. You won’t be disappointed.  

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What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon

Recommended to me by a dear friend, this time-slip novel about a young, grieving American woman, who journey’s to Ireland with her grandfather’s ashes only to find herself transported back into his history, is hauntingly lovely.

The book starts in 2001, when Anne Gallagher, despondent and lost over the death of her beloved grandfather, Eoin, fulfils his final wishes by taking his ashes back to his home country to spread them over the lake he loved.

Heart-sore, lonely, yet enchanted by this country she’d only ever known and loved through her grandfather’s stories, Anne is both mesmerised and lost. Knowing she is named after and resembles her grandfather’s mother strongly, she seeks solace in the few mementoes she has of her grandfather’s life, including a detailed journal written by the man who was like a father to her own grandfather, a doctor named Thomas Smith. Fittingly, while absorbed in the past and drifting through the present, Anne is wrenched back in time to 1921 and the height of the troubles in Ireland, when Michael Collins and those who believed in the future he saw are fighting for Irish independence – including Eoin’s father figure, Dr Thomas Smith.

These are dangerous times and moreso because there are those who would see Anne Gallagher  – the past one and the modern one – dead. Over the next few months, as tensions increase and Ireland draws closer to war – civil and with Britain, Anne finds comfort in the new life and loves she is forging, a healing and simultaneous remembering and forgetting that is both painful and joyous. But Anne knows she is living on borrowed time. As a child of the future, does she have a right to this past or is it one she’s lived before? Or will any chance of learning the truth be taken from her?

This is an exquisite story that is so easy to lose yourself in, even at its bleakest moments. Like so much good historical fiction, you also learn while reading it. Having an Irish grandfather who fled Ireland at this time (while being fired upon) it was easy to have sympathy with the causes being espoused. The conflict was bitter, confusing and caused so much heartache and bloodshed. All of this, and the inner turmoil it created, the families and friendships it tore apart, is beautifully explored. The reader sees the “troubles” through Anne’s eyes, someone familiar with the written history but swiftly learning that living it, with all its inherent danger, immediacy and pain, is altogether very different.

The love-story woven through it – or rather, love stories – there are a few and all with Anne at the centre – are really moving and relatable. So are the countryside and its warm, stoic and superstitious people.

A fabulous read that kept me awake until the wee hours so I could finish it and then beyond that while I wept a storm. A good one.  

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The Nowhere Child by Christian White

When Christian White appeared on ABC breakfast to discuss his debut novel, The Nowhere Child, I was immediately struck by not only his humbleness, but about how he spoke about the craft of writing. Then, of course, there was the summary he gave of his novel. I confess, I was hooked, and wasted no time downloading The Nowhere Child, anticipating with no small degree of excitement what I might discover (another great novelist and tale).

I was not disappointed.

This story about a young woman, Kim Leamy, who is approached by an American man on the streets on Melbourne, is marvellous and utterly gripping. The man tells Kim he believes she is actually Sammy Went, a girl who was kidnapped from her home, Manson, in Kentucky 28 years earlier. Refusing at first to credit such an implausible notion, as she begins to delve into the possibility, everything Kim thought she knew, about herself, her family and her past is suddenly thrown into doubt.

Left with no choice, Kim/Sammy must now go backwards in time, to the place this man believes she originated from to confront what might be her past in order to reclaim her present and her future. But the past is a dark place filled with secrets, some of which should never be disturbed…

Segueing between “then” and “now”, the USA and Australia, as well as moving between first person PoV and third person, this is a masterfully plotted, beautifully characterised novel that draws the reader into not only small-town life with its strange folk, customs and religious devotees, but also into what makes and breaks a family. Able to move the reader between places and times with ease, White paints a picture of different kinds of family life, tragedy, grief, confusion, tolerance and intolerance, loss and guilt so well.

Particularly fascinating (and repellent) were the strange religious cult (who refuse to embrace that name) that have a peculiar hold over the township – even of those who don’t approve of or believe in its practices.

Eerie at times, always plausible and with some excellent twists, this is such an accomplished book (with a simply lovely Author’s Note and Acknowledgments). I am really looking forward to what White produces next. Highly recommended.

 

 

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Ripple by Michael C. Grumley

The fourth book in the really exciting Breakthrough Series, Ripple keeps the pace fast, the plot tight and the action going. In this book, the specially formed group overseen by Admiral Langford and operating under the radar are dispersed across oceans and continents, trying to unravel secrets left beneath the waves eons ago, and searching for another source of the remarkable biological entity they earlier found and which the Chinese and Russians sought to possess at any cost. An entity which can change the course of humanity’s future while at the same time throwing the past into question.

Once more, lives are in danger, the clock is ticking and as the group draw closer to the truth, the risks they take become even greater, the rewards if they succeed, do as well.

All along, the technology that’s allowed Alison, Deanne and their teams to communicate across species keeps learning and what it teaches the dolphins and primates is nothing compared to what these creatures are yet to teach their humans…

This series is just such a great read. Michael C. Grumley can not only write but inviting you to suspend your disbelief and douse your cynic gene, he takes you on an emotional and visceral ride that is breath-taking in scope and richly imaginative. I am utterly stunned a major publisher has not picked this guy up, but I am so grateful he keeps writing and that his following is growing. Cannot wait to read the next instalment in this series and see where he takes us, never mind his characters.

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