Everything She Didn’t Say – ‘Jane Casey at the top of her game’
The weather has cooled down, the kids are back in school, if you look up at the treetops you can see them turning, and, sadly, the evening light is disappearing into darkness. Maybe the days of books on the sun lounger are gone, but the fireside is as good a location for a cosy read. And so is the bed. And the bus and the train and the kitchen table while you’re waiting for the spuds to boil; anywhere is good. And backlit Kindles do better in poor light. Just sayin’…
A Village Scandal, Diane Allen, Pan, €11.99
The reading public continue to have a healthy appetite for fiction set in WWII, and indeed WWI. This novel is set in the Yorkshire Dales, where Flora Whitaker is left to run the Cunning Vixen pub after her husband re-enlists in his old regiment to fight his second world war.
Flora’s young neighbour May is employed to help out. Flora has a few not-very-legal schemes and ‘money-saving’ measures in place, just to keep things ticking over. But when young May starts dating a copper, he shows an unhealthy interest in Flora’s financial affairs.
To boost her income, Flora rents a room out to Matt Walker, an official from the War Office who’s been charged with overseeing the transfer of Italian prisoners of war to a different location.
Her husband Bill, still away on the front and a jealous man, gets word of Flora’s new lodger, and, let’s just say, he’s not pleased! Matt Walker, meanwhile, is harbouring a secret which, if it gets out, might start a whole different war in the quiet of the Dales.
Make Strange, Niamh Campbell, W&N, €16.99
Lena and Odhrán’s four-year-old daughter is making repeated and insistent references to her past life, and she doesn’t understand why her parents don’t remember what she does.
Little Sunny is creeping her parents out. Lena is left wondering if she’s somehow a bad mother, if her child is suffering some kind of psychiatric illness. She doesn’t know what to make of it and eventually consults the medical profession. In the background is Lena’s former career as a singer, the couple’s struggle in the housing crisis, wondering if they should move out of the city.
Then there’s the appearance of the sister of an old friend who killed herself, and of course there’s the navigating relationships with the in-laws. Lena is under a lot of pressure, but front and centre is the plight of her little girl, as the author examines the guilt and worry of every mother who’s ever taken care of a sick or beleaguered child.
A highly original idea and a thought-provoking take on the challenges of contemporary motherhood.
People in Love, Claire Daverley, Michael Joseph, €16.99
On the same day as Nora gets unexpectedly engaged to her long-term partner Robin, her estranged old friend Bren sends her an email and then turns up at their engagement party.
Nora and Robin have, until now, enjoyed a decade of their loving relationship and are finally looking forward to tying the knot. But Bren showing up seems to throw a spanner in the works. If you want to know why, you’ll have to read it.
Daverley explores the various threads of these three characters’ lives with a deft and compassionate pen, prompting the reader to maybe examine their own major life choices, especially if they didn’t get them right. A satisfying, well-written story about the small vagaries, the big difficulties and the quiet intimacies of everyday life.
Everything She Didn’t Say, Jane Casey, Hemlock Press, €13.99
Jane Casey is the award-winning novelist responsible for the Maeve Kerrigan series of police procedurals, but her latest novel is a standalone and a right page-turner. A woman is found on a Mayo beach, covered in blood but uninjured, and the blood is not hers.
The guards have no idea who the blood belongs to and the woman, Ruth, is at first too traumatised to speak. Eventually, we learn that Ruth and her friend Maura were staying in a nearby cottage that invited PR creatives to stay and, in return, to advertise the location as an ideal tourist destination.
But there’s no sign of Maura and the locals say they’ve only ever seen Ruth out and about, no second woman. Where is Maura? The two detectives assigned the case are complete opposites; one a ‘posh boy playing at being a guard’ and the other a hard-bitten inner-city type, raised on a drugs-ridden housing estate in the inner city.
When the DNA results from the blood come back, the case is turned on its head, and these two cops have to pool their respective talents to crack the case. Filled with suspense and unexpected twists, this is Casey at the top of her game.
The Last to Drown, Noelle W Ihli, Pan, €14.50
Ihli’s latest thriller features 20 tourists on a rafting adventure, supposed to be the thrill of a lifetime. Soon one of them, Kaia, begins to think she made a mistake. Because she’s heard the rumours about a previous rafting trip on Camas Creek seven years earlier, where a tourist guide murdered a group of rafters in precisely the same stretch of water.
And while the killer’s body was later recovered in the water, the local true-crime community has never been satisfied with the outcome. Small things begin to happen on this trip; missing supplies, noises at night, a flipped raft. But with 135km between the group and dry land, things get more sinister. And Kaia realises that history seems destined to repeat itself on this stretch of water. A blood-pounding psychological suspense novel.
Footnotes
Choirs all over the country are getting back together this week after the summer break. And except for a few exclusive ones, they are welcoming spaces that encourage members to join, whether musically experienced or not.
Most choristers in community and church choirs do not read music, but there’s a raft of learning materials to help singers learn their lines. And we all know now that singing in a group, big or small, is hugely beneficial to mental health.
You can check out the choirs in your locality through social media, local FB pages and the following link from Sing Ireland.