Fatal Inheritance by Rachel Rhys

You’ve just got time to squeeze in this summer read. The setting is luscious, South of France, The Riviera just post-war, full to the brim with authors and personalities and bathed in sunshine. When dowdy Eve Forrester learns that she has inherited a share of a beautiful coastal villa on the plush Riviera, from a man she has never heard of, she leaves behind her disapproving husband, Clifford, to find out what it is all about. 

The villa is crumbling, but finding some backbone at last, Eve installs herself in Villa La Perle, to the astonishment of her benefactor’s sophisticated wife and sons. Eve is hooked on the heady climate and lifestyle, the unfamiliar scents, boisterous flowers and the sheer glamour of the place (as are we) and cannot return to her dull life with Clifford until she has resolved the mystery and asked herself a few searching questions. Besides, she finds that her new friends are just too dangerously engaging. 

Escapist and atmospheric, with a great sense of place. very much in the mood of Rachel Rhys’ last book, Dangerous Crossings.

Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon

A beautiful, moving book with a mystery. I love the pink-and-yellow Battenberg cake cover, taking me back to many a teatime with my grandparents (although personally I can’t stand the stuff). The story opens with 84-year-old Florence after she has had a fall in her flat at Cherry Tree sheltered housing and is hoping for someone to notice her plight. As she lies there patiently waiting, we revisit the past few months of her life. 

A mystery has been consuming her: why does the newcomer in the flat opposite look exactly like a man she knows to have been dead for years, and why do the things in her flat keep moving about? She enlists the aid of residents Elsie, and Jack, to help unravel the facts, which includes some ill-advised outings and a trip to seaside resort Whitby. But Florence is also suffering from the confusion of old age, and can’t trust her mind or her memories anymore. There are secrets there, but she can’t quite reach them.

We also see the situation from the point of view of Simon, the handyman at Cherry Tree and Miss Ambrose, one of the wardens, who are struggling with their own disappointments in life. It’s a story of loss, remembering, challenge, the questions of old age, Florence’s rage against becoming irrelevant and overlooked, and a search for meaning in an ordinary life. Also the loyalty of lifelong friendship. Joanna Cannon’s words are gentle and thought-provoking, but don’t think this is just a book about old age. It’s about every age, and every one of us.

Together by Julie Cohen

About a couple Emily, who worked as the local midwife, and Robbie, a boatbuilder who live in Maine USA. We meet them in their eighties, when Robbie feels he needs to take action to protect a lifelong secret, something that will otherwise blow their family apart. We work back from there, dipping into their history, their choices and mistakes, gradually forming a picture of a life lived, and how these two people came to be together, beginning in Norfolk England, where Emily grew up. We also draw nearer to the secret. 

Billed as a stellar love story, Together is for the most part an engaging read. I was slightly troubled by the co-incidence at the heart of the book (the fact that they meet at all) but as we discover Emily and Robbie have some painful choices to make throughout their lives, which they are forced to revisit in order to be, well... together.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

It is 1859, the early days of Empire and malaria is rife in India. Botanist Merrick Tremayne, sets off on a journey to Peru, with his friend and colleague Sir Clements Markham, to search for the calisaya cinchona tree, which yields quinine, the only treatment for malaria. Funded by the mighty East India Company, the first global business superpower, they make for New Bethlehem village, in Caravaya, known to be cinchona tree country and where Merrick’s grandfather explored before him, intending to take cuttings. But it is forbidden to take this plant and they need to be secretive, pretending to be trading coffee instead. 

This is where the story morphs into magical realism, as they arrive at the village built on strange glass cliffs made of blue obsidian. There are pollen lamps, babies abandoned on the altar, a line of salt ‘border’ which cannot be crossed, mysterious unseen warriors the other side, exploding trees, and the Markayuq, stone statues which move, said to be left by the Inca. They meet Raphael, the local priest who has some strange qualities himself, but Merrick is drawn to him unsure whether he is friend or foe. 

I don’t usually read literary magical realism, although I enjoyed the writing, and the characters, and the sheer quirkiness of the book. I can never quite accept that you can resolve a story by simply inventing an outcome, and saying ‘there we are it’s magic.’ But if you liked ‘The Watchmaker of Filigree Street’, which is her other book, I’m sure you will enjoy this. It’s certainly well put together and makes a change from psychological thrillers...

Origin by Dan Brown

Guilty pleasure this one. Don’t know about you, but I can’t resist the odd commercial humdinger book. It’s the usual plot, Robert Langdon takes his eidetic memory off on a jaunt to solve a riddle filled with symbolic meanings and conspiracy theories, together with an intelligent and beautiful companion. Nuff said, really.

After ex-student and friend Edmond Kirsch, is spectacularly killed at a global presentation before he can reveal a scientific truth that will expose all religions as irrelevant, Langdon sets off around Spain (with the future queen of Spain in tow) to find the code that will unlock the truth. There are mysterious forces trying to stop them… 

This time we are treated to a run-through of the greats of modern art, heavily focussed on Gaudi, Barcelona’s art hero. It is neatly done, although at times I did feel Dan Brown had turned into a virtual tour-guide. Finally we end up at the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's iconic and as yet unfinished Cathedral. There is an absence of that gruesome violence that often forms the central plot. In fact the quest is an intellectual conundrum, ‘Where do humans come from, and where are we going to?’ Through his characters Dan Brown addresses some of the toughest questions of today, using existing scientific theory to pose the question of one possible future. He comes up with some startling answers

The Party by Elizabeth Day

We open the story in an interview room. Clearly something bad has happened at a ritzy house-party, and we work back from there, through the point of view of Martin and Lucy, a couple who were guests. The trouble is, they are both unreliable narrators and we are not sure what has happened anyway. The story delves back into the friendship of Martin and his best friend Ben, stretching all the way back to school days. Lucy entered Martin’s life later and clearly feels uncomfortable with the status quo. As the narration unfolds, we begin to realise there is something essentially off at the heart of this friendship, but whether it is just Martin’s needy assertion that they are besties, in the face of Ben’s effortless popularity, or something deeper, is not clear. Elizabeth Day manages to lead us by the nose, and the characters are authentic and convincing, exploring the marriage between Martin and Lucy too. A look at how the well-connected manage to win, regardless of their actions in life. Cleverly plotted and sophisticated, and some quality writing. But strangely, although the book only came out about a year ago, it already seems a bit dated. The party-goers are quite clearly personalities from the Cameron-era UK government, with references to the Notting Hill set, and so on, which highlights how quickly the political landscape can change. But if you can put that to one side, it’s a good read.

The Death of Mrs Westaway by Ruth Ware

Hal earns her living reading tarot cards on Brighton pier. She doesn’t believe the cards, instead she reads people and tells them what they want to hear. And she’s good at it. So, when a crisp solicitor’s letter arrives for Harriet Westaway, saying she has been left a bequest by her grandmother (a case of mistaken identity) Hal wonders could she pull it off and pretend to be this other Harriet? After all, it’ll probably only be a couple of hundred quid, and Hal’s desperate for cash. 

She sets off to Cornwall to chance her luck, to the mysterious dark and brooding house, Trepassen. Of course, all is not as it seems, and Hal quickly realises she’s in too deep for her own good. It is down to Ruth Ware’s skill that we are firmly on Hal’s side, even when we know she is telling a pack of lies to a bereaved family. After all, she’s been dealt a tough hand in life, and there are bad people after her. Twisty, and engrossing, it almost has the feel of a country house mystery, but darker, and the house setting is positively gothic, complete with Mrs-Danvers-style housekeeper. Can’t say much more without spoilers. Put it on your noir thriller must-read list. 

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

A twisty take on an old favourite, in the form of the country house murder mystery. Aiden Bishop is forced to live the same day over and over, but as different people. Each time he falls asleep, (or gets boshed over the head) he wakes in a different person, trying desperately to solve the mystery of who killed Evelyn Hardcastle, in order to win his freedom. He has no idea who is keeping him there, or why, and barely any idea of who he really is. Blackheath, the former grand mansion he is trapped in has fallen into disrepair, and his fellow guests have all been convened there in a macabre recreation of a house party twenty years before, when the young son of the house was murdered. Aiden is surrounded by a cast of odd characters with malicious motives of their own. I assumed the story would have more old-world charm, but it’s hard to place in time at all. There are dark doings, and it is all rather theatrical. It’s a clever idea, very plot-driven, and I was keen to get to the end and have it all explained; but ultimately felt I didn’t know enough about any of the characters to really care what happened to them. When I finally did know all, it left me rather puzzled. Nevertheless a good original mystery.