The Plague Charmer by Karen Maitland

The Blurb On The Back:

”Something was approaching, something evil – I could feel it. As if in some distant land the devil had just unfurled his wings and was even now flying over the sea towards us, his shadow reaching out before him.”

1361. Porlock Weir, Exmoor. Thirteen years after the Great Pestilence, plague strikes England for the second time. Sara, a packhorse man's wife, remembers the horror all too well and fears for safety of her children. 

Only a dark-haired stranger offers help, but at a price that no one will pay.
Fear gives way to hysteria in the village and, when the sickness spreads to her family, Sara finds herself locked away by neighbours she has trusted for years. And, as her husband - and then others - begin to die, the cost no longer seems so unthinkable.

The price that I ask, from one willing to pay... A human life.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Karen Maitland’s latest historical novel is another well researched story set amid the Black Death that incorporates elements of superstition, legend and magical realism but it reminded me a lot of THE COMPANY OF LIARS and the wide cast of characters made it difficult to empathise with any one character’s plight so that ultimately I found it difficult to engage with it enough to care about the story. I found Will to be the most sympathetic character – his dwarfism deliberately manufactured to condemn him to a life of being seen as unhuman for the merriment of the rich and titled - and wanted more of his story with Christina (who is underdeveloped) to understand a little more of what brought them together. Matilda is a cunning, vicious shrew and for me a more interesting antagonist than Janiveer (who didn’t really come alive for me – mainly because her true objective doesn’t become clear until about half way through the story) while Sara is a bit of a stock character – worried about her family and trying to do what’s best. The religious cult storyline was predictable and ultimately I think I’d just seen all this before in Maitland’s other work so while I enjoyed the sense of period and the way she mixes in the fantastic my ability to engage with it was hampered by the déjà vu.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

Beneath The Surface by Jo Spain

The Blurb On The Back:

”I am going to die. I cannot stand the thought of leaving my girls, of never seeing them again. I would give anything to turn back time and stop this. The gun is in my eye line as the second bullet is fired. That’s the one that kills me.”

Ryan Finnegan, a high-ranking government official, is brutally slain in Leinster House, the seat of Irish parliament. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team are called in to uncover the truth behind the murder. As the suspects start to rack up, Tom must untangle a web of corruption, sordid secrets and sinister lies.

At first, all the evidence hints at a politically motivated crime, until a surprise discovery takes the investigation in a dramatically different direction. Suddenly the motive for murder has got a lot more personal … but who benefits the most from Ryan’s death?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The second in Jo Spain’s TOM REYNOLDS SERIES is an okay crime thriller that looks at the effects of Ireland’s energy policy and politics in general on the forgotten coastal communities but the reveal relies on crucial information being hidden until the final chapters and there’s a soap opera element to the story (notably the family set-up of some of the characters) that was a bit too melodramatic for my tastes. I liked Tom Reynolds as a detective hero – a dedicated family man, I believed in the relationship with his wife and the situation with his single mum daughter gave him some emotional bite – and I also liked the fact that he was willing to listen to his superiors without running off to play the maverick rule-breaker. Ray Lennon was less interesting to me, partly because I haven’t read WITH OUT BLESSING so wasn’t familiar with the storyline but also because the inevitable romance developing with DS Laura Brennan had a soap opera vibe to it that I didn’t care about. The mystery itself rattled along fine until the final chapters when Spain suddenly reveals information previously unmentioned (which I thought a cheap trick) and the ending dripped with melodrama that made me roll my eyes. Ultimately, it wasn’t a bad book and I kept turning the pages but I won’t rush to read the preceding book.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.