The Pipe Smoker’s Cut by Glenn Muller is a fast-paced, action-packed historical mystery-cum-spy thriller.

The prose is dense, yet taut and propels the reader into the action from the first chapter. A generous sprinkling of historical references brings the heady jazz age of post WW1 London to life. Soon, we are plunged into the shady underworld of espionage and revolutionary plots, where nothing is as it seems and where secret agents, ex-soldiers and agitating Bolsheviks rub shoulders with glamorous heiresses, flashy tycoons and newspapermen. Among such company, who can Dan Turcotte, our hero with a conscience, really trust?

The narrative is woven into actual events and peopled with real figures from the past resulting in an entertaining and informative read. With edge-of-your-seat plot twists and a Hollywood ending, this novel really has something for everyone.

Rating: GREAT (watch this author!)

Ms Christie would approve.

Sun, Sea and Murder by J.S. Savage is a witty, modern take on the classic locked-room mystery and harks back to the golden age of the whodunnit with a colourful cast, red herrings aplenty and clever plot twists that keep you guessing to the end.

The characters are depicted with warmth, authenticity and humour. Their first person narratives transport you straight to the heart of the action: a sun-soaked Spanish hotel, where the guests, gin and tonics in hand, are reeling from not just one, but two impossible murders.

The author leaves a little crumb at the end of each chapter to keep you turning the pages and the resolution of the puzzle is both surprising and satisfying. I hope debut sleuth Penny Haylestone has a few more adventures up her sleeve. Fans of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series will adore this.

Rating: GREAT (watch this author!)

Oh, Mr Darcy!

Will a mysterious figure from Darcy’s past come between him and his new bride, Elizabeth? Can fresh turmoil in the Bennet household be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction? And can sworn enemies ever hope to be reconciled? Find out in Easter at Netherfield, a delightful Pride and Prejudice sequel.

The author’s meticulous research of the Regency era shines through as does her respect for Austen’s much-loved characters who are faithfully depicted in this sparkling romance. We also meet intriguing new characters and are left with a hint of more delicious drama to come in the next instalment.

Fans of Death Comes to Pemberley and The Other Bennet Sister won’t be disappointed by this heart-warming variation of Austen’s classic. Easter at Netherfield is the third book in Gill Mather’s The Elizabeth Bennet series, but holds its own as a well-rounded stand-alone novel.

Rating: GREAT (watch this author!)

Never lose hope.

Yuri and the Pig by C.W. Lovatt, is the story of an ideological farmer who leaves his sheltered life in a mountain village to embark on an epic journey to the Capital with his pig. When confronted by the horror and insanity of war, Yuri is determined to remain detached, yet struggles to do so as atrocities multiply at every turn. As he ventures further into the war zone, he and his pig are drawn into the conflict, and he is forced to question the values and convictions he has held his whole life.

This is a well-written, thought-provoking, page-turning hero’s adventure, full of action and camaraderie, with a moral at its heart, as the author’s rallying dedication puts it: for those who are oppressed, never lose hope.

Rating: GREAT (watch this author!)

 

The Sow’s Ear by Bernard Cronin published 1933

A rural drama and love story set in late 19th and early 20th century North West Tasmania, Australia.

June, a sensitive young dreamer, is oppressed by her zealot father and the suffocating expectations of her small community, among whom, ‘love had no enchantment, no visioning, no avian flight. It was stupid and conventional, a mere bodily functioning’. She is promised in marriage to a much older man from whom she instinctively recoils. Her grey life of drudgery and fear is gradually filled with light and hope as she develops a friendship with the town’s new teacher, Brian, a genteel young man from the city who fosters her love of books, poetry and nature. But just as their mutual passion finds expression, tragedy strikes.

The book is divided into three parts, ‘Morning’, ‘Noon’ and ‘Night’ and in the last part we find June at age thirty, now a wife and mother of three, eking a living on a subsistence farm, all her girlhood dreams obliterated. A series of disasters shreds the last of her courage and brings her to the verge of despair when suddenly there is a glimmer of hope from an unlikely source.

This is literary fiction in the tradition of Thomas Hardy and Henry James. Sadly, it’s out of print, but I wish it weren’t so that a new generation of readers could appreciate its exquisite poignancy and gorgeous poetic depictions of the land and sea. I read it when I was a teenager and it stayed with me until I found it again twenty years later. It made me cry all over again.

Rating: EPIC (unforgettable)