Month: July 2019

OLGUIN’S ON THE RIGHT TRACK WITH A HIGH SPEED STORY FROM BUENOS AIRES

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The Fragility of Bodies CoverThe adage goes about regular gamblers, ‘that they’d bet on two flies walking up a wall…”. Years ago, betting shops where the only way to place a bet, primarily on horses and dogs. Also back then, they were predominantly a male preserve. Dark and seedy places, that gave off a totally uninviting image. Nowadays, you can watch live races while drinking freshly made coffee and, owing to the removal of the boards which covered the windows of their predecessors, they are now light and airy places that want to entice customers of any age or sex.

However, with the development of the internet and social media, the modern betting shop is on the decline and the ability to gamble is easier today than at any time in the past. But despite this there is still a dark side to gambling where, shady back street bookies and fronts for criminal organizations can launder dirty money while taking bets on any manner of weird activity. Although your perception of weird and mine may differ, but if you have the money, there will always be someone willing to bet against you on any activity you maybe watching or engaged in. Whether it be, dog fighting, hare coursing, a cockerel fight or people playing chicken with a moving vehicle.

The final example is the premise for this months second book review, it’s the Fragility Of Bodies by Segio Olguin, published by Bitter Lemon press on the 11th July 2019 (www.bitterlemonpress.com).

Veronica Rosenthal is a young Argentinian journalist with a leading weekly magazine in Buenos Aires. She decides to follow up what seem likes a straight forward crime piece on a train driver who has committed suicide, leaving a note saying he was sorry for the deaths of the four boys. What she initially thinks is the confession of a serial killer, leads her to investigate the unusually high number of suicides on the Buenos Aires railway network, which seem to all involve young boys. Talking to colleagues of the driver who committed suicide, she discovers that at the time of the incidents, there are reports of witnesses to the apparent suicides. Her investigation awakens her promiscuous streak and she starts up a relationship with the married friend and colleague of the driver, who has also been involved in a number of these supposed suicides. As things progress it turns out there is some sort of weird game being played here that the underworld is gambling on. Her investigation in turn brings her into direct conflict with the games organizers and this has implications for both her, her family and the families of the boys involved. Can Veronica stay one step ahead of the criminal gangs organizing this sordid game of chicken and in doing so complete her expose and save other boys from being needlessly killed and break the criminal network involved?

The first thing that gets you about this book, is that its lead character is not shy, especially in the bedroom department. Veronica Rosenthal has the morals of a tom cat and would give 007 a run for his money in the womanizing/man eating stakes. In this book alone, Veronica beds more than one man, including a priest…  So, she comes across as more of a nymphomaniac than a crusading journalist. Yes, I like my characters to be complicated and to have busy lives or interesting hobbies, but at times her insatiable sexual appetite ends up being more of a distraction.

Sergi Olguin

Sergio Olguin (Alchetron.com)

As for the main plotline this is a refreshing and totally believable storyline, People have been playing the dangerous game of chicken on railway lines for years. Figures from Network Rail in the UK for 2016 showed there were 8000 reported incidents of people on the tracks. Of that 555 were children and half of those killed on train tracks were under 25 years of age.

That this book is also set in a country with great divides of wealth and poverty and where the criminal fraternity thrive with their brothels and underground gambling dens, which allow punters to gamble freely on any sort of activity, while also praying on the weak and needy (in the book the participants are paid 20 Pesos for taking part and 100 pesos if they win). The Fragility Of Bodies is a page turner that had me intrigued from the first to the three hundredth and eightieth page, but again at times I did think it was a bit long.

Of the characters, Veronica and the two boys she ends up  trying to save are the onlyChicken with train interesting ones. The criminal and gangland figures are stereotypical and after that, there are many others who only serve to complicate and overcrowd an already busy storyline.

This is Argentinian author Sergio Olguin’s (@olguinserg)  first novel to be translated into English. He’s a successful writer in Argentina where his previous books have already been translated into German, Italian and French. In Argentina, he’s also a scriptwriter and editor of cultural publications. The Fragility Of Bodies is the first of a crime trilogy featuring the journalist Veronica Rosenthal.

So, if you are looking for fresh new story and heroine, set in the overcrowded and warm streets of the Argentinian capital, then you could do no wrong by getting in with Veronica Rosenthal. Then afterwards await the next installment of this series.

 

Reviewed by :  Adrian Murphy

 

This book is part of a Random Things Blog Tour. To see what the other reviewers thought, visit their sites listed  below and then after you’ve read the book, comeback and tell us what you thought. We’d love to hear your feedback.

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THEY WON’T BE WHISPERING HIS NAME AFTER NORTH’S REINVENTION,BUT SHOUTING IT FROM ROOFTOPS

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whisperman cvr“If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken”

We all have those rhymes or tunes which stick in our head and can become annoying; ‘ear worms’, as they are known in modern parlance. Sometimes a few evocative words, somehow familiar but out of context, will send you back to a moment in time, elicit a strong, visceral reaction or a sense of déjà vu. We don’t really understand how the human brain works to protect us from dangers or how our senses and bodies can act in an extraordinary manner when faced with danger. Maybe those instances of heightened sensitivity, foreboding feelings and ghostly warnings are just the chemical reactions in our brains, trying to help us.

This month’s book review is The Whisper Man by Alex North and published by Penguin Michael Joseph (www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/michael-joseph.html ) on 13th June, has two of my favourite things combined: crime fiction and the supernatural. I’ve always been fascinated by murder mysteries, serial killers and evidence of the paranormal since childhood. Jake, the child in this story has an imaginary friend. Common in only children, I had one myself , Caroline,  who had to have a place set for meals and took tea with me in my Wendy house.  Jake’s however, appears a little more sinister. She makes him repeat the rhyme, “if you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken”.

Jake and his dad, Tom have just moved to strange looking house in Featherbank village,

Purple Emporer Butterfly

Purple Emperor Butterfly 

to make a fresh start after the sudden death of Jake’s mum. Jake is understandably traumatised, and Tom is struggling to deal with his own grief and to form a good relationship with his son. Jake is a sensitive child but appears to be regressing into his own world and talking to an invisible person, who he says he hears whispering to him at night. Unbeknownst to them, Featherbank was the scene of a series of child murders some fifteen years earlier, by a killer known as The Whisper Man. He was caught and jailed. When another boy goes missing under mysteriously similar circumstances, the police revisit their investigations and Jake appears to be being targeted as the next victim. What links Jake and Tom to the investigation? Who is Jake’s ghostly friend? Is the whisperer real or a nightmare?

This book moved between the police investigation and the story of Jake and Tom’s attempts at recovery from traumatic loss very smoothly. Overall, I felt this was a book which looked closely at the relationships between fathers and sons. We are often more like our parents than we’d like to admit. Some of that can be due to nature and some to nurture but this book showed that while some men fall into repeating the sins of the father as it were, some do manage to overcome genetics and poor childhoods and blossom. This may all sound a bit deep for a crime novel but the characters are in the main, beautifully drawn. We get inside the heads of the men here. The women are support acts but good ones.

 

This is the first book by British author Alex  North (@writer_North), although not his first foray into  crime fiction as he previously wrote crime novels under another name. He was born in Leeds, where he studied psychology at Leeds University and where in a previous life worked in its sociology department. The Whisper Man was inspired by his own son, who remarked one day that he was playing with the boy in the floor. North currently lives in Leeds with his wife and son.

There were lots of twists and turns and plenty of explanations at a satisfying conclusion. If I had any any complaints I’d maybe think there was too much in way of coincidence, in the way everything fitted together so neatly. But that’s the joys of fiction . You can contrive a set of events to suit. I do love an aligning of the fates and a “fancy that” moment in real life so I shouldn’t question their appearance in a story, I guess. Tom seemed a little vague at times. Can you be married to someone and really know nothing of their upbringing? Then again, I’m not a quizzer of people myself. Sometimes you just accept people and don’t query.

This had a few genuinely creepy moments as well as a slow build of tension to frantic search for a killer. It should appeal to those crime readers and the fans of whispers and things that go bang in the dark.

So take my advice and get a copy from your local bookshop or download a copy. But before diving in to what has been described as the “Best Crime Novel of the Year”, remember to close the door fully, so you won’t be disturbed.

 

Reviewed by: Georgina Murphy

 

This book review is part of a blog tour organised by the publisher. To see what the other reviewers thought about visit their websites listed below. Then, if and when you get a copy and have read it, come back and tell us what you think. We’d love your feedback.

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