DEAKIN’S SECOND BOOK IS GONE BUT BLOOMS INTO THE SPECTACULAR

Gone Cover Image All good things must come to end, either by death or dispute. The maturity is accepting that people leave, friendships end, love vanishes and life goes on with empty feelings, sad smiles, and a broken soul.

This is something I am coming to terms with recently, owing to two of my best friends walking away from our thirty-five-year friendship over my refusal to accept their relationship with a convicted sex offender. This month’s second book review is a thriller, also about a group of people who also mysteriously walk out of their lives, it’s called “Gone” by Leona Deakin and is published by Black Swan (https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/transworld/black-swan.html) as an ebook on the 19^th August and in paperback on the 3^rd October.

When four people go missing from various parts of the UK on their birthdays after receiving cards from an anonymous source, daring them to partake in a game, the police don’t suspect anything. These people went voluntarily and are playing a game. But then the daughter of one of the missing persons contacts her neighbour’s brother Marcus Jameson, an ex MI6 Agent, and his partner Dr Augusta Bloom, a Psychologist, who together run a private investigation company dealing with unusual cases.

At first, they think it just four random disappearances across a couple of months, then with the help of the police, they discover there are over a hundred people missing supposedly playing this game. When one of the missing then returns home and brutally murders her husband in front of their young kids, Jameson and Bloom suspect there could be some sort of terrorist motive behind the game. As well as that, Bloom has realised all the missing share psychopathic personalities and that they are being singled out for this reason. But to what end? As their investigation digs deeper, Bloom and Jameson discover that they are now part of the game and are forced to take part in it. With psychopaths in all walks of life, is there anyone they can really trust? Can they stop this twisted game and find the mastermind behind it, and discover for what purpose is it being run, before another member of the public or one of their family or friends is hurt?

As well as the sense of loss running through my life in the past couple of weeks, I’ve also had to read this month’s choice for my book group, which was the Booker Prize winner Milkman. Well, I’m very glad that Gone came through my door, because compared to Milkman (I threw it down after twenty pages), the telephone directory was looking very appealing!

Robbie Coltraine in “Cracker”(Denofgeek)

Deakin’s book on the other hand, is a sleep depriving, white knuckle ride from the first page to the dramatic conclusion at the end, that left me with a crick in my neck too.

The plotting is superb and the edginess of the story and the multitude of dark and sinister possibilities for why these people are targeted and then used is the biggest hook and the reason it’s an out and out page turner. When the two main characters started getting paranoid of people in public, I was so into this book, I too felt the need to look over my shoulder and became wary of people on public transport and in the street.

Deakin’s two main characters our straight out of the Mulder and Scully school of teamwork and interaction. There is a perfect chemistry of brains and brawn, Jameson is almost bond-esque, without the gadgets, while Bloom does all her fighting with her scalpel sharp mind. This book is similar to Val McDermaid’s Wire in the Blood which inspired the TV series of the same name and also in the same vain as The Cracker series starring Robbie Coltraine, as they both centre around the work of a criminal psychologist. But I felt Gone had a fifth gear as a result of its pace and the numerous possible threats to its protagonists along with the far-reaching consequences to the wider population. My hope is that Deakin can keep this is edge of your seat pace going forward into the next book.

It’s been a number of years since a decent crime series involving a criminal psychologist has stepped out of the shadows on to our book shelves and in this book we have the beginning of what could be a cracker (excuse the pun) of a series, written by a professional in the field. However, the public interest hasn’t waned, judging by the success of Netflix’s new Mindhunter series. The level of detail in the book and the facts about those with this type of personality, speaks volumes about the authors expertise and allows you to be drawn deeper into this immersive and completely engrossing story.

This is English Author and occupational psychologist Leona Deakin’s (@leonadeakin1)

Leona Deakin

second book. Her first one was a romantic thriller called Anomaly published in 2013, but didn’t feature Bloom or Jameson. She has previously been a psychologist with West Yorkshire Police and lives in Leeds with her family.

This is undoubtedly up there as one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year and we are still in August, I am really looking forward to seeing if it becomes a series featuring these two characters or at least reading her next book.

So download it now as an e-book, or I dare you to put and order in with your local bookshop before they’re Gone…

Reviewed by Adrian Murphy

This review is part of a Random Things Blog Tour, to see what the other reviewers thought of it go to their blogs sites listed below. If after reading this or any of the reviews you go out and get a copy, comeback and tell us what you thought, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Gone BT Poster

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

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 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.

RUBIN’S DEBUT IS A LIBERATION FROM OTHER FAR FETCHED ALT. HISTORY BOOKS

Liberation Square This week, the Crystal Palace and Welsh International goalkeeper Wayne Hennessy was accused by a Football Association hearing of “lamentable” ignorance towards Fascism and Adolf Hitler. This came after he used the excuse that he didn’t know what a Nazi salute was. This thirty-year-old highly paid premier league footballer’s appearance before the tribunal came after images of him emerged last year, at a Crystal Palace team dinner, making what was construed as a Nazi salute.

There have been enough movies and video games made, as well as books published in the past three decades,(Schindler’s List, The Boy in The Stripped Pyjamas, Inglorious Bastards and Call Of Duty) to leave only someone living in a cultural vacum or a hermitage, in this position. Following the decision of the Football association conduct hearing which cleared the player, he was sent informative material by The Auschwitz Memorial about Fascism.

Mr Hennessy, like quite a large number of people in the UK and across Europe, lives a good life owing to the sacrifices made by their grandparents and hopefully will never experience the constraints of Fascism or even Socialism, except in the realms of video games or as alternative history story lines in TV programmes and books. One of those books is this month’s second review, its Liberation Square by Gareth Rubin, published by Michael Joseph (www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/michael-joseph.html) on the 18^th April .

Its 1952, in a divided European country following the end of the second world war. But instead of hearing German accents as you travel around this place they are English … Yes, the D-Day landings failed and England is divided following a German invasion. The Democratic United Kingdom controlled by the Allies lies beyond a border stretching from Bristol to the Norfolk coast. Beneath that line, is the Soviet controlled Republic of Great Britain and inside it is London a city divided in two by a large wall.

The Berlin Wall (StMU History Media)

In the Soviet controlled sector of the city Jane Cawson, a school teacher, suspects her doctor husband Nick is having an affair with his first wife, Lorelei an actress and star of numerous propaganda films. Jane goes to Lorelei’s house in the hope of confronting the two of them, but finds the former Mrs Cawson murdered in her bath. Nick is arrested on suspicion of murder and held by the brutal Secret Police.

Jane then starts trying to prove her husband’s innocence to get him released, she starts probing Nicks relationship with his former wife, why are there coded messages hidden in a book in Lorelei’s house. All the while trying to protect her step-daughter, as well as not arousing suspicion from the authorities and nosy neighbours who are all too eager to tow the party line and curry favours. With the help of Tibbot, a middle-aged East End bobby, Jane starts to piece together the identity of Lorelei’s murderer and hopefully prove Nick’s innocence. But is he innocent? Was Lorelei consorting with the Allies and what does it have to do with her recent miscarriage…?

As alternative history driven plot lines go, this in the current climate is not too far from the truth. With Brexit looming over the United Kingdom, the country is divided and becoming even more fractured by the day.

Rubin’s book is superbly crafted and drives the imagination from the first page to its conclusion, with its Sliding Doors – “What If” scenario. Along the way it asks the reader to imagine what might have happened if the course of history had changed.

The description of the remnants of war-torn London and the citizens trying get by under a brutal socialist regime are thought provoking and envelopes the reader into the story with every turn of the page. The historical nuances are superb, especially when you have Jane coming up against the likes of Burgess and Blunt and other members of the Cambridge five spy ring, who in this story have been exalted into running the country for their soviet bosses, as a reward for their cowardice and betrayal.

As for the characters, Jane is an excellent heroine, whose simplicity allows her to be believable and sets her apart from the all too often, highly skilled, super spy protagonist you expect to find in these types of books. She’s a school teacher, in well over her head, but allowed to follow the course of her investigations by the assistance of some other remarkably drawn characters, such as Tibbot the police officer working up to his retirement and the cagey and mysterious Charles, Nicks practice manager. Not forgetting the other host of run of the mill cockney characters and party hangers on and apparatchiks who help drive the story forward, as well as making it as wholly believable as it.

This is English Author Gareth Rubin’s (http://gr8502.wixsite.com) first

Gareth Rubin

novel, he’s written one previous book, an anthology of mistakes which have changed the course of British history, called The Great Cat Massacre A History of Britain in One Hundred Mistakes (2014). He’s journalist also a covering social affair, travel and the arts for various newspapers. In 2013 he directed a documentary about therapeutic art at The Royal Bethlehem Hospital in London, otherwise known as ‘Bedlam’.

Liberation Square asks the unthinkable; what if for example Alan Turing and his secret team at Bletchley hadn’t broken the Enigma machine or Churchill’s government hadn’t found enough little boats to Sail twelve miles across the channel to rescue the Allies from Dunkirk? It makes the reader realize how much of what happened during that time in history is down to coincidences and a stroke of luck, as well as how easily things could have gone awry. If things had happened as in this book, where would the likes of Wayne Hennessy be now? Would they have been even born?

So if you are looking for deeply engrossing debut thriller, to read over the Easter break, which will make you think twice about how good your life is now, then get down to your local book shop or download a copy.

Reviewed by Adrian Murphy

This book part of a Penguin Books blog tour, to see what the other reviewers thought. Visit their blogs listed below and if you pick up a copy, comeback and tell us what you thought. We’d love the feedback.

TUDOR CONTINUES TAKING THE WORLD BY THORNE WITH HER SECOND BOOK

Annie Thorne Cvr I’m of the opinion that the smaller the community, the larger the secrets. Look at Emmerdale , but seriously, if something mysterious or seedy happens in a small village or town, it becomes public knowledge very quickly. Okay, so it’s not normally shouted out by the town crier but usually talked about in hushed tones behind closed doors, in pubs and over coffees while accompanied by a furtive glance over one’s shoulder. Why the furtive glance I’ll never know, because you know damn well everyone else knows, but just won’t admit it. In a large town or city, secrets large and small get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the rat race and also hundreds of other, larger, more heinous goings on. That’s why murder mysteries and horror stories work so well in rural settings or small communities. This month’s book review is no exception. Its set in an old mining village in rural Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands of England. The book is ,’The Taking Of Annie Thorne‘ by C.J. Tudor and is published by Penguin (www.penguin.co.uk) on the 21^st February 2019.

Joe Thorne is a teacher with a few unpaid gambling debts hanging over his head, which have left their mark thanks to the handywork of a rather cold but attractive female enforcer called Gloria. He returns to his home town of Arnhill to take up a post in his old alma mater, where a couple of months previously another member of the teaching staff Julia Morton brutally murdered her son Ben and took her own life, after leaving the words “Not My Son” scrawled in blood over the child’s bed.

Joe rents Julia’s cottage where the murder took place, but on his first day on job he has a run in the with the school bully, Jeremy Hurst. Joe knows the Hursts, he went to school with the bully’s dad Stephen, who was also a bully and is still a bully with power on the local council. But Joe isn’t here to reconnect with his childhood friends. No, he’s here because Ben Morton went missing a short while before he was bludgeoned to death by his mother and when he returned a day or so later everyone said his personality had changed. Ben isn’t the first child to go missing, Joe’s younger sister Annie went missing for forty eight hours twenty years ago and when she returned she wasn’t the same either. What do the Hursts, both father and son, their terminally ill wife and mother Marie, have to do with the missing children and the disused mine that overshadows the village. Can Joe get to the bottom of things while clearing his debts and turning his life around?

When I picked up this book I got the feeling it was going to be dark and that was just from the cover. But what I expected and what I got where two totally different things. I envisaged a murder mystery, or even the hunt for a kidnapped girl told through the eyes of a private eye or police detective. What lay beyond the covers was an in your face horror mystery. Something straight out of the James Herbert or Stephen king guide on how to write a perfectly well plotted and edge of your seat read.

C.J.Tudor

This is what one encounters from the opening pages. with the discovery of the Morton’s in their blood splattered cottage and then enter our hero, or in this case an originally drawn and depicted antihero, who smokes and drinks his way to the conclusion and who is made even more memorable by the addition of a limp and walking stick. Then throw in a thick repertoire of dark humour and at times I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry with fear.

This book is engrossing and while reading it in a silent house on Sunday night, I was conscious of every other noise in the house and frequently went to the bathroom to check for an infestation of beetles, which regularly appear, chittering their way through the book. So if you have a fear of creepy-crawlies then reading this in the dark will not be good for you.

This English Author C.J. Tudor’s second book. Her first, ‘The Chalkman‘ was published in 2018 and her next book is due out in 2020 and is titled, ‘Other People‘. I haven’t read Tudor’s previous book, but a friend I spoke to last weekend had and raved about it. So, I will try to get to it over the next couple of months. Tudor was born in Salisbury, she grew up in Nottingham where she still lives.

By the time I’d finished this book, I had a hankering for Rigoletto, there were so many twists in this pacey and chilling plot, which again can only add to the success of this book and show what an amazing talent this new entrant into this genre is. So pop down to your local bookshop or download a copy and go and stalk the small winding streets of Arnhill to discover the truth behind the Taking of Annie Thorne.

This book is part of a blog tour to see what the other reviewers thought, visit there sites listed below and if you get a copy of the book, comeback after you’ve read it and let us know if you agree.

SVEISTRUP’S DEBUT WILL SEND YOU NUTS FOR THE NEXT INSTALMENT

The Chestnut Man Jacket It’s almost a week since some of us roasted chestnuts on an open fire and possibly a good while since Jack Frost nipped at our nose (it was a very mild Christmas Day here on the East Coast of Ireland). In life as well as in literature criminals or especially serial killers get fancy monikers, while plain old Jack Frost and the like are the heroes, as in ITV’s detective drama starring the very wonderful David Jason. Although The Chestnut Man is a new one on me in the evil villainous names department. He’s the mysterious killer in this months second and last review and blog tour of 2018. It’s The Chestnut Man by Søren Sveistrup and published by Michael Joseph, part of Penguin (www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/michael-joseph.html) on the 10^th January.

One Tuesday in October, the Danish Social Affairs Minister Rosa Hartung returns to her job after a leave of absence, following the abduction of her daughter who was never found, despite a suspect being arrested and convicted but unwilling to disclose the child’s fate. On the same day, police in Copenhagen discover the body of a young woman in a playground, one hand has been severed and a chestnut figure is found near the body. Young Detective Naia Thulin and her partner Mark Hess a detective recently dismissed from Europol, are assigned to the case. Soon they find evidence connecting the chestnut man to the Rosa Hartung’s disappeared daughter. Shortly afterwards when another woman’s body is discovered, this time with both hands severed and another chestnut figure nearby, the two detectives realize they are racing against the clock to catch a serial killer before the city becomes totally paralysed by fear and he completes his twisted agenda…

I have a confession. I missed the furore surrounding ‘The Killing’, the Bafta and Emmy award winning series created by Dane, Søren Sviestrup. The thriller captured the imagination and shredded the nerves of fans worldwide. It also started a trend for Faroe Isle knitwear- I’m not so sorry I missed that. It wasn’t the subtitles which deterred me, I have enjoyed many of the ‘Walter Presents’ international offerings on Channel 4 but I hate missing the beginning of a story and unless I watch BBC4 shows when they are aired I cannot catch up with them or watch them ‘on demand’ with Sky here in Ireland.

My friends will tell you that I’m the same with a series of books featuring the same characters, I have to start at the start and stay in order. In that way I was delighted to be in at the beginning of the Thulin and Hess story reading The Chestnut Man, Sviestrup’s debut novel. I predict (and hope) for many more cases to come.

Søren Sveistrup

I love a good murder mystery. Weaned on Agatha Christie, I moved onto Ruth Rendell and PD James at an early age and still return to those old favourites when the urge arises. I loved their ingenuity, the twists, turns and red herrings. I prefer to not know the identity of the killer at the start but to be led through a maze of clues, misdirection and revelations to a satisfying conclusion. This book ticked all my boxes. Two flawed and realistic detectives, newly paired. A ‘cold case’, a serial killer with a disturbing signature and a tension filled climax.

This is a meaty book at 500 pages but I couldn’t wait to pick it up each day. This was my equivalent of a binge watch. I could easily see it being made into a television series. Some the writing is very much a screenplay. You can almost hear the movements of the actors being directed. There are no long descriptive passages regarding scenery or inner thoughts, unless they are pertinent to the narrative. This is very much plot driven. Saying that I enjoyed the characters.

The book introduces us to a typical sleuthing pairing in Naia Thulin, a detective in the murder squad, looking to advance her career and Hess sent back to the police department after some infraction at Europol . Hess is at first disinterested in the new case, just biding his time until he can return to his real life. but he soon is drawn headlong in. As for the minister Rosa Hartung and her husband, their presence suggests there is political machinations at play. The book is populated with a plethora of smaller characters who all have a role to play, even if its only to help us learn a little more about the main characters and maybe send us off tack.

This is Danish scriptwriter Søren Sviestrop’s first book, but he is best known for his highly acclaimed TV crime drama The Killing, which won various international awards and sold in more than a hundred countries. More recently, Sveistrup wrote the screenplay for Jo Nesbø’s The Snowman. He obtained a master’s in literature and in History from the University of Copenhagen and studied at the Danish Film School. He has also won countless prizes, including an Emmy for Nikolaj and Julie and a BAFTA for The Killing

Like the Killing, In The Chestnut Man there is a mix of police work and politics. There is a Faroe Isle sweater dig at bureaucracy and paper pushing in relation to those who fall through the cracks and left without support. The violence is graphic. The tension builds. I’ve always been particularly terrified by those movies and dramas where the victim enters their home and the bad guy is already there hiding so this book gave me a couple of anxious moments, but for a thriller that can only be a plus!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and so will you. I suggest you pre-order a copy at your local bookshop or download one post haste. Meanwhile I await a sequel with anticipation and the odd glance over my shoulder into the darkening house, while nibbling on a roasted chestnut…

Reviewed by Georgina Murphy

This review is part of a Blog Tour, to see what the other reviewers thought see their sites below and visit them. If you agree or disagree with their reviews after reading the book, let us know.

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From all of us at The Library Door, I’d like to say thank you for visiting the site over the past year and following us both here and on twitter (@apaulmurphy) and wish you all a very happy New Year.

Adrian Murphy

FEARS FOR MY FUTURE HEALTH LEAVE ME MISSING OUT HEALEY’S DEBUT

ezbth-missng-cvr In 2015 The world Alzheimer’s report stated there are currently 46 million people worldwide suffering from some sort of dementia related illness and that figure will double each year going forward. Like cancer or any other large global illness, we all know someone with dementia and to be honest with those figures, it’s a scary thought that anyone of us reading this piece could fall victim to it. That brings me onto this month’s second book, its Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey, published by Penguin in 2015 (www.penguin.co.uk).

Maud forgets things, the cup of tea she made earlier, what she went to the shops for. Even where she lives and her own family, are at times, strangers too her. But one thing Maud does know is that her friend Elizabeth is missing. How? Because there’s a note in her pocket. No matter who she tells, even the police – no one believes her and they just tell her to forget it. Whatever else she may mentally let go of, Elizabeth’s disappearance isn’t one of them. Maud is in her eighties. So, she isn’t just pushing against everyone else in her search for the truth about her friend’s whereabouts, she’s also trying overcome the cloying effects of her illness. On top of that, there’s the mystery surrounding what happened to her sister 60 years ago, can Maud work out the clues in her rolling ship of a memory? Is Elizabeth even missing? Did her sister ever return?

I read a lot of books, as you can gather and if you’ve read most of these reviews you’ll be aware that I have a fifty-page rule. If the book doesn’t get me by fifty pages then I put it down, as life’s too short to read bad books. This book, I had to put down not before fifty pages but at one hundred and eighty-six!!!! Why? Because the writing and storytelling was so compelling, I got upset. Maybe I was at a low time in the year, this was strange because when I picked it up and started reading it, I was on a week’s holiday in the Algarve with my new wife, enjoying blue skies and temperatures of 30 degrees in late September. But for some reason I got all worked up about dementia and started to wonder what would happen if I got dementia and how I would cope with it? Silly isn’t it?

I’ve read other books that have upset me in the past and as I said then, I’ll say now. It’s not a sign of failure, but of success on the authors part and here Emma Healy has

Miss Marple – aka Joan Hickson

succeeded in getting the reader into the shoes, or more appropriately, the disheveled mind of Maud. If Agatha Christie had given Miss Marple Alzheimer’s, herself and Maud would be almost alike.

In those one hundred and eighty-six pages that I read and from what I ascertained from friends and acquaintances who have read the full two hundred seventy-five. Healey keeps you on the edge of your seat and at times your heart in your mouth, with worry and concern for our heroine as she goes about trying to solve the two mysteries.

This is British writer Emma Healey’s (www.emmahealey.co.uk) first novel and was inspired by her grandmother. She grew up in London and studied art in college. In a recent interview in The Times, she admitted that at sixteen she contemplated suicide, but that art saved her. After working in libraries, universities and bookshops around the UK she eventually settled in Norwich in 2010, to complete her MA in Creative Writing and never left. Elizabeth Is Missing won the Costa First Novel Award in 2014 and was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize in 2015, there is currently no news on her next book.

The only bad mark against this book is that there is a lot of jumping back and forth between present day and post world war II Britain as Maud tries retrace the final movements of her sister and recount run-ins with her shifty brother-in-law. Mixed with the constant disruption caused by her faltering and decimated memory it can get a bit confusing. Maybe it’s planned that way? As well as that, there is a rather dark comedic element to Maud’s predicament which at times serves to lighten the mood of the book.

Emma Healey

I never apologise for wearing my heart on my sleeve and letting my emotions get the better of me. I’m not alone in letting thoughts of our own mortality rise to the surface, but to quote James Shirley in Death The Leveller “There is no amour against fate…”. We must just get on and enjoy life as best we can.

What I read of it, this was a lovely book and as other reviewers such as Debra Moggach and Emma Donoghue have claimed, it is a haunting and unsettling read that will stir and shake you. So, if you can lock your fears of mortality and the future in a metaphorical steel casket for a while, then go out and buy or download a copy of this book.

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From myself and the other contributors to the Library Door, we’d like to take this opportunity to again thank you for visiting the site over the past year and hope you’ve enjoyed reading the reviews as much as we have writing them. Thank you to the publishers who keep my postman busy – especially Karen in Orenda books who continually surprises us with regular parcels. If you are an author or publisher and you’d like to send us copies of your latest releases you can contact me on twitter @apaulmurphy or by email at apaulmurphy@gmail.com . We hope you had a great Christmas and wish you a very happy New Year.

Adrian Murphy

A LAUGH OUT LOUD HIT FOR SIMSION, BUT IT HAS NOTHING DOWN UNDER.

Remember how when we were growing up we were always told never to make fun of people who were less well off than ourselves, had a stigma, disability or were over-weight. This never seemed to apply on TV Sitcoms and the like, such as the Carry On movies or more recently Little Britain, which went all out to send up those with disabilities or weight issues. Then there’s the current US hit comedy the Big Bang Theory which makes fun of highly intelligent people who are on “The Spectrum”.

The term “The Spectrum” refers to the Autism Spectrum or Autistic Spectrum; which is used to diagnose a range of five conditions classed as Nuerodevelopmental Disorders, one of which includes Asperger Syndrome. People with Apergers often display high levels of intelligence, very bad social skills, nonverbal communication and restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests. Hence Savants and academics at the top of their fields are often said to be “On the Spectrum”. The 1988 Film Rainman highlighted this side of autism, although it wasn’t meant to be funny, it was amusing. If the Australians’ had made a similar movie it might have been something like this month’s book, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.

Published in 2013 by Penguin Books, the book tells the story of Don Tillman a highly intelligent genetics professor in Melbourne. Don’s hit a bit of a mid life crisis, he’s single, has tried all the usual routes, online dating, blind dates, personal ads, chatting people up in bars – which is difficult for Don, given his limited social skills – all to no avail and with disastrous results(see the Apricot ice cream fiasco). So Don decides to take a more scientific approach to dating. He draws up a questionnaire “The Wife Project”, which again leads to hilarious results. Gene his promiscuous boss, whose own life project is to shag a female from every nation on the planet and one of only two of Don’s close friends he has (the other being Claudia, Gene’s long suffering wife) then sends a mature student called Rosie to him, resulting in a misunderstanding when Don believes Gene has put her forward for “The project”. He is roped into helping Rosie find her real dad, despite writing her off as totally unsuitable as a mate, but something begins to evolve through their close scrapes and weird escapades, including Rosie’s modicum of success in de-stigmatizing Don and making him slightly more socially adept, Don starts to realise she is the most beautiful woman he has ever met. But will his rather glaring and outlandish foibles get in the way of true love?

Hold on to your hats and don’t blink. Why? Because this is the funniest book I’ve read this year and if not, then it must share the mantle with The Collected Works of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin (See previous review). But where that was a heart tugging, sentimental tale of star crossed lovers with the innocent humour of a small child thrown in for good luck, The Rosie Project is a straight out of the blocks, side splitting laughter fest. From the first page to the three hundred and twenty seventh, Professor Don Tillman will have you eating out of his hand and almost cracking a rib with the laughter. I’ve often said the that you know you’re reading a great funny book when your giggling and failed attempts to control hysterics in public cause other commuters on a train to give you funny looks, this book left me in this situation on a number of occasions.

Whether it’s the descriptions of the previous dating experiences, his idiosyncrasies such as having his meals, alcohol consumption and every hour of his day planned, judging everyone he meets by their BMI, his and Rosie’s first date when Don gets embroiled in a fight over a jacket and single handedly immobilizes two bouncers, or that he memorises the recipe for almost every cocktail ever made in 48 hours so that he and Rosie can pass themselves off as waiters to collect DNA for “The Father Project”, you will never again meet a person like Don Tillman and the weird and wonderful characters in his life.

Rosie is no wilting wall flower, while the creators of The Big Bang Theory have tried to saddle the male cast with equally straight laced high achievers; Rosie is no regular girl next door. She works in a gay bar and dresses like a biker, while studying psychology. At first you’d think these two are chalk and cheese, but then you realise they are just right, who else is going to be able re-wire the oddly wired Professor Tillman, but a savvy street-wise ‘Sheila’.

As for the other characters, Gene is straight out of the British sitcoms of the seventies, bed hopping his way through the UN, while marking his conquest with a flag on a map in his office. It reminded me of Adrian Mole and how he measured the development of his manhood and kept track of it on a chart in his bedroom supposedly tracing rainfall in the Norwegian forests. There’s the Dean who realises Don is special, but while trying to accommodate him has to keep the University running smoothly round Don – which isn’t easy.

This is Australian author Graeme Simsion’s first work of fiction, in another life he was an IT consultant who wrote a book in 1994 on Data Modelling, which is now in its fourth edition. As I started reading this book his second work of fiction The Rosie Effect, was in the bookshops.

The book its self started life as a screen play and as Graeme says himself at the back of the book, it only became a novel first because “..It’s cheaper to get a book published then raise money for a film”.

Here in lies one of its only flaws, it’s not Australian, nowhere in the book do you get any feeling that it’s Australian, the speech and dialect doesn’t come out in any of the characters. Yes the characters mention Australian places and street names, but like any script it’s just words on a page until an actor brings a character to the part. This is the second Australian book I’ve read in the past year and a half after Murray Bail’s “Eucalyptus”, which oozed Aussie charm and character from every pore and you could literally taste the hot dry barren outback. As a result this comes across like a RomCom film script, something ideally suited to Hugh Grant, Ricky Gervais or Steve Carrell, but a damn good one at that.

This was a sentiment echoed by the book group at our last meeting when we gathered to discuss it, overall they loved the book, a few of us got through the book so quickly we actually went straight on to the sequel “The Rosie Effect”, but like most sequels, it tires quickly and only just manages to keep you to the very end with its modicum of new material. Whereas The Rosie Project is a great piece of original work, the sequel feels very much like a rehash of most American sitcoms, as the story moves to the States.

So, with the Christmas season fast approaching and if you find yourself looking for away to quietly digest the third day of turkey salad sambo’s or pass the time on a long journey home, pop into the nearest bookshop and snap up a copy or download it and laugh all the way to the New Year.

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