64 posts tagged “england”
NO ESCAPE is the first of a series by N J Cooper, previously known as Natasha Cooper, author of the Trish McGuire books. Like the earlier books, NO ESCAPE has an appealing female protagonist - this time a forensic psychologist called Karen Taylor.
Karen is staying rent-free in her grandmother's ramshackle holiday home on the Isle of Wight while she works on her research project to identify and characterise "dangerous severe personality disorder" (DSPD). Her task is to interview Spike Falconer, incarcerated in Parkhurst prison for shooting a family of four to death some years previously. Karen and her autocratic boss Max Pitton think that based on his history he may have DSPD, which if so would be additional evidence that the condition exists.
As Karen gets to know Spike via her prison interviews, she becomes unsure whether he really did commit the murders for which he has been convicted. At the same time, a policeman on the island, DCI Charlie Trench, tells her of some unsolved crimes from years back. Charlie would like to nail Spike for these murders too, but Karen does not think they fit with what she is learning about Spike.
Part of this pacy novel is a straight "whodunit" - if Spike did not commit the crimes, who did? A crisis occurs when Spike escapes from prison accompanied by Jim, a guard he's befriended, and takes a young girl hostage, an event both resolved by Karen and one which makes her even more sure that nothing adds up about the strange young man she's investigating.
The book is also a story about Karen's journey to self-confidence. She's experienced a traumatic event in her own past, which we come to learn about, and as a result is reluctant to trust anyone - either a partner or a colleague. How she learns to overcome her own fears and demons in the light of police hostility to her views, bossiness from Max Pitton, her encounters with Spike's family and her wavering over her attraction both to Charlie Trench and her current lover, heart surgeon Will Hawkins, all take place against the increasingly tense backdrop of threatened violence and instability. As well as being a satisfying mystery novel, I liked way in which Karen develops from being rather weedy at the start of the book, to capable self-assurance as she's increasingly threatened by unknown forces.
TRUE MURDER tells the story of Ajuba, an 11-year-old girl from Ghana whose parents' marriage is in great difficulty. She's therefore been dumped, uncomprehending, in an English boarding school. She befriends three other girls with whom she shares a dorm, and together they read 'true-murder' stories in American comics, acting out some of the cases in their games. Two detectives in the comic, Malone and Leboeuf, accompany Ajuba in her imagination, becoming substitute parents who guide her and act as her role models.
One of the girls in the dorm, Polly Venus, befriends Ajuba and invites her home at weekends and vacations to share life with her family. The Venus parents, Peter and Isobel, have an extremely brittle and volatile relationship, with Polly being very much a player in the warped dynamics that underlie the adults' superficially charming and sophisticated lifestyle. Ajuba is mainly an observer of these scenes, but they bring to her consciousness events that have happened to her mother in the past, and increase her confusion about her (rather unpleasant) father - a confusion only increased by her awareness of the supernatural, impressed upon her by her unstable mother.
At the Venus house, the girls again play their detective games, but this time they make a gruesome discovery in an old trunk in the attic. Much of the rest of the novel is set against the girls' determination to solve this crime, interrogating anyone they think might have been involved and generally making nuisances of themselves or even putting themselves in danger. What with this and the intolerable strains in the Venus family relationships, which become violent and unpredictable, it seems inevitable that disaster will strike - which it does.
There are many other elements to this novel that combine to make it a somewhat fractured whole. Although I enjoyed it very much and recommend it, I could have done with fewer fleeting characters who never really come into focus, and more development of some of the central ones. The school scenes would have been more convincing had some of them taken place in the context of other pupils - the four dorm-mates seem to exist in isolation of influences from other girls, which is necessary for the plot but not realistic. My other gripe is that there are too many heavy hints that something awful is going to happen, often at the end of chapters. Not only does this constantly snap the reader out of the world the author is creating, but slows the pace and actually reduces the tension rather than builds it up.
Don't let me put you off, though - this is a first novel which is enjoyable and holds a great deal of promise. If you enjoy Ruth Rendell or Morag Joss you will find much to like in TRUE MURDER.
FEVER OF THE BONE is the sixth in the author's series about DCI Carol Jordan and criminal psychologist Tony Hill, but you don't need to have read the previous novels to appreciate this one. It is written with multi award-winning Val McDermid's usual professionalism, dependability, style and apparent effortlessness. Although some parts stray into formula and are even slightly tired, the book is replete with tiny, fascinating character sketches and barbs of insightful observations of modern mores that lift it way above the average. It's a perfect holiday or weekend piece of light reading (despite the dark central theme) that leaves plenty of issues to ponder after the last page is turned.
The main plot concerns the deaths of some young teenagers in and around the fictional town of Bradfield in northern England. Carol and her team find themselves looking for a person or people who stalked the youngsters by first befriending them on a social networking website called RigMarole, then luring them into a direct meeting, and then killing them. Very few details of the abductions and deaths are provided, thankfully, but it is harrowing to read about the impact of the disappearances on the children's parents, who seem to have done all they can to protect their offspring. While paying due respect to the emotions involved, the book shies away from covering much of these aspects and focuses mainly on the investigation: how Carol's "cold case" team discover clues via old-fashioned police work as well as by following the internet trail. One part of their multi-specialist approach is missing, however. Carol's new and unsympathetic boss, James Burke, will not let her call in Tony Hill to work on profiling the criminal, ostensibly for cost reasons but Carol senses egos are involved. Instead, Burke tells Carol to make do with one of the police force's own profilers, ironically a man trained by Tony. Of course the man is useless, leaving Carol and her colleagues pretty stuck as to how to proceed when the tangible leads run out.
Tony is not sitting around moping while all this is going on. At the end of the last book, he discovered that his estranged father had died, leaving him a considerable amount of money. Tony has no wish to learn anything about the life of the man who abandoned him as a baby, but he can't avoid sorting out his father's estate, having to sell his house and narrow boat in Worcester. By coincidence, Tony is contacted by the Worcester police who are at their wits' end over the killing of a young teenager and so hire Tony to create a criminal profile for them. Curious about his father's life despite himself, Tony agrees to take on the job and travels to Worcester, in the process ending up spending the night in his father's old house and beginning to discover unexpected things about his own past. (Helped without his knowledge and against his will by Carol, who confronts Vanessa, Tony's evil mother, to try to find some answers about the past lives of father and son.)
Carol and Tony are intensely involved with each other on an astral plane but can't admit their feelings openly (a longstanding theme). The action is stalled for a while because Carol is too principled to discuss details of her cases with Tony even though they live in the same house, because Tony is not officially involved. Eventually, they put their heads together and realise that the case Tony has profiled in Worcester is likely to be an earlier crime committed by the same person who killed the two teenagers in Bradfield. Tony is allowed back on the team and by joining forces with the attractively portrayed Alvin Ambrose of the Worcester police, Carol and her colleagues begin to narrow down their list of suspects. Val McDermid is bang up to the minute (or, rather, nanosecond) with her social media and technological know-how, providing a whistle-stop tour of security breaches and data-protection issues as the hunt becomes more targeted.
The criminal is eventually tracked down by a combination of traditional police detection and some (glossed-over) online gee-whizzery, with a dash of inspiration from Carol and Tony combined. Although the resolution is a logical and rational outcome of all the earlier clues, to me it did not seem credible in psychological terms, and nor did it seem likely that the criminal would have managed to obtain the specific information needed about which children to attack, despite the book's casual assumption that there is no security or code that cannot be hacked. For me, a stronger part of the book was the story of Tony's gradual discovery of his father, which is rather moving - and, one hopes, will enable him to move on a bit in his rather static relationship with Carol.
After reading this book, I learnt that Val McDermid and her publishers have created a social networking site called RigMarole, just as described in the book. In a spirit of curiosity I joined it, and have to admit it is an eerie experience to look around it and to see (and if you wish, interact with) the characters in the novel (some of whom meet sticky ends, and some of whom are distinctly unpleasant). I found this experience more unsettling than actually reading the book. If you want to look for yourself, the URL is http://rigmarole.ning.com/.
Weighing in at 550 pages, I was slightly daunted at the prospect of reading this book, but I need not have worried. It’s very absorbing – a slow burn of a book (published by Pan Macmillan), full of atmosphere and suspense, as well as with a well-drawn cast of characters and a satisfying plot.
The first part of the novel concerns three women who are staying in a remote cottage in a village in the north of England. Rachael, Anne and Grace are conducting an ecological review, the results of which will determine whether the area can be developed into a quarry. As the novel opens, Rachael arrives at the cottage to begin the project and discovers her friend Bella, owner of the neighbouring farmhouse, hanging from a noose, having apparently committed suicide. This being a crime novel, we know that this conclusion may not be justified, but for the first part of the novel, the author is content to let everyone believe that Bella took her own life, while we get to know the living characters and the dynamics between them. Each section of the book is told from the point of view of one of the three women researchers, having the double benefit that the characters and their concerns can come to life, and that certain events can be with justification kept from the reader.
Tensions build between the women and with the people in the nearby village who have conflicting interests in the project. Peter, the women’s employer, is a greasy-pole-climber who among other nefarious activities has plagiarised Rachael’s research and discarded her after an affair without telling her he’s begun to see another woman (whom he eventually marries). Rachael is the most successfully portrayed of the three central women, as she fights to overcome her insecurities and relationship with her confident, overwhelming mother. Anne is married to the local squire, but their relationship is semi-detached to say the least; Grace also has a local connection – she is the most mysterious of the three women and one senses she must have some connection to Bella’s death.
A crisis occurs in the shape of another death, which leads to the introduction of DI Vera Stanhope, a middle-aged, unmarried and distinctly unconventional woman who has bags of external confidence but her own share of internal insecurities relating to her own past, and in particular her father’s “secret obsession”. Vera brings a welcome dynamism to the book, both in terms of plot and her working environment with her subordinates.
The author cleverly switches between points of view; these, together with her paced revelations of past events gradually show the full extent of the network which Vera must unravel to get to the bottom of the mystery (or mysteries). I shall certainly be reading the next books in the Vera Stanhope series (though I believe that THE CROW TRAP was originally written as a standalone novel), not least because I find her an attractive and unusual character, and want to know more about her.
Since first drafting this review it has been confirmed that Vera Stanhope is to become a TV detective. I’m very much looking forward to watching her exploits, and well-deserved congratulations to Ann Cleeves for this news.
The Crow Trap reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence
Wheredunnit on Northumberland, Ann Cleeves and the Vera Stanhope books.
Brief review at Mysteries in Paradise, as part of a "female detectives" post.
Ann Cleeves guest post on "crime for all" at DJ's krimblog.
Posts about Ann Cleeves at DJ's krimblog: includes reviews of all the Vera Stanhope series.
DI Will Wagstaffe, who is universally known as Staffe, is a policeman with problems. His parents were killed by a Basque bomb while on holiday while Staffe was a teenager; ever since he has been working with the Spanish police to track down the killers. He's just off to continue this quest, in the guise of a holiday, when he hears of a murder on the run-down Limekiln estate in his patch, "Leadengate" (a fictional area of London). Foregoing his trip to investigate the crime, we rapidly learn of Staffe's failed relationship with Sylvie; his hankering for his junior colleague Julie; his sense of responsibility for his drug-addicted sister Marie, a single parent whose boyfriend beats her up; guilt over Jessop, his ex-partner and mentor who has been forced into early retirement; and to cap it all, Staffe has just compromised himself in court in order to bang up a member of the "eGang". On the bright side, he is very well off, having used the compensation money from his parents' deaths to begin a second career as a property speculator. He now owns several houses in London, very useful for his rather complex life, and for helping out Marie (who has long-since blown her share of the compensation).
This busy background is worked into the plot that is kick-started by the Limekiln estate murder. The victim has in the past been accused, but not convicted, of a sex crime against a child. He's been killed in a particularly sadistic way, and the killer has left no trace of his (or her) crime. Soon, a second assault takes place - this one an even more sadistic and nasty ritual, which is unfortunately explained in some detail. The victim, Guy Montefiore, is a paedophile who is not allowed near his own daughter, and who has been stalking another teenage girl. Staffe manages to rescue Montefiore before he dies because someone, presumably the attacker, phones to alert him. Pennington, Staffe's unsympathetic boss, is suspicious of Staffe's own role in the attack, and wants to hand the case over to the Met. Staffe is convinced that the cases are related, so begs to keep control of the investigation - but his unorthodox methods enrage Pennington further.
Somewhere in SUFFER THE CHILDREN is a good story trying to get out. But because the book is stuffed with so many disparate themes, it has insufficient drive and pace. Staffe himself is the strongest element in the novel - some of his personal dilemmas are a bit cliched, but he's an interesting character with room for development. The plot, however, is far too bitty - gruesome serial killer, possible police conspiracy, a vigilante group that might or might not exist, whether the injured Montefiore will regain consciousness or if he'll be killed in his hospital bed, a mysterious video-embedded website, and what seems like endless witness and suspect interviews that are hard to keep distinct.
Unfortunately, by the time I reached the three-quarter point of SUFFER THE CHILDREN, I had ceased to become involved, and although I did finish it, I was not all that interested in the outcome. I was not quite convinced, once the identity of the killer(s) was revealed after a few red herrings, that it all stacked up. Fewer characters, themes and plot-lines would have made this a stronger book, so I hope that in future the author will decide that "less is more".
GONE TOMORROW is a typical Jack Reacher thriller. If you like this series, you'll know exactly what to expect and you won't be disappointed (as you might have been in NOTHING TO LOSE, Reacher's previous outing). Reacher, as he likes to be known, is a capable, kind, tough-guy ex-army MP. He's also a drifter, wandering around America (usually) - in the earlier books he seemed to be looking for closure and resolution to some of his mysterious, covert past, but now that many of those plots seem to have run out, in recent books he travels around relatively aimlessly. Each novel tends to start with Reacher accidentally stumbling across trouble of some kind - he then follows a trail to sort out what is really going on, cuing lots of military, special-agent and police details as well as plenty of action. The story usually includes a brief relationship between Reacher and a woman, but by the end of each novel he has sorted out the main business and is setting off for a new, unknown destination.
In GONE TOMORROW, the plot follows the usual arc. At the beginning of the novel, Reacher is randomly taking a subway ride in New York in the early hours of the morning, as you do, when he notices a woman who fits almost every item on the Israeli government's secret list of "tell tale signs of a suicide bomber". Keeping a close eye on the few other occupants of the carriage, he eventually decides he has to intervene - with devastating consequences.
I'm not going to reveal any more of the plot here as that would destroy the fun of this somewhat formulaic (but enjoyable) novel. Suffice to say that soon enough, Reacher becomes involved with the NYPD and a capable detective there called Theresa Lee; the brother of the potential suicide bomber, who is a New Jersey cop; the FBI; a congressman who aspires to be a senator, another ex-military guy who has certain attitudes in common with Reacher; various indeterminate mobsters; and some rich Ukrainian refugees. As the seasoned Lee Child reader has come to expect, quite a few of this cast of characters are not what they seem (not least the suicide bomber and the Ukrainians), and Reacher spends much of the middle part of the story working out what he thinks is going on, travelling between the groups to confront them, finding out he was wrong, re-thinking, etc. As is usual in this series, Reacher is fairly slow off the mark, working things out wrong and having to rethink his options - but this is always OK because friends and foes alike are all considerably more stupid than him. The whole is all highly and undemandingly readable as we feel that we are getting an insight into a life we don't know, for example US military strategy during the Afghan-Russian wars of the 1980s, the inner workings of the New York subway system, the provenance of various kinds of guns, or how sports jocks in LA live - but pushing the plot forward fast is not part of the package. To like these books you have to like all these slow details - of how to get a room in a NY hotel for less than $100 a night or what it is like to while away hours in bookshops, on trains, in coffee shops or on park benches (Reacher's usual lifestyle).
By the end of the book, Reacher - backed up by the few people he has come to trust after numerous attacks, kidnappings, ambushes, etc - has finally worked out what is really going on, which is rather exciting and quite satisfying. I hope it isn't giving too much away to reveal that he walks off into the sunset with his ATM card, toothbrush and out-of-date passport (his only possessions) - still the same old Reacher, and doubtless off to find some similar adventure in some other US city or county this time next year.
The new Roy Grace novel is an exciting, fast, satisfying read. The previous four books in the series featured a left-of-field, imaginative hook, ratcheting up the suspense (such as the stag night that went wrong when the groom was buried in a shallow grave as a prank, and then left and maybe forgotten). DEAD TOMORROW is a more conventional police-procedural novel, and none the worse for that. There are several interlocking plots, which make the most of the Brighton location. Various set pieces are fun, but small details such as noting named, minor celebrities' houses as two characters drive pass it, are sweet touches.
Lynn Beckett has had a challenging life: she's divorced, depressed, working in a debt-collection agency, and her daughter Caitlin has advanced liver disease. Lynn becomes desperate near the start of the novel when her doctor reveals that the girl's illness has reached crisis point and her only hope of survival beyond a few months rests on a liver transplant. Lynn's ex-husband Mal is a sailor, currently engaged in dredging the sea bed off Shoreham for gravel and other materials for the construction industry. The crew make a gruesome discovery when a body becomes stuck in the dredging pipe. It isn't long before macabre details come to light about the corpse, that of a teenage boy with a strange tattoo on his arm which might provide a clue to his identity.
Detective Superintendent Roy Grace has lots of cases on his plate, and is working extremely long hours to attempt to keep up - to the slight consternation of his girlfriend, glamorous mortician Cleo. The corpse on the sea bed takes over Grace's life as a major case, soon acquiring a connection in Romania, where the reader learns of the awful circumstances in which many young, abandoned children are forced to live, scrounging a living on the streets, addicted to drugs, glue or paint-sniffing, living among the central heating pipes under the ground. Criminals masquerading as friends and supporters prey on these waifs and strays, trafficking them for nefarious purposes. Back in England, the story forges on: there are several narratives, each of which has a short chapter devoted to it before the reader is whisked onto the next development. The technique is that of James Patterson, but far more effectively used here to build up suspense in the race to discover what is happening to the Romanian orphans, whether Caitlin will find a liver on the transplant register, or whether the various shady Eurotrash characters will be uncovered by Grace before they dispatch more victims. At the same time, the author does not neglect the personal lives of his characters, as Grace and his friend and colleague Glenn Branson, currently living in Grace's house because his wife has thrown him out, try to keep their domestic lives together as well as, in Grace's case, provide the necessary reassurances to his bosses that he's running a good investigation.
Interest is sustained not only because the plot (in itself not that original) is very well conveyed, but because there are so many vignettes and small observations that add up to make an exciting whole. The team of police who are investigating the case(s) appear in each book and are now gelling as individual characters. There are plenty of small, neat touches - I smiled when one character could not remember what he wrote in an article in Nature - and several in-jokes, such as when the relative merits of two actors who play Ian Rankin's detective Rebus are briefly mentioned, or when Lynn is reading a Val McDermid novel that contains an apposite scene, or when a minor character has the name Jeffrey Deaver. There are also plenty of hints about Grace's caseload as well as the continual mystery of what happened to his wife Sandy, who disappeared more than 10 years ago (we learn a little more about that here), to keep him going for many more books.
Since the "retirement" of Rebus and John Harvey's Resnick's almost-retirement, Peter James's Roy Grace is a main contender for the title of crown of UK police detectives. Perhaps Grace will have to fight it out with Peter Robinson's Alan Banks for the top spot, but I think Peter James's series is going from strength to strength. Full marks for readability, plot, character, sense of place and, perhaps above all, an attractive sympathy displayed by the author for his many characters, major and minor.
Johnny Mann, the bereaved Hong Kong police detective at the centre of THE TROPHY TAKER case, is sent to England to investigate the case of Amy Tang, a 12-year-old girl who has been kidnapped from her boarding school. Amy turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of Johnny's old enemy "CK", who controls the Hong Kong triads. Johnny is keen to undertake the case because he's had enough of his period of leave and wants to continue his work to break the corrupt sex trade between the Far East and the UK. He's convinced there is a connection with the Philippines, where he has been recuperating, and believes Amy's disappearance to be related to others. In the UK, Johnny acquires a partner, police detective Becky Sharp, who is both attractive and intelligent. Becky has a possessive husband, who loses no time in accompanying the couple to Hong Kong when the investigation leads them back there.
THE TRAFFICKED is fast-paced and readable. However, any book on the topic of the exploitation and brutalization of girls and young women is treading a difficult line between expose and entertainment. Although Lee Weeks writes with assurance about various grim and ghastly situations, and never fails to be sympathetic to the many victims in the pages of her books, the explicit, businesslike descriptions of violence and sexual abuse are hard to take. The core assumption is that the sex trade through Hong Kong and the Philippines to the UK is free to continue unabated as government and police forces are either corrupt or complicit - the Philippines are portrayed as truly awful: full of poverty and horrendous squalor, with government-backed death squads roaming the streets, killing boys and kidnapping girls (into prostitution) so that the place looks nice for the tourists, who are said to be blissfully unaware or uncaring in their quest for personal satisfaction in an environment less restrictive than at home. There seems to be an unending source of customers in the UK for these poor "trafficked" victims - can there really be so many men who would do these things to babies and girls? The fate of these children is dreadful - repeated scenes of torture and depravations are described, with the men involved enjoying and/or hardened to it. Cumulatively, the lack of official action and various nasty events lead up to a justification for Johnny and his team to take personal vengeance on the horrible villains - with one or two loose ends left over, doubtless for the next book. There is a mystery aspect to the plot - someone is betraying Johnny and co - but the resolution of that is not much of a surprise.
It is hard to sum up THE TRAFFICKED. It is a good thriller, racy and pacey, but for my taste the subject matter is too awful for entertainment. It would make a good movie, but not one I would watch. It is definitely not a comfortable read and will make you question why you are reading it at all; why you go on holidays to places in the world where poverty is rife and the local population is exploited; and why (if you believe the author) nobody other than the under-resourced Catholic missions is doing anything to halt these dreadful, entrenched practices.
LULLABY is about the worst nightmare-situation imaginable: the loss of a child. A young woman, Jess, and her older husband Mickey are out for the day with their baby Louis. They become separated, and Jess, from whose point of view the book is told, cannot find her husband or baby - and her bag, containing her mobile phone, is on the back of the missing buggy. The first chapters of this neat thriller build up the tension, as Jess becomes increasingly desperate when Mickey fails to come home and cannot be contacted. Her insecurities become magnified into paranoia as a result of the presumed abduction of her son.The police are not very sympathetic and don't take the case seriously for a while, particularly when they discover Jess's earlier post-natal depression.
LULLABY is a page-turner, yet I felt an increasing level of irritation with the wet main character as it progressed. It turns out that Jess barely knows Mickey and let him sweep her off her feet into an instant marriage when she fell pregnant. Nobody at his office knows his movements or anything about his working lifestyle. Facts and characters pop up out of nowhere as the book progresses. Jess is a passive character, allowing herself to be dominated by her au pair and her sister, as well as putting up with the patronising behaviour and inappropriate terms of endearment from DI Silver, the policeman in charge of the case.
I was mentally encouraging Jess as she gradually came out of her self-imposed ignorance and took more control of her life. Yet to keep the plot going, she avoids telling the police about leads: for example she deliberately puts herself in danger more than once at the hands of her drug-addicted brother and an unconvincingly portrayed crime boss, and she allows her au pair to keep a key to the house and to entertain her boyfriend there, even though she has good reason to be suspicious of them both. More by luck than judgement, Jess gradually uncovers more about her husband's life, and through that route works through a selection of minor characters and red herrings until she eventually discovers what happened to Louis - although the solution is a slight cheat as it relies on a degree of disinformation and omission. Inevitably, Jess's discovery about Louis's abduction puts her in a perilous position, but she hangs on for the sake of her son, and in a coda (also somewhat cliched) she seems on the brink of growing up.
The publishers of LULLABY liken it to the style perfected by Nicci French, but although the themes of domestic life turned to nightmare are similar, and the descriptions of post-natal depression are particularly well done, I feel that the comparison is not yet justified. LULLABY also contains elements of Martina Cole's books: for example the gangland characters, the family troubles, and the wealthy lifestyle that Jess has accepted unquestioningly since her marriage.
Once you have started LULLABY you will have to finish it, if only to find out what happens to the lost baby. One difficulty for me is that I found none of the characters particularly likeable; indeed, many of them did not seem very believable either. The book is a good, lightweight pastiche of contemporary themes, but does not cohere into a convincing whole.
Manda, the main character in OUT OF A CLEAR SKY, does not have much luck with her friends and family. Her parents are awful: a drunk, addled mother and a father who is both emotionally absent and in love with another woman. Her boyfriend is a prig who (just before the book opens) has left her for another woman. And as the book progresses, Manda realises that she has a (male, naturally) stalker. Her only support comes from her sister, who herself is not around as much as Manda would like - or needs.
Perhaps to compensate for her unhappy relationships, Manda is in love with things - nature, in the shape of a yearning for the country in which she grew up, almost always referred to as "Africa" (although England is referred to as "England" and not "Europe" throughout). What Manda loves the most is birds, and via her relationship with the uptight Gareth, she's become a birdwatcher, part of a close-knit group who dash off at a moment's notice when a rare species is spotted somewhere. Professionally, Manda is an IT specialist, maintaining the local university's computer system and helping aged professors to cope with modern technology. She's used these skills over years to create a database for the group, of all the birds they have seen.
The dramatic structure of the book is driven by the opening description of Manda's discovery of a dead body while on a remote mountainside, and Gareth's leaving her for an "Essex girl" called Ruth. Interspersed with these events we learn more about Manda's past and how she copes with the loneliness of single life as well as Gareth's ineffectual attempts to persuade her to divide up their house and possessions. Each chapter of the book is the name of a species of bird - I enjoyed the one about the green parrots in Richmond park, as every April these birds fly down the nearby road where I live and strip the blossom from the cherry trees - it was amusing to have their presence documented so accurately.
Gradually, the reader learns how Manda has become obsessed with birdwatching; she despises Gareth for (she thinks) pretending to see rare species just when his companion is looking the other way or has left the observation post temporarily, and she's not above tampering with the computer when she feels slighted not just by Gareth but by the whole group, whom she feels ostracise her and take Gareth's side after the split.
Manda's stalker is David - he pretends to be a member of the birdwatching group and constantly appears wherever Manda goes, but she gradually becomes more suspicious of him. Does he really work in a garden centre, as he tells her? He seems to have an unnerving way of knowing exactly where she is and what she's doing - and eventually Manda realises that David is a super-hacker who has infiltrated her computer systems and is making her colleagues as well as her friends suspicious of her.
We become less and less sure of Manda's stability. What really happened in her childhood, and in particular to her mother? And what is going to happen to David and Gareth, both of whom displease her? OUT OF A CLEAR SKY is not a conventional work of crime fiction; as an aficionado of the genre I felt that some of the "crime" aspects were rather obvious, and the surprises not that surprising. But the book is a gripping enough read, Manda's character and past are oddly compelling, and you will know a lot more about birds when you've finished it than you did before you started.
