Tag: suspense

Review 2747: A Box Full of Darkness

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In A Box Full of Darkness, Simone St. James returns to the eerie town of Fell, NY, where The Sun Down Motel is set. This novel has as its protagonists the three siblings of the Esmie family, whose original home is in Fell.

Violet Esmie sees dead people. She does in her work cleaning houses after the owner has died, but terrifyingly, she did in her parents’ house growing up. She was hospitalized for her “delusions,” and her ex used that to get custody of their daughter, Lisette.

Violet receives a call from the landscapers taking care of the family grounds in Fell. They are quitting because of sighting a boy on the grounds who says, “Come home.” Violet knows that this boy is her little brother Ben, who disappeared when he was six during a game of hide and seek and was never found. She summons her brother and sister to go to Fell.

Vail Esmie had experiences in childhood that made him believe in alien abductions. So, he works as an investigator in cases where people think they have seen aliens.

Dodie Esmie is a model who purposefully keeps removed from men by only going on first dates. She has just had a first date with Ethan when she gets the call from Violet.

The neighborhood in Fell is creepy. Two houses are vacant, one recently so, and there is only one family there, in what should be an upscale area.

Violet finds that Sister, a spirit who haunted her childhood, is there in the house and dangerous. She has never told her siblings about Sister, whereas Vail has never told them about the bright lights, and Dodie about the feeling of drowning—all these events at night unless Ben was sleeping with them. Almost as soon as they arrive, they begin experiencing odd and frightening events that eventually make them realize they need to figure out what happened to Ben.

This novel is fast moving and engaging, with scary and intriguing events. I don’t think there is any writer these days who handles ghost stories as well as St. James.

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Review 2746: The Jealous One

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Celia Fremlin does it again! This time, a puzzling, suspenseful story in which you’re never sure how much to like the main character.

Rosamund awakens from a feverish dream in which she pushes Lindy off a cliff. When she awakens, she is still ill with the flu but relieved to find it was a dream. Her husband Geoffrey bursts in, saying that Lindy is missing. Then the novel returns to the day they met Lindy.

Rosamund and Geoffrey are happily married. Maybe they’re not the nicest people in the world, because they enjoy making fun of their neighbors, but they share many tastes and like talking things over.

Rosamund’s first glimpse of their new neighbor is of a dowdy woman with ugly furniture and a Pekinese (they prefer cats). They both agree there’s plenty to amuse themselves there. Rosamund sends Geoffrey over to invite the neighbor to dinner, but instead she invites them.

When they arrive, the room looks lovely and Lindy is attractive, charismatic, and outgoing. But Rosamund can’t help noticing that there are hidden barbs in what Lindy says, especially toward her sister, Eileen.

Already by the end of the first evening, Rosamund realizes there will be none of the usual post-party discussions. Geoffrey is enchanted.

The friendship continues with Geoffrey spending time gardening for Lindy and Lindy popping into their house at all hours. She calls them Geoff and Rosie, which Rosamund hates. Suddenly, there’s nothing funny about owning a Pekinese or growing tulips (which the couple used to dislike). Geoffrey’s pride in not owning a car but enjoying walking or taking a train disappears because Lindy has a car. Geoffrey is either with Lindy or Lindy is with them. Even Rosamund’s particular pleasure in visiting her mother-in-law is disturbed by Lindy first offering them a ride and then by her being included in their visits.

Rosamund is determined to show no jealousy, but she can see her marriage eroding, while Geoffrey remains blind to any problems. One of Lindy’s favorite topics of conversation is to blame the wives for any problems with a marriage. Even working wives, she says, should have dinner on the table for their husbands and be sure to make housework look effortless so their husbands don’t feel bad about not helping!!!

Rosamund is back and forth on whether Lindy is trying to ruin her marriage or is just oblivious. No one else seems to notice anything amiss. Everyone loves Lindy, but Rosamund is starting to hate her.

Returning to the present, Lindy remains missing, and Rosamund realizes she can’t remember the events of Tuesday, the first day of her flu, past a morning party she attended at a friend’s house. She thinks she was in bed, but then why are her shoes muddy? And why did she find Lindy’s new purse with her own coat on the bedroom floor?

Rosamund begins to worry that her nasty dream might be real. Did she kill Lindy? Surely not.

The suspense builds as we sympathize more and more with Rosamund and begin to see Lindy as a malevolent force. But did Rosamund kill her?

As always, Fremlin takes her time building her characters and situations, but she’s really good at hooking our attention and reeling us in for the dramatic finish. I’m happy to see that Faber is apparently publishing three more books by her that I haven’t read yet.

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Review 2735: Wild Dark Shore

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I have a fascination, at least in fiction, with islands and wild untamed places. That’s why Wild Dark Shore seemed like a great book for me.

A woman comes ashore, nearly drowned and badly injured, on a remote island south of Tasmania during a terrible storm. The island is only occupied by its caretaker, Dominic, and his three children. When she awakens, the woman, Rowan, claims she was not on the way there, but there is nowhere else she could have been going. Dominic feels she is lying. But Rowan thinks the family is hiding something.

Fairly quickly, we learn that Rowan is the wife of Hank, one of the scientists on the island. But Dominic tells her the scientists left the island, and someone wrecked all the comms (communication devices). The family and Rowan are trapped there without the ability to communicate until the next boat comes in eight weeks.

What Rowan doesn’t say is that she received a letter from Hank saying his life was in danger. Rowan can’t understand why he would have left the island without telling her.

Rowan begins to get to know and love the island, which is teeming with wildlife, and the family. There is Raffi, 18, a young man with a reading problem who plays the violin and likes to record whale songs; Fen, 17, who is fascinated by the seals and spends most of her time with them. She seems haunted, though, and won’t spend the night in the lighthouse where the family lives. Then there is Orly, a brilliant boy who loves botany but is still a nine-year-old. Dominic, a widower, still hears his wife and feels her near him.

Rowan learns that the reason the scientists left is that sea levels are rising and the seed bank on the island, an important repository of millions of seeds, is being shut down. Dominic is packing the seeds that are to be removed when the ship comes, but many will be lost. Rowan can’t understand why Hank, who was in charge of the seed bank, would have left.

This novel is terrific. It has all the things I look for in a really good book—an involving story, interesting characters, a palpable sense of setting, and a strong evocation of emotion. I loved it.

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Review 2710: Heartwood

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Hiker Valerie Gillis has vanished in the Maine woods while hiking the Appalachian Trail. She has failed to check in with her husband at the agreed-upon location for a few days before he reports her missing, because she has often been late. Did Valerie wander off the trail or has something else happened?

This story is narrated from the viewpoints of several characters. Valerie herself is keeping a journal that eventually reveals what happened. Lieutenant Bev Miller is the game warden in charge of the search. Santo is a black New Yorker who was Valerie’s hiking buddy on part of the trek. Finally, there is Lena, a retired wheelchair-bound scientist who sees something online that helps the search.

This novel is interesting on several fronts. Readers get to know these main characters very well and feel affection for some of them. There is a lot of detail about the wildness of the Maine forests and how searches are conducted. And the tension mounts as the search continues well beyond the usual time it takes to find someone. The book is fairly hard to put down.

Finally, it has a touching ending.

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Review 2684: Wolfe Island

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For quite a while, I wasn’t sure whether Wolfe Island is a contemporary novel or a dystopian one set in the near future. Eventually, it became clear that it is dystopian. It was published in 2019, but we are so much nearer now to its reality that it’s scary.

Kitty Hawke has lived on Wolfe Island in Chesapeake Bay almost all her life. It was once thriving, the home of watermen and their families and summer tourists. Now, with the rising waters, she is the only person left. She is an artist who makes sculptures out of found objects, and her only company is her wolf-dog Girl. All the houses on the island but hers are ruins.

Kitty tried to live off the island when she married Hart, but away from the marshes she couldn’t create, and she felt like an outsider. Once her daughter Claudie was a teenager, she left her family to return to the island, causing a break with Claudie.

During a storm, some people arrive on the island, three teenagers—two boys and a girl—and a little girl. Kitty recognizes the teenage girl as one who asked her questions when a school field trip came to the island. It turns out, she is Kitty’s granddaughter Cat, whom Kitty has never met. With her are her boyfriend Josh and Luis, a Hispanic young man, and his little sister Alejandra. Cat explains that she and Josh illegally drive people north, but they need to lie low for a while.

Luis and Alejandra are illegal aliens. Their father disappeared and their mother has been arrested. They are trying to find their mother, in a climate where ordinary citizens are challenging people to produce their papers and men are running around shooting anyone who looks foreign. Rising waters have ruined the soil of many farms, places are abandoned, and people are flocking north.

The young people move into a nearby house, and they stay there for several months while Cat is pregnant and eventually has the baby. But soon afterward, it becomes clear that someone has found them.

This is a really engaging and occasionally exciting novel. I’m having to eat my words about being sick of dystopian novels, as two of the best novels I read lately are dystopian, and this is one of them.

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Review 2663: The Hours Before Dawn

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Boy, if you like a good thriller, this Celia Fremlin is terrific! I wonder why I never heard of her before. Since the summer before last, I had been trying to find a reasonably priced copy of her Uncle Paul. In May, another blogger told me she had found one, so I looked again and ended up with a set of three novels. One more to go!

Louise is exhausted. She has a young baby, Michael, who won’t sleep through the night and two girls, ages six and eight. In with the times, her husband, Mark, isn’t much help and even complains about the baby and the untidy house. Louise also has some objectionable neighbors. Mrs. Philips, who shares a wall, complains every day about the noise her children make. Mrs. Hooper has a talent for roping Louise into things she doesn’t want to do, like taking care of her baby, Christine. Mrs. Morgan is always condoling with her and criticizing the others, but Louise knows she does the same with the others.

Louise and Mark have decided to rent a room on their top floor, but Louise is surprised when Mis Brandon shows up to take it. She looks too prosperous and respectable to need to rent someone’s room, and there is something intense about her. But she teaches school at a local primary and is too respectable for Louise to turn away.

Louise begins to have strange dreams, but there are also some odd events that occur, and Louise is so tired, she thinks she may be imagining things. Tony Hooper, a young boy, tells her Miss Brandon is a spy, because he saw her going through Mark’s desk as well as his own mother’s. Then one night Louise takes Michael out for a walk so as not to disturb Mrs. Philips and falls asleep on a park bench. When she awakens, Michael and his pram are gone. She goes to the police and incoherently tells them her story only to find Michael and his pram at home, the baby asleep in his bed.

Now she feels she is branded not just a poor housewife but a lunatic. Mark is angry with her because he thinks she is jealous of Miss Brandon on his behalf. But Louise is determined to investigate her lodger.

This is a terrific little thriller that builds suspense throughout and ends with a bang. I’m really enjoying these books.

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Review 2645: #RIP XX! Uncle Paul

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Why have I never heard of Celia Fremlin before? This book is great! When I first read a review of it last year, I could only find an expensive used copy, but another blogger this year (sorry, I don’t remember who) set me looking again, and I found an inexpensive set of three novels, including this one.

Meg gets an urgent message from her older sister Isabel asking her to drop everything and come see her at a vacation caravan site on the seaside. The telegram simply tells her that Mildred, their much older half-sister, is in trouble.

After talking it over with her friend, Freddy, Meg travels to the run-down caravan park to learn that Mildred’s problems have to do with Uncle Paul. Fifteen years ago, when Meg was a child, Mildred married Uncle Paul, and they spent their honeymoon in a cottage just a few miles away. It turned out, however, that Uncle Paul was not only already married but he was wanted for attempted murder of his wife for her money, and Mildred was also wealthy.

Now it is the end of Uncle Paul’s 15-year sentence. Mildred seems to think he will be coming to get his revenge, but she has perversely rented their old holiday cottage.

Both of Meg’s sisters seem permanently distressed. Isabel worries constantly about her husband Philip’s reaction to everything, while Mildred is often alarmed enough to scream. Meg talks Mildred into returning to town and looking for different lodging, which she finds for her at a comfortable hotel. She also finds Freddy there.

Her sisters’ alarm seems to be contagious, though. When she arrived at the cottage, she found Mildred all aquiver because she had been hearing footsteps—Uncle Paul’s footsteps. Isabel is hardly less nervous. And Meg learns that she may also be in danger, because she was the one who recognized Uncle Paul in an old newspaper.

Fremlin manages to work a good deal of suspense from what seems like trivial incidents, and from fears that Uncle Paul could be any of several men around. But just when I was deciding that everything was in their heads, things got going.

This book reminded me of a lot of Mary Stewart’s combinations of suspense and a bit of romance that I’ve always loved. The writing style is sprightly, the dialogue is witty, and the characters are vivid. Finally, Meg is an engaging, intelligent heroine.

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Review 2628: #RIPXX: Fallen

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When Will Trent’s partner Faith Mitchell goes to her mother’s house to pick up her baby, Emma, she can see something is wrong. Loud music is playing inside and there is blood on the door handle. When she goes to the shed to get her mother’s gun, the gun is gone and the baby is locked inside.

Entering the house, she finds a dead man in the laundry room. She is forced to shoot a man in the bedroom and another one threatening the neighbor’s kids in the next yard. Her mother is gone.

Faith can’t be on the case, but Will and his boss Amanda Wagner have different ideas about what’s going on. Amanda is sure the incident has to do with gang activity, as Evelyn Mitchell used to be in charge of the narcotics squad. But Will can’t help thinking it may have to do with the case he investigated against her squad for skimming drug money. Evelyn was not prosecuted like the others but retired. Will has always thought she was guilty, and a large amount of money has never been found.

On the personal side, his relationship with Sara Linton is heating up just as his wife Angie has reappeared after months of absence.

This novel is the fifth in the Will Trent series and is full of action. I like Will, but I am thinking of stopping, and I have several reasons for that. One is his relationship with Sara Linton. She was apparently a main character from a previous series, and Slaughter has brought her into this one slowly, starting with the third book. My problem with her is that Slaughter hasn’t really bothered much with developing her character, having presumably developed it in the previous series, and I haven’t read the previous series. Plus, we haven’t seen much of Angie at all in the series, but in this book she is so horrible that you can’t imagine anyone staying with her. I think Slaughter is just using her as a device. Also, a little romance in this kind of novel is okay, but there’s an awful lot of emphasis on it in this book.

Finally, this took longer to occur to me than it should have, but this is Atlanta, Georgia, yet all of the principal characters in this novel are White, except for the bad guys. I had some difficulty in my brief bit of research finding data for 2011, the publication date of the book, but Atlanta is about 50% Black in population. The GBI doesn’t publicize its statistics, but the current demographics of the APD exactly meet the percentage of Black people in the community. Back in 2011, the APD was about 30% Black, and in 2010 there were about a third more Black people than White people in the city (statistics may be different for the greater Atlanta area). Yet, there’s not a single Black or Hispanic main character in this book. The TV series has taken care of this by making Will Hispanic and both his boss and partner Black. In fact, the only main White characters are a much nicer Angie and Angie’s partner Ormewood (no Sara).

So, is Slaughter a bigot or writing for what she thinks her audience wants? (2011 isn’t that long ago.) I was also irked by how Faith has spent two books not eating when she is having trouble with her diabetes. Come on! In any case, with Sara moving in and this belated realization, I’m moving out. Let me add, though, that Slaughter writes a truly suspenseful, exciting book.

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Review 2609: The Keeper of Lost Causes

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My husband and I were recently transfixed by the Department Q TV series, so I set out to find the books it was based on. They are by the Danish writer, Jussi Adler-Olsen.

The mystery in the first book was the same one as in the first series, but lucky for me, the TV series changed it enough so that it wasn’t totally predictable. They also changed the personality of Merete Lynggard and the motive for the crime, which was even more senseless than in the TV series.

Following a shooting incident which wounded Carl Mørck, paralyzed his partner Hardy, and killed Officer Anker, the department doesn’t quite know what to do with Carl. The media has been out to get him, claiming that he hid behind Hardy when in actuality Hardy fell on top of him, and he is difficult and not liked by most of his colleagues. Then his boss is told to set up a special department to investigate cold cases and given a large budget to fund it. So, the boss takes most of the money for the homicide department and sticks Carl in a basement with only one assistant, a Syrian refuge named Assad, charged with cold cases.

At first, Carl is totally apathetic. He spends his days playing games on his phone and visiting Hardy in the hospital. When they finally get some files, it is Assad who reads them and encourages him to pick the case of Merete Lynggard.

Merete was a rising political star when she disappeared without a trace from a ferry on vacation with her disabled brother Uffe. The investigators eventually decided she had fallen overboard. But we readers know she is alive and being held captive, because occasionally the novel flashes back to events five years before, when she was taken, and to her situation in the present.

Despite my knowledge of many of the plot points, I found this novel intriguing. The characters are interesting—Carl is actually a tad more sympathetic than in the TV series (although probably not as handsome)—and the mystery is a good one, with a suspenseful climax and a touching ending. Now I just need to read the second book before the next series comes out.

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Review 2606: The Episode at Toledo

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I have read two books before by Ann Bridge, and although the second was more action-oriented, they were both about women discovering themselves. When I looked for another book by Bridge, I wasn’t aware that she had a series of books around the character of Julia Probyn. This is one of them, about the sixth or seventh in the series, but Julia is a fairly minor character.

Although not necessary, it might have helped me to have read the series in order. I say this mostly because of the beginning and ending of this book, where Julia is ensconced in Scotland among a throng of characters who are briefly introduced but who I couldn’t keep straight.

Julia receives a guarded letter from her Hungarian friend, Hetty, who has married Richard Atherley, British Counsellor in Madrid. Hetta has asked that Julia send either her husband or another friend in Intelligence out to Madrid but doesn’t explain why. However, her friends speculate that it might have to do with a visiting admiral from the U. S. Understand that this is definitely a Cold War novel, and that in an earlier novel Hetta was kidnapped and drugged by Hungarian Communists.

Hetta is worried because she thinks she has recognized the American ambassador’s chauffeur as a Hungarian Communist who years ago closed down the Catholic school that Hetta attended and took delight in harassing the nuns. However, when Hetta’s friends check into it, they find he has been vetted by American security, so they dismiss her fears.

Of course, he is a bad guy, so Hetta does her best to keep the American admiral out of the ambassador’s car. On a tour to Toledo, Hetta suffers a broken arm after she delays the car, which has an accident trying to get to a rendezvous in time to be blown up.

After that, Hetta’s husband arranges for her to go to Portugal to stay with friends, as she is pregnant. But danger follows her.

For a suspense novel, there is a lot more inactivity than activity. Somehow the balance wasn’t right. There is also a lot of repetition as one group after another discusses the same incidents. Frankly, the last 20 pages or so, in which Hetta’s husband arranges for her to return to Scotland and she does, seem to have no relevance except to return to Julia and her confusing pack of relatives and friends. I would estimate that 50-75 pages of this novel are unnecessary.

Was Bridge tired of writing this series? She seems to have been trying to replicate the kind of books Mary Stewart wrote, combining suspense with lovely descriptions of the country. But Stewart did it better. This book also reminds me of the Cold War books of Helen MacInnes, only they have more romance.

To really evaluate this series, I think I would have to start with the first one, which I plan to do. In the meantime, I prefer her other books.

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