Wednesday 28 January 2015

Arsenic for Tea: A Wells & Wong Mystery

Arsenic for Tea: A Wells & Wong Mystery by Robin Stevens
Published by Corgi Childrens
29th January 2015
Paperback Edition


Schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are at Daisy's home, Fallingford, for the holidays. Daisy's glamorous mother is throwing a tea party for Daisy's birthday, and the whole family is invited, from eccentric Aunt Saskia to dashing Uncle Felix. But it soon becomes clear that this party isn't really about Daisy at all. Naturally, Daisy is furious.

Then one of their party falls seriously, mysteriously ill - and everything points to poison.

With wild storms preventing anyone from leaving, or the police from arriving, Fallingford suddenly feels like a very dangerous place to be. Not a single person present is what they seem - and everyone has a secret or two. And when someone very close to Daisy looks suspicious, the Detective Society must do everything they can to reveal the truth . .  no matter the consequences.

 
This is the second in the Wells & Wong series and for me it doesn't disappoint.  In my opinion, Robin Stevens writes in the same vein as Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce novels, and I adore them, (and Flavia) too.  Set in April 1932, schoolgirls Hazel Wong and Daisy Wells are home from their boarding school Deepdean for the holidays, and as it's Daisy's birthday, they are joined by fellow boarders Kitty and Beanie.  Daisy's mother, the self-obsessed Lady Hastings seems to have invited all manner of guests along for the party, including the rather mysterious Mr Curtis, whom no one except Lady Hastings claims to know. 
 
Due to some odd behaviour, the Detective Society, now with two honorary members, are soon investigating the guests in the house, and even more so when one of the grown-ups is taken seriously ill at tea.  As luck would have it, for the girls anyway, the weather takes a turn for the worse, and the police cannot arrive until the floods subside.  It looks like it is up to the girls to solve the mystery again, especially as no one can leave Fallingford either!

Robin Stevens loves Agatha Christie novels and I think this is apparent in her writing as her books read like Miss Marple novels for young adults.  They are fun and well-paced with lots of detail and suspicious characters to keep you guessing who's going to succumb to danger, and ultimately whodunnit.  I can't wait for the next one!

Gripping and lots of fun!

 
Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

Friday 23 January 2015

The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Published by Doubleday
15th January 2015
Hardback Edition

 

Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy.

And then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s enough.

Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the lives she’s only watched from afar.

Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…

Paula Hawkins debut novel has already been compared to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and at times it seems that if you have written a crime novel, with a leading female protagonist (or in this case three of them), then this comparison seems to always crop up.  It is unfortunate that you can't write a book these days without it being compared to something else that came before.  However, in my humble opinion, The Girl on the Train is better than Gone Girl which I enjoyed but thought had a pffff ending that left me disappointed to say the least.

Anyway, back to the book in question, which attracted a huge bidding war last summer, with Doubleday winning over the other publishing houses concerned.  I can see why, this is probably going to be huge this year, even more so when it hits the shelves as a paperback, and I wouldn't be surprised if it makes it to the big screen, as I thought it was a very visual novel.

The book starts with Rachel, on the train home from work that she takes every week night.  When the train stops, Rachel always turns to look at the houses along the embankment, and in particular to see if a couple she has named Jess and Jason are at home.  Rachel usually sees one, or both of them, each day, and in her head has visualised their perfect lives together.  What she doesn't do is to look at the house just down from theirs, which it turns out, used to be hers.  Rachel is an unreliable narrator, in that not only does she lie, but she also drinks, heavily, and it is this that makes her so untrustworthy.  Whenever she does see something of significant importance, she usually seems to be drunk.

The other two narrators are Megan - or as we initially know her, Jess, and Anna who lives in Rachel's old house.  Their lives become linked by Rachel and by what she sees from the train on the way home.  The plot reminded me a little of the Steve Guttenberg film The Bedroom Window.

However, can we trust Rachel or does she have another agenda?  Come to that, on the face of it, can we either trust Anna or Megan, or their partners Tom and Scott?  Is everything that we see, or think we see, what it appears to be?

I read this in 24 hours because I needed to know what was going to happen next.  I felt sorry for Rachel, who used to 'have it all' and is now just seen as an overweight, unemployed drunk who is considered unreliable by most people and even when she tries to convince people that what she knows is fact, they don't tend to believe her.  Paula Hawkins writes about characters, with real flaws, that remind us that what people see on the outside, isn't necessarily what is going on on the inside. 

Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

Wednesday 21 January 2015

The Bookshop That Floated Away

The Bookshop That Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw
Published by Constable
3rd April 2014
Paperback Edition

In early 2009 a strange sort of business plan landed on the desk of a pinstriped bank manager. It had pictures of rats and moles in rowing boats and archaic quotes about Cleopatra's barge. It asked for a £30,000 loan to buy a black-and-cream narrowboat and a small hoard of books. The manager said no. Nevertheless The Book Barge opened six months later and enjoyed the happy patronage of local readers, a growing number of eccentrics and the odd moorhen

Business wasn't always easy, so one May morning owner Sarah Henshaw set off for six months chugging the length and breadth of the country. Books were bartered for food, accommodation, bathroom facilities and cake. During the journey, the barge suffered a flooded engine, went out to sea, got banned from Bristol and, on several occasions, floated away altogether. This account follows the ebbs and flows of Sarah's journey as she sought to make her vision of a floating bookshop a reality.

 
I initially heard about this book via another blogger Miss Beatrix, and my interest was immediately grabbed.  I needed a copy of this book, which unfortunately appeared, via the publishers, to have gone out of print!  However, patience is a virtue and by the end of last year, I had not one, but two copies of The Bookshop That Floated Away in my hands.

I guess we all have dreams that never come to fruition, and if you asked us book loving types what our dreams involve, it may equate to selling books for a living, working in publishing, or being an author.  Sarah Henshaw fancied the first option, but not in the conventional sense of bookselling, by renting a shop to do it from.  Oh no, she decided to spend her parent's money on buying a barge, and turning it into a bookshop!  In a industry that has seen bookshops close more frequently than they are opened, it was certainly a risky venture, and Sarah documents this in her book.  Split into three parts (with the middle part being about the boat's (Joseph) history - sorry Sarah I skipped this bit because I wanted to carry on with the current story) it tells of how Sarah decides to take her boat up and down the locks of England, with a dream of one day sailing along the Seine in Paris, trying to sell her books. 

What actually happens isn't maybe quite what she had planned for, with issues in Bristol about being able to sell at all, and flooding problems, let alone the time she came back and found her boat in the middle of the sea, unmoored from it's hitch, but with determination and some bartering skills, Sarah manages to swap books for meals, drinks, and a bed for the night.  She meets a whole host of characters along the way and her business survives.

You can still find Sarah running her bookshop along the banks of the river at Barton marina, Barton under Needwood.  She has a website and Facebook page if you indeed fancy popping along for a browse of her books, and hopefully, for her, a purchase or two.

I'm lucky to have a copy of The Bookshop That Floated Away to give away to one reader of Miss Chapter's Reviews.  Just leave a comment below, or on my Facebook page or over on Twitter  The competition will close at midnight UK time on Friday 23rd January and you can enter as many times as you like.

 
Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

Monday 19 January 2015

The Hourglass Factory

The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester
Published by Simon & Schuster
Paperback Edition
15th January 2015

 
1912 and London is in turmoil...

The suffragette movement is reaching fever pitch but for broke Fleet Street tomboy Frankie George, just getting by in the cut-throat world of newspapers is hard enough. Sent to interview trapeze artist Ebony Diamond, Frankie finds herself fascinated by the tightly laced acrobat and follows her across London to a Mayfair corset shop that hides more than one dark secret.

Then Ebony Diamond mysteriously disappears in the middle of a performance, and Frankie is drawn into a world of tricks, society columnists, corset fetishists, suffragettes and circus freaks. How did Ebony vanish, who was she afraid of, and what goes on behind the doors of the mysterious Hourglass Factory?

From the newsrooms of Fleet Street to the drawing rooms of high society, the missing Ebony Diamond leads Frankie to the trail of a murderous villain with a plot more deadly than anyone could have imagined...

 

Lucy Ribchester's debut novel is a fantastic combination of circus and politics.  Set in 1912 at the time of the sinking of the Titanic, Ebony Diamond, suffragette and trapeze artist, is trying to use her work to help in the cause for votes for women.  Meanwhile, reporter Frankie George has been sent to interview the flamboyant performer.  However Ebony soon disappears after agreeing to meet Frankie, and this peaks Frankie's interest, especially as a young woman, wearing the circus performers clothes is found murdered in the London street.

Can there be a link to Ebony Diamond's disappearance, and this woman's death?  Frankie seems to think so, and using her investigative skills, sets off to see if she can find out more.  The police though have their hands full, with Mrs Pankhurst and her WSPU members causing mayhem and damage on the streets; they certainly don't have time to be interested in a missing showgirl, or in the death of another young woman.

I really enjoyed this book.  I'm fascinated by the suffragette movement anyway, and Lucy Ribchester has clearly done her research.  Her description of force-feeding in prison was stomach-churningly accurate, and I really did feel that she captured the growing emotions and frustrations felt by the women, and men, concerned throughout the book.  In fact she kept the story going right to the very last sentence, without letting the tension drop at all.  This would make a fantastic film, as it is very dramatic and visual.  A brilliant read that I would wholly recommend to start the year with.

 
Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

Friday 16 January 2015

The Visitors

The Visitors by Sally Beauman
Published by Abacus
15th January 2015
Paperback Edition
 

Under the tablecloth, Frances's hand reached for mine and clasped it. I knew what it meant, that clasp and the mischievous grateful glance that accompanied it: it meant I was thanked, that there were secrets here. I could accept that. I too had secrets - who doesn't?

Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922 to recover from the typhoid that killed her mother, eleven-year-old Lucy is caught up in the intrigue and excitement that surrounds the obsessive hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb. As she struggles to comprehend an adult world in which those closest to her are often cold and unpredictable, Lucy longs for a friend she can love. When she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, her life is transformed. As the two girls spy on the grown-ups and try to understand the truth behind their evasions, a lifelong bond is formed.

Haunted by the ghosts of her past, the mistakes she made and the secrets she kept, Lucy disinters her past, trying to make sense of what happened all those years ago in Cairo and the Valley of the Kings. And for the first time in her life, she comes to terms with what happened after Egypt, when Frances needed Lucy most.


If you have been following this blog since the beginning, you will know that I'm a bit of an Egyptophile - I love a bit of Ancient Egypt, so when I saw that Sally Beauman's new book was to be set in Egypt during the 1920s, well I just had to get a copy and read it for myself.

Was it all I expected it to be though?  In a nutshell, yes it was.  The discovery by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of the tomb of Tutankamun is still the greatest discovery of ancient Egyptian artefacts ever, and in 1922 it was huge news.  The book is set both then, and today, as our narrator Lucy begins the book as a recovering eleven year old, and again as a elderly lady recalling the days she sent in Africa.  There they happen to become aquainted with the inner circle of Carter and Carnarvon and of the growing intensity around the digging at the Valley of the Kings.  There are a whole host of varying characters here, and I have to say, there were very three-dimensional and believable.

Sally Beauman has certainly done her research here, and intersperses both real-life characters with those of fiction and for me it was seamless.  I was instantly drawn into the mystical and evocative world of Egypt and of its tombs and could certainly imagine myself to be there again.  My only criticism, and it's a small one, is that there is no clear definition as to when each chapter is set; meaning sometimes I was slightly confused as to whether Lucy was talking about the 1920s or the present day, but it's a tiny flaw in what I think is a fantastic book.

Happy Reading

Miss Chapter x

Wednesday 14 January 2015

Serial


Now I may be a little late to mention this, as I know lots of people who have heard this already, but if you like a bit of crime fiction (as I do) or even true crime, then I feel the need to tell you about this here on my blog.  It's the Serial podcast which is available online and you can download it on iplayer (so I'm told) or listen on your pc or kindle fire (as I did).  If you click on the link it will take you straight to it.  The story is this:

It's Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder. He says he's innocent - though he can't exactly remember what he was doing on that January afternoon. But someone can. A classmate at Woodlawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trouble is, she’s nowhere to be found.

It's a 12 part series, which was originally broadcast weekly and tells the true story of the murder of student Hae in 1999.  It's a compelling tale, which features transcripts from the case and the trial of Adnan, an ex-boyfriend who was charged with her death.

The question is, did he do it, could he have done it, and if he didn't, who did?  Sarah Koenig has the evidence and sets out to see if it holds out, and she makes some interesting discoveries along the way.

Each section is around about 45 minutes long and it makes fantastic listening.  I won't say anymore about it because I don't want my opinion to spoil listening for others, except to say that there should be another series of Serial coming out this year!  I'll definitely be tuning in.

Happy Reading

Miss Chapter x

Monday 12 January 2015

The Crooked House

The Crooked House by Christobel Kent
Published by Sphere
Hardback Edition
8th January 2015
 
 

One fateful night. One unthinkable family tragedy. One survivor.

This is Alison's story.

Alison is as close to anonymous as she can get: with no ties, no home, a backroom job, hers is a life lived under the radar. She's a nobody; she has no-one and that's how she wants it.

But once Alison was someone else: once she was Esme Grace, a teenager whose bedroom sat at the top of a remote and dilapidated house on the edge of a bleak estuary. A girl whose family, if not happy, exactly, was no unhappier than anyone else's - or so she thought.

Then one night a terrible thing happened in the crooked house, a nightmare of violence out of which Alison emerged the only witness and sole survivor and from which she has been running ever since. Only when she meets academic Paul Bartlett does Alison realise that if she's to have any chance of happiness, she has to return to her old life and confront the darkness that worked its way inside her family and has pursued her ever since.

As she seeks to uncover the truth of what happened that terrible night, Alison begins to question everything she thought she knew. Is there anyone she can trust?

 

This book starts with a fantastic opening.  Esme Grace, upstairs in her bedroom, while the rest of her family are downstairs, hears a series of loud bangs.  When she finally ventures downstairs all she sees are dead bodies, her entire family have been murdered in one single incident.  Esme leaves her life, and moves south with her aunt, becoming Alison in the process.

Now in a relationship with Paul, she gets the opportunity to return to Saltleigh in order to attend a wedding in her home town.  As Paul doesn't know about her past, she can't think of a good enough reason not to go with him.  Surely, by now, almost 15 years later, no one will recognise her, and her new identity will remain as such?  Of course it doesn't, else what would be the point of the book?  Alison returns but it isn't long before the interest of those she left behind is gripped with this woman who some seem to recognise as Esme Grace.  The killer was identified as Esme's father, who police claimed shot his family before turning the gun on himself.  Esme has never been convinced that it was him, and now is as good a time as any to see if she can find out anymore about that dreadful night.

However, if you don't think your father did it, then that must mean that someone else from the village did, and if that is the case, other's may know too.  Is Alison treading on dangerous ground by looking for a killer that has so far remained anonymous, and who can she really trust?  Quite frankly, I'd trust no one and get out as soon as possible, but Alison is drawn into finding out the truth, and soon learns that nothing is really what it first seemed.  I have to say, I think this would make a great television drama as it's very atmospheric.


Happy Reading


Miss Chapter x

Friday 9 January 2015

Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You About this Magnificent Life

Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About this Magnificent Life) by Kate Gross
Published by William Collins
5th January 2015
Hardback Edition

 
What are the things we live for? What matters most in life when your time is short? This brave, frank and heartbreaking book shows what it means to die before your time; how to take charge of your life and fill it with wonder, hope and joy even in the face of tragedy.

Ambitious and talented, Kate Gross worked at Number 10 Downing Street for two British Prime Ministers whilst only in her twenties. At thirty, she was CEO of a charity working with fragile democracies in Africa. She had married 'the best looking man I've ever kissed' – and given birth to twin boys in 2008. The future was bright.

But aged 34, Kate was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. After a two-year battle with the disease, Kate died peacefully at home on Christmas morning, just ten minutes before her sons awoke to open their stockings.

She began to write as a gift to herself, a reminder that she could create even as her body began to self-destruct. Written for those she loves, her book is not a conventional cancer memoir; nor is it filled with medical jargon or misery.

Instead, it is Kate's powerful attempt to make sense of the woman who emerged in the strange, lucid final chunk of her life. Her book aspires to give hope and purpose to the lives of her readers even as her own life drew to its close.

Kate should have been granted decades to say all that she says in these pages. Denied the chance to bore her children and grandchildren with stories when she became fat and old, she offers us all instead her thoughts on how to live; on the wonder to be found in the everyday; the importance of friendship and love; what it means to die before your time and how to fill your life with hope and joy even in the face of tragedy.

 
This is the first book in my attempt to include more non-fiction on the blog, and boy is it a powerful one.  Can I firstly say a huge thank you to Katherine Josselyn for sending me a copy of this book to read over Christmas, I feel very privileged to have been able to read Kate's story.

So, the tale is this, a 29 year old woman who has bowel issues, goes to her doctor and has a sigmoidoscopy . When faced with later bowel issues, she tells medical staff that it is okay because this has been looked at via a colonoscopy and everything is fine.  However, it is not, and when she practically collapses on a flight home, a trip to the hospital reveals stage 4 colon cancer - there is no stage 5.

Kate Gross is 34, with twin boys who are just four years old.  She has a fantastic career as CEO of Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), this is previous to working at 10 Downing Street for both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.  This woman has a most promising career ahead of her, both in terms of her work and home life.  This is not to be fulfilled.

This is Kate's memoir and legacy to her boys, the Knights, now almost six years old.  She died at home on Christmas Day, still making sure that everyone else that survived her was going to be okay.  This book is both a celebration of her life, and also of how it has changed since her diagnosis of what she terms the nusiance.  It's a book that reminds you to celebrate life, and to grab it with both hands, for none of us knows how long we have been granted on this earth.

Get this book, laugh and cry as you read one woman's story, and hold on to those closest to you.  Make the most of every moment that you have.

 
Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

Wednesday 7 January 2015

The Life I Left Behind

The Life I Left Behind by Colette McBeth
Published by Headline Review
Hardback Edition
1st January 2015
 
 
She's dead but she's the only one who knows what really happened;

What your friends have said.

What the police missed.

Who attacked you.

So if you want the truth who else are you going to turn to?

 
Five years ago Melody Pieterson was attacked and left for dead.

She coped by burying the person she was, locking away her memories and creating a new life for herself. Her attacker is behind bars. In four weeks' time she will get married. She's almost normal.

Then the body of another woman is found, close to where Melody was discovered. Like her she has blond hair and green eyes. Like Melody police find a gold bird cage necklace at the scene. And Melody realises her attacker has been out there all along.

The woman's name is Eve Elliot. Melody sets out to discover everything she can about Eve to work out why they were targeted. But the more she gets to know her the more she realises what's wrong with her own life. Eve may be dead but she's the only person who can teach Melody how to live again.

So, the book begins with the murder of a woman, her son, who has been out building forts all day comes home and finds her dead in their lounge, he spends all night with the body until his father returns home the next day.  Then we move to the present day, with our dead narrator Eve.  Eve has been murdered and her body found in a field by an elderly man out walking his dog.  In her hands she is clutching a gold bird cage necklace.  This is the only link that the police have to a previous attack on a woman, Melody Pieterson, five years beforehand.  Melody was left for dead but has now recovered and is trying to live her life again.  That is, until the police notify her that a murder has been committed, and that the obvious suspect is the man who was convicted of attacking Melody, her former neighbour David Alden.

Melody is trying to hold her life together, but she can't.  She never really believed that David attacked her but as her memory of the night in question is still blank, she has nothing other than her instinct to go on.  Then she learns that Eve was investigating her case, and that she too believed that someone else was responsible for Melody's attack.  Did she find out who the killer actually was, and was that why she was killed?  If that is the case, should Melody be worried that the wrong man was convicted and that the real killer is still out there, possibly looking to finish what he started five years beforehand?

I think that Colette McBeth has written a solid story here.  There are three main female narratives, that of Eve, Melody and of DI Victoria Rutter who is trying to find the killer.  The dead narrator concept works; Eve knows who killed her, and is trying desperately to let Melody know from beyond the grave but will she be too late?  You soon learn not to trust any of the characters, as no one seems to really be telling the truth, either now or in the past.  They all have something they want to hide.

This is Colete McBeth's second novel and it's a good one.  If you are a fan of crime novels, this would be a good start to the year.

 
Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

Monday 5 January 2015

The Wrong Knickers - A Decade of Chaos

The Wrong Knickers - A Decade of Chaos by Bryony Gordon
Published by Headline
1st January 2015
Paperback Edition
 
 
Bryony Gordon survived her adolescence by dreaming about the life she'd have in her twenties: the perfect job; the lovely flat; the amazing boyfriend. The reality was something of a shock. Her Telegraph column was a diary of her daily screw-ups; she lived in a series of squalid shoe boxes; and her most meaningful relationship of the entire decade was with a Marlboro Light.

Here in THE WRONG KNICKERS Bryony busts open the glamorized myth of what it means to be a young (perpetually) single girl about London town, and shares the horrible and hilarious truth. The truth about picking up a colleague at the STI clinic; sinking into debt to fund a varied diet of wine, crisps and vodka; and how it feels when your dream man turns out to be a one night stand who hands you someone else's knickers in the morning.

Bryony's wonderfully ridiculous and ultimately redemptive story is essential reading for everyone whose 'best years' weren't quite what they were expecting...


I finished The Wrong Knickers yesterday, and was exhausted by it.  I thought my twenties was manic - university, holding down two, sometimes three part-time jobs and partying like it was 1999 every weekend where I could but Bryony Gordon takes it all to another level. 

Bryony's problem, and one that was an issue for many a child born of the 70s and particularly 80s is that they were the 'want-it-all' generation.  You could have everything you wanted, just put it on any of the plastic cards in your wallet and the dream was yours for the taking.  When Bryony decides that the time has come to move out of the family home, getting the perfect flat in London - on a budget she can actually afford - proves harder than she first thought.  Yes, she has a glamourous job as a journalist but it's not actually well paid, and all of her money seems to be going on take-aways, alcohol and drugs.  Who mentioned that you need to save for electricity, water and council tax?!

Could I have written anything so honest myself, if I was Bryony?  I doubt it.  This is certainly a no-holds bar book about her life.  Men who want to snort cocaine off of her breasts, an affair with a married man who only wants her for sex, and the most disastrous account of going to Glastonbury that couldn't fail to put anyone off of going.

If you didn't do it back then, live through it with Bryony.  If you did have your own decade of chaos, recollect all those heady days, and chortle as you reminisce.  Or like me, read and think, blimey, and I thought my twenties was chaotic....

Happy Reading


Miss Chapter x  

Friday 2 January 2015

Die Again

Die Again (Rizzoli and Isles 11) by Tess Gerritsen
Published by Bantam Press
1st January 2015
Hardback Edition

 

THE VICTIMS
In Boston, Detective Jane Rizzoli and Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles are investigating a bizarre murder. A man has been found gutted and hanging in his home. When the remains of another victim are found, it is clear that this murderer has been at work for years, and not just in Boston.

THE KILLER
Six years ago, a group of travellers set off on an African safari. None of them are seen again – apart from one woman who stumbled out of the bush weeks later, barely alive. The only woman to have seen the killer’s face.

THE SURVIVOR
Has the ‘safari killer’ resurfaced in Boston? Jane is sent to Africa to find the one link between the two cases – the only survivor - and convince her to face death once again...


Tess Gerritsen is back with her latest Rizzoli and Isles thriller.  This one begins in Africa, on safari.  I was instantly captivated and drawn to the heat of the wilds, with jungle animals roaming dangerously outside your tent, with only a warning bell to alert you to attackers.  Only in this case, the warning bell doesn't sound and one by one, the innocent tourists are violently killed.

Six years later, in Boston, two people are found murdered in their apartments, and Maura Isles believes there is a link between them.  Can these two seemingly separate killings actually be intrinsically linked to the killings in Africa almost a decade before, and should the only remaining survivor of that trip be worried that the killer will be looking for her next?

I haven't read any Rizzoli and Isles for a while and I have missed them.  It was nice to be back in their company again, as well as roaming around Africa with a killer on the prowl.  I thought I'd got this one sussed out though, and in my head, I was naming the killer with confidence.  Only I was so wrong on that front, and I'm still kicking myself for having not worked out 'whodunnit' before it was revealed to me.

Don't worry if you haven't read any of the previous books in this series, as Tess Gerritsen makes them work entirely as stand-alone novels, so feel free to jump right in here with number 11 and then work your way through the back catalogue.

Happy Reading

Miss Chapter x