This week's bookcase includes reviews of Falling by Jane Green, The Secrets Of Wishtide by Kate Saunders and Underground Airlines by Ben H Winters.
Falling
Jane Green
Moving to the suburbs and falling in love with a hunky man is a fantasy for many of us, but author Jane Green is proof of a success story. It's been 20 years since the former feature writer left journalism - and London - for America to work on her debut novel Bookends, and she has never looked back. Like many of her earlier works such as The Beach House, Summer Secrets and Girl Friday, Green's 18th book has been inspired by her own life. It touches on the familiar themes of class wars, love and family: the protagonist Emma Montague swaps her upper-crust English life and dull boyfriend Rufus for a financial career in New York, before switching up from the Big Apple to a beach cottage in Westport, Connecticut like the author herself. Emma immediately falls in love with her landlord (just as Jane did), who is also a father to six-year-old son Jesse. Together, the new couple have to learn to overcome their differences and deal with the curveballs life throws at them if they are to make their relationship work. Falling, also billed as A Love Story, is the perfect summer escapist read - it will make you laugh and cry, showing why Green continues to wear the 'chick-lit' crown.
The Secrets Of Wishtide
Kate Saunders
Meet Laetitia Rodd, a widow in "reduced circumstances" who also happens to be an ace undercover private detective. The first novel in a new series by award-winning author and journalist Kate Saunders, this is a breath of fresh air. Set in the Victorian era, there are charming nods to history such as when Mrs Rodd makes rabbit pie or dons black silk for mourning. This case involves travelling to Wishtide in Lincolnshire, disguised as a governess, to investigate the background of a so-called "unsuitable" woman set to marry a rich man's heir. A deceptively gentle read, it's packed with pithy observations about human nature and Mrs Rodd makes a genuinely likeable character you can't help but root for. Luckily, there are already plans for five more books in the Laetitia Rodd Mystery series. Can't wait.
Underground Airlines
Ben H Winters
Victor's latest mission is proving trickier than usual. A former slave turned slave catcher, he inhabits an America that's the same as the country we know today... only different. In this distorted present, the American Civil War never happened. Slavery - complete with horrifically modernised forms of incarceration and torture - still exists in a handful of Southern states known as the Hard Four. With abolitionists defeated, clandestine groups that free individuals provide the only glimmers of hope. It's these 'underground airlines' that the morally ambiguous Victor is up against. But what is it that his bosses are trying to hide? This is a counterfactual novel in the Fatherland mode and similarly has a terrific premise. But any momentum created by Winters, also author of dystopian trilogy, The Last Policeman, is stymied by over-complicated plotting and overloaded description. Still, the haunting scenes of slavery in the Hard Four will stay with you.
Blackwater
James Henry
Author James Henry has taken what he learned from writing three prequels to R.D. Wingfield's popular DI Jack Frost series and created this police procedural novel set in Essex, featuring DI Nick Lowry, a hard-bitten cop with a talent for boxing. Set in 1980's Colchester, the story is very much centred around this being a garrison town. This plot line is bolstered by the typical top army brass, and army boxing organiser, which cause Nick no end of trouble during his investigation into an incident involving two soldiers, when what started as a drunken accident escalates into murder. It's a well-paced read with the events only spanning a short timeline, and serves its purpose to introduce us to Lowry and his immediate colleagues, yet it leaves some loose ends, allowing the development of each character in later novels. However, I found it a too familiar and therefore not outstanding in the genre.
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