First thoughts
Blue Door,
£12.99; Kindle £3.99
Review: Zahra Saeed
DO not be deceived by the chick-lit style cover, as this is no girly romance. Sherry Cracker is socially-awkward, eccentric and has a freakishly extensive knowledge of tartan.
When her grammatically-challenged boss, Mr Chin, gives her £100 and a weekend to get normal or “Chin find new worker for replacement!”, Sherry embarks on an adventure replete with oddball characters, humorous misunderstandings and mysterious dealings, unwittingly ending up making life very difficult for the bad guys.
Author DJ Connell’s peripatetic lifestyle (she was born in New Zealand and has lived in several countries) may be why it is sometimes difficult to fix a national identity to the characters and even the fictional town in which the book is set.
Also, with every person being as odd as the next, they all tend to blend into one. But, all in all, it’s a funny and endearing coming-of-age story, and a quirky read.
Barry Unsworth
Hutchinson,
£18.99; Kindle £8.99
Review: Ben Major
BARRY UNSWORTH became the joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize for his novel Sacred Hunger and nearly two decades later has written its anticipated sequel, The Quality Of Mercy, which opens two years after the events of Sacred Hunger.
The novel follows a fiddler who escapes from a London jail after being incarcerated because he was involved in a rebellion on board a slave ship. He travels to Durham to recount the story of his friend’s death to his family, only for his one-time employer to invest his interests in a coal mine in the same area, where their two paths collide.
With a well-crafted narrative and expert grasp on 18th century life, Unsworth depicts the changing fortunes of the upper and lower classes, their differences and similarities, while revealing how people are capable of change despite their contrasting backgrounds.
Peter Robb
Bloomsbury,
£18.99; Kindle £11.96
Review: Roddy Brooks
VIOLENCE has been the lifeblood of the coastal city of Naples since its beginning. Inhabited by a people who have welcomed invaders as both impostor and liberator, the food riots and revolts over crippling taxes have been as much a part of the fabric of the city as its cosmopolitan population.
Australian Peter Robb, like so many an outsider warmly welcomed into the city, reveals the petty crime and black market economy that lies at the heart of Naples.
An award-winning writer of such titles as A Death In Brazil and Midnight In Sicily, Robb lays bare the darker side of the city that has been home to famous artists such as Michelangelo, Passante and Ribera.
Having been invaded by the Greeks, Spanish, French, Turkish, Germans, Americans and British, as well as fought wars against the Protestants and the forces of Islam, Naples has certainly given Robb a rich canvas with which to work and make this a captivating read.
Stephen Gundle
Canongate,
£14.99, Kindle £8.54
Review: Emma Everingham
HISTORIAN Stephen Gundle, who has lived in Italy for many years and has written two books on the country’s modern history, tells the true story of 21-year-old Wilma Montesi, whose seemingly accidental death in April, 1953 uncovered political corruption, crime, sex and drugs, and also had serious ramifications (even affecting America’s relationship with Italy).
It’s quite hard to believe that her murder was the catalyst of such events, but Gundle is a brilliant writer, and makes you feel as if you’re reading a fictional crime novel.
It’s a little hard to follow at times, but Gundle has included a list of people involved in the ever-expanding case, and also photographs of those people, and these really immerse you in the book.
This is an incredible story and is a must-read for crime novel fans.
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