Troubled Blood, by Robert Galbraith. (a.k.a. J. K. Rowling)

         

        

  The welcome reappearance of ex-soldier, amputee and private detective Cormoran Strike and his attractive, resourceful and secret love Robin Ellacott is hardly helped by the size and weight of their latest adventure together, ‘Troubled Blood’, nearly 1000 pages of myriad characters, mind-taxing detail – and first-class storytelling.  Yep, you’ll have to do plenty of wristy push-ups to manage its weight, especially when trying to hoist it up to read in bed.  I speak from experience!

            But, as usual, weight and size count for nothing from the very first chapter:  the reader is as hooked as Strike when a woman approaches him in a Cornwall bar – he is visiting his beloved Aunt Joan, who has terminal cancer, and he’s having a necessary break with a friend – and asks if he would like to take on a 40 year-old Cold Case, specifically that of her mother, a respected doctor in general practice, who went out for a drink with a friend after work one night, never to return – and never to have left any trace of herself anywhere from that day to this.  Her daughter has no memory of her mother, being only a year old when she disappeared, but her desire to know what happened is overwhelming – as it eventually becomes for Strike and Robin.

            There begins the meticulous ‘no stone unturned’ poring over old evidence, made more difficult by the fact that the original supervising police detective had a huge nervous collapse when he started bringing in Astrology and the Occult into his investigation, but his replacement couldn’t have been more different – a by-the-book copper with no belief in intuition or hunches.  And zero imagination.

            There are red herrings galore, dead ends for Africa, and the wrenching loss of Strike’s beloved Aunt Joan, not to mention approaches from Strike’s Rock Star father, with whom he wants no contact at all – and tells him so:  why should this man who is world-famous anyway, want to claim kinship with Strike, because he is now a famous detective?  He didn’t want to know Strike as a child;  now Strike is returning the ‘interest’.

            And Robin’s divorce from her self-centred husband is progressing at a snail’s pace:  anything that he can do to cost her extra time and expense is worth a try – even though he was the one caught in adultery, everything is still all her fault.  In the meantime, Strike’s ex Great Love Charlotte, society Belle, mother of twins and sender of texts announcing suicide attempts is busily doing just that:  no peace of mind for HIM.

            Robert Galbraith drags us into Strike’s complicated world yet again with no effort whatsoever – beautifully plotted, unforgettable characters and dialogue, and still no Declarations of Love!  The  Robin/Strike love affair has to happen, but when???  FI VE STARS.      

 

The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donoghue.

 

  

          Influenza - ‘The Pull of the Stars’:  Italians believed that the influence of the constellations could indeed make them sick, and in November, 1918, the whole world is slave to Influenza.  As if an earth-shattering world war hadn’t caused enough suffering, the Flu, the Grippe – call it what you will, had invaded every home, especially those of the poor.

            Emma Donoghue’s latest novel was started in November, 2018, the centenary of the disease that wiped out between 3 and 6% of the human race, and was rushed into print to coincide with the latest threat to humanity:  COVID 19.  It describes the events of just three days in the maternity/fever ward of a catholic hospital in Dublin, severely understaffed as more nurses and doctors succumb to the illness, leading to ‘promotions in the field’ of staffers who have previously kept strictly to their allotted tasks.  Such a worker is Nurse Julia Power, suddenly in charge of three patients, all of whom are infected, and all in danger of going into labour as a symptom of the disease.

            The Night Nurse, a nun, arranges an assistant from the Mother House, a catholic orphanage just around the corner, and Bridie Murphy enters Julia’s life:  semi-literate, half-starved, and the owner of mysterious scars, she is still a breath of fresh, clean air in the ward, heartbreakingly willing to please, a natural nurse and the possessor of a memory that forgets nothing, good or bad:  together, she and Julia quickly weld themselves into an inseparable team – even the sadness Julia has waiting at home in the shape of her mute brother (wounded in the war, in his spirit.  He no longer talks.) can dim the satisfaction of a job well done.

            Until Day Three dawns, and with it the re-arrest at the hospital of Dr Kathleen Lynn, a Sinn Feiner and dangerous rebel, released early to attend to the appalling numbers of flu sufferers;  her second incarceration coincides with new exhortations from the Government pasted on city walls:  EAT AN ONION A DAY.  LIE DOWN FOR A FORTNIGHT.  ‘WOULD THEY BE DEAD IF THEY’D STAYED IN BED?’ Julia is living in a nightmare which continues with no respite throughout the day:  young lives cease without warning – youth is no insurance against this disease, especially with poverty and malnutrition as a base:  the stars are pulling strongly indeed.

            Ms Donoghue, acclaimed author of ‘Room’ and ‘Akin’ to name just two of her great stories, recreates superbly the terror and fear of a century ago when our world was held hostage to an unknown, all-powerful enemy, an illness that we didn’t know how to vanquish:  she draws the obvious parallels to the corona virus, but surely – surely – we can beat it this time around – can we? -  can’t we?  SIX STARS!!

 

                     

 

The Girl in the Mirror, by Rose Carlyle.

 

            Sibling rivalry takes a horrible new twist in Rose Carlyle’s debut novel:  main protagonists are identical ‘mirror’ twins Summer and Iris Carmichael, who were born with several unusual quirks – Iris’s heart is on the right side of her chest  for example;  she ‘mirrors’ Summer in every way, except where it counts:  Summer is the good twin, the popular, radiant twin.  The one with all the luck.  And the whole family certainly needs some, for the twins’ despotic, philandering, very rich father has unexpectedly died and, instead of bequeathing his estate of one hundred million dollars fairly to his warring, various families he has instructed that the first of his daughters to produce a child shall inherit all of it.

            Naturally, this does nothing to bring all the siblings closer together;  instead of being united by grief, the opposite occurs.  Iris enters into a disastrous marriage which fails to produce the desired baby, but Summer marries for love, declaring that she doesn’t care about the money – she has been put on this earth to help people, as seen by her choice of career (nursing) where she met her wonderful husband, bereft after the tragic death of his first wife who left a little baby boy to be cared for.  No, money doesn’t mean a thing to Summer – besides, her husband Adam runs a chain of successful travel agencies established in the Seychelles by his family, so they are quite secure, in fact so secure that they are currently cruising on dear old dead dad’s ocean-going yacht Bathsheba in Thailand, but -  they’ve run into a bit of bother with the Thai authorities;  they have to sneak out of Thailand and sail to the Seychelles because their yacht paperwork is no longer valid, due to the baby’s unexpected illness and hospitalisation:  would Iris like to come and help Summer sail Bathsheba across the Indian Ocean, their old stamping ground?

            How could Iris possibly refuse?  She has always been a great sailor, much better than Summer, and to be back on Bathsheba, her favourite place in all the world, sailing her favourite ocean is finally a sign that her luck might be changing, even temporarily.  She hopes.

            And it goes without saying that that the worst does happen:  Summer is lost at sea and Iris, traumatised and grieving, sails Bathsheba  to the Seychelles, there to enter into a deception so overwhelming that she doesn’t know how to sustain it.  Iris, the bad twin, finally has everything her good twin had – but does she want it?

            Ms Carlyle is a smart and observant writer;  all her characters are chillingly credible and the plotting is first-class, but there’s a shocking twist to the tale at the end that leaves a bitter taste:  one hopes there will be a sequel so that someone will get what they deserve!  FOUR STARS