Broken, by Don Winslow.

            What an absolute pleasure it is to read this latest  by Don Winslow, because the quality of his writing is so reliable.  The reader knows that there’ll be no slacking off because the author is bored with his characters or fed up with the plot – in these five short stories, the opposite is true as Mr Winslow thrills, charms and horrifies us with the richness and humour of his prose and the harsh and terrible reality of criminal greed and corruption, especially among those who paint themselves whiter than us all.

            ‘Broken’ is first, telling the story of a Police family:  Mum Eva operates the department switchboard, her husband has recently retired from the police and she has two sons who have taken his place;  son Andy is a high-flying Drug Squad detective, and younger brother Danny is a patrolman.  Danny is ‘The Nice One’.  The sensitive one.  And he is the one who is kidnapped from his patrol car, tortured and murdered because brother Andy sent the wrong message to a drug dealer.  Eva and her family want – need revenge, and she instructs Andy accordingly.  Danny is avenged, but nobody feels better for it:  as she knows all too well, 'it don’t matter how you come into the world, you leave it broken'.

            The next three stories are gems, comparatively gore-free and full of sly or laugh-out-loud humour;  with continuing characters,  con-men and thieves of varying intelligence, but the story that will stay with me permanently is ‘The Last Ride’, the story of Good Ole Texan Boy Cal Strickland, not much motivated to do anything except his job as a Border Guard – until he becomes incensed at the new law that came in via the new President (Hell, Cal voted for him!) that separates asylum-seeker refugees from their children, resulting in parents being deported, and their children permanently lost in ‘the system’.  This doesn’t sit at all well with Cal, particularly when he comes across a little 6 year-old Honduran girl in a cage:  WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIS COUNTRY??!!

            And Cal is so horrified by her circumstances that he, a law-abiding (former) Trump supporter, decides to take the law into his own hands, and attempt to return the little girl to her deported Mum – knowing that should he be successful, his life as he knows it will be over, for no-one humiliates Washington and gets away with it.

            Mr Winslow is an enormously powerful writer and he demonstrates with every new novel that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword.  This is a mighty book.  SIX STARS.

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins.

Young Adults.

          The acclaimed author of ‘The Hunger Games’ Suzanne Collins has done it again:  created another heart-stopping episode in her Dystopian fantasy series of America ‘After the War’, this time giving her millions of fans (including me!) a forerunner to Katniss Everdeen’s heroic exploits for her people in the first trilogy.

            In this prequel we follow the teenage life of President Snow – hard to believe such a man was ever a young man with normal hopes and dreams, but as a teenager, Coriolanus Snow (Ms Collins has a lot of fun with Latin names for her characters here) is no different from his other classmates at the Academy, an elite school in the Capitol, famed for producing future leaders – and he has a shameful secret:  despite living in a penthouse in one of the most desirable apartment buildings in the city, he, his Grandmother and cousin Tigris are struggling to put food on the table;  their family’s former rich holdings were all destroyed in the war, and Tigris has had to work long hours at menial work to keep the household afloat.  The Snows could not bear the humiliation and shame of their neighbours learning of their dire straits, so try to keep up appearances, and Coriolanus is very accomplished at presenting himself as that which he is not – rich.

            A prize-winning opportunity arises with the introduction of ‘mentoring’ tributes for the latest Hunger Games, providing back-up and support for whomever is chosen for Mentors to sponsor.  Initially Coriolanus is hugely disappointed in Lucy Gray Baird, his tribute from District Twelve – she doesn’t look like she’d last five minutes up against all the other desperate youngsters, though most of them do look half-starved and ill.  Oh well, time will tell, and it does:  readers are treated to another horrific, hair-raising and tragic account of the Hunger Games, resulting in victory for Lucy Gray, and humiliating disgrace for Coriolanus who, instead of realising his ambition of going to university, is shipped off to District Twelve as a lowly PeaceKeeper.

            And his rich, would-be friend Sejanus goes too, but for entirely different reasons:  he wants to escape from the Capitol, that hotbed of privilege and corruption, and join rebels that surely hide in District Twelve.  He wants to live a peaceful, honourable life some day. 

            Ms Collins brilliantly conducts us all yet again through a tightly plotted and suspenseful adventure that juggles ambitions, excuses and rationalisation with morals, principles and ideals:  guess who comes out on top?  SIX STARS  

Magpie Lane, by Lucy Atkins.

            A Scottish Nanny is being interviewed by two detectives in the university city of Oxford:  they wish to know her version of events leading up to the disappearance of her eight-year-old charge, Felicity, the daughter of a new, hugely influential and charismatic College Master.  What is the child like?  Has she many friends?  Does she ‘get on’ with her new, pregnant stepmother, glamorous Mariah?  Is she still grieving for her mother, dead for four years?  For Felicity suffers from a number of psychological problems, not least ‘selective mutism; she communicates with no-one except her father – and that seldom because of the demands of his job and social life.

            Dee is eager to answer their questions accurately;  the sooner they can find her damaged little girl, the better – but she gradually sees that the questions take a sinister turn, one slanted by Felicity’s parents to portray Dee as having a negative influence on the child, innocently caused by  gradually winning Felicity’s trust with affection and support, virtues spectacularly lacking in the little girl’s life.  Felicity now ‘speaks’ to Dee reasonably often, even less to her father, and never to Mariah:  it’s painfully clear where her loyalties lie.

An added and frankly eerie complication is that the ancient house they have been allocated seems to have more than its fair share of Things That Go Bump In The Night, and Mariah’s attempts to redecorate in cool Nordic colours (she’s from Denmark) horrify the other Oxford Dons, stout supporters of 400 year old traditions:  could they have given this illustrious position to someone Gravely Unsuitable?

Ms Atkins takes us on an intimate tour of the great city, bastion of all that is noble in Western thought, ‘of history, literature, philosophy, politics, art and scientific discovery’, but she cleverly presents quite a different side to those who frequent its dreaming spires:  lofty thought still descends regularly into dog-eat-dog rivalry, arrogance and ignoble disapproval.  This is no place for Felicity’s spectacularly dysfunctional family, still less for her, and the new information that a child may have been murdered in Felicity’s bedroom a century before fills Dee with dread: are they haunted, and where is her poor, damaged, mute little girl?

Ms Atkins has created an intelligent and fascinating mystery, with strong, credible characters and a pace that doesn’t falter;  add to that a wealth of intriguing historical details about Oxford luminaries of the past, and we have the perfectly written ingredients for a great reading experience.  FIVE STARS         

Crooked River, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

            I have been languishing on my chaise-longue (not really:  I don’t have one), in a decline because I have been deprived for too long of the latest adventures of fearless, resourceful and brilliant FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast – what have Preston and Child been doing?  Having a holiday?   At the very least they should have been satisfying their legions of fans with a bloodthirsty new mystery that only that silver-haired, silver-tongued and silver-eyed polymath could solve.  The wait has been disappointingly long:  I shall say nothing more, except that it’s about time!

            Our hero and his mysterious ward Constance Greene (she wears a lot of organdy;  he wears a white silk suit, making him resemble an Albino Drug Lord) are enjoying a luxurious vacation on an unnamed island off the coast of Florida, when they are visited by his new superior ADC Walter Pickett:  Pendergast’s help and input are needed ASAP as dozens of shoes of the same variety have drifted onto the shore of two of Florida’s most charming off-shore island tourist beaches.  This would be minor news – but for the fact that each shoe is filled with a foot, amputated in the crudest possible fashion.  Needless to say, Pendergast’s curiosity is indeed aroused and he swings into action, first recruiting FBI Agent Coldmoon, his colleague from ‘Verses for the Dead’.  Agent Coldmoon is vacationing too, and is most reluctant to be involved – unless he’s an equal partner:  none of this junior colleague shit – he wants recognition for nearly getting totalled in the Everglades.  It’s time to acknowledge his talent.

            Well, if that’s the price, so be it.  Agent Pendergast knows how and when to relent:  as we all know, there are many different ways to skin a cat, and he, Coldmoon and Constance are launched on another hair-raising, bloodthirsty quest for answers, including the fact that whatever knowledge they glean is available also to a very formidable enemy:  everything they find out has been hacked. 

            As the mystery gradually reveals itself the danger multiplies ten-fold, with Pendergast’s life within an inch of being snuffed out (again!), but Coldmoon demonstrates his worth as a true partner, and Constance appears as the Cavalry – in the nick of time, naturally, slaying all before her.  What a woman!  And where did she learn to operate (let alone carry – she’s a slight wee thing!) a military machine gun?  Well, as we all know, all things are possible in a Pendergast adventure;  the trick is to make it believable – and above all, entertaining:  Preston and Child are masters at it.  FIVE STARS.