The Spy Coast, by Tess Gerritsen.

        

            Where do old spies go when it’s time to retire?  (always assuming they last that long.)  In Tess Gerritsen’s first novel in her new series, five of them have moved to a  small seaside town in Maine, on the North-Eastern Canadian border.  It’s a very tame life now for these ex-CIA veterans but they meet regularly and try to be content with their safe but boring new circumstances – until a strange woman – obviously from the agency – confronts one of their number at her home, full of questions that she has no intention of answering.  Maggie Bird is happy with her new life;  she has had a career of great danger and enormous rewards which led to the most tragic event in her life;  now she is content to live in peace on  the chicken farm she purchased, and has no intention of getting dragged into any ructions caused by the last (and worst) job she was on.  She sends the woman away with instructions not to come back.

            But she does:  as a corpse, laid out crucifixion-style with two bullets in her skull, all done while Maggie was meeting with the other exes for Martinis.  Her neighbour appraises her of this when he sees the police-car lights in Maggie’s driveway.  It would seem that Maggie and her friends are going to be dragged back into the old job with its old mysteries and those seeking revenge whether she wants it or not.  To make matters worse, the local (acting) Police Chief, Jo Thibodeau, is not satisfied with the friends’ version of what they were doing at the time of the murder:  drinking Martinis and calling themselves the Martini Club was not befitting the seriousness of the crime committed in Maggie’s driveway, and how come Maggie has the best security cameras that money can buy – for a chicken farm?  And Jo would appreciate it if she could show them the footage NOW, please, which only reveals an SUV with tinted windows and a heavily-disguised shape delivering the body.  Which satisfies no-one. And sends Jo Thibodeau away with the knowledge that somehow, some way, Maggie Bird and her friends know a lot more than they are saying and that makes her determined to find out what, and who they really are.   She may never have left Purity, Maine, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be good at her job, so there!  She’ll keep on digging whether they like it or not.

            Ms Gerritsen has written a perfect airport thriller, strong, believable protagonists,  (read the Author’s Note), mile-a-minute action, and a plot that takes us all over the world without losing its credibility. FIVE STARS

( And Book Two is available at your library:  ‘The Summer Guests.’  Can’t wait!)      

 

Sea Change, by Jenny Pattrick.

 

            Jenny Pattrick is New Zealand’s premier historical novelist – who hasn’t read ‘The Denniston Rose’ and ‘Heart of Coal’ - and IF you say to your shame ‘not me’-  then it’s time to start gorging yourselves on her lovely stories of early New Zealand and its turbulent history, BUT! 

            This is a contemporary novel, dealing with and exposing 21^st century problems and the differing solutions according to those with the power, and what’s available those who have none.

            A huge earthquake devastates the top of NZ’s South Island;  the damage and loss of life is huge and all the North Island’s first responders are sent to the worst-hit areas;  meantime, the quake has struck a small Kapiti Coast village not far from capital city Wellington – the damage from that was bad enough, but a huge tsunami has inflicted a fatal blow to property and people living close to the beach.  Those few whose houses are on higher ground fare better than others, like Lorna, a retired public servant, and her neighbour Toddy, a retired engineer – who is also blind.  And their next neighbour is Eru, 9 years old and an orphan:  his father was fishing in his dinghy when the tsunami rolled in. 

            When everyone eventually meets up at the school hall (still standing, but the school isn’t) there is a very disparate group:  those who want to stay and get electricity and communications up to speed again;  those who want to get out immediately – not so easy – there is only access by sea; two gay plumbers (the Plumbelles) who will try everything to get fresh water piped again if they can only find a source;  and several jack-of-all-trades including a brilliant engineer (‘but he’s a recluse!’) who are undaunted by the situation – if only they could get some assistance from Wellington, which is sending manpower, firepower and dollars to the worst-hit in the South Island.

            Eventually the word from Wellington is that the village is too inaccessible to save:  there will be a managed retreat.  Which is not acceptable to everyone who has worked so hard to get everything up and running again, and definitely NOT cricket when it is found that the ‘managed retreat’ is to enable Lorna and Toddy’s very rich neighbour Adrian Stokes to eventually buy up cheaply all the undamaged land to build an exclusive private resort:  betrayal of the worst kind, and so easily done with friends in the right places.

            Jenny Pattrick has charmed us yet again with a story of triumph over adversity that could be ho-hum and mawkish in other hands;  instead she shows us all what logic, kindness and common sense can achieve when backs are against the wall – in a very logical, kind and common-sensical way!  SIX STARS.

                

 

The Valley, by Chris Hammer.

    
          Chris Hammer is a happily familiar face for all the tens of thousands of Crime novel fans in this part of the world, knowing as we do that each new book is always meticulously plotted and characterised, and that each story is a microcosm of contemporary Australian lives and times.  He has several returning characters to the differing themes in his books;  in this story we meet again with Nell, short for Narelle (what a good Aussie name that is!) Buchanan and Ivan Lucic, Detectives who didn’t work together very well at all a few titles ago;  now the rough edges have been worn away and they are a polished and effective team who always get their man.  Eventually.

            They have been sent to a central NSW valley where a local, a young and wealthy entrepreneur has been found dead, drowned in a beautiful lake not far from where he had established a luxury eco-resort for the wealthy and jaded to recharge their batteries.  It hasn’t taken long to confirm that blunt-force wounds to the head rendered him unconscious when he was put in the water:  drowning completed the job.  His young wife (his second) seems more business-like than mourning – she has a business to run, after all!  And the local businessmen of his acquaintance don’t appear to be mourning his passing.

            And there seems to be a secondary scandal and mystery pertaining to the abandoned goldmine halfway up the escarpment;  the woman who owned it threw herself off those cliffs when her husband’s body was found murdered in the depths of the mine.  But the more questions Nell and Ivan ask, the more mysteries they expose, including Nell’s parentage:  she was adopted as a baby and never knew her biological parents.  Now, that is about to change.  By birth, she is a local, too!  The clues to the victim’s seed wealth all seem to point to the abandoned and played-out mine, but countless searches for any gold have revealed nothing over the years, and the mystery of Nell’s parentage is almost more than she can cope with;  however, dogged determination as always, solves everything satisfyingly at the end  -  as it should. 

            And as always, Chris Hammer produces a highly satisfying page-turner, full of red herrings and pretzel turns and, particularly when describing The Valley, a lyrical and beautiful hymn to the wonderful Australian landscape and wildlife.  We can only pray that it stays that way.  FIVE STARS. 

 

The Things We Didn’t Know, by Elba Iris Pérez.

 

       
     Eight-year-old Andrea and her six-year-old brother Pablo are on their way to Puerto Rico with their mother.  Mama has grown terminally discontented with life in a U.S. East Coast mill town – which isn’t even a town;  she can’t even shop for food, or socialise with any friends unless her husband Luis takes her in his beloved Oldsmobile, and he will not hear of her learning to drive:  she is effectively his prisoner, subject to every one of his whims.  Which doesn’t mean that he’s a bad man;  he just loves his job at the paper mill, loves his family and doesn’t know why she doesn’t love her life too, which is so much better than Puerto Rico.

            The only way to convince him that all is not well is to leave, to return to the life they had before America, Land of the Free, started singing its siren song – sadly, her children don’t feel the same way, especially when Mama immediately leaves them in the care of her sister Cecilia, a very kind and loving woman who would rather be a man, and lives as one.  It takes several weeks before they are used to their new living arrangements, gradually looking forward to starting school again in a strange environment but, just when they are starting to enjoy their new life with their manly aunt their Mama turns up with a new boyfriend and another sister for them to stay with.  And this sister is very poor to the extent of not having enough for them to eat:  their future looks grim, until Cecilia manages to contact their father – this criminal selfishness of a mother who refuses to mother her children has to stop, and Luis arrives to right the awful wrong his wife has created.

            But this lovely story is about much more than a marriage;  it’s about racism in all its forms:  aunt Cecilia isn’t despised in some quarters because she’s lesbian but because she’s negrito – her father was black and so is she.  Andrea finds that as she grows up, despite being blonde and blue-eyed by some genetic quirk, ‘white’ Americans regard her with suspicion, her first boyfriend’s mother as a typical example.  And her own beloved Papa is horrified and furious that she is choosing to marry a black man – never mind that he’s a University Professor:  he has fuzzy hair!

            Ms Pérez’s debut novel starts in the turbulent 60’s and covers some brutal times and huge changes in American society, especially when so many young men returned from Vietnam in wheelchairs – or coffins.  The Land of the Free is still in a state of discomfit and uncertainty, but there is always hope for it as long as they have writers like her to tell its truths.  FIVE STARS.    

 

 

When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole,

By Geoff Parkes

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            Just as Aussie Noir has become an established genre in South Pacific Crime writing, New Zealand writers have taken up the baton to produce their own brand of bushy WhoDunnits – and doing pretty well at it too, thank you, as evidenced by (amongst others) Catherine Chidgey, Michael Bennett and Rose Carlyle’s success, for our beautiful country has myriad spaces and places to create mysteries and murders galore.

            Such a place in the 80’s is the small Waikato town of Nashville – fictitious for the purposes of Geoff Parkes’s debut novel, but typical of small towns everywhere:  everyone knows everyone else;  they all love to gossip, and they can be forgiven for that for not much happens of note in Nashville – until a young hitch-hiker goes missing, a Finnish girl on her OE, who was temporarily working as a roustabout in a shearing gang on one of the local farms.  And this is not the first hiker to disappear in the town:  a couple of years before a young woman was last seen just out of town trying to hitch a ride;  someone unknown picked her up and she was never seen again.  The locals are starting to mutter about a Serial-Killer, gossip rubbished by the local police, but they don’t seem to have any clues either, even though HotShot detectives have been sent to investigate from the big cities. 

            It’s a mystery alright, especially for Otago law student Ryan Bradley, home for the holidays and working in the same shearing gang – and lover of Sanna, the missing girl:  he is frantic with worry for her but doesn’t believe he can do anything to help, so stays silent about their affair, thinking that no-one else knows.  Which is rubbish:  someone always knows something.  And he’s mystified by the change in his friendship with Phillip Nash;  growing up they were like brothers, peas-in-a-pod;  now, Phillip avoids him and only speaks if he has to, the excuse being is that Ryan thinks he’s too good for his old friends ‘now that he’s a lawyer-boy’:  there’s lots of anger simmering just under the surface, and lots of grubby secrets, too, which makes for a very satisfactory attempt at plot twists and turns.

            To reveal any more would spoil things, for it’s not just Ryan in the frame, and not all the characters are credible, which is a shame.  Having said that, what I really enjoyed about Geoff Parkes’s writing was the fact that his protagonists are a very good cross-section of society, with all its foibles, weaknesses – and loving-kindness.  FOUR STARS.     

 

Spirit Crossing, by William Kent Krueger.

           

      
      Once again it’s good to meet Cork O’Connor, longtime First Nations investigator and upholder of the law (when he’s not running his burger bar) in beautiful Minnesota, one of the Northern states bordering Canada.  Life is pretty much the same as it was in ‘Fox Creek’, except that his beloved daughter Annie has returned from hard charity work in the barrios of Guatemala, bringing Maria, her new partner with her.  They are returning for the wedding of Cork and Rainey’s son Stephen; it will be a joyous occasion for them all, except that Annie has a secret
that she doesn’t want to reveal until after the festivities are over – in fact she doesn’t want to disclose anything:  she’s just glad to be home once again, in the bosom of her loving family;  everything will be revealed eventually anyway, nothing stays secret for long.

            Meantime, it’s blueberry-picking season – as we all know there is nothing more delicious than those heavenly fruits on one’s breakfast and in pancakes etc, so Cork and his little grandson Waboo (little rabbit) are on their way to a secret site by a cabin in the woods once owned by an old Finnish man who used to swap blueberries for other kinds of food (who needs money when you can use the barter system?).  As Cork thought there is a considerable stash of blueberries, but there is something else which reveals the fact that little  Waboo has a gift for speaking with the dead – which he does by a mound covered with blueberries.  The young Lakota girl dumped in a shallow grave wants Waboo to tell her how to find The Path of Souls.  And it’s not long before the old Finn’s cabin reveals another terrible secret:  another murdered girl, this time from a prominent white family, and it doesn’t take long before the huge publicity following the white girl’s death, that Waboo’s identity is revealed and he has to go into hiding for his life, not only a victim of publicity but to keep him safe from the murderers of the girls:  if he can talk to dead girls, what can he say about the murderers to police?

            Meantime, a huge new oil pipeline is being constructed through tribal land (‘Drill, baby, drill!’) much to Ojibwe outrage, and furious protests have ignited hatred all along its route:  there is much for Cork and his family to navigate and try to change even though the class and racism cards are strongly stacked against them.  They have a strong and faithful ally in William Kent Krueger – long may he record the myriad injustices – and victories – that First Nations people receive.  FIVE STARS.    

 

Precipice, by Robert Harris.

 

            ‘The Shot That Was Heard Around the World’:  Gavrilo Princip, a young Serbian Nationalist and leader of a rebel group assassinates the heir to the Austro/Hungarian Empire and his wife, thus starting the First World War. Austria’s traditional ally Germany rallies its forces and attacks Belgium and France and their treaty partner Britain reluctantly starts recruiting troops for the war that everyone thinks will be ‘over by Christmas’.

            Meantime, Britain’s Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is enjoying a great wave of popularity for his strong leadership and cabinet, not least First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and Secretary for War Lord Kitchener, surely an unbeatable combination. 

            And Asquith is also enjoying – and is happily enslaved by – a passionate affair with 26 year-old Venetia Stanley, a much younger socialite of aristocratic birth with which he shares secret communications from his overseas ambassadors;  Venetia and her common-sense approach to huge military problems helps him to have a more clear-eyed view, especially about other members of his cabinet.  She has become indispensable to him in life and in love.- the only problem being his cavalier treatment of the decrypted telegrams and documents that he shows her on their many drives around London – he does insist on several occasions on screwing up these official state secrets and throwing them out the car window.

            Which is hardly a good look as people, in the first great flush of patriotism, hand the telegrams and state secrets into Scotland Yard, and a discreet investigation is obliged to begin, revealing that the affair is common knowledge among the Great and the Good, in fact it’s nearly last week’s news amongst the aristocracy – except for Margot, Asquith’s strident, social-climber wife:  she has also known about his affairs, but this is the first time he has been so impossibly, uncontrollably smitten.  This whole thing must stop!

            Meantime, the War rages on;  casualty lists are horrific, especially since Germany has started using Poison gas, and a new offensive touted by Winston against the Dardanelles is proving to have the opposite desired effect:  Gallipolli has been an exercise in supreme carnage.  Asquith must pull himself together, Vanessa must marry someone – not quite anyone, for she is an aristocrat, but Asquith’s government musn’t fall:  everything depends on sound leadership to beat the Hun, and distractions like socialites can’t be allowed:  in short, Asquith has to show a bit of Stiff Upper Lip – which he does, at the eleventh hour.

            Robert Harris has written superbly of this fraught time, using all the correspondence from Asquith to his darling Venetia, plus many of the decrypted messages and telegrams which are still in existence, and he has endowed all main players in the drama exciting new life, especially demonstrating that Love doesn’t always Conquer All – sometimes it can produce the opposite effect!  FIVE STARS.      

Julia's 2024 Top Reads

 

I have a Special Little List ……… 

(which I should have prepared MUCH earlier) of 2024’s Top Reads on Libraries Horowhenua’s review blog, Great Reads for Great Readers.

1.    The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons, by Karin Smirnoff

2.    Horse, by Geraldine Brooks

3.    Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett

4.    The Hunter, by Tana French

5.    All the Words we Know, by Paul Nash

6.    Fox Creek, by William Kent Krueger

7.    City in Ruins, by Don Winslow

8.    Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, by Benjamin Stephenson

9.    James, by Percival Everett

10.            Long Island, by Colm Toibin

11.           Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life, by Helen Fisher

12.           The Trees, by Percival Everett

13.           The Spy, by A. J. Choudhury

14.           The Mountain King, by Anders de La Motte

15.           Table for Two, by Amor Towles

16.           Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson

17.           Patea Boys, by Airana Ngarewa

18.           Nine Girls, by Stacey Gregg         Junior Fiction

19.           Tell Me Everything, by Elizabeth Strout

20.           Juice, by Tim Winton

These are truly great reads as every great reader will know, and aren’t we all blessed that our exceptional library enables us to be the Great Readers that we aspire to be. 

The staff and volunteers at Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-po wish you all a most happy and healthy 2025.  (And some summer sunshine would be nice!)

 

Nine Girls, by Stacy Gregg.            Junior Fiction.

 

            Stacy Gregg is enormously popular for her equine novels for children, but she takes a different tack his time with an exploration of her own origins, so successfully that she won first prize for this title at the New Zealand Book Awards.  And deservedly so:  it has just the right mixture of everything – comedy, pathos, friendships old and new, and most importantly, family solidarity, for we all need to be part of an enveloping, loving kinship – whether we like it or not!

            It is 1978 and Titch is wondering how she has gone from living in Remuera, Auckland’s most expensive suburb, to residing in a much humbler house next to her Nan (her Maori Mum’s Mum) in Ngaruawahia – a sorry little town halfway between Auckland and Hamilton, and all because her Geologist Dad lost his job because JBL, the company for which he worked folded in the stock market crash.  They are no longer privileged, pãkehã and rich, and instead of their own private pool they have to go to the scummy local pool or swim in the mighty Waikato river.  Which is not a good idea because of the strong currents.   And several of her many new cousins reckon there’s a Taniwha – a hungry river monster -  in there, too, so she better watch out.  Yeah, right.  They’d say anything to upset the new kid on the block, but they also say that there’s buried gold on one of the derelict old farms in the area and, despite Titch’s scornful disbelief, she can’t help but get excited over the family rumours of betrayal and heartbreak a century ago;  in fact this is her first introduction to her mother’s family History – her Whakapapa – and it is Titch’s history too.

            And the plot can only thicken when Titch releases an enormous eel from a trap in the river;  it seemed to be calling her, and sure enough, when she let him out he had plenty to say, especially about how slow she was to get him out, for naturally he was no ordinary eel, but the Taniwha of legend, and he had lots of things to fill her in on about her history, because they were part of the same family, eh!  And the stories are tragic;  treachery and deceit from the Pãkehã Governor Grey, who wanted all the Waikato land but not the Maori who farmed it, and murder and injustice that had never been forgotten, as if it ever could.

            ‘Nine Girls’ covers five years of Titch’s life admirably;  it has a glossary of Maori words and terms for those not familiar with Te Reo, and a great love for Whanau (family) and country, especially Ngaruawahia, that is evident on every page of this lovely, unforgettable book:  suitable for kids of all ages – SIX STARS!   

              

         

           

 

No one Will Know, by Rose Carlyle.

 

            Rose Carlyle writes thrilling thrillers.  Every ingredient required for success – suspense, horror, characters-who-aren’t-what-they-seem, and an indomitable protagonist who survives an ending with the final twist on the last page is present by the bucket-load.  (Can you tell how much I enjoyed this book?  It’s not often that I try to read something in a single sitting, and I didn’t succeed, but two days is pretty good.)

            Eve Sylvester hasn’t had a good start in life, but lately she believes she is being rewarded with some happiness at last:  crewing on an ocean-going yacht with a man she eventually loves, exploring wonderful destinations, and a marriage proposal from Xander who has arranged for her to meet his parents when they dock in Sydney:  what could possibly go wrong?

            Naturally, everything.

            On the way to the fateful family lunch, Xander is killed in a freak car accident and Eve is injured, but finds that she is pregnant.  As well as being rejected as a fortune-hunter by Xander’s family, she is stunned with grief but is determined to manage somehow:  she will be mother to Xander’s child if it is the last thing she does – they will both survive, but how?

            The seemingly miraculous answer comes in the shape of an offer by a very rich couple who seem to know her circumstances better than she does:  wife Julia cannot have children.  To inherit a very old family property in Rumania she must bear a child:  if Eve could spend her pregnancy on their remote property off coastal Tasmania, after the secret birth she could be the child’s Nanny, never having to leave its side.  A win-win for everyone – what could possibly go wrong?  Except everything.

            For a start, Eve notices too much about her surroundings, which are sumptuous but so remote that she would never be able to leave without the couple’s permission should she change her mind;  there are unexplained arrivals of various big boats at the island’s marina where mysterious deliveries and collections are made.  And the staff closest to Julia and her husband Chris are very hostile and protective.  Eve is trapped in a rich little cocoon:  what will happen to her after the birth?  Nothing good, she’s certain!

            Ms Carlyle has proven that she’s no One Hit Wonder – she carried me along on a wave of ‘will she won’t she’ that nearly drove me mad enough to read the ending before I’d got there;  fortunately, I didn’t succumb to my baser instincts and lasted the distance, giving myself a well-deserved pat on the back for being strong.  Well done, me!  FIVE STARS.