Blood Line by Theo Baxter

 

I made a mistake and didn’t notice that Blood Line was book 2 in a series. The beginning of this book was devoted to tying up loose ends from the first one so I couldn’t get into the story until that was done. Once it got underway, however, I found it was well worth the wait. 

This was a very good detective story with a pleasingly unusual plot, and interpersonal relationships similar in style to a Karin Slaughter novel. The two main characters, Marcy Kendrick and Angel Reyes, whose background stories were developed in the first book of the series but are also brought up to date in this book, are faced with solving a possible murder/suicide with few clues on first reading. A woman has died and the only two witnesses to her death are her fourteen year old twin sons who have been rendered mute and are unable to be questioned until they can become capable of speech.

There is intrigue and lots of action as Marcy and Angel follow a particularly disturbing line of inquiry. Romantic tension is always there in the background as well, to keep things interesting. 

I found this a very satisfying read and I will look for Skin Deep, the first book in the series as it looks like a lot has happened in the lives of Marcy and Angel and all the supporting characters in the story to get to where they are now.

I’m happy to have discovered Theo Baxter!

Published by Inkubator Books.

The Fragility of Light by Heather S Lonczak

 

This utterly engrossing book is an examination into a specific mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, through the deeply moving, deeply personal accounts of the main character, Sunny; her husband, Joshua, and her father, Peter. Sunny has graduated with honours from her chosen university, has a “perfect job” with a publishing house, loves and is loved by Joshua and Peter, and her grandparents, her Baba and Papa, and she loves and cherishes her cat, Chester. Although she had always been “bookish and shy” and seemed unapproachable to most young men, Joshua was enchanted by her and gradually won her heart.

Sunny’s mother died when Sunny was eight years old. She adored Baba and Papa who were Holocaust survivors and her father’s parents, and she immersed herself in Holocaust literature in order to understand their suffering and their sadness over the loss of their extended families.

It is from this background that Heather Lonczak unfolds the story of Sunny’s illness, in such a compelling way that I found it very hard to tear myself away from the book. It is a long book which also encompasses the lives of Baba and Papa, as well as Gracie, Sunny’s mother. All of this is important in order to understand Sunny’s illness. An interesting aspect to the story from the point of view of someone living outside America is that the costs of medical treatments in that country have to be met by insurance policies which form part of wages packages; whereas Australians who don’t have private health insurance are covered by Medicare.

I read The Fragility of Light as an ebook, thanks to Heather Lonczak and Net Galley but I think it would be perfect as a hard copy; there is so much in it that bears dipping into and re-reading. 

Published by Ivy Lane Press.

The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson,

 

The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson is a book of epic proportions spanning the years 1940 to 1989 and ranging in scope through England, Germany, Portugal and back to England. It tells of spies and counter-spies in neutral Portugal; Germany’s race to build atomic powered weapons, and the ruthlessness of the British, German and Russian intelligence agencies throughout World War Two and the Cold War.

It is also a story of the complicated personal lives behind all of those scenes, full of tremendous depth and colour. At the soul of the book is the fateful, heart-wrenching love story between Andrea Aspinall, a young English mathematician recruited as a spy while at Oxford, and Karl Voss, a German military attaché she meets in Lisbon. Robert Wilson’s beautiful writing brought them to life for me in such a way that I can’t imagine I’ll ever forget them.

This is simply a brilliant story, filled with drama, suspense, intrigue, sadness and, ultimately, love. I read it first on Kindle and then bought it as a second-hand paper back published in 2001 by Harper Collins. I consider it a treasure and an absolute 5 star read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Love from Venice by Gill Johnson

 

Love from Venice is Gill Johnson’s utterly fascinating memoir of the summer of 1957 which she spent in Venice caring for the two older sons of the Conte and Contessa Brandolini in their magnificent 15th century palazzo on the Grand Canal. Gill had become romantically involved with David Ross, an architect, but when David left to work in Paris Gill decided to give up her job “shifting postcards, posters and calendars” at the National Gallery to look for an adventure of her own.

Gill entered into the glittery, luxurious life of the gracious and kind Conte and Contessa. Her charges were two impeccably mannered, always beautifully dressed little boys and her main duty was to make sure they spoke only English when she was with them. A thrilling, to me, part of the memoir was the friendship Gill struck up with my heroine, Nancy Mitford, at the beach on the island of Lido where Gill took the boys each day, accompanied by a retinue of servants armed with picnic baskets and whatever was necessary to make their cabana comfortable. 

Gill has included extracts of letters she wrote to David from Venice and from Switzerland when she was there with the family. Gill also writes about her parents. Post WW2 London had left them feeling depressed; of their former servants only their old nanny remained and Gill’s mother mourned their  former lifestyle, making her father feel inadequate while he drifted about “waiting for things to improve”. Gill’s escape to her “golden summer” was a brave step out into a completely different world and how lucky she was to have been able to  take it.

Published by Hodder & Stoughton