Century Archives

Book review: Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant

February 11, 20262 min read

Dead Heat by Sabine Durrant is the first book I’ve read by the English author since 2018. I absolutely loved her very twisty Under Your Skin, which I read over a decade ago. Here 51-year old journalist Matt is staying in a guest cottage in Greece after losing his job and girlfriend when he becomes embroiled in a love triangle (or is that rectangle?) involving long-term friends, Adam and Celia, and a mega-rich newcomer to their usually peaceful seaside haven.

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Book review: Death in the Arctic by Tom Hindle

January 16, 20253 min read

Death in the Arctic by Tom Hindle is brings us a golden age detective story combined with a locked room mystery. It’s set on an airship – the first of its kind and supposedly the size of a football field. I’m not a visual person so couldn’t picture it at all but I gather that’s massive and it mustn’t fly too high as it’s powered by propellers and afloat thanks to helium. As a complete aside I was extremely traumatised by the movie The Hindenburg when I was a child and still recall my horror that people knew they were about to be burned to death (or fall to it!), so there was a bit of a sense of the macabre for me here.

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Book review: Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons

December 7, 20242 min read

Murder for Busy People by Tony Parsons is the seventh in the series featuring detective and single dad, Max Wolfe. I assumed I’d missed more recent ones but discovered I’d read the sixth when it was released in 2019… so it’s been a while between books in this series (of which I’ve only read #1, #3, #6 and now #7). Wolfe’s daughter Scout seems to be ageing in real-time. She was eight in Taken and is now 12, almost 13, nevertheless I was quite surprised at the freedom she’s offered here given Wolfe certainly knows that London is not a particularly safe place.

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Book review: I Will Find You by Harlan Coben

March 10, 20232 min read

I Will Find You by Harlan Coben starts by introducing readers to David, a man in prison for murdering his son Matthew. He tells us he didn’t do it but didn’t fight the conviction because he blames himself anyway. David’s a likeable lead and though the book unfolds in first person, it occasionally dips into a second person narrative, as if he’s talking to us… so we know HE also knows most people in prison claim to be innocent.

He’s accepted his fate however until his former sister-in-law arrives with a photograph of a boy she believes to be Matthew – supposedly murdered by David five years earlier.

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Book review: The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell

July 3, 20224 min read

I hadn’t realised new release The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell was a sequel to the popular The Family Upstairs, published in 2019.

I’ve not read all of Jewell’s books but had read that one and one of our narrators was offering a bit of a recap and I thought, “That sounds familiar…” before going onto Goodreads to discover this was – in fact – a follow-up. I think – in all honesty – it works better having read the original. I didn’t remember the details but (reading my old review and some others on Goodreads) helped remind me of the backstory.

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Book review: The Match by Harlan Coben

March 22, 20223 min read

The Match by Harlan Coben is billed as Wilde #2. I was a smidge confused by this as I could not recall a ‘Wilde’ #1. I then realised I’d missed The Boy From the Woods so came into this without any backstory. And it didn’t matter at all.

Initially I thought it was going to be reminiscent of Linwood Barclay’s Find You First, which featured someone picking off family members with related DNA (discovered through an ancestry match type place). Happily however the DNA matches aren’t really the tipping point here, rather what brings Wilde into the mix.

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Book review: The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

July 20, 20213 min read

Many of the books I read unfold in dual timelines. Quite often decades apart. The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell offers three separate narratives, though only a year apart. It means secrets and lies haven’t had time to fester, but it means wounds are still fresh and grief is still palpable. Of course it may also mean the story is not yet over.

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Book review: The Whispers by Heidi Perks

July 18, 20212 min read

The Whispers by Heidi Perks is an intriguing read. It’s one of those books featuring a narrator who may – or may not – be reliable. On one hand they appear entirely normal and only worried about a missing friend, but on the other their behaviour seems excessive. Bordering on obsessive and increasingly worrying.

But then it seems that others are keeping secrets so we’re not entirely sure who to trust.

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