The Secrets of Pain - Phil Rickman

‘The Secrets of Pain’ is part of Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series, books that tell the story of a single mother who retrains to become a vicar in village close to the border with Wales. As well as having to break into a tight knit rural community and dealing with the prejudices and opinions about women priests, she is also then appointed as diocese Deliverance Consultant (that's Exorcist to you and me!).

The books are paranormal thrillers telling the stories of Merrily’s encounters with the paranormal and the evil that can be found woven into the fabric of daily living.  The books also tend to draw on the ancient past and traditions of the area and ‘The Secrets of Pain’ is no exception.

The book starts as the village of Ledwardine is preparing for Easter.  The spring is slow coming that year and the weather is bitter.  Murders are committed that at first seem to have no connection to each other.  A prosperous local farmer is found savagely slaughtered and covered in blood in his own field, while two young migrant workers are found dead in the city.  DI Frannie Bliss has to work his way through a tangled web of crime and local rivalries to find the connection, only to discover that his own private life has been compromised and it has become personal.

Merrily is drawn into this web through an old acquaintance that seems to be hiding a dark secret that he cannot talk about but is obviously weighing him down.  He is the chaplain at the nearby SAS base and is found dead a few days later on a steep path on the hillside. Did he die of natural causes or was this suicide?  If so, what terrible knowledge drove him to his death?  Merrily discovers that some of his SAS colleagues may have embraced an old cult from Roman times that celebrated being a warrior and perhaps were even performing the ancient rites.

Merrily’s daughter Jane became involved when she got mixed up with a sleazy banker from the city who was staying at the new resort that catered for townies who wanted to become part of the hunting, shooting and fishing crowd.  But her discovery of a dead cock that he had dumped in a rubbish bin triggers suspicions that somebody in the district has revived the cruel sport of cock fighting.  As she tries to find out where this is taking place and who is behind it, will she find that her new acquaintance is actually involved in something much darker and much older?

The story takes us into the ancient Roman past of the area and the more recent history of the SAS. One of the major themes of the book is blood sacrifice as Merrily prepares for a Good Friday meditation based on the writings of Julian of Norwich about the crucifixion.  But had some of these hard bitten SAS men taken up rituals involving a very different form of blood sacrifice? Had the beliefs of the ancient Mithras cult permeated the closed, secretive ranks of the SAS? 

As Easter grows closer can Merrily unravel the tangled trail behind the deaths that have taken place before someone else gets killed? Or will someone close to her pay a heavy price for their investigations and  interference?

'The Secrets of Pain' is a long book that is heavy on detail and description, which at times feels a bit ponderous and sometimes as I was reading I wished that he would just get on with the story. The book is, however, beautifully written with a lot of interesting historical detail. However, I found that the tension didn't build was well as it could because of the length and detail and I would have preferred a little more action as they say.

The book does work as a standalone read, but if you haven’t read any of the earlier Merrily Watkins books then you might enjoy it more if you start reading from the beginning of the series, as you will get to know the characters and the background.  And surely by now Jane should know not to get into cars with strange men that she doesn't trust?

You will need quite a few lunches to get through this one, so stock up the fridge or book a seat in your local sandwich bar and ask them to keep your coffee mug topped up.

Awakening - S J Bolton

This is not a book to read if you have a snake phobia!  In Awakening by S J Bolton, Clara Benning is a young woman who has always sought to hide herself away from people after a tragic childhood accident left one side of her face badly scarred.  She moved to a remote cottage in an isolated, rural English village to be on her own as much as possible, working as a vet at the local animal rescue hospital.

Not much happens in this sleepy village, aside from a group of rowdy teenagers making noise late at night and indulging in some petty vandalism.  So the village is shocked when one of the elderly residents is taken into hospital after being bitten by an adder, and Clara is then taken by surprise when she is called out one night to assist in removing snakes that have suddenly appeared in one of the local houses. She initially thought that finding an adder in the cradle of a newborn baby was the worst horror she would have to sort out, but the discovery of a deadly taipan, one of the most venomous snakes in the world dramatically changes the stakes.

Clara takes the deadly snake to renowned young herpetologist Sean North for positive identification, and on finding out that the elderly gentleman who had been bitten had far too high a concentration of snake venom in his bloodstream for a single adder to have been responsible, they have to start considering whether this was actually a murder.

So what part does the creepy old Witcher house have to play?  It is supposedly empty, but dark, shadowy figures have been seen at the windows, and Clara starts to believe that her old acquaintance, Albert Witcher, is not really dead after all.  Then there is the mystery of the church that was burned out in 1958, killing several of the villagers.  Why were the emergency services not called  for several hours after the blaze started and why will no one talk about it?

As more elderly village folk get killed and there are more terrifying incidents with snakes, Clara is trapped in a desperate game to find information on what is really going on in the village before more people get killed.  Most of the villagers are not talking, and several of the shadowy Witcher family have supposedly moved away and dropped out of view. The village is built in an area where there are many natural watercourses, old mine workings and secret tunnels, which our intrepid heroine Clara runs around in the dark of the night, trying to find the evidence she needs.  But all the clues seem to point back to the creepy old Witcher house, and Clara will have to brave the dark and the decay of the old building to find out what is really going on

As the finger of suspicion is pointed firmly at Clara as the murder suspect, she finds support in Matt, a local detective, and from Sean North, the charismatic TV reptile specialist.  But as Clara finds out more about what really happened in the Church, and the torture of an innocent man, the noose begins to tighten and her very life is in danger.  Can she clear her name and save the life of Matt, the first man that she has ever been attracted to?

Very creepy and detailed horror story and you will learn more about snakes, strange Roman execution customs and American charismatic religious leaders, than you perhaps want to know! After reading this you might want to change your locks before you find a taipan in your bed!  Definitely a book to be read under the bedclothes with a torch and a large supply chocolate!

Lost Souls - Lisa Jackson

Kristi Bentz is the daughter of a homicide cop in New Orleans and is a rather unfortunate young woman, as she has already survived vicious encounters with two serial killers.  You would think that this would have bred a bit of caution into the girl but no, after her convalescence from her last adventure she heads off to to study at All Saints College in Baton Rouge, a campus where four young girls has disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the past year.

Kristi wants to solve the case and write a book about it so, instead of being totally freaked out and heading for the hills like most of us, she happily settles into an apartment that was previously lived in by one of the missing girls.  Although she changes all the locks, she bizarrely leaves a window open day and night to allow a stray cat to come in and out, even though she feels 'watched' all the time.  She settles into life at College, determined to discover the fate of the missing students, and soon hears rumours of a mysterious cult on campus centred on vampires and blood letting.  All of the missing girls were signed up to the same English major courses, including one on 'Vampyrism' led by the mysterious Dr Grotto, so Kristi duly signs up for the same courses and tries to make friends with the other students.  She is soon confronted with mysteries to solve such as why do some of the girls wear vials of blood around their necks, what goes on in the creepy old Wagner House and why does she feel as though she is constantly being watched and followed.

One of the legacies of her traumatic experiences at the hands of psychopaths is that Kristi now sees colour leeching out of people as she is watching them, that she believes is predicting injury or death for them in the near future.  She tragically experienced this while saying goodbye to her father, and also while interacting with some of the other students on the All Saints campus, convincing her that they will be the next to disappear.

Another complication for Kristi is that her ex-boyfriend, Jay McKnight, is now one of her professors on a forensics course.  Will Kristi be able to face him again in class, or will she be plunged back once more into the maelstrom of her feelings for him?  Also what is the significance of the Morality plays staged at the College, how does the mysterious Dr Grotto fit in, and what are the other nervous students hiding?

As events start moving towards a climax, Kristi has to keep her wits about her or she too will become a victim, and suffer the same terrifying fate as the other missing girls.  Set in the atmospheric misty winter of historic Baton Rouge this should be a tense, fast moving thriller, but instead it is a ponderous, even tedious read, that I had trouble wading through to the end.

Lost Souls doesn't seem to know whether it is a thriller, a horror or a cheesy romance, and so tries to be all three, which doesn't really work. It is interesting that Lisa Jackson refers to herself as a romance writer on her website and that Lost Souls is under a category of 'romantic suspense' which might explain it. Kristi is one of those heroines who is supposedly ultra sexy, athletic, brave and very smart and yet does some incredibly stupid things to move the plot along.  I found it really hard to have any empathy for her and at the book's climax was not really bothered whether she survived the horrors inflicted on her or not. I like books with a supernatural theme and vampires, but this one just just came off as improbable and far fetched, especially when a couple of the characters have started calling themselves 'Vlad' and 'Elizabeth Bathory'.  There is also no building of tension or suspense in the writing, and it just plods on and on for way too many pages, so there is none of the sense of having to turn the next page or reading far into the night to see what happens that you get with the best books that you read.

If you do choose to read this book, I hope that you enjoy it, but you may need a very large bag of chocolate buttons to keep up your dopamine levels and a stiff gin or two to keep you going!

The Return of Captain John Emmett - Elizabeth Speller

That Captain John Emmett had been one of the few young men lucky enough to return from the carnage of the Great War only made it even more incomprehensible to his family and friends that he had apparently taken his own life. Although her brother had returned from the fighting of World War I mentally fragile and suffering from shell shock and was placed in a nursing home to recover, he had seemed to be  slowly improving in the weeks before his lifeless body was shockingly discovered lying in a lonely wood.

His sister Mary could not reconcile herself to the idea that her beloved brother could have committed suicide, so enlists the help of one of Captain Emmett's former school friends to investigate her his sudden death.  But Laurence Bartram has ghosts of his own to contend with, as he too had fought in this 'War to end all Wars' and while he was in France he had lost his young wife and baby in childbirth.

 But as Bartram starts his investigations, he discovers that there have been other mysterious deaths besides that of Captain Emmett's, and that they are all in some way linked to a tragic battlefield execution.  Can Bartram uncover the truth before there are any more deaths? And what really happened to Captain Emmett in his nursing home? And what is the significance of a shadowy group of young war poets?

Elizabeth Speller's novel evocatively conjures up the febrile atmosphere of the years immediately after the Great War, where people were trying to return to some semblance of a normal life even though most had lost sons, husbands and brothers on the battlefields. This is a novel about the secrets people hold and that every man or woman who returned from the war was irrevocably changed and had dark places in their hearts and minds where even their closest companions could not reach.

The story also charts the tenderness and growing relationship between Bartram and Mary, who is a young lady with her own secrets to hide.

These days we find it hard to comprehend that a whole generation of young men could lose their lives in a hail of machine gun fire and artillery shells in a wet, muddy field, or that soldiers who were little more than boys could be shot in the foggy early light of dawn for their perceived cowardice, but this books explores how people were trying to come to terms with this new reality and the problems and tests of faith that it threw up at them.

This book will take you straight back to those traumatic post-war years, so go and find yourself an old fashioned pub in London, and order yourself some hearty pie and mash with a pint of real ale for lunch while you read!

The Crocodile on the Sandbank - Elizabeth Peters

'The Crocodile on The Sandbank' is the first of a series of books by Elizabeth Peters that introduces us to the indomitable Amelia Peabody. The saga starts in 1884 when Amelia decides to use the money that she has inherited to travel to Egypt and indulge in her interest in excavating and Egyptology. Amelia is a straight-talking, no-nonsense kind of woman, who carries a trusty parasol to great purpose. Whilst on her journey through Europe to Egypt, she rescues a young lady called Evelyn Barton-Forbes. Evelyn, who is a much more ethereal, 'shrinking violet' type of young lady is duly appointed as Amelia's companion and the pair become devoted friends, despite or because of the fact that Amelia fondly bullies her and interferes in her life!

When they arrive in Egypt, the murder mystery unfolds as they encounter strange happenings, ancient mummies that roam the night, and the two Emerson brothers, Radcliffe and Walter.

At 32, Amelia believes that she is set to be a spinster for life, but can the inscrutable and irascible Radcliffe Emerson melt her heart? Will romance also blossom for Evelyn and Walter? Will the mysteries be solved and will their little party survive the dangers that beset them?

One to be read while taking afternoon tea at the British Museum, while one knows that one should really be studying their hieroglyphics texts! Cucumber sandwich anyone?

Tutankhamun - Nick Drake

Tutankhamun by Nick Drake is the second outing for Rahotep, Medjay officer and super sleuth in Thebes in the time of Egypt's 18th Dynasty. Rahotep is summoned from his bed in the early hours of the morning to attend the unusually gruesome murder scene of a young man. When the murderer strikes again, along with his faithful assistant Khety, he has to try and get inside the head of the murderer and find out what is motivating him.

As events spiral out of control, Rahotep is once again sucked into the very heart of Egyptian political life and intrigue, when he is summoned by the young queen Ankhesenamun, wife of pharaoh Tutankhamun to discover who has been leaving gifts and messages in the palace designed to terrify the royal couple. She needs him to find out who is behind this campaign of terror and fast!

Can the events in the city of Thebes and those in the palace be connected? Which of the powerful courtiers surrounding the pharaoh and his queen are implicated? Will Rahotep only discover the information he is seeking too late to prevent a major tragedy?

An atmospheric and detail filled murder mystery adventure set in Ancient Egypt - get your hammock out in the sun, chill a nice bottle of dry white and fill a bowl with grapes as you disappear for a few hours into another time and ancient culture.

Fractured - Karin Slaughter

A classy thriller from Karin Slaughter set in the torrid heat of late summer in Atlanta. Special Agent Will Trent walks into a crime scene where a teenage girl lies dead on the landing in a pool of blood, a young man who is believed to be the perpetrator has been killed in the hall and a misjudgement by the local police leads to the life of another young girl being put in grave danger.

Agent Trent has secrets of his own to hide, so is dismayed to be partnered for the the first time with detective Faith Mitchell. She in turn, has her own reasons to resent and mistrust Agent Trent, and as time starts to run out for the missing teenager, they have to try and find a way to work together to bring her home.

With many twists and turns, graphic portraits of violence and human cruelty, the plot delves into the darkest parts of the human psyche, and it is sometimes difficult to tell who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.

Not one to read if you've got got rare roast beef sandwiches for lunch and if you read it late at night - leave the light on!

The Laughter of Dead Kings - Elizabeth Peters

I have been reading Elizabeth Peter's novels now for many years, and have thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. 'The Laughter of Dead Kings' is the latest in the 'Vicky Bliss Murder Mystery' series. It reprises the characters of Vicky Bliss a tall, blonde American Professor of Art History, her erstwhile lover 'Sir John Smythe,' a former antiquities and art thief now going straight, and Schmidt, Vicky's madcap boss at the Museum of Art in Munich.

The plot centres around the theft of the mummy of one of Ancient Egypt's famous pharaohs from under the noses of the authorities in the Valley of the Kings. A desperate visit from an old friend, who is also an Inspector of Antiquities in Upper Egypt, begging for their help leads to Vicky, John and Schmidt pursuing leads from London, to Rome, to Berlin and finally to Egypt and the Valley of the Kings itself.

Throw in a handsome, charismatic Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, an agent called Suzi who pretends to be in love with Schmidt, and a thoroughly unexpected villain and you have an effervescent mixture of murder mystery and comedy, with a strong dash of romance thrown in!

A very easy read, so pack it for the pool or drag it out of your overstuffed handbag for a lunchtime read in the park!