Review: "Black Water Rising"

There's something really special about reading a good thrilling book. One with a bit of crime, a bit of mystery and lots of thriller-elements - you know a book that makes you turn the pages faster and faster because you need, NEED, to know what happens next. 

"Black Water Rising" by Attica Locke is not one of those books. It wants to be, yes, but it's not. I picked it up last Saturday when the weather here in South London was gorgeous and really warm for a September day. My plan was to spend the entire afternoon on the balcony with a good book and I did. The book was not very good though. Actually it was really a disappointment, especially as it has had so much praise. 

The plot is good, it has a lot going for it. The main character is a young-ish lawyer by the name of Jay - he has a strong, intelligent wife, a lazy secretary and a traumatic past. On his wife Bernie's birthday, their romantic evening on the river is ruined when they fish a young, terrified woman out of the water. Although Jay is adamant not to become involved in what becomes an increasingly mysterious and threatening situation, he slowly but surely gets dragged in. Not just into the case of the young woman from the river but also in a union strike which his father-in-law, the reverend, is championing. The case of the young woman is by no means straight-forward and it brings out memories from Jay's politically active past which ended in disaster. 

So far so good. It all sounds really interesting. But somehow, somewhere, it all goes horribly wrong and it just becomes dull. Really, really dull. I'm not sure exactly what it is but I think it's quite possibly down to the main character. Jay painfully un-exciting. There is nothing, nothing, there to make me care about him. Actually that goes for most of the characters - the only exceptions being Jay's wife Bernie and her sister Evelyn who is a minor character. 

It was a struggle to finish this one, it didn't become interesting at any point and the characters never came to life. What a waste of a good plot and a sunny afternoon. 

Read it if: You can't fall asleep. 

Review: "Into The Darkest Corner" by Elizabeth Haynes

Some books are unputdownable. Not many. A few. This one is one of them. It is an absolutely gripping story and from the very first page I was hooked and kept on reading to find out more. It is a story about domestic abuse and the awful consequences that it can have, how life is never the same again. Genre-wise it is somewhere between a mental disorder novel and a psychological thriller but mostly it is the last one. 


Catherine spends her life catering to the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that is keeping her from living. By all means, she is surviving but living she is not. Every day she triple checks (or more) the locks on her door, her windows, the front door. If she fails to check it correctly, she has to do it all over again. And sometimes her world falls apart and she descends into a full-scale panic attack. The descriptions of living with OCD are scary in their truth, the way the disorder drives her life and dictates every little action. For a long time Catherine has been living alone with her disorder, not telling anyone about it though some are bound to have guessed it. Then a  new neighbour moves in, a psychologist, and he recognizes her symptoms and offers her a friendly shoulder to lean on and advice on how to get help. 


So far so good. 


The story is told in two tracks - one is set in 2008 and one in 2004. The Catherine in the 2004 story is a very different young woman. Outgoing, vivacious and full of life, she lives life as a single girl to the max - partying and having fun. Then she meets the gorgeous Lee who is very keen on going from date to full-on boyfriend and within months of their initial meeting, they are to all intents and purposes living together. However, something is not quite right. Lee is sometimes gone for days, working a job that he is very secretive about and sometimes Catherine gets the feeling that he is watching her, keeping tabs on her. 
Then one day he hits her for the first time and from then on the relationship becomes more and more violent until the day he almost kills her.... 


In 2008, Lee is a serving a three-year long prison sentence for the violence he inflicted on Catherine while she is serving a life-sentence in the prison that is OCD, worrying about the day when Lee will be released. 


This is a really really difficult book to read because it isn't (as so many psychological thrillers and crime fiction novels) something far off. This could happen to your or to your friends. Domestic abuse is an underreported crime that still smacks of taboo and I take my hat off to Haynes for having written such a strong novel about it. The description of the isolation that Lee manages to put Catherine in is what scared me the most - again because it was so incredibly believable. His psychopathic personality charms her friends into thinking that she is the one with the problem and thus he gets space, peace and quiet to beat her and treat her just as he wishes. 


Well-written, well put together with lots of page-turning moment and a good pace, this is the perfect read for a lazy weekend or to bring with you on holiday. 

Read it if: You are a fan of believable psyhcological thrillers. You prefer your crime fiction well-written and clever. You want to read a truthful representation of life with OCD. 

Review: "Smokeheads"

Is there such a thing as dude lit? If there is - and I think there is - then "Smokeheads" by Dough Johnstone must surely be part of that genre. It is such a dude-ish book, written by a guy for guys focusing on things that guys should like. So I am probably the wrong audience for this one and I have to say I didn't love it. It was alright but nothing special, nothing that made me want more.

The storyline is quite good though: A group of friends who all share a love of Scottish whiskey from far-away, misty islands go on a weekend road trip to celebrate whiskey. Kind of like "The Hangover" in the sense that everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. From the moment they step foot on the island, they make enemies and when you throw into the mix a whiskey-loving hottie, vengeful local police and liberal quantities of whiskey, it all becomes dangerous. Especially because these guys are such different characters that they are bound to get into fights.

It is doomed to go wrong and it does. One bad thing after another leads to death, destruction and a chase across a remote Scottish island. Not really my kind of fun to be honest.

Maybe I am just more of a French cinema girl than an action-packed road trip girl but this book didn't do it for me. Or maybe it is because the characters are wooden with no depth whatsoever. Or because the plot is seriously difficult to believe. Or because the storyline goes from "has potential" to "please just get this over with". Not sure but it wasn't for me.

Best thing about this book: It got me interested in whiskey!

Read it if: You drink a lot of "on the rocks"... or if your idea of a great night in is to rent any movie with one or more of the following elements: 1) Arnold Schwarznegger 2) Sylvester Stallone 3) liberal doses of car chases and violence