The Black Loch – Peter May

Fin Macleod, who featured as the detective in May’s earlier Isle of Lewis trilogy, is no longer in the force, nor on the island. He is in Glasgow working for the police in a civilian role monitoring the seedier aspects of cyber-crime. It is unrewarding and is putting a strain on his marriage to Marsaili. So when one night he returns home to hear that his son, Fionnlagh, has been arrested back on Lewis for the murder of a teenaged girl, it is an easy decision to leave it all behind and head for The Isles.

He and Marsaili get the first plane to Stornoway, and Fin wastes no time in using his old contacts to establish the bones of the crime and gain access to Fionnlegh in custody. The circumstantials look bad, the forensics are likely to come back damning, and the lad himself (though at thirty hardly a lad) is uncommunicative and seemingly guilt-ridden.

Fin has no authority but that does not stop him investigating the crime. As he does, connections to his youth arise and memories of past events (some related in the earlier  Blackhouse novel, some fresh) intrude and might even have links to the girl’s murder.

It’s all good – trademark atmospheric descriptions of the Hebridean landscape and weather, gritty realism of island life, and a plot that thickens like a good stew. Fin’s parental instinct to protect his son battles with his ingrained police approach to follow the evidence. To add to the mix, Fin and Marsaili have to confront their own relationship as both stumble over old flames from their youth.

A good read. Links back to The Blackhouse are frequent and a re-read, or pre-read, would do no harm. Or just read it (it’s very good) afterwards.

The Missing Husband – Amanda Brooke

 Jo Taylor’s husband, David, fails to return to his suburban Liverpool home following a works training session at Leeds. He has messaged to say he is on the train, then – nothing, and his phone is off. A worry for Jo of course, but then they had parted that morning with cross words, she refusing to drive him to Lime Street, making him leave early for a connecting commuter train. Is he making a point? She goes to bed.

Next morning, still no sign and he does not arrive at work (they both work for Nelson Engineering where they met ten years back). Police are contacted, and friends and family gather to give mutual support. Appeals are made, CCTV is pored over, no body turns up; it all points to David just disappearing. For no reason.

Except, Jo knows, there may be a reason. After ten years of living the DINKY life (dual income no kids yet) of exotic holidays and globetrotting adrenalin trips, Jo wants a baby. David doesn’t, yet. Jo makes the pre-emptive move of coming off the pill, and the result forces the issue. How pissed off is David? A bit, but enough to abandon his wife and unborn child?

Evidence trickles through: a history of cash withdrawals, a scribbled note in a trouser pocket, the cryptic words in the last text message. Then fresh, post-disappearance, ATM visits. It all points less to a missing person and more to him doing a runner.

A huge chunk of the book deals with Jo’s state of mind, understandably fragile in her circumstances, which deteriorates through and beyond pregnancy. A state of mind that may only improve once she gets closure on the disappearance of her husband. Will she get it?

And that is the hook that keeps the reader going through the (for me repetitive) days and weeks and months of Jo’s self-questioning, second-guessing, trials and tribulations. All very mental health aware, but as wearing on the reader as on Jo.

A reading group choice, otherwise I may not have stuck it out to the end, when thankfully and despite my worse fears, a resolution occurs.

Oxygen – Andrew Miller

Alice valentine is dying, but not before a last birthday is due, and under the circumstances she wants her family around for the occasion. That means sons Larry and Alec. No problem for Alec, he is single, works as a freelance translator, and has already moved into the West Country family home to support his mother. For Larry, ex tennis star and latterly soap actor, it means a return from the US where he lives uneasily with second wife, Kirsty, and kleptomaniac six-year-old daughter, Ella.

Meanwhile in Paris, playwright Laszlo Lazar, Hungarian exile since the 1956 uprising, is hosting a small dinner party. Guests are his live-in secretary Kurt Engelbrecht, an artistic American couple, and a fellow eastern European émigré.

The two narratives move forward - the Valentines’ painful reunion and Laszlo’s party and aftermath. The connection between the two is tenuous – Alec Valentine’s latest commission is to translate Lazar’s new play ‘Oxygene’. But (no spoiler, there is nothing to spoil) the expected collision of the two strands never happens. What commonality there is concerns the emotional states of the key characters. Loss of purpose, regret for past action (or inaction), timidity to grasp opportunity, to name but a few.

Lives are laid bare by Miller’s precise nuance-filled prose, so that by the end the reader knows these people well; and as each is challenged afresh, has a good idea how they will respond this time.

A quietly intense piece of writing that draws you in and keeps you interested to the end.

Review of 2025 Reading Year

Another productive year with 39 books read, including four non-fiction. The male to female author ratio was 24:15 and the same ratio applied to previously read against new to me writers. The eleven reading group selections included three I did not fancy, but the other eight helped the ratios with majority female and new to me authors; also, two make it onto the highlights reel. It was a good year for the Book-et List - four ticked off leaving six outstanding.

 

My nine best books of the year are: (Month of full review in brackets.)

 

Phosphate Rocks – Fiona Erskine: Interestingly constructed mix of science, memoir, and whodunnit set in the chemical industry. (Feb)

 

Should We Stay or Should We Go – Lionel Shriver: Darkly playful exploration of late life choices. (Apr)

 

Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell: Moving re-imagination of how the loss of the playwright’s son affected the man himself and his family. (Apr)

 

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr: Masterful twin track tale of two young people caught up on opposite sides of the German occupation of France in the Second World War. (Jun)

 

The Bee Sting – Paul Murray: Set in Ireland, the disintegration of a family, comic and tragic by turns, is told from the wildly different perspectives of Dad, Mum, Daughter, and Son. (Jul)

 

Bridge of Clay – Markus Zusak: Another tragi-comic family saga, this one set in Australia where five brothers make their rough and ready way following the loss of both parents. (Aug)

 

The Muse – Jessie Burton: Two timelines – 1960s swinging London and 1930s revolutionary Spain – become improbably but cleverly linked as mysteries unfold. (Sep)

The Heart’s Invisible Furies – John Boyne: Cleverly constructed story of a life in seven decade-skipping episodes - each told with wit, humour, and wisdom – and together providing satirical comment on the last seventy years of Irish society. (Oct)

 

You Are Here – David Nicholls: No longer boy meets no longer girl on a hike. Will opposites attract or will ingrained habits get in the way? Funny and moving by turns. (Dec)

 

Testament of Friendship – Vera Brittain

Testament of Friendship sits between Vera Brittain’s other two Testaments – of Youth, and of Experience – and was read to complete the trilogy as part of my ‘book-et list’.

This volume differs from the other two by charting not her own life but that of her dear friend Winifred Holtby, who died prematurely in 1935 aged thirty-seven. Holtby is best known now as the author of South Riding, a novel completed the year she died, which paints a vivid picture of the people and landscape of the part of Yorkshire she came from and knew well.

But, as the biography makes clear, there was much more to her than that. She went up to Oxford shortly after the First World War and there met the like-minded Vera Brittain. Their experiences of the war, and the losses sustained, fuelled their passion for peace and reconciliation. Social justice was another driver and, now based in London, they found voice for their causes in their journalism, politics, and public speaking.

Following a visit to South Africa, Winifred Holtby found an additional cause to champion, becoming a life-long campaigner against segregation and subjugation of the native races.

Brittain’s admiration for Holtby shines through. Her only criticism of her friend is her willingness to be put upon, to help others, to lend support to causes, to accept responsibilities, that all conspired to limit her creative writing. She was also bedevilled with an unrequited love for a man she could not get over.

The contemporaneous account of the lives, struggles, and successes of aspiring female writers in the 1920s and 1930s is interesting, as are the insights into early feminism and the beginnings of the anti-apartheid movement. Underlying it all is the rarely told account of feminine friendship between equals, both trying to juggle a professional career with family responsibilities (children in Brittain’s case and for Holtby aging relatives back in Yorkshire).

Brittain tells it articulately with tenderness and such objectivity as possible given the closeness of their friendship.

They Were Found Wanting – Miklos Banffy

This is Banffy’s continuing tale of Transylvanian folk – not the vampires, nor the little furry toy animals, but the aristocratic class of Hungary circa 1900. It picks up a year or so after volume one (They Were Counted, reviewed October 2015) and again concentrates on the lives and loves of the Counts Balint Abady and Laszlo Gyeroffy. More the former than the latter.

Balint is now a member of the Hungarian Parliament. Unaffiliated to any party, he looks on with cool detachment at the machinations of Austro-Hungarian politics. These get a good airing and may have had relevance and satirical impact in its own time and place, but in the here and now are obscure and just have to be ploughed through.

When not politically engaged, Balint remains obsessed with Adrienne Miloth, now married to the half-crazed Pal Uzdy. She reciprocates Balint’s passion, and together they plot, meet, make love, and plan to one day marry. Balint’s mother, the Countess Roza, disapproves, and tension builds between mother and son.

Meanwhile, Laszlo Gyeroffy continues his decline, selling off what remains of the family fortune to finance his drinking and gambling. His friend Balint, his wider family, and the wealthy lady farmer, Sara Bogdan Lazar, all try to save him from himself.

The plot inches forward giving plenty of time to appreciate the lovingly described Transylvanian landscape, and the stately homes set therein. There is a fin de siècle feel to the lifestyle of the aristocracy as the foreshadow of the First World War begins to impinge.

However, nothing much happens of any note. Perchance it all kicks off in volume three, although I won’t be picking that up any time soon.

You Are Here – David Nicholls

Cleo Fraser knows what people need, particularly those friends whose lives fall short of her own standards of happiness. Like Michael, her colleague at a north country school who teaches geography and who, since splitting up from his wife, has retreated into a solitary life. And like Marnie, a friend from her youth, several years divorced, who as a home-working self-employed proofreader in London, also spends too much time alone.

Cleo decides to take them out of their humdrum existence for a few days hiking on the Coast to Coast path. She also invites fellow northerner Tessa, who she thinks may click with Michael, and Londoner Conrad, who she hopes may take an interest in Marnie.

They gather in St Bees, already a couple down as Cleo’s husband has baled, and Tessa is a no-show. They set off regardless. Cleo, energetic and mothering; Michael, grizzled and experienced walker who intends to carry on solo when the others depart; Marnie; a novice newly kitted out and resigned to her two-day ordeal; and Conrad, ill-prepared for the walk but ready to hit on Marnie.

How far will Conrad last? Will Michael go on to the bitter end? Will Marnie find any conversational common ground between Conrad’s metropolitan chatlines and Michael’s field trip nuggets?

Few authors do fluent internal monologues and socially awkward interactions as well as David Nicholls. The walk gives an unusual but authentic context within which the walkers get to know each other and their back stories. There are comic moments, tragi-comedic misunderstandings, and an endearing plot line that does not quite end as expected.

Great fun but more besides – depth of character, empathy, and scenery!