Prompted to Kill – Frank Demain

Four short cases for Detective Inspector Elspeth Sanderson and her team, as within four seemingly harmless communities, deaths occur in suspicious circumstances.

A member of a creative writing group expires when an allergy is exploited; a death at a snooker club exposes strife among the committee; a holiday in the Hebrides becomes that of a busman when a local clergyman meets his maker early; then a fresh body on the golf course interferes with DS Susan Charlton’s game.

The murderers may be amateur, but they are inventive in their means and secretive in their motives. However, Sanderson is the consummate professional and cracks the cases.

Clever plotting and sound characterisation make for a good pacy read.

Gabriel’s Moon – William Boyd

Gabriel Dax, when the story opens in 1960, is a thirty-year-od freelance travel writer. He lives alone but has a girlfriend, Lorraine. It is a relationship he finds satisfactory but to which he is not committed. She would like to move in, but, well, he’s away a lot and there’s his nightmare induced insomnia to consider, so perhaps not, he says.

The nightmares, recurrent dreams of fire, are triggered by a childhood tragedy when he was trapped in a burning cottage, He escaped but his mother died. And the fire was attributed to his nightlight, a candle-lit lamp, the shade a model of the moon.

Back to 1960, on an innocent trip to Leopoldville he is invited to interview (despite his protestations that he is a travel writer not a foreign correspondent)  the president of Congo, who wants to place certain things on record. Events unfold from there, and things get complicated for Gabriel. He is contacted by the elegant and enigmatic Faith Green and is persuaded to undertake ‘harmless, risk-free’ and remunerative little courier services for HMG. They escalate and before long Gabriel is embroiled in plot and counter plot, with secret agents and double agents. His inclination to get out is compromised by a growing attraction to his handler, Faith Green.

Meanwhile, he is tackling his insomnia through psychotherapy sessions, leading to a re-examination of the events of the night of the fire. He traces the firemen and the loss adjustor in his search for the truth. Then there is the Lorraine issue.

It is a potent mix, expertly handled by Boyd who deftly manipulates plot, character, and atmosphere to produce a tidy read. It feels a bit Graham Greene (not a bad thing) in its style and commendable brevity. Though I did not warm to Dax as a person, the flaws-and-all character was well drawn and able to carry the sole burden of the narrative effectively.

At the end there is some unfinished business (Faith, Lorraine, the fire, a career as ‘an accidental spy’) so no surprise that two further Gabriel Dax books follow, one published, one in preparation. I suspect I will pick up them up.

Step by Step – Simon Reeve

In this autobiography, Simon Reeve tells how from an unpromising start in life he became the maker of interesting and inspiring travel documentaries.

Born in west London to working class parents, itemising his journey would spoil the read so suffice it to list some milestones: dropping out of school; teenage depression exacerbated by alcohol and drugs; unemployment; key advice from a DSS clerk; a lightbulb moment in Glencoe; an unlikely opportunity to work at The Sunday Times; the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 1993 and the attack on the twin towers six years later; a call from Kevin Space, then one from the BBC.

How these dots join up forms the first half of the book, interesting in illustrating how serendipity may throw up chances, but talent and application is needed to benefit.

The second half of the book covers his successful early series, Meet the Stans in which he travelled the ex-soviet states of mid-Asia, and Places That Don’t Exist which covered disputed territories such as Somaliland, Transnistria, and Taiwan. This gives insights into the methods and thought process that go into his programmes, mixing light with shade, combining travelogue with investigative current affairs, and being as much about the people as the landmarks.

Throughout, Reeve exudes his trademark ‘this is how it is’ honesty, laying bare his troubled adolescence and pulling no punches on the injustices he sees in the world. His writing style is as engaging as his voice to camera, which makes for an enjoyable read.

This Must Be The Place – Maggie O’Farrell

It starts somewhere near the middle, when in 2010 Daniel Sullivan, an American on a flying visit to pick up his twenty-years deceased grandfather’s ashes, meets in the wilds of Ireland, a striking but enigmatic woman. There is an immediate connection, but it takes Daniel some time to realise that she is Claudette Wells, one-time film star who dramatically and mysteriously dropped off the radar some years previously and now lives as a recluse in Donegal with her young son.

From that point, the novel spills out in twenty-eight time-shuffled chapters, told from fifteen separate character points of view, with locations across four continents. It sounds crazy but it works magnificently as Daniel’s and Claudette’s back stories emerge and their unfolding relationship moves forward. While the narrations of Daniel and Claudette are predominant, the vignettes provided by their families, ex-partners, friends, and employees are beautifully framed and give a depth of perspective that is mesmerising.

To say more on the plot would spoil the pleasure of second-guessing the mysteries and hidden corners of the various characters’ lives as they are revealed.

Simply brilliant and highly recommended.