Getting Away - Kate Sawyer

New summer read by Kate Sawyer

This was a very pleasing read. A word of caution though, you will require a family tree/understanding of genealogy to remember the names and relations of all the people. However, once you get your head around that - this book was entertaining and enlightening. 

Using family holidays as the means to show familial relationships and how they alter over the years, decades and generations coupled with the ever-changing types of family holidays - from day outs to the beach by train, to the growing market of package holidays booked on Ceefax, to the globe-trotting gap years of the grandchildren.

Indebted to the work of David Nicholls, nevertheless Sawyer has crafted a work that is original yet familiar, comforting but challenging and by the end the reader would have developed a lump in their throat. Delicately handled with poise and guile by a writer with nuance. As you get nearer to the present day, the writer is able to incorporate the ever changing landscape of communication - using tweets, emails and magazine articles as a changing style of writing from by-gone eras of postcards and diary entries.

Sawyer writes with assuredness having an ear for how characters talk to each other, and she does this well with her plethora of protagonists ranging from the overweight police officer, to the shy retiring teenager who was born premature and must keep on fighting for his place in society

This is a book that will stay with the reader after completing it, and is a real find and a must for the summer of this year.

My thanks to Compulsive Readers for letting me be part of the blog tour for this title and the preview copy in advance.

Getting Away is published by Zaffre/Bonnier Books, thanks to them 

God As My Witness (2025)

A new documentary examines the Catholic clergy molestation scandal in Louisiana, screens at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival this June. The film is directed by Lindsay Quinn Pitre.

A harrowing and hard watch of a film over its 82 minute run time, about the lengths and depths of depravity men of the cloth went to hide their illicit behaviour.

The film is produced by Michael Brandner Sr, who in 2018 discovered a set of love letters from a priest to his younger brother, Scot. Scot committed suicide in the early 1990s at the age of 29.

After the first twenty minutes of talking head personal accounts of individuals who suffered molestation at the hands of clergymen. The film then shows the legal ramifications as attorneys of New Orleans brought claims against the church. The church faced so many clerical claims it had to file for federal bankruptcy protection in May 2020.

The case has cost the Archdiocese more than $40m in fees which remain unresolved. 

Tellingly, the film is left open-ended as this is an ongoing case with more people still to come forward. It allows you to see the story come to the viewer at this pace which is deliberate under the circumstances.

Heartfelt due to the personal nature of the Brander situation, this is a film that is a good companion to the Alex Gibney documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In the House of God (2012) which itself delved into the claims of abuse in the catholic church and touched upon in the Oscar winning film, Spotlight. 

This is a poignant documentary that is as much about healing as about the horrific acts put upon this vulnerable individuals.

God As My Witness has its World Premiere at the 33rd Raindance Film Festival on 26th June.

My thanks to Raindance for the screening link for review.

What The Dark Whispers - MJ Lee

 

Book 11 in the DI Ridpath series released 3rd July from Canelo

Having had the pleasure to read the DI Ridpath series from its genesis in the years prior to the global pandemic, it is the first time in my long tenure of reading that this reader has followed such a new detective series and character from its inception to the present day. Following, enjoying and anticipating.

Lee returns along with Ridpath in a Halloween set tale that sees the maverick Ridpath again having to uncover the truth behind a series of recent murders in the Greater Manchester area which may or may not be connected. A man sets himself on fire at a petrol station, a family is brutally murdered in their home and a single mother is strangled by her daughter.

Ridpath under his guise as policeman and assistant to the Coroner, has to battle familiar office politics - those who have been promoted ahead of him - with his embatteled support staff who endeavour to do the right thing despite the best efforts of those to merely tick a box. 

This along with his daughter, Eve, going through the tumultuous period of hormones and school coupled with the conclusion of the last book - What The Dead Want - where she was attacked by a male teen; with the two navigating their life together without mother, Penny around. 

A familiar experience when reading Lee's series (and this can be said for his contemporary Marion Todd) is that the books start off sprightly with the problem laid out before our hero in the first act. Only when he starts investigating and is at loggerheads with a superior officer, does the narrative gain pace and reads at a clip that is enjoyable as this reader digests with aplomb.

The last act of the book as the answers become clear to Ridpath and his team - a credit and salute to the leg work and diligence of police work - before the murderer can kill again, is pulsating and heart racing. The last quarter of the book flies past with a mixture of thrill and enjoyment as the plot unravels

Written with flair, pace and tension, Lee again has written a thriller of exceptional quality that in time may well rank as one of the best in the series overall. Lee like Ridpath has done it again.

What The Dark Whispers is out from Canelo on all formats from 3rd July 

Row (2025)

Premiering at the 2025 Raindance Film Festival, 

Row is written and directed by Matt Losasso.

It tells the story of a woman washed ashore in a blood stained boat as part of a doomed trans-atlantic World record attempt. While she has survived, her three shipmates are missing and presumed dead. She attempts to piece together her fractured memories.

The premise of this film is a good one and it does create an effective claustrophobic atmosphere of the cabin fever that takes hold of the shipmates in treacherous waters. However, these confinements are also restrictions and with a young cast trying their best, they are unfortunately let down by a quite a damp script which falls too swiftly into cliché and signposted direction of narrative flow.

This is a pity as the potential is clearly apparent with little nods to the work of John Carpenter and his evocative scores and economical storytelling, and yet that is all this film is, wanting to be something more than it is.

Female lead, Bella Dayne, is lacking in her conviction of performance sadly when the film desperately needs a strong one for the stakes required and with the whole narrative upon her shoulders. Sophie Skelton (Outlander) shows some brief spark in her time onscreen. 

For something so tense the pace is incredibly plodding and pedestrian. No rhythm or tension is apparent, perhaps the writer-director could have done with a polish of his rudderless script. 

It is frustrating when funding goes to films such as this, when the message is not clear and nothing new is being spoken of and with an overlong run time, this film really needed to have a good pay-off which unfortunately when it arrives it is with as little fanfare as the two hours that preceded it and lacks any sort of resolution for the tested audience.

Shot without any invention or colour, this is a film that is unwittingly all at sea.

Row receives its World Premiere on 21st June at 33rd Raindance Film Festival

Row has been nominated for four awards at the festival: Best Performance in a UK Feature (Dayne), Best UK Feature, Best Director of a UK Feature (Losssso) and Best UK Cinematography.

My thanks to Strike Media for the screener link 

Brian Wilson (1942-2025)

Brian Wilson, who passed away Wednesday at the age of 82, leaves behind a musical legacy that is untouchable in the pantheon of pop and rock and roll music.

Wilson, the songwriter and composer, of the five piece California band that brought surf culture to the wider popular attention and was a competitive contemporary of Lennon-McCartney during the British invasion of the mid-1960s.

Wilson, was a writer of huge acclaim and mainstream appeal, jaunty numbers that were talking about surfing, driving and having girlfriends. It was music for the teenager and young adult hot off the heels of Chuck Berry's hooks, the Beach Boys spoke for people from 'Little Deuce Coupe' and 'Fun Fun Fun'

He made California a destination for the globe, a place to aspire to visit. I remember seeing an interview with Billy Corgan (The Smashing Pumpkins) and he said, 'Brian Wilson should be paid royalties by the state of California, for the work he has done for the state'

Listening back to his catalogue over there is just a wave of joy and exuberance from the beginning - 'Surfin USA', 'Barbara Ann' and the jam nature of 'I Get Around', the jaunty nature of the works coupled with the nature of being young.

While Wilson would write at a clip unmatched, his attention to composition and complex arrangements were gaining traction. By the time Pet Sounds arrived in May 1966 a reaction to the Beatles' Rubber Soul; he had incorporated a wall-of-sound reminiscent of Phil Spector but the key was partnering with advertising writer Tony Asher as the lyricist. The lyrics while sentimental when married with Wilson's sound were a match made in heaven - the key change in 'God Only Knows' remains something from another dimension.

It is of course a shame that Wilson's dependency on psychedelic drugs curtailed his creative juices, yet the works still come and remain totems that soundtrack the summer as well as that inevitable question of growing old from 'Sail on Sailor' and 'Do It Again'

For me personally, Brian Wilson has been with me always. I worked overseas in a Catalan resort and many a time at the end of the shift I would listen to the Best of the Beach Boys and eventually Pet Sounds in its entirety; it became one of the touchstones works of my impressionable coming of age. I came out of my shell during those summers and the positive mindset that Wilson's music gives you is a jolt of lightning through your veins.

As with anything, it is a shame when someone you admire passes but his work remains and to enjoy. While people dream of better times and time of peace, just think of 'Good Vibrations' and 'Smile'.

The Bones of Chester - MJ Lee

 

Third book in DI Emma Christie series by prolific MJ Lee

Returning for the third book in the series, MJ Lee again writes a pulsating book set in and around the historic city of Chester. 

DI Emma Chrisite, is again tasked with a troubling case after human remains are found near a landmark in the Cheshire city. After an autopsy and inspection by pathologists, it is determined that the remains are from three different female skeletons.

Christie, must contend with office politics and the police hierarchy who want her to fail and have the men pick up the pieces. With her diligent and devoted team, they set about trying to find out firstly who the women are who have been buried and who did the heinous acts of maceration - the removal of flesh from human bones. 

Based around the mythic folk tale of Santa Muerte, who speaks to our villain; the plot revolves around the disappearance of young girls on two specific dates every calendar year. This nugget of truth amidst a fictitious tale helps somewhat ground it in reality - this is helped by Lee writing the discombobulating effect of the politicking in her job. Not to mention, her ongoing care for her ailing father and ex-super cop who is battling Alzheimer's at home.

That facet of the narrative is dealt with delicately, as the father's back story is slowing growing along with the history of the original crime gang family - the Gilligan's from Liverpool - who are always sniffing about. Another thing sniffing, is that familiar rat Gavin Newton, the journalist with no morals and even less ethics. 

A familiar trait of Lee's books is that the first half of the book seems to tread water in narrative construction and obstacles for our protagonists as if it is going uphill to reach a summit. Then when it reaches that summit, the downhill portion is all-go, thrill seeking page turning of the highest order.

Highly recommended for fans old and new, a book to get your teeth into. The fourth book cannot come soon enough.

The Bones of Chester is a self-published book by Author MJ Lee and available on all formats now.

The Famous - Rachel Lynch

New novel by prolific Rachel Lynch set in the world of celebrity and television

Lynch returns with another standalone thriller set amidst the world of the rich and famous following her successful departure from Cheshire set crime series, with The Rich.

Lynch creatively exposes the darkness underneath the sheen of superficiality we see amongst Instagram reels and stories.

In this book, we meet Gloria White, the aging mid-morning television host who is being subjected to a series of vicious anonymous letters culminating in the kidnapping of her daughter; while dealing with the loss of her media mogul father-in-law Roger Wade and the stress this leads.

Hot on the heels of the highly acclaimed film 'The Substance', where the varnish vanishes from an ageing starlet as she seeks the elixir of youth; this shows a highly esteemed television personality's life slowly unravel when her integrity is questioned.

Unlike The Rich which was one of those Crash-like scenarios, when lives are entwinned unknowingly, this story focuses solely on a main matriarch and her behaviour impacts everyone, while her arc revolves around this eventual realisation of her actions before it is too late.

Truth is buried and lives are ruined by the acts of the rich and famous. Lynch who touched upon such things in her previous work, invents more fictional tales that focus upon cancel culture, celebrity and money buying power.

Thrilling and tantalising in equal measure, fans of Lynch's Kelly Porter books will know what to expect with the intricately plotted narrative, but the realisation of a character such as Gloria White, at her advanced age is a successful one.

The Famous is out from Canelo on 6th March in all formats