The Mess We're In - Annie MacManus

 

Brand new book from Annie MacManus THE MESS WE'RE IN from Wildfire books

Renowned DJ Annie Mac returns with her second book, set in the early 2000s it follows a young Irish girl named Orla who moves from Cheltenham to London to follow her dream of becoming involved within the music scene. This goes hand in hand whilst living with an up and coming indie band called Shiva in the digs of Kilburn.

Orla wants to make music, but juggling a temp job in new PR company RedStar and a pub job whilst partying every night is not helping. Meanwhile, in Ireland her parents marriage is falling apart and she is not speaking to her Da.

As Shiva strife to breakthrough, the hedonism gets bigger and relationships within the house are strained.

A story about a young woman making sense of living in a strange land but finding yourself through the rhythm of life. Annie Mac delivers in a big way with this nostalgic look at the boom in music and how being in the music business remains one of the coolest aspirations for many people

THE MESS WE'RE IN is out now from Wildfire Books.

My thanks to Headline for the review opportunity.

Hide and Seek - Ken Lussey

 

Fifth book in the Bob Sutherland series by Scottish based author, Ken Lussey, out 26th May from Arachnid Press.

It is April 1943. Set in and around Stirling Castle, Bob and his bride-to-be Monique Dubois are attending a secret meeting at the castle to discuss details of national security.

Meanwhile, medical student Helen Erickson is followed from London to her aunt's farm in Perthshire, why is she being followed? Is it about the work her mother is taking part in at Bletchley Park?

An old adversary is murdered mysteriously whilst the secret meeting is taking place, Bob and the MI11 team are called in to investigate when everyone has a motive to the victim.

Lussey has in the past six years created this quite wonderful world of World War Two espionage and mystery surrounding this lone central character of Bob Sutherland and yet in each book through the four previous (Eyes Turned Skywards, The Danger of Life, Bloody Orkney and The Stockholm Syndrome) there has been perpetual growth of Bob as an officer and a gentleman, he and Dubois have grown closer together from flirting to close to being married and in the last book Bob killed a man with his gun breaking his virginity.

What is so good about this book in comparison to others previously, is that there is a genuine sense of not coming next. While others have followed traditional narrative paths, for instance in the Stockholm Syndrome the daring pair are in the Swedish capital meaning the action is contained within that city. Here we start in Stirling Castle, yet there was a short prelude where German crew seek asylum and land in Scotland. We then go to Stirling Castle and after the murder, Monique is on the trail of Helen while Bob must investigate the murder himself. 

The separation of the pair for narrative reasons is cleverly done because again it helps to let the pair grow, but Monique's chase of Helen across the Scottish Highlands and train tracks means it is her story we are more engrossed upon. The scene where Helen and Anthony discover the carnage at the aunt's farm was to this reader reminiscent of the opening to No Country for Old Men told with such assuredness that comes from a writer confident in the characters he has created.

While that is daring and driven, Bob's castle death is closer to an Agatha Christie novel and those famous drawing room murders where everybody is a suspect.

Drawing from a wealth of influences and his own Royal Air Force career, Lussey has again written an entertaining page-turning novel that delivers in spades of enjoyment and tension.

Hide and Seek is out in Paperback from Arachnid Press on 26th May