Blood Men | Paul Cleave

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, where this story is set. Cleave is a good crime writer but I think for me, the portrayal of the city as dark, sinister and Gothic seemed a little strained, as I live here and it doesn't seem that bad! I 've been thinking a lot about the book as I am trying to figure out why I didn't love it outright, as with Paddy Richardson's crime books set in Christchurch.
I think that with Cleave's type of serial-rapist story if it had been set in New York or Los Angeles it would have been a lot more believable for me. maybe other readers who live there would be ok with reading of a far off city which seems steeped in darkness where horrid things happen. Our city is called "The Garden City" and its genteel calmness (others would call it boringness) just doesn't seem to match the story.
In this crime novel a serial rapist's son is caught up in a bad bank robbery where his wife is shot. He spirals out of control and in a matter of days has come to acknowledge that some of the violence he knows is in his father, is coming out in him. He makes contact with his father in hope that he'll know who was involved and then the body count starts to mount. It is mostly resolved but as i turned to the last page I was left with the feeling this was going to lead into a sequel. I hope it's a good one, as I will read it, in support of a local author. But I hope I like it a bit more than this one. It's not a bad read, it's well written, but not as satisfying as Richardson, whom I've read concurrently.

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A Year To Learn A Woman | Paddy Richardson

What a writer! I am so pleased to have discovered this wonderful author from New Zealand. Richardson lives in Dunedin, in the South Island and this landscape features strongly in her work.
This is the second novel I've read of hers and I am out hunting down her other two novels. She is very talented and I highly recommended her work to anyone who wants a great story, very well crafted characters and stories which are absorbing and keep you turning the pages even when you should be out there doing something else.
In this story, Claire Wright is a freelance writer who became widowed at a young age. She lives with her teenage daughter and together they have a pleasant suburban life in Christchurch. Out of the blue is is asked to write the authorized biography of a serial rapist who is in prison and has specifically asked for her to ghost write the book. Although full of apprehension Claire takes on the contact due it the huge amount of money she will be paid for it, money which will alloy her and Annie to be able to travel and pay for university fees.
Doing the research leads to contact with Travis Crill, the rapist, and his six victims. There is a lot of discussion among Claire and friends about rape and the impacts on their lives as they become involved in the details of the crime.
At school Annie meets a new arrival, Savannah, from USA who is forceful and possessive and they become best friends. Savannah isn't a great influence and over the year Annie's life turns upside down.
As I read I knew we were heading for disaster, I just couldn't see from which direction it was coming or what form it was going to take...i just braced myself for it and read on! It was like bracing for a car crash and when it happened, it was dramatic, but well handled and resolved. Stunning book. Read everything she's written.
Hunting Blind is her latest.

The Long Song | Andrea Levy

Levy is English, born of Jamaican parents who emigrated in 1948 to England. This novel is about the lives of white planters and black slaves in the time of the Baptist Rebellion and beyond. The narrator is July, a slave on Amity, a plantation in Jamaica. The slaves are many, the overseer cruel, the masters feeble and incompetent, the mistresses, an embarrassment.
I found it a good read, but I became impatient with some of the white characters who were drawn in a less favorable light than the blacks. The story is primarily about the abolition of slavery and Jamaica's history since then so our sympathies are very much with the slave population but the tedium of engaging with the whites made me impatient to finish the book. I also found it very similar to "James Miranda Barry" by Patricia Dunker. I'm not sure if it is because of this that I didn't find it an altogether satisfying read, but on the strength of the writing I will chase down some of Levy's other novels and read them as she is very talented.

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Winter In Madrid | C J Sansom

Having just been in Spain, I was looking forward to this book. It was easy enough to imagine the scenes and cityscapes but it was quite hard to relate to the story. It is mostly about the British in Madrid at the beginning of WW2 (1940-1) and a lot of the story takes place within Diplomatic circles, embassies and is very stiff-upper-lip. The Spanish are being courted by Hitler, the British are trying to influence the Spanish by blockading the ports and the citizens of Spain are just trying to survive the starvation and unrest. The novel centers around the main character of Harry Brett who is asked by the British forces to become a spy after being injured in Europe. He is to watch an old school friend of his, Sandy Forsythe, who appears to be involved in the black market in Madrid.

Harry had been to Spain a few years before while looking for another friend Bernie Piper, who disappeared in the civil unrest and is presumed dead. He helped Barbara to look for him. Now she is involved with Sandy and .is trying to make sense of it all. Most of the book is slow, with the action taking place in the final chapters.

The relationship between the three men is very much developed at the public school they attended as teens and it colours everything they say and do as adults.

There is a certain amount of intrigue but not edge-of-you-seat kind of stuff. I read “The shadow of the wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon and it is a much better story than this one.

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Menagerie of False Truths | Greg French

I learned a new word reading this book ‘friction’, which is the way French describes his novel: a mixture of fact and fiction giving you ‘friction’. In the telling of any story the mix of fact and fiction rub up against each other creating friction between the two to the point where both are melded together. French draws on his experiences growing up in a family with various degrees of autism, a distant mother, a love of nature and fly fishing to weave a beautiful story.

A young man out in the Australian bush meets a young woman in a bogong. They have a weird conversation about native moths and fly fishing for trout and are mutually intrigued. Over the next ten or so years they write letters, using them as a means to tell their stories and piece together the truth about themselves. Cherry is in Dunedin, New Zealand, and Zack is in Australia. Both have autistic siblings and this has shaped their families. They also have friends in common and a love for art and nature.

I loved the way the story is interesting, it captures both the Australia and New Zealand landscape and a love of nature. A beautiful read.

Hunting Blind | Paddy Richardson

I'm so glad I've discovered this author. Richardson is a Newzealander, writing from the city of Dunedin and she has set this gripping story in familiar territory around the city of Dunedin, Central Otago, Kaikoura and the West Coast.
It is the story of a family in Wanaka,who at a school picnic, lose Gemma their four-year old daughter. It is devastating for the family and the community. No trace of her is ever found and the general belief is that she drowned in the lake. Stephanie, her older sister, becomes the main narrator of the rest of the book as she studies in the city of Dunedin to become a Psychiatrist. In one of her rounds she comes across a woman who eventually reveals her sister disappeared in the middle of the night and was feared drowned. She mentions a teacher who was friends of the family at the time...on a hunch Stephanie takes leave from work and wanders around the South Island hoping to answer some questions and come to terms with what she fears happened to Gemma. It is totally gripping and I couldn't put it down.
Totally engaging, intelligent and gripping (what DID happen?) this book is very well written. For those who have traveled in the South Island, the landscapes, town and cities described are familiar and the story takes on different dimension for being so recognizably set in New Zealand. I highly recommend this story and will look for her other books to read.

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Tinkers | Paul Harding

This is the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I try and read as many Pulitzer winners as I can so I can 'meet' authors I may not have read before. With 'Tinkers" I was underwhelmed. It describes the last few days of George's life where he is bed ridden and surrounded by relatives. He drifts in and out of consciousness and in the drifting revisits his life's story and more poignantly his relationship with his father, Howard.
George grew up on a New England farm which just made ends meet. His brother Jo seems to have had some mental illness, his mother worked hard to keep things going with the help of George and his two sisters. The Howard was an itinerant salesman to rural properties and suffered from epilepsy. Whether it was this illness or another condition is unclear but he had weird sensory hallucinations which he wrote in a notebook as he traveled through the countryside. He also muses a lot on his own father, a preacher whose mental state deteriorates to the point where he tells his congregation the Devil isn't all that bed. He is ousted by the parishioners and put in a mental institution
George struggles to relate to his father, and as his father's mental state deteriorates George is more and more confused in his emotions towards him. As an adult he became a clock repairer and he compares the intricacies of clocks to the intricacies of life and of his own family.
In his last few minutes of life we discover that Howard left his family and remarried and started a new life. He shows up at George's home and tires to reconnect but the impression is that George was distant and too removed to make any meaningful emotional connection with his father in the end.
There is a lot of reflection and musing on life and families and it is well written but I didn't feel it was a satisfying story and when finished it didn't linger in my mind at all.

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Fame & Infamy | Ed Wright

I picked up this pocket book at an airport when I finished my book too soon. It is part of a series called Pocket History of which I have two others. They are gorgeous books to hold, small 'pocket' size with fabric covers. Lovely. This one is "History's most shocking frauds, scandals and intrigues". It is very well written and each chapter dedicated to someone in history who was a fraud or a scandalous figure or just bizarre.
Wright starts off with Caravaggio's life of passion and art. Tchaikovsky, Fatty Arbuckle, the Petrovs, Lord Lucan and Jim Bakker are among those written about. There is a lot to learn in each chapter about human behaviour, and how each person had an Achille's heel they wrestled with and succumbed to. These wee books are much better than your average airport read and I will try and get more of the series.

The other books I have in this series are "Good Girls don't make History" and "Obscure Events that Shaped History."