Amagansett | Mark Mills

Yet another great book by Mark Mills.

In this story we meet Conrad Labarde, local fisherman and Tom Hollis, local cop in Long Island. There's a body tangled in the nets, there are suspicious locals and the high flyers who use the local town as their party playground. Who killed Lillian? We are drawn into the story through the investigation that follows.

What I like abut Mills' novels is that he researches them well and I can get right into the scenes and enjoy the landscapes. In this one the sea has quite a presence, and we get to learn a lot about fishing!

It’s not hard to love the characters. We get to know why Conrad’s family become fishermen on Long Island. Tom is exiled to Long Island after being falsely accused of corruption in his previous posting. Lillian’s family uses Long Island, they have a huge sense of entitlement and dark secrets.

This is a good book on many levels, there is enough intrigue to keep us reading, characters we get to care about and a satisfying conclusion.

His other books are well worth a read too, The Savage Garden, The Information Officer.

Buy at Fishpond.co.nz

The Information Officer | Mark Mills

Picked this up on a whim and it turned out to be a great read. It drew me in straight away and the characters are so well done that I cared what happened to them.

Set in Malta in 1942 Mark Chadwick is stationed on the island as the information officer. His job is to filter the information that reaches the people of Malta so as to maintain high morale and support of the British stationed on the island. But Mark suspects a British officer is killing local women. He surreptitiously goes about trying to solve the mystery and maintain his position as information officer.

It’s well written and will keep you reading. Interesting setting and well drawn landscapes and characterisation.

Mills’ other books are well worth reading too: “The Savage Garden” and “The Whaleboat House”.

The Savage garden |Mark Mills

I picked this one up because I loved “The Information Office” by Mills as well. If I like a book I tend to read as many as I can by the same author. Savage garden didn’t disappoint! It’s quite cerebral and bookish, with loads of references to classical writing, but he’s skilled at taking the reader along with him in this story that has a bit of everything in it.

If you don’t know your classics, it won’t matter, really, as Mills has set up a situation where the main character is a young student, Adam Strickland, who learns as he goes, thus educating us without looking down on the undereducated reader! The learning process is quite enjoyable.

Adam finds himself in Tuscany trying to figure out the puzzle of an ancient garden set out with deliberate care by the Docci family in the 1500’s. The garden reveals family secrets and Adam has to deal with the revelations of an old murder and a more recent Dicci family murder which has been kept hidden.

I really enjoyed this book. The others by Mills are also worth reading.

Mark Mills is a British author and screenwriter.