Book reviews: Marshal of Snowdonia, A Mother’s Promise, The Private Jet, Little Red Death, The Voices, The Official Bridgerton Cookbook

Janet Gordon, who lives in Takeley, reviews best-sellers and debut fiction for the Indie

When I was a kid, I used to spend hours in our local cottage library. I’d been allowed, because I read so much and so quickly, to access the “grown up” section, with the friendly librarian checking to make sure I wasn’t checking out serial killer reads (not that they were as explicit as they are now!) or anything else they felt was unsuitable.

I was also charged with choosing books for my dad. He’d left school at 14 and yes he could read, write and perform complex mathematical sums. Remember those people that appeared on Double Your Money and did maths in their head? Well, that was my dad. But somehow he felt he couldn’t enter a library because he hadn’t taken any exams.

Marshal of Snowdonia by Simon McCleave (Stamford Publishing £12.99)

And that brings me round to what I used to call men’s reads. I’ll be honest, the cover of Marshal of Snowdonia didn’t convince me to pick it up, but when a book publicist told me “it has serial killers” I thought I’d give it a go. And I’m glad I did.

Frank Marshal is a retired detective living in a remote part of Snowdonia and shares his home with wife Rachel, who has dementia. When he receives a call from an old friend, retired Judge Annie, she enlists his help to search for her sister Meg, who has gone missing and the police are not interested.

Annie, Frank and his three-year-old German shepherd Jack set off on the trail. What they discover, the scrapes they get into and the amazing twists make this a great read.

McCleave is an online publishing sensation and an Amazon best-seller. His Ruth Hunter Snowdonia series is currently in film production. And if you check out his bio on Amazon, he’s a rather good-looking silver fox!

Incidentally, Bishop’s Stortford Library has a really novel (see what I did?) idea – Blind Date with a Book. Pick up a tissue-wrapped read of your chosen genre (no cheating before you get home) and hopefully you’ll have collected not only something you’ve not read before, but a book you’ll enjoy.

A Mother’s Promise by Renee Salt with Kate Thompson (Seven Dials £20)

I make no apologies for returning to the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It is written by my good friend Kate Thompson, whose novel The Little Wartime Library is a heart-wrenching tale based on the true events that led to the formation of London’s first underground library.

Whilst doing publicity tours for this and her other books, Kate met 95-year-old Renee who, with indefatigable courage, spends her time talking to schools and colleges detailing the way in which she managed to survive Auschwitz having been taken when she was just a youngster.

I was an emotional wreck reading this. My brain can’t compute how Renee and her mother Sala kept going, clinging to one another, plodding through day after day and never giving up. There are scenes within the book – told by Renee and also by Kate, to explain – where I simply had to stop reading as I was crying so much and completely choked with emotion.

Renee met her husband Charles Salt after the war ended – he was actually one of the liberators of Auschwitz and has campaigned tirelessly to tell listeners of the horrors within. Renee has never forgotten a single moment of her incarceration and goodness only knows what it costs her to keep on and on reliving those horrors so that the Final Solution doesn’t happen again.

The Private Jet by Sarah Goodwin (Avon £9.99)

Many moons ago I used to lap up reality shows and gossip mags and knew exactly who had been expelled from the Big Brother house. Now I don’t know the names of any of the latest reality stars and wouldn’t recognise them if they came to tea. But I do still love reading about designer clothes/bags/perfumes and anything else that can be logoed, even if I only ever buy clothes from the charity shops!

Lila Wilde is the madcap daughter of one of the most famous rock stars in the world. Unlimited credit cards, private jets, designer clothes coming out of her ears (everything Meghan Markle would give her eye teeth for!) and yet she’s just drifting through life.

We meet her when she’s complaining bitterly about frizzy hair having landed in one of the most beautiful resorts in Thailand. She’s there with her would-be DJ boyfriend Bryce, who has been freeloading off her since they met.

Spending the night at the glitziest of nightclubs, Lila gets wasted when Bryce drops something into her drink and she then invites about 30 of the people from the VIP section to her secluded mansion up shore and accessible only by private jet. An hour into the flight, turbulence hits, the jet splits in half as down they go. They wait….and wait….and wait for rescue.

If you love disaster movies and reads then this one is a must-read.

Little Red Death by A. K. Benedict (Simon & Schuster £16.99)

I guess we’ve all read dozens of fairy stories, the sort of wholesome tales written by Hans Christian Andersen and the more gruesome ones from the Brothers Grimm, and here we have a serial killer fixated on the Brothers Grimm.

DI Lyla Rondell is on the case, although Katie, her best friend, is also on the case. But whether that’s inside Lyla’s head or Katie really exists, it’s impossible to tell.

This novel is absolutely mystifying – you simply don’t know what is real, what is a fairy tale and what is a figment of the imagination.

I’d love to see A. K. Benedict’s house – I can’t imagine it’s anything like what we’d know as normal. Her imagination seems to be working in triple time. All I know is that I really enjoyed this.

The Voices by Natalie Chandler (HarperNorth £16.99)

It’s funny the conversations my husband and I have sometimes. Recently we were debating whether, if you had a car crash, would you rather be paralysed for life or spend your days in a coma where you can hear but you can’t move.

A ridiculous conversation, really, but, in The Voices, Tamsin has been lying in a coma for nearly three years. Spending her days in a luxury rehabilitation centre, she can hear everything that is said, but she can neither move nor speak.

She’s learnt to recognise the way in which each individual carer looks after her, to recognise the voices of her husband, her best friend and other more or less regular visitors, but nobody knows whether she can hear what they’re saying.

Through a series of flashbacks we learn just why Tam is in this situation and how she got there, but then the rehabilitation centre decides she’s been comatose for long enough and gives her husband an ultimatum.

I enjoyed this so much that I’ve downloaded Natalie Chandler’s previous novels.

The Official Bridgerton Cookbook (Piatkus £30)

This is the most beautiful of cookbooks with such sumptuous photographs actually taken from the show and even more sumptuous recipes, some of which I’m definitely going to have a go at making.

What a wonderful Mother’s Day gift this would make.

The winners of Janet’s The Women competition were Carole Nott and Jane Peck, both of Bishop’s Stortford.