Concrete Angel, Patti Abbott

I received an email yesterday announcing that Patti Abbott's debut novel is to be published by Exhibit A (an imprint of Angry Robot Books), the blurb for which is below.  Wonderful, I thought, Patti's a brilliant writer - as anyone who reads her short stories knows.  Then I read the last line of the blurb - 'will be with you in Winter 2015'.  Oh man, that sounds like a hell of a long wait.  Talk about a teaser email.  Can't it be winter 2014?  That seems reasonable.  Doesn't it, you good folk at Exhibit A?  Anyway, if you've not read any of Patti's work and can't wait that long, you could try her novella through interlinked stories that I reviewed just before Christmas, Home Invasion.
   
Concrete Angel

Eve Moran has always wanted “things” and has proven both inventive and tenacious in both getting and keeping them – she lies, steals, cheats and swindles, paying little heed to the cost of her actions on those who love her.

When Eve kills a man she picks up in a shoe repair shop, she persuades her twelve year-old daughter, Christine, to confess to the crime. The girl, compelled by love, dependency and circumstance, is caught up in her mother’s deceptions and find herself drawn to her new role. It’s only when Christine’s three year-old brother, Ryan, is drawn into her mother’s deceptions, that she finds the courage and means to bring an end to Eve’s tyranny.

Set in 1970s Philadelphia and packaged to match, Concrete Angel pits a vindictive and manipulative mother against a daughter with just enough of her mother’s immorality to fight back.

With extraordinary vivid central characters, Concrete Angel is a powerful psychological mystery about a woman who always gets what she wants...this remarkable debut novel will be with you in Winter 2015.

The Song of the Sea published

I spent a few hours on Sunday proofing and formatting The Song of the Sea, a collection of the first 100 drabbles published on this blog, then converting the file into Kindle, EPub and PDF formats.  I'm publishing the book through my own imprint, Eostre Press, and making it freely available since all the content has already been openly published.

Mobi/Kindle  Free download
EPub  Free download
PDF  Free download

A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words and here is the title track, so to speak.

The song of the sea

It had been five days since the yacht had capsized.  Five days in an orange bubble being tossed around on boiling waves, tumbling and spinning in a drunken dance.  Five days listening to the song of the sea.  The pitter-patter of spray and the thwack of waves against nylon and rubber, the crash of mountains of water greeting each other or tumbling in on themselves, the howl of the wind whipping and spinning in the troughs, his own groans and the dry heaves of sea sickness.  And every now and then a haunting lullaby calling to him from the deep.


Hopefully the book proves to be an enjoyable read.

Estimating the age of women ...

Declan Hughes, in All the Dead Voices, shows the same aptitude and befuddlement at trying to estimate women's ages these days as myself:

"Anne Fogarty was about forty but looked thirty-five, or maybe she was thirty-five and looked her age.  It was hard to tell these days, when 21-year-olds were so primped and groomed and orange-faced they often looked like startled 55-year-old millionaires' wives with too much work done."

All I know is your best keeping any estimates to yourself - whatever you guess, whether it's too young or old it's going to offend in some way.

Lazy Sunday Service

A week after submitting my latest academic book to the publisher I'm coming to realise the degree to which it coralled my creativity.  I barely managed to write any fiction last year bar drabbles.  For twelve months or so, I've kept assembling a virtual issue of a journal on the long finger.  And despite having all the material produced, I never quite got round to publishing my collection, The Song of the Sea.  Over the past couple of days I've turned my attention to the latter two, with the aim of having both complete by the end of the month.  I think that should be doable.  We'll see.


My posts this week
January reads
Review of The Holiday Murders by Robert Gott
Review of Darkhouse by Alex Barclay
A thin slither of light

A thin slither of light

Janet knelt on the worn hassock, her head resting on her clasped hands.  She stared glassy-eyed at the dull image of Christ in a murky stain glassed window behind the alter.

This wasn’t how her life was meant to be.  Thirty six, widowed and mourning the loss of a child. 

It should have been perfect.  It had been perfect.

And now she felt bereft and lost.

A thin slither of light shone through a blue shard and a small hand patted her shoulder.

‘Come-on, Mum, this place gives me the creeps.  Let’s go to the park and feed the ducks.’

Review of Darkhouse by Alex Barclay (Harper Collins, 2005)

Nearing his fortieth birthday, NYPD Detective Joe Lucchesi has taken a year’s leave of absence after a kidnapping case goes wrong, leaving the kidnapper and a mother and child dead.  Joe’s wife, Anna, is an interior designer and the family move to a small village in South East Ireland for her latest project: to restore an old lighthouse.  Their sixteen year old son, Shaun, attends the local school where he meets and falls in love with Katie.  It seems like an idyllic life until the partner of the kidnapper catches up with them and Katie disappears after a night out with Shaun.  Duke Rawlins and Donnie Riggs grew up in rural North Texas where they formed a twisted and dark bond.  Now that Donnie is dead, Duke is compelled to seek revenge against the officer who shot him. 

Darkhouse was a book I edged my way through given the underlying tension and sense of foreboding, which left me uncertain as to whether I really wanted to find out how the story is resolved.  Much of that tension is created through the intersecting storylines and juxtaposition of everyday family and village life in Ireland in the early 2000s, with the dark world of Duke Rawlins and Donnie Riggs in North Texas in the late 1980s.  Barclay’s writing is vivid and well paced and balanced.  The characters are nicely developed throughout the story and the interactions between them well portrayed, especially the suspicions and strains amongst the Lucchesi household, the police and the village population.  There is also a great sense of place, time and social worlds in both Ireland and Texas.  The key strength of the story though is the plotting, with a nice mix of carefully ordered tension, feints, and reveals that produces an edge of the seat read without descending into a gore fest.  Overall, a very good crime thriller.

Review of The Holiday Murders by Robert Gott (Scribe 2013)

Melbourne, Christmas Eve, 1943, and Inspector Titus Lambert of the Homicide division is called to a large house in which a father and son have been brutally murdered.  He’s accompanied by Sergeant Joe Sable, a young Jewish cop with a heart murmur, who’s been promoted to detective because others have been called up for active service.  Initially they have few leads, but when two military intelligence officers declare an interest in the case it’s suggested that this might be the work of Nazi sympathisers.  Lambert is not convinced that the murders are politically motivated, but it's soon obvious that there is a small group of active national socialists that have not yet been interned who are intent on creating a fascist Australia.  For Sable, the investigation reawakens an interest in his Jewish heritage, and for Constable Helen Ford presents an opportunity to make her mark in a patriarchal police force.  As the violence escalates over the Christmas period, Lambert and his team seek to solve the murders before they induce public panic.

The Holiday Murders is a very competently told police procedural.  The real strengths of the book are the plotting and historical contextualisation.  The story has a nice pace and cadence, and carefully works all the various clues and participants into place, with some nice feints and blinds.  Set in Melbourne in 1943, the story is well framed with respect to the small pockets of anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathisers and agitators who felt the real enemies of Australia were the Jews and communists rather than fascism.  Despite this, the sense of place is a little underdeveloped, giving little flavour of the locale.  The characterisation is nicely done and there is a good dynamic between the various actors, especially Inspector Titus, Sergeant Joe Sable, and Constable Helen Lord.  Overall, an interesting and entertaining read that is hopefully the first in a series.