Janice Hallett: The Appeal, Serpent Tail/Viper, 9781788165297

I always check the books listed for the CWA Dagger Awards and came across Janice Hallet's " The Appeal" which won the CWA New Blood Dagger Award 2022 , sounded really interesting

This is certainly a totally unique crime novel in the sense that it is written entirely as a sequence of emails and WhatsApp messages going back and force when law students Charlotte and Femi are assigned to this case by a law firm. In order to uncover what went wrong in the little town of Lower Lockwood and their alpha family the Haywards during a fund raising appeal for their sick grandchild leading eventually to murder,  they have to read previous emails of all the 15 people involved in this plot to get to the bottom of the murderer. 

I really struggled with this concept,  took me quite a while to warm to the concept but it never took. Another problem was that I really did not like any of the characters in the plot and the book has 432 pages! I finished anyway, the second half of the book saw me more engaged but this is definitely not my favourite mystery of the year. Apparently others see this differently which is part of the fun of reading, different strokes for different folks. 

 Joseph O'Connor:  My fathers House, 9871787300828, Penguin Random House, Harvill Secker, pub date: Jan 26, 2023

" Joseph O'Connor's : My fathers house " is one of these rare books that is literary, thriller and historical novel all in one,  based on a real life figure, Father Hugh ' O Flaherty, who was a priest in Vatican city with an Irish background. Set during the Nazi occupation of Rome in 1943, ( of which I had scant knowledge)  O' Flaherty set up a tight network of people from British diplomat,  Italian contessa, street vendor, nurses or ordinary people who helped Jews or escapees from prison camps to flee Italy via hiding them in Catholic institutions before an escape route could be found. Their hair raising dangerous missions of leading these groups to freedom while risking their own lives left me breathless at times. What human beings were capable of can be discovered between these 300 pages of this novel, be it the brutal reckless rule of SS Officer Hauptmann or the men and many women around O' Flaherty. Taking fictional liberties but based on true facts, this is a fantastic read, great writing and uplifting in the end.

 Ajay Chowdhury: The Detective, Harwill & Secker, 9781787303171 trade paperback , April 2023

Ever since reading the debut "The waiter" of the wonderfully entertaining Kamil Rahman detective series, I have become a fan of Ajay Chowdhury's writing. It has been such fun to read these three detective novels, featuring the demoted former Kalkotta detective Kamil in his new life as a cook and waiter in his friend Anjoli's Indian Restaurant in Brick Lane, London. Like a cat who cannot stop chasing mice, Kamil stumbles from one murder to another and resolves it in his unique way with Anjoli's unorthodox help. 

In " The Detective"  he has finally made it to detective with the British Met police and the plot is the best yet. One of the co-founders of a start up dealing with Artifical intelligence has been found murdered and Kamil is very  eager to show his worth to his superiors. Loved it, excellent mystery, cleverly constructed, gobbled it down.