Large Print Fiction Reviews
The Order of Things by Graham Hurley
I was so excited. Having almost accepted the fact that I had now, by necessity, joined the large print brigade, I had found one of my favourite authors, Graham Hurley and it is his latest book...I couldn’t wait.
It took less than the first chapter for the disappointment to sink in...he’s gone the way of so many others who I presume think they have made it so they stop trying.
They dredge up characters from a previous storyline and reintroduce them into the latest plot, referring back to their previous adventures, relationships, moving back to the present. You can imagine the publishing team sitting around in an office. “What’s a good storyline for this?” Graham Hurley asks, or perhaps it is the publisher. “Climate Change”. I mean really. They decide the characters to reintroduce, there we are the 2019 novel.
I wonder if Graham Hurley wrote it. Don’t get me wrong it’s a good read, he writes well. The path he is taking is one taken by many if his contemporaries, it is just really lazy somehow.
But if I didn’t know, if I hadn’t read the earlier novels, remembered the characters it wouldn’t bother me...it just irks me somehow. I think I refer to this style of writing as ‘pre scribes’...they have previously scribed this.
The Reckoning by John Grisham
John Grisham's latest novel. I was so happy to find this one, I read slowly so it would last longer. If I didn’t think there were lots of people waiting on a list to settle in on a rainy day with their favourite author I would start all over again.
This is Grisham at his best, yet it is a different Grisham. Yes it has the court scenes, but it is not the same. It is set in Mississippi - a World War 2 hero. A member of a prominent family. A Church-going man. Yet one day he walks into the home of the local pastor and shoots him through the head. All he will say to Police, in his defence...”I have nothing to say.” Grisham takes us on a journey as we try to find the answers.
From the Jim Crow South to the Philippines during World War Two, from an asylum filled with secrets to the Clanton courtroom where Pete’s defence desperately tries to save him. Grisham at his best, legal suspense, unanswered questions...it is really good.
Pandemic by Robin Cook
It was like finding an old friend. Robin Cook, it’s been years, yet here he is, a 2018 novel, another medical thriller. So exciting. I read him years ago, thoroughly enjoyable.
A seemingly healthy young woman collapses on a train and dies. An autopsy reveals she has had a recent heart transplant. A pandemic is suspected and the hospital medical examiners must rush to identify the dead woman and the deadly virus.
The investigation leads to a gene-editing biotechnology that’s captured the attention of the organ transplant market’s unethical members.
Lots of long medical terminology. Often thought it would be fun to Google some of the more obscure to see if they really are real words.
The Sisters of Battle Road by J.M.Maloney
This is a warm, lovely story about Annie Jarman and her six daughters who, in 1939, were evacuated from their London home and sent to the Sussex countryside.
The author found family ‘papers’ long after the war had ended. Intrigued he dug deeper and was moved by the family’s war. His writing is unpretentious and honest.
The youngest of the daughters was still a baby, the oldest 14. They fought to stay together, never imagining just how long the war would take. The horror of the blitz, the challenges of growing up in new schools, trying to make friends with the locals. And as they grew, the jobs, dances, Canadian airmen, a dreadful tragedy.
The Sisters of Battle Road is a true story of this family’s journey. The Jarmen family was one among many to be evacuated.
It is a thought-provoking read, the poverty, the thoughts of the girls sometimes challenging, the kindnesses shown them, the determination that against the odds they would stay together.