Blue Light Yokohama – Nicolás Obregón

Setagaya ward, Tokyo
Inspector Kosuke Iwata, newly transferred to Tokyo’s homicide department, is assigned a new partner and a secondhand case.

Blunt, hard as nails and shunned by her colleagues, Assistant Inspector Noriko Sakai is a partner Iwata decides it would be unwise to cross.

A case that’s complicated – a family of four murdered in their own home by a killer who then ate ice cream, surfed the web and painted a hideous black sun on the bedroom ceiling before he left in broad daylight. A case that so haunted the original investigator that he threw himself off the city’s famous Rainbow Bridge.

Carrying his own secret torment, Iwata is no stranger to pain. He senses the trauma behind the killer’s brutal actions. Yet his progress is thwarted in the unlikeliest of places.

Fearing corruption among his fellow officers, tracking a killer he’s sure is only just beginning and trying to put his own shattered life back together, Iwata knows time is running out before he’s taken off the case or there are more killings . . .

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I’m not sure if it is coincidence or whether I am subconsciously travelling the world via new titles but recently I have read novels set in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and now Japan (and the next one on my reading list is set in India!)

I heard about Blue Light Yokohama via an email and the description intrigued me, especially since the book was inspired by true events.

Inspector Kosuke Iwata had been signed off work for a while and on his return is transferred to Tokyo’s Homicide Department. He is allocated a new partner, Noriko Sakai, and given a secondhand case where a Korean family of four had been murdered in their own home, complicated by the fact that the original investigator had committed suicide a few days earlier.

It soon becomes clear that both Iwata and Sakai have their own issues. Snippets of Iwata’s troubled, painful, past are slowly revealed. Sakai comes across as hard but efficient. She doesn’t mix with her colleagues and some of them try to give her a hard time.

When they start investigating the brutal murders it looks like there could have been a ritualistic element to them but no real clues.

When more cases turn up, Iwata thinks they may have a serial killer, but they get little support from the bosses. Apart from the Korean family, there just doesn’t seem to be anything linking the victims. As they investigate further Iwata deals with bullying, corruption, incompetence and his own demons. It also appears that someone is out to destroy his career.

Nicolás Obregón sets a wonderful scene and although I have never been to Tokyo, I felt a sense of being there, even the bleak places.

It’s quite a complex story because of the references to Iwata’s recent past, and also his childhood/adolescence, as well as the present, but I found I was able to follow it. Initially I had some trouble with the unfamiliar Japanese names and places but you get used to that. I liked the ending and for me it was a real page-turner.

Is it different to any other police procedural/crime thriller set somewhere else? Yes, I believe it is. I felt I got a glimpse of some aspect of Japanese life. Whether it is an accurate portrayal, I don’t know, but it makes for a good debut novel.

Author’s webpage is here.

My thanks to NetGalley and the UK publishers Penguin UK – Michael Joseph for an advance copy.

The Trapped Girl by Robert Dugoni

When a woman’s body is discovered submerged in a crab pot in the chilly waters of Puget Sound, Detective Tracy Crosswhite finds herself with a tough case to untangle. Before they can identify the killer, Tracy and her colleagues on the Seattle PD’s Violent Crimes Section must figure out who the victim is. Her autopsy, however, reveals she may have gone to great lengths to conceal her identity. So who was she running from?

After evidence surfaces that their Jane Doe may be a woman who suspiciously disappeared months earlier, Tracy is once again haunted by the memory of her sister’s unsolved murder. Dredging up details from the woman’s past leads to conflicting clues that only seem to muddy the investigation. As Tracy begins to uncover a twisted tale of brutal betrayal and desperate greed, she’ll find herself risking everything to confront a killer who won’t go down without a deadly fight.

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I’m a fan of Robert Dugoni’s books, having discovered him through NetGalley.

I like his writing style. His books seem to have a bit of substance – a good balance of scene setting, characters, dialogue and importantly, as far as I am concerned, a well-written, entertaining story. This one is no exception.

The Trapped Girl is the fourth book in the Tracy Crosswhite series. Tracy is a strong character, a homicide detective in the Seattle Police Department and she leads a good team. In the previous books, she’s had problems with her boss, Captain Johnny Nolasco. They really don’t like each other and in the past he has made life difficult for Tracy but this time round, we see a slightly softer, more mature side to Tracy and while she is still disagreeing with her boss, she’s trying a different approach. Her personal life also seems more settled.

Tracy and her colleague Kins are called out to a body found near Cormorant Cove, not far from Tracy’s home. A high school student who is out crabbing illegally in Puget Sound caught more than he bargained for when he pulled up a crab pot with a young woman’s body in it. It turned out the victim had facial implants of the kind to change her appearance and by tracing the serial numbers to the manufacturer, eventually got a name from the plastic surgeon who had carried out the procedure – but little else. Lynn Hoff had paid in cash, and had requested that she be given all the photographs taken.

Further investigation leads them to believe Lynn Hoff did not want to be found and had never been reported as missing. No history, a fake social security number, no employment, no phone, nothing.

But then the story takes another twist. Tracy obtains Lynn Hoff’s drivers licence and the photo is passed around. She is contacted by a ranger based in Mount Rainier National Park. He believes the woman is someone who went missing, presumed dead, in unusual circumstances on the mountain, except he says her name is Andrea Strickland.

Just as Tracy’s team are starting to get somewhere, they are ordered to hand the case over to Pierce County who had investigated Andrea Strickland’s disappearance from Mount Rainier. Tracy wasn’t happy about this particularly since she considered their detective, Stan Fields, had carried out a pretty sloppy investigation into the circumstances surrounding Andrea Strickland’s disappearance. So of course Tracy being Tracy, she carries on investigating (just a little) after complying with the order to hand over the case.

Some of the chapters in the book are in the voice of Andrea Strickland (in journal form) so you get a lot of background as to what was happening with her work, her marriage, her husband, her friends, a few months earlier, all adding to the mystery and throwing up possible suspects.

It’s a complex plot but written so well that it is not difficult to follow. There are great twists and turns. I thought I had sussed it out, but I didn’t get it quite right. For a while it looked like I was going to be close, but then there was another twist. Wonderful stuff. Definitely a page-turner.

Although The Trapped Girl is fourth in a series, it can be read as a stand-alone.

My thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing an ARC.

Author’s website:  www.robertdugoni.com.

Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land

Annie’s mother is a serial killer. The only way she can make it stop is to hand her in to the police. But out of sight is not out of mind. As her mother’s trial looms, the secrets of her past won’t let Annie sleep, even with a new foster family and name – Milly. A fresh start. Now, surely, she can be whoever she wants to be. But Milly’s mother is a serial killer. And blood is thicker than water. Good me, bad me. She is, after all, her mother’s daughter… Translated into over 20 languages, Good Me Bad Me is a tour de force. In its narrator, Milly Barnes, we have a voice to be reckoned with, and in its author, Ali Land, an extraordinary new talent.

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Good Me, Bad Me is one tense thriller.  Oh yes.  The tension is there from the start  The writing style demonstrates that – short sentences, fast paced.   At one point I stopped to make a coffee and realised I was so physically tense I was going to have to try and breathe properly and release some of that tension.

Milly knows her mother has done terrible things. Milly’s mother is a serial killer.  Milly is the one who reported her to the Police and her mother is now in jail awaiting trial.  But Milly misses her mum.  She is with a new foster family, has a new name, and has started a new school.  She tries, but finds it hard to fit in.  She thinks about her mum all the time and can’t sleep.  It’s as if her mum is still with her.

Milly’s foster dad is Mike, a psychologist who is an expert in trauma.  And Milly has experienced terrible things throughout her life at the hands of her mother.  Mike is married to Saskia and they have a daughter Phoebe.  It’s clear from early on Phoebe has a problem with Milly.  She also doesn’t get on that well with her own mother. She is bitter and angry that her parents are fostering yet again.

Mike has regular counselling sessions with Milly to try and help her cope with what has happened and the forthcoming Trial.  But does Mike have his own agenda?

The tension just builds and builds.

The story is told from Milly’s point of view but you soon realise that what Milly says to others is not necessarily what she is really thinking.

Although it gets quite dark at times, I really enjoyed this debut novel.  Despite her problems I liked Milly.  I wanted a good outcome for her.  I got a good ending but …… ?

[My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an advance copy]

The Dry – Jane Harper

I just can’t understand how someone like him could do something like that.

Amid the worst drought to ravage Australia in a century, it hasn’t rained in small country town Kiewarra for two years. Tensions in the community become unbearable when three members of the Hadler family are brutally murdered. Everyone thinks Luke Hadler, who committed suicide after slaughtering his wife and six-year-old son, is guilty.

Policeman Aaron Falk returns to the town of his youth for the funeral of his childhood best friend, and is unwillingly drawn into the investigation. As questions mount and suspicion spreads through the town, Falk is forced to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. Because Falk and Luke Hadler shared a secret, one which Luke’s death threatens to unearth. And as Falk probes deeper into the killings, secrets from his past and why he left home bubble to the surface as he questions the truth of his friend’s crime.

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The Dry is a very good debut novel. I liked the writing. It kind of sucked me in immediately. I felt as if I was in that hot, dry town of Kiewarra which was suffering from a longstanding drought.

Aaron Falk is the outsider who has reluctantly returned to the town of Kiewarra where he had grown up, to attend the funeral of Luke Hadler and his wife and son. Luke and Aaron had been friends when they were younger but Aaron had left Kiewarra with his father and had gone to live in the city where he now worked as a policeman. Luke remained a farmer, married Karen and had two children. Apparently Luke came home on day shot his wife and son (but not the baby daughter) and then shot himself in the face.

Aaron planned to stay just for the funeral and wake and leave the next day but he is persuaded by Luke’s parents to stay on for a few days to look into the deaths to see if their son’s name can be cleared. What caused Luke to murder his wife and son? Was his business in financial ruin? When Aaron starts to investigate he finds a few things that just don’t make sense.

Things are complicated by the fact that Aaron is not welcome in the town. He and his father had left the town twenty odd years before having been under suspicion for the death of 16 year old Ellie Deacon, who had been Aaron’s girlfriend at the time. Luke had come up with an story that gave Aaron an alibi at that time but they had agreed to keep that secret between them.

However as Aaron and local police Sergeant Greg Raco investigate deeper, old wounds open, scores have to be settled. Emotions are running high. The drought has affected everyone. Livestock have had to be destroyed because there is no feed, debts are mounting, some farmers have been ruined. Was Luke another casualty of the drought?

Aaron is threatened, his vehicle is damaged, he is challenged in the street, he’s accused of harassment – the tension and the underlying threat of violence is kept running high.

In the meantime we get flashbacks to what actually happened in the past (printed in italics so easily distinguished from the present).

There are quite a few twists and red herrings. Just as Aaron and Raco think they have someone who could have been involved in the family’s murder, an alibi surfaces.

The writing is good and the characters are interesting. I liked the flashbacks to the past. Emotions and surroundings are at flashpoint (literally). A real page turner and a very good ending.

The Dry has already been published in Australia and the author’s webpage can be found here.

It’s scheduled for release in the UK 12 January 2017.

My thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown for an advance copy.

Songs from the Violet Cafe by Fiona Kidman

1943.   Violet Trench crosses Lake Rotorua with a small boy, but rows back without him. Sixty years later, a boat is ritually set alight on the same body of water. The intervening years see Violet open a café by the lake – the scene of an event in the summer of 1963 with lasting repercussions for Violet and her young employees. Their lives diverge, but Violet’s influence on them all – and on runaway Jessie Sandle in particular – will linger like the scent of the truffles with which she infuses her dishes.

The experience of working for Violet Trench in her small-town cafe in the summer of 1963 shapes the lives of a group of women including Jessie Sandal, who follows Violet’s influence as far as Cambodia.

Fiona Kidman explores family relationships and the difficult journey to female independence.

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I enjoyed this book.  Songs from the Violet Cafe is a story of mothers, daughters, relationships, family.

This is a beautifully written book, set in New Zealand, which tells the stories of the girls who work in the Violet Cafe and how they came to be there working for the owner of the cafe, Violet Tench. Violet is an older woman and is a major influence on the girls who work for her. She is strict but fair and helps the girls find their way in the world.

The girls are considered to be “troubled” (or perhaps they were just a bit different and didn’t quite conform to what was expected of a young woman at that time).

The book spans 60 years and starts with friends burning an old boat on the lake in 2002. We are then taken to 1943 when a woman with a young boy goes across the lake in a boat but returns without him.

There is a bit of a jump then to 1963-64 when we meet the girls who work for Violet:

Jessie who decided, on her 18th birthday, to leave the home where she lived with her mother, step-father and half-siblings. There didn’t seem to be any compelling reason – she just left the next day;

Marianne who hadn’t had contact with her mother since returning home unexpectedly one day and catching her boyfriend and her mother in bed;

Belle, the daughter of a preacher, who is engaged to Wallace a young, part-time preacher who had given her a ring on the day before her fifteenth birthday. It was agreed she could work at the Violet Cafe, washing dishes, until she was married but is now being pressured by Wallace to give up work;

Hester, the only child of widow Ruth who owns a bookshop. Hester had been engaged for five years to Owen but Ruth is not happy about Hester’s engagement; and

Evelyn, the daughter of Freda Messenger and who is filling in at the Violet Cafe until she goes to university.

They all come from very different backgrounds and experiences but they are all connected through being employed by Violet Trench.

The writing is is very, very good. and although I have no experience of New Zealand in the 1960s, I felt as if I were there and could easily picture the people and places.

Then in 1965 everything changes following a devastating incident and the story jumps to 1980 and we’re taken to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. At first I thought this was a very big jump forward in time but the story is so well written it all makes sense.

The book ends where it started – in 2002. I liked the way everything linked together and characters connected.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard of this New Zealand author although I realise now that she is a highly acclaimed writer.

[Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book].