I love a good historical mystery and David Penny always delivers. A Surfeit of Grief is the latest in his popular Thomas Berrington series. This began with ten books set in Spain as Berrington rose to prominence through Moorish Spain, then becoming a confidant of Queen Isabel, the go to man at court for solving murders. He then returned to England, and we now have the fifth Thomas Berrington Tudor mystery, in which he has returned to Spain.
Sevilla, 1502, ten years after the defeat of Moorish Spain, Isabel is still Queen of Castile and King Ferdinand has just survived an assasination attempt in Barcelona. Thomas and friend Jorge Olmos, a former Alhambra Palace eunuch, are attending a banquet at the Real Alcazar Palace. They are talking to the master of the feast, Don Alejandro Dominguez and his deputy Don Rodrigo Vargas, who introduce him to the Infante Duarte de Beja, an eighteen year old Portuguese suitor for the hand of princess Catherine of Aragon. Thomas is attached to the English ambassadors party, Foxe and Savage are promoting eleven year old Henry’s claim following the death of his brother Arthur, which left Catherine widowed.
Berrington left Spain with Catherine when she travelled for that marriage. All hell breaks loose when Don Alejandro collapses at the head table. As a physician Thomas steps forward to help but he cannot save him. Thomas soon realises that Alejandro has been poisoned via the wine. The hunt for a rogue cupman and the power behind the assassination begins, the wine merchant is questioned. The cupman is soon found battered, with his throat slit. Diego Serrano of the Queen’s guard is in charged with the investigation but it is soon clear he needs Thomas’s help. There is a conspiracy to uncover and Thomas and Jorge are in danger as they investigate the great and the good of the Spanish court and the servants behind the scenes. There’s a credible mix of real history and fictional murder, this pacy tale has the feel of the age and its landscape. Very readable, it’s easy to get into the series at this point but more rewarding to check out the backlist too. A new novel Life and Sacrifice will follow shortly. (Published by Rivertree).
To modern day Worcester for Good Gone Bad by Tony Fisher. Charlie Burrows is about to do something stupid. He thinks he has a good reason for doing it but that’s not going to help matters. He’s not a thief by nature, or a bad person per se but one mistake is a gateway to a nightmare.
Charlie photographs an expensive engagement ring in a local Worcester jewellers’ shop. Then he takes that to Birmingham and has a fugazi made. He just knocks on a dark door, on a dark night, no names mentioned, he’s £3,000 lighter but he has his fake ring. Only the forger is greedy, he has Charlie tailed to find out what he plans.
Charlie goes back to the jeweller’s shop,a young woman, Molly, serves him. While looking at the ring, costing £30,500, pay in installments, he makes the switch. He leaves, reserving the ring and promising to come back.
It’s then the trouble starts, Charlie gets a message saying ‘they’ know what he did, it’s going to cost him; the real ring plus £10,000 on top. Unsure what to do, Charlie turns to an old school friend, now a podcaster, for help. Dean comes up with a good idea, a way out. Only we know it’s not going to be that easy. Charlie doesn’t know as much as he should about Dean and things soon get complicated. Innocents are involved and the bad guys seem to have no mercy. Events spiral, now it’s not just about avoiding going to gaol, it’s a matter of survival.
This is a fast read, enjoyable and involving. Tony Fisher Press.
Barvick Falls by Rob McInroy. A story in the Bob and Annie Kelty crime series. Set in Crieff, Perthshire, where McInroy was born. The novel opens as war arrives, 2nd September, 1939. Mrs McNeill calls on the Keltys to tell them they have to take in an evacuee child from Glasgow.
12 year old Ellen turns up, she’s from a working class family, all attitude and anger, a sign of her fear and mistrust at being cruelly uprooted like this. The novel is very good on the upheaval of WWII on daily homefront lives. The Kelty’s do their best to help Ellen settle. Meanwhile, new school maid Mary is getting to know schoolteacher Miss Laura Carrington. Though Carrington appears friendly she is soon manipulating and abusing Mary to her own ends. Ellen has problems in school not least of which is that Miss Carrington takes against her. There is something very wrong with Miss Carrington. Her father was a preacher, she believes ‘God is a consuming fire.’ We soon find out how disturbed she is when Carrington starts a fire in a hay bale outside the local hotel. The locals are none the wiser as to who did it, blaming interlopers and outsiders. Things escalate, the police are baffled, and eventually it will lead to murder.
This is a suspenseful tale, the ominous sense of worse to come haunts the pages. These are characters and lives we care about, touchingly flawed people coping with the wider trauma of war in the background and a frightening series of events blighting the community. Wartime Crieff is so vividly reimagined. (Tippermuir Books).
A Dangerous Business by AR Goldsmith. The Washington novelist has created a female spy who joins the spy service in mid-1970s Cold War Britain. Nicolette Beverley has appeared in two novels to date. In the first, A Nasty Business, seventeen year old Nicky had a fairly mundane job and lived in a quiet little village before opportunity knocked. An invitation from the local airbase led to an interview during which the husband of her hockey coach revealed himself to be a spy recruiting her to a specialist unit of female code breakers. She is one of a handful of women in the new ‘enlightened’ modern service. Soon, due to circumstances, Nicky is sent on her first live mission. This sequel continues Nicky’s story. It opens in Chiang Rai, Thailand, where Nicky is part of a clandestine team listening in on drug traffickers and gunrunners in the Golden Triangle of Thailand, Laos and Burma. The NATO operation is designed to protect Europe from trafficking. When the group is attacked, Nicky manages to escape but back in Europe she faces accusations of betraying her colleagues and has to defend herself. As she seeks to clear her name she is sent on another mission, this time to the Falklands. The British government is concerned by the Argentina crackdown on their own population as information on Operation Condor begins to emerge, not to mention fears over naval activity in the South Atlantic. British readers will have some idea of where this is going. It is intriguing for the NATO angle and the young female protagonist. This feels like a series that could run for a while, more about the landscape of Nicky’s career as an agent/officer rather than just each individual story. (Flare Books/Catalyst Press).
Chris Humphreys, actor and writer, is well known for his historical novels as CC Humphreys. One London Day is a contemporary tale of spies and the chaos they create in the capital city. Malcolm Phipps is a professional killer working for MI5 as an outside contractor. He’s got an ex-partner, daughter and girlfriend to worry about. His latest target is dodgy accountant Joseph Severin, a well off businessman who does the books for a rogue offshoot of the security services. The order isn’t just to kill Severin but to collect the books he is keeping, there is nothing on the computer so that the nefarious activities of ‘Shadow’ can’t be traced. The hit gets messy, a witness stumbles onto the scene. To top it all the rogue outfit is headed by psychopath Sebastien. Fast and fun and, clearly, Humphreys can do a decent contemporary thriller too. (Allison & Busby, January 22nd).