Ashes to Ashes

 

The Burning Men
Will Shindler
(Hodder)

When an expensive property development in South London catches fire, a team of fire fighters enter the building to save a man reported trapped inside. They come out without a body and soon after they leave the service and go their separate ways.

Five years later, one of them is burnt to death on his wedding day. Then, a second team member is found dead in a burnt-out sports car. Did something happen on that night five years ago that has made them targets now?

Piecing together the truth from the ashes of the past presents DI Alex Finn and new partner DC Mattie Paulsen with a difficult case. One made all the harder by their own private troubles.

This debut for Finn and Paulsen (for Shindler as a writer of fiction too), doesn't break much ground in the way of originality. Old crimes casting long shadows and cops with complicated back stories are recognisable tropes to anyone with an even passing familiarity with the genre.

Despite this, Will Shindler has delivered a satisfying police procedural that has the potential to build into an equally pleasing series. His prose style is appropriately direct, and he has a strong feeling for character. Both of which are useful crossovers from his day job as a journalist.

The Burning Men might not be a book that shimmers with originality, but it delivers everything a reader of crime fiction could want. This reviewer will take that over disappointing pretention every time.
Good Reads, Friday 19^th May 2023

 

The First and Cruellest Colonisation

 

The Inheritors

William Golding

(Faber & Faber)

 

Lok and his tribe think of themselves as 'the people', inheritors of an unchanging world. Then, as they follow their migratory pattern, they encounter a new race. The first in a long and brutal history of colonisations has begun.

 

William Golding is rightly lauded for writing The Lord of the Flies. It's a novel that, thanks to being taught to generations of school kids, has wormed its way into popular culture. Even if most of the people citing it have never read the book itself all the way through.

Success at that level can overshadow the rest of a writer's work. That is what seems to have happened to Golding, in the case of this novel, first published in 1955, and it is rather a shame.

 

In The Inheritors, Golding uses Lok and his clan to show creatures who relate to the world in a way that is totally different to ours. He does so in a way that is both strange and sympathetic. These aren't stereotypical "savages" dragging their knuckles down the road to perdition.

 

He also touches on issues of colonisation that are still pertinent today. The doomed Neanderthals being swept away by Homo Sapiens are the ancestors of all the indigenous peoples usurped by the West.

 

This is a brilliantly conceived novel telling one of the oldest and cruellest human stories. One, we are still, sadly, repeating to this day.

 

Good Reads, Monday 1^st May 2023

Late Delivery

 

The Letter

Kathryn Hughes

(Headline Review)

 

In 1970’s Manchester charity shop volunteer Tina Craig finds an unsent letter in the pocket of an old suit. Finding out who wrote the letter and why it was never posted provides an escape from her own troubles, and maybe the chance of a new and happier life.

 

Thirty-four years earlier on the eve of World War Two Billie Stirling knows he has done wrong by the love of his life. Before he goes to war, he attempts to make amends by writing her a letter.

 

The chain of events that brings their two stories together takes Tina from Manchester to rural Ireland and to the heart of a tragic love story.

 

Calling a book ‘beach reading’ is a backhanded compliment at best, and often a rather sniffy put-down. This novel is firmly in that genre, and, to my surprise, I very much enjoyed it.

 

Hughes tells the sort of story that keeps your interest and makes you care about the characters; both things are far harder to do than some reviewers think. She is also unafraid of tackling serious issues like domestic violence, addiction and the way unmarried mothers were treated in the 1940’s.

 

She isn’t a great prose stylist and has a habit of telling her readers things she could just as well show them. Her plot is also quite reliant on secondary characters turning up who just happen to have the next piece of information her protagonists need. In Hughes’s defence Dickens was fond of that trope too and he’s got a secure place in the canon.

 

Best of all this is a book that does the thing anyone who reads does so to experience, it tells a story that engages. This reviewer prefers this to pretention any time and so, I’d bet, do Kathryn Hughes army of fans.  

 

 

 

Home Sweet Deadly

 

The Fall

Gilly MacMillan

(Century, 2023)

 

Nicole and Tom have it all, a strong marriage, a beautiful home in rural Gloucestershire and, thanks to a lottery win, enough money to build a new life there. The trouble is, when things most look like they’re going right, is often the point at which they start to go wrong.

 

 When Tom is found dead in their swimming pool with a head injury that suggests suspicious circumstances neighbours Olly and Sasha and their housekeeper Kitty are supportive. As the investigation progresses though Nicole begins to wonder if they are quite so friendly as they seem.

 

This is an accomplished psychological thriller that will please MacMillan’s growing army of fans. She takes one of the genre’s favourite tropes, the closed community, and uses it to create a miniature world where nobody is entirely what they seem and every motive is likely to be an ulterior one.

 

To this she adds a neat combination of the age-old warnings to be careful what you wish for, and that money can’t buy happiness, and our thoroughly modern obsession with reinventing ourselves. Each of her skillfully drawn characters is, at some level, trying to be something they aren’t, engaged in a plate spinning routine where everything is fated to come crashing down sooner or later.

 

How that comes about and what, if anything, they do with the smashed crockery of their hopes is what makes this book so enjoyable. It also establishes Gilly MacMillan as one of the best writers of dark and twisty thrillers currently at work.

Shots, April 2023

 

 

 

#THRILLS

 

# Panic

Luke Jennings

(John Murray, 2023)

 

Jaleesa, Kai, Dani, and Ilya are super fans of cult TV sci-fi show City of Night. Living in different countries, the challenges they face and the online friendship that give them strength. Out of the blue, they get the chance to travel to America to meet the show's star Alice Temple. Their idol has troubles of her own and within hours of meeting for the first time in real life, the four friends are on the run, pursued by the police, the Russian mob, and a sinister right wing militia.

 

As the author of the cult Killing Eve trilogy, Luke Jennings knows a thing or two about writing high concept thrillers. He also has a tough act to follow, something he does here with a handy turn of speed.

 

The action comes thick and fast and is rooted deep in the cultural conflicts going on in the US and beyond. Using a cult TV show as the frame for a novel that, judging by the loose ends left enticingly hanging, could become one itself is a neat touch.

 

Jennings does more than just tell a ripping yarn. What he has delivered is a story about friendship and the importance of being true to yourself that is powerfully topical.

This could have come out as either mealy mouthed and cynical, or worth and didactic. In his hands, it is neither, instead, it is hopeful and life-affirming.

 

Luke Jennings might just have another cult hit on his hands. About which, using the text speak of the title all this reviewer can say is #goodjob #bringonthesequel.

 

Shots, March 2023

 

Greens warn UK government is going into the COP 15 summit empty handed without plans for a Rights of Nature Act.

 

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsey has warned that environment secretary Therese Coffey will be going into a key UN summit on biodiversity ‘empty handed because the government has failed to put forward plans to give legal protection to nature.

The UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) will take place in the Canadian city of Montreal between the 7^th and 19^th of December. It brings together scientific experts and representatives of governments to agree a set of global goals to reverse nature loss [1].

Adrian Ramsey said that the environment secretary would be “attending the UN biodiversity summit empty handed, despite the UK being one of the most nature depleted countries in the world [2].

He added that there was “little confidence” in the government “meeting its target to halt the decline in species by 2030”.

Ahead of the COP 15 summit the government has faced criticism for failing to meet even its own unambitious targets in areas such as protecting threatened habitats.

Speaking to the Guardian Elliot Chapman-Jones, head of public affairs at the Wildlife Trusts said, “we are losing nature at a faster rate than at any time in our history”, yet the government’s “culture of delay” meant they were missing their targets [3].

Adding that “Current plans will mean even less wildlife in 20 years’ time than the much-depleted state that we have now. A truly ‘world leading’ target must aim to leave the next generation with more nature – not less.”

The Green Party are calling for the introduction of a Rights of Nature Act enforced by an independent Commission for Nature.

This will, Adrian Ramsey said provide “legal protection for wildlife and habitats in England and Wales”, it would also put the regeneration of nature “at the heart of all policy considerations”.

Announcing the policy in October last year Green Party spokesperson on the Natural World Jonathan Elmer said “We face an ecological emergency which threatens the survival of all life on the planet including our own. The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world with about half of its biodiversity lost” [4].

Going on to say that a “bold approach” was needed to “challenge the government and other parties to go further in addressing the tragic depletion of nature and wildlife and creating a thriving natural environment for the future.”  

Issuing this fresh call to action Adrian Ramsey said “the pace that we are losing nature continues to accelerate and there is no sign of a reversal in this trend. We face an ecological emergency which poses real threats to human society - to food and water supplies, to clean air, to our ability to adapt to a warming world”.

Adding that “If the UK government wants to demonstrate a genuine commitment to halting and reversing species decline, and avoid arriving at future biodiversity summits empty handed, it will show leadership by introducing a Rights of Nature Act.”

[1] https://www.unep.org/un-biodiversity-conference-cop-15

[2] https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2022/12/07/greens-call-to-extend-legal-protections-for-wildlife/?link_id=0&can_id=8bc5e413fe5b14a23ca14eb06da17776&source=email-green-party-morning-briefing-tuesday-6-december&email_referrer=email_1759856&email_subject=green-party-morning-briefing-wednesday-7-december

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/28/tories-embarrassingly-poor-nature-targets-2030-labour-says

[4] https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2021/10/23/green-party-backs-a-rights-of-nature-act-to-give-nature-legal-rights/

 

North Staffs Greens back COP27 protest.

 

Members of North Staffs Green Party will join activists from trades unions and environmental groups at a protest in Hanley this Saturday.

The protest has been organized by North Staffordshire Climate Coalition; a campaign group founded in the run up to last year’s COP26 summit held in Glasgow.

The coalition brings together trades unions, environmental groups and groups campaigning on issues of social justice to call for urgent global action on climate change.

A spokesperson for North Staffs Green Party said, “climate change is the defining issue of our time, and it is important that we demand action because the government under Rishi Sunak and his two predecessors this year has not stepped up to its responsibilities”.

Adding that “the situation is rapidly approaching a point where we will not be able to turn things around and will hand on a world that has been irreparably damaged to future generations”.

Despite holding the presidency of COP26 the UK government has been criticised for failing to meet the obligations it signed up to in Glasgow and prime minister Rishi Sunak initially refused to travel to Egypt, only changing his mind following pressure from environmental groups and MPs, including some from his own party.

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsey said, “since last year in Glasgow the UK government has gone in completely the wrong direction by introducing new North Sea oil and gas licences, continued to roll out airport and road expansion and will not even rule out the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria” [3].

The COP27 summit takes place in the Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt and is organised by the United Nations to build on the ‘outcomes of COP26 to deliver action on an array of issues critical to tackling the climate emergency – from urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience, and adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate change, to delivering on the commitments to finance climate action in developing countries’ [1].

In his opening address to the summit UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the planet was “on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator”, and that the COP27 meeting was possibly the last chance to develop a workable plan to prevent climate disaster [2].

 North Staffordshire Climate Coalition has issued statement outlining three demands, these are for governments around the world to take urgent action on climate change, for local authorities including Stoke-on-Trent City Council to honour the commitments they made when they declared a climate emergency in 2019, and for an end to attempts by the Egyptian government to use hosting the summit to cover up human rights abuses.

The protest event in Hanley will take place from midday on Saturday 12^th November at the bus station located on Litchfield Street, ST1 3EA.

Further details can be found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/430403929255929

 

[1] https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/cop27

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/07/cop27-climate-summit-un-secretary-general-antonio-guterres?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other&link_id=4&can_id=8bc5e413fe5b14a23ca14eb06da17776&source=email-green-party-morning-briefing-monday-7-november&email_referrer=email_1733043&email_subject=green-party-morning-briefing-tuesday-8-november

[3] https://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2022/11/04/greens-condemn-uk-government-for-failing-to-honour-cop-commitment-to-update-climate-targets/?link_id=0&can_id=8bc5e413fe5b14a23ca14eb06da17776&source=email-green-party-morning-briefing-friday-4-november&email_referrer=email_1731328&email_subject=green-party-morning-briefing-monday-7-november