More usually writing about crime, this writer here takes a step away in this unusual style. I was hooked from the first page as a woman makes an Atlantic voyage on a liner, waking to find she is the only person on the ship; the other passengers and the crew have vanished.
I loved the mystery, and the peril increasing through what is a classic page-turner; somehow, the writer builds the tension and maintains the credibility as the unusual solution to the mystery unfolds.
I know some readers did not get it, but I loved the thread of dark humor and wanted to cheer aloud at the end, where there is a final twist on the very last page (don’t look!).
A luxury cruise liner, abandoned with no crew, steaming into the mid-Atlantic. And you are the only passenger left on board.
'Astonishing' IAN RANKIN 'The premise is excellent... [a] mile-a-minute, bite-your-nails-to-the-quick ride of a novel, but I will tell you to trust this writer because I guarantee you'll enjoy where he takes you. Extra kudos for the final twist, which brought me great pleasure' OBSERVER 'Oh my goodness, what a rollercoaster of a read!' PRIMA
Caz Ripley, a cafe owner from a small, ordinary town, boards the RMS Atlantica with her boyfriend Pete and a thousand fellow passengers destined for…
I love this author, who is famous for twisty plots with a protagonist caught up in mystery and peril.
This time, the setting is Japan and the United Kingdom, and the only detective is dead as the book starts. What has caused his death? His secretary, Wada, must work to discover what her boss was up to that got him murdered, and I love the fact that having never been out of Japan in her life, the whole search for the truth is as difficult culturally as it is from the danger she finds herself in.
I felt that how she rises to the occasion and uses previously untapped skills to overcome the problems she faces makes for an excellent read.
'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' Daily Mail 'He's the high priest of plot ... deftly woven, but also beautifully written ... I loved it' Mel Giedroyc _______________________________
Umiko Wada has recently had quite enough excitement in her life. With her husband recently murdered and a mother who seems to want her married again before his body is cold, she just wants to keep her head down.
As a secretary to a private detective, her life is pleasingly uncomplicated, filled with coffee runs, diary management and paperwork.
I love this because, though fantastical, it just works.
It starts in 1714 when a young girl rescues herself from danger by making a pact with the devil; this makes her seemingly immortal. So far so unlikely I thought - but I was hooked. With the premise accepted I found the tale rattled along as she spends the next 300 years trying to live a life in which she appears normal. It is difficult, and that difficulty creates a roller coaster of a plot that had me reading long into the night.
I found it a valuable lesson in going outside your normal area of reading – and would label the book "a real find."
"For someone damned to be forgettable, Addie LaRue is a most delightfully unforgettable character, and her story is the most joyous evocation of unlikely immortality." -Neil Gaiman
A Sunday Times-bestselling, award-nominated genre-defying tour-de-force of Faustian bargains, for fans of The Time Traveler's Wife and Life After Life, and The Sudden Appearance of Hope.
When Addie La Rue makes a pact with the devil, she is convinced she's found a loophole-immortality in exchange for her soul. But the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.
This story is set in and around a London market. It is a mystery with a thread of crime, but describes how the life of a young woman, unsuccessful at school and stuck in a drab supermarket job she hates, changes when she takes on the job of apprentice to a local locksmith.
Just as she begins to think she has a proper career; she finds herself involved in criminal activity. With her life under threat, she must draw on all her strength and resolve to survive, stay ahead of a series of unexpected events, and somehow carve out a better life for herself.
