celticman's blog

Patrick Radden Keefe (2018) Say Nothing is a book to savour. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and was named one of the New York Times 20 Best Books of the 21st Century. It’s not just a murder-mystery whodunit. But shows how money, power, and secrecy combine to warp memory and the idea of an authentic truth that can be picked up and put down again—and not just in Northern Ireland. Say Nothing...

I’d no idea who Tim Walker was or is, but because he writers for the Daily-hate-Mail and often works as a theatre critic, I’d stick him down as being a run-of-the mill and middle-class lad who done good for himself. His 71 pen portraits were mostly of people I knew, famous people. It helped that each interview had a photo. I could flip to that to see if I knew the face. Even with a photo, I didn’t remember who Antonia de Sancha was. Her...

Sean McNulty’s Excavatum has been described at the haunted twin of The Odyssey but without the $250 million budget. Half of which was spent on marketing. Indeed, the cover for Excavatum, A Northern Folk Story, 1953 looks like a child’s drawing of a fishing boat, with three faceless dark figures and at the pointy bit of the boat, beyond the cabin, another faceless figure looking out to whiteness of the borders and the blue surrounds. Some might...

For many readers the term The Body Keeps the Score has become a truism. Something that sounds kinda true, but you don’t really know why or who said it. It’s routinely rolled out in debates and conversations about mental health and in particular PTSD. But really it applies to those lives that have been struck by tragedy and trauma. Unfortunately this includes a large group of children. Those hundreds of thousands of children in Palestine, for...

TG Reid Blood Water Falls setting is the Highlands. The cover describes it as ‘A DCI Bone Scottish Crime Thriller’. I’ve not read other of Reid’s series of books featuring DCI Bone. But as a standalone book—‘You can’t drown the dead’—that should be unnecessary. But Reid and DCI Bone didn’t work for me. I read around the first 30 pages. Over a million copies of this book sold? Perhaps I should add an exclamation mark! Richard Jones, a geography...

Lin Anderson’s Whispers of the Dead is sold as Rhona MacLeod Thriller. Ah, you might say. An established series. That’s good, in a way. Anderson is one of the top ten percent of writers that can afford to write and produce around a book a year. Front cover: The Daily Record labelled it (or her) The Best Scottish Crime Series Since Rebus . I know who Rebus is. I’ve even got a couple of his books lying around unread somewhere (I keep meaning to...

I’ve read J. Oliver Padgett’s work on ABCtales. I’d be able to pick out his writing from others by his measured style and a quirk that stands out like a thumbprint. I didn’t pay much attention to the title page or the title. But it made sense in the end. This is a short book. Just over 200 pages. It can be read in one sitting, which I could easily have done. But I left the last 20 or 30 pages until my concentration was better. And to give it the...

Camilla Läckberg & Henrik Fexeus’s Cult (2023) has sold more than 30 million copies. I like to say I’d read it, but I haven’t. I read around a fifth. The first 100 pages. For the record. My combined book sales lie about 3 copies, or more, maybe 4. Nordic noir is the new ABBA. Ossian is the kidnapped five year old boy whose disappearance drives the central plot. Frederik & Josefin, Ossian’s parents, are devastated by the abductor being a...

Patricia Wolf’s Outback is a DS Walker Thriller. This is her debut novel. Less than a handful of readers would know (or care) who DS Walker is. But it’s presented as part of a series of books such as Rebus or Laidlaw that has a pedigree. This is market-speak for look at me. Outback is readable. I’ve left unfinished around four novels recently. Simple setup—with the ticking clock. Unless they’re found they’ll die. The Australian sun is a killer...

Cathy Rentzenbrink is described on the cover as a Sunday Times bestselling author. True. It reminds me of a phrase Carl Macdougal copy and pasted onto all of his books. Something from Billy Connolly that described him as a great writer. It you’ve got it, flaunt it. Often now, authors aren’t selling books but brands. Her memoir The Last Act of Love was a breakout hit. In Rentzenbrink’s memoir she described the devastation of her elder teenage...