The Night Visitor

The Night Visitor by Lucy Atkins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Olivia is a telegenic academic historian desperate for an idea for her next commercial book. She happens upon a Victorian diary, a deathbed confession that one of the first woman doctors murdered her abusive husband. Vivian is the gatekeeper of said diary, who must be won over.

I’ve looked at other reviews on Goodreads, and people clearly enjoy this book. I did too—to a degree. Atkins summons up a great sense of menace. But I’m not a fan of creating suspense by talking at length about something which is yet to be explained, especially when there’s precious little reason to obfuscate the facts. For Olivia, it’s the “dreadful” thing that her husband has done. For Vivian, it’s the loss of of her dear friend “Bertie”.

Neither woman is especially likeable, and both appear to be liars. Vivian, delivered in the first-person present, lies by omission, if she’s lying at all. As she slides back and forth between the present and her constant reminiscing, the abrupt change of tense can be a little confusing. Olivia, by contrast, is delivered in the third-person perfect from Olivia’s POV. Rather than stating, “She lied,” or, “She couldn’t bear to tell her friend the truth,” Atkins resorts to having her do things she would undoubtedly lie about were she to be caught.

A warning for anyone who likes their stories neatly tied up: you are likely to be furious with the ending.

SPOILER ALERT: If, like me, you’re left wondering who was responsible for chopping off the daughter’s hair, I’ve seen one potential explanation. It was Vivian. This is based entirely on a phrase she uses about the night in question: “The whole episode is a little hazy…” p333. Vivian denies it, but since Atkins offers no other explanation, this is as close as it gets to an answer.

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The Dry

The Dry by Jane Harper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After many years of enforced absence, police officer Aaron Falk returns to his home town to attend the funeral of his former best friend, who, it would seem, took his own life, having just murdered his wife and his young son. But this is a town with old secrets that Falk must uncover.

I’d read the second book in this series, Force of Nature, and was tempted to try the first one. While I managed to put everything together when I was two-thirds of the way through, I enjoyed learning more about Falk—something Harper doesn’t really achieve in Force of Nature. A very nice read for a whodunnit.

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Monthly Post: May 2019 The rise and rise of vanity publishers

Gooseberry (Send for Octavius Guy, #1) by Michael Gallagher
Current average rating: 4.13 of 5 stars

Once upon a time, before the advent of ebooks, there lived a much despised, poor relation to the beloved publisher, and its name was the Vanity Press. Or so many writers believed. But here’s the thing. Unbeknownst to said writers, it provided a valuable service to those who simply wanted to write a book, hold it in their hands, and maybe give it away to their extended families to read—their memoirs, as likely as not, to be recorded for posterity before they died. Given how easy it is to self-publish these days, I would have thought such services a thing of the past. Apparently not, as I discovered when Michael Mills, one of my writing friends on Twitter, contacted me to ask my opinion of an advertisement he’d seen. I’m really delighted that he agreed to discuss the matter with me. Read on…

This month’s offer is a free download of Gooseberry: Octavius Guy & The Case of the Thieving Maharajah (#1). Fourteen-year-old Gooseberry once helped solve the mystery of the Moonstone. Now fate is about to throw him a new case, sending him sleuthing round the Victorian capital once more. Offer ends on May 31st 2019.
“Sometimes you see a book and just know you’re going to love it…An absolute treat for fans of Collins’ novel and a successful novel in its own right.”—Emma Hamilton, LibraryThing Early Reviewer (5 stars)
Happy investigating! Michael
Find me on my website Michael Gallagher Writes and on Facebook, and make sure to follow me on Twitter @seventh7rainbow.