Find You First by Linwood Barclay.

Miles Cookson was a sperm donor but now he has a terminal illness and wants to find his adult children. Follow Miles as he searches for them before his time runs out.

I found Find You First to have the 3 e’s - engaging, enjoyable and entertaining. Although this novel deals with terminal illness and characters who disappear or are killed, it is easy reading because Linwood writes so smoothly. He writes about current times, attitudes and social issues in a soothing style like listening to a radio phone-in programme. All the lifestyle trigger points are covered, for example landlines, burner phones, following Gwyneth Paltrow on Twitter, binge-watching TV, teenagers at home with their mobile phones and ear buds, who text or email with voice calls the last option, Airbnb, Nespresso, and Google Alerts.

There were a lot of twists and turns through this story, lots of finger pointing and a fair range of good and bad characters. These characters gave Linwood the room for subtle humour which made me chuckle, for example…

He’d be ruined professionally. The clinic would be shut down. God, he might even face criminal charges. He’d be lucky to have a job as a Walmart greeter by the time the dust settled.

“You get to a certain age you can throw your back out just wiping your ass.”

Maybe this was what marriage was, Gilbert mused. Unrelenting unhappiness, but at least you had someone to talk to.

“Four stops, four days. Like I’m Drake on tour.”

… I found the plot of Find You First to be okay but the really clever bits were from the beginning and as the story unfolded, slowly but steadily the intriguing elements reduced to a mediocre race to the end. I think Find You First is a GOOD 4 star read but I did not enjoy it as much as his previous book Elevator Pitch.

Thanks to Netgalley and HQ the publisher for providing an ARC on the understanding that I write a review.

Find You First was written in 2021 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook. 

Slow Curve on the Coquihalla (Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery #1) by R. E. Donald.

Follow Hunter Rayne as he solves a mystery back in 1995 when a lorry crashes off a road in Canada, killing the driver.

 

I found Slow Curve on the Coquihalla to be a soft, cosy mystery even though it involved a fatality. Hunter Rayne is a fellow trucker who was asked by the dead driver’s daughter to look into her dad’s death. But Hunter is no average trucker because he used to be a mountie with the RCMP.

 

R. E. Donald writes a lot of detail into her mystery - loads of paragraphs describing the colours of the landscape, the roads and locations alongside plus the workings of a haulage company. I was not bothered by her lengthy descriptions of landscapes and vegetation but loved that her locations were real and not fictional or generic.

 

Of great interest to me were all the details about the workings of the transport industry. Readers must remember that the technical side of trucking has moved on a tremendous amount since 1995. With modern telematics, every damn thing is monitored and recorded, there would be no mystery at all about this road traffic accident.

 

R. E. Donald used to work in the haulage industry and her understanding of the work and the drivers really shines through. I have never driven a lorry but many of my Facebook friends have moved over from coaches to lorries and the attitudes and issues they raise are the same as she describes. For all that bus, coach and lorry drivers enjoy their job and working on their own, whenever they compare notes, they are always moaning about similar things, year in, year out. Honest, all professional drivers are content and happy but we can have a good old moan.

 

Solving the mystery of the lorry crash was a steady plod with lots of finger pointing. I found the parts about Hunter’s family life tedious to read through and were an unwelcome distraction from the core of this mystery. The solving of the mystery was not mind blowing and was something to roll along with. Because the quality of her writing about trucking culture held my interest throughout this book, I consider this novel to be an Okay 3 star read. 

 

Kitty Dunn had a small part to play in this story but she had the best line of dialogue when she said “Yes, it suited me well. Over the years, I’d gotten used to being alone, and I like having my own home without the clutter of a full-time husband”.

 

Slow Curve on the Coquihalla was written in 2011 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

Cold Snap by Sam Clover.

Iddy is a gay 20 year old homeless man. The city is covered in snow and rumours are that a monster is hunting the streets at night. Can Iddy and his homeless friends stay safe from the cold, the snow and the monster?

I really enjoyed reading Cold Snap. It allowed me to enter a very different world to the one I live in. A world of homelessness and homosexuality. Cold Snap has gritty urban issues, gay sex and horror from the monster seeking it’s prey. I think this story would make a great film.

I think Sam is a great author because she engages the reader with situations they may not have any experience or understanding about. Her talent shines when she writes about man to man emotions and gay sex. I naively assumed that only homosexual male authors could write about gay sex. But Sam covers the gay sex so well and I feel it should not offend straight readers of either gender.

I thought the character development was very good, especially Ben, the bi-sexual police officer. There was a good discussion about sexual politics and diversity of lifestyles.

I found Sam’s writing high quality and loved her wide range of language. She made good use of informal North American words which made this British reader tap his Kindle to pull up the dictionary to confirm the meaning. The use of these local words gave the story colour and context.

I loved the banter and humour shared between the characters. The dialogue was very witty and constantly made me smile. For example…

“You know, in case the pretty one turns up dead and you crave some hardcore street cock!” Ben kept going. “I mean, if you’re gonna do dirty, do it right!” Gary insisted. “This meat is ripe! I haven’t showered in three weeks, and it burns like fucking acid when I pee!” He caught Bot nodding and quirked a brow at him. “What, you too? Man, we gotta spring for some ointment.”

...I think Cold Snap is an OUTSTANDING 5 star read from Sam Clover and I hope she writes more books of the same high quality.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher NineStar Press for giving me an ARC on the understanding that I write a review.

Cold Snap was written in 2020 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4) by Rachel Caine.

 Follow Gwen Proctor who is now working as a Private Investigator as she tries to trace Remy Landry, who disappeared into thin air three years ago.

Bitter Falls is the fourth book in the Stillhouse Lake series but can be read as a standalone. I think it is best that you start reading the books in order from book one. It is nice that Rachel does not labour the back story in each book, which would bulk out the story and bore returning readers.

I live in the UK and was shocked to read about the Active Shooter Drills in American schools. Fire drills are an accepted procedure all around the world and for good reason but Active Shooter Drills are scary.

I loved how the writing followed the format of books two and three where-by each chapter is from either Gwen, Sam, Connor or Lanny and are told in the first person with a linear time frame.

I also liked the humour that involved Sam…

I would,” I admit. “But given the circumstances with Lanny...maybe I’d better just go for cleaning the toilets. Option B.”

“You ever seen what these toilets look like? I get hill people and truckers in here. None of them have good aim off the range. But sure. Your choice.”

...not forgetting Sam’s lovely quip “You’re ISIS with a Bible”.

I did enjoy reading about how religious fundamentalists operate because America has quite a history of cults.

I found it funny when Gwen said to Vera “I promise you, if you ever need me, all you have to do is call.” because Gwen very frequently buys yet another burner phone with a new number. I am sure Gwen buys more burner phones than Al-Qaeda. I was however surprised to discover the location of Vera’s secret little hiding place, revealed on page 288.

I enjoyed reading Bitter Falls and find that Rachel is consistent in her writing quality. I think Bitter Falls is a GOOD read and gets 4 stars from me, which is the same as the other books in this series.

Bitter Falls is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2020.

Overland to the Middle East: How it began for me by Ben C. Scott.

Follow Ben as he drives his Volvo F88 pulling a trailer overland from the UK to the Middle East. Ben had been a long distance lorry driver in the Uk for over 12 years when he decided to become an owner operator and tender for continental work.

I have not driven a Volvo F88 lorry but I have driven many Volvo B58 coaches which share the same Volvo TD100 9,602cc inline 6 cylinder engine.

This short 31 page memoir from Ben dates back to his driving adventures in 1975 - hence his Volvo F88 tractor unit which was superseded by the Volvo F10. It is a puzzle to the reader why Ben has taken from 1975 to 2014 to write his story. Adding further mystery is that this memoir ends with a surprise AND Ben has not published anything since. What has happened to Ben, did he run into further trouble going to Iran or Iraq?

I enjoyed reading this short memoir although his writing quality was poor. Ben is not very good at spelling and his story lacks proof-reading. But I downloaded my Kindle copy as a freebie and it was a change from professionally published books.

I found Overland to the Middle East to be an OKAY 3 star read which brought back transport memories from the 1970’s. Hands up, I have been a lorry spotter since childhood.

The most amusing piece in this short memoir is Ben’s encounter with some rather young bandits along his route when he writes…

As I came abreast of the first lot I had the window down and a packet of cigs in my hand, I threw out my arm keeping hold of the packet and the fags went out in an ark, the kids went after them like a pack of rats. Before I got passed the kids I had thrown three packs of fags out this way, but we were past and into the village proper.

Overland to the Middle East was written in 2014 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

Echo the Cooshh (Echo the Cooshh book 1) by Jacqueline Karaca.

Simon brings home a puppy that he names Echo. She is a crossbreed and her mother is a Collie but what breed is her father? Follow Simon in this tale of one boy and his dog.

Echo the Cooshh is a very short 9 page book that is the first in the series of 11. Because I have a crossbreed dog myself called Charlie who is a Pug/Shih Tzu and this book was FREE, I downloaded a copy.

Echo the Cooshh is a book for children or the very drunk. Clearly Jacqueline made book 1 as a freebie in the hope that people would like it and maybe purchase books 2 to 11 for 99p each.

As a business model, making book 1 in a series FREE to download is a brilliant, everybody-wins idea.

Echo the Cooshh however is NOT a book for a 62 year old adult. But this short book is okay for children under 5 years of age or the very drunk. It is told in very simple language, it has a nice range of sounds and is how young children or very drunk adults talk.

There is no plot to Echo the Cooshh and it is simply an introduction to the series about living with a crossbreed dog. There is a little magic in this very short story that should appeal to children under 5 years of age or the very drunk.

My big problem with this series is value for money. Books 2 to 11 bang out at 99p each, yet most of them are less than 10 pages long. This is far over-priced for this volume of content, so sadly I say AVOID this 1 star read. Readers should get value for money with their hobby and Jacqueline does not give you that. Although J. K. Rowling charges a fair price for her books, she has plenty of pages that gives her readers hours of pleasure.

Echo the Cooshh is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2014.

Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3) by Rachel Caine.

Gwen gets two telephone calls for help coming from Wolfhunter, a remote, rural small town in Tennessee. Gwen has to deal with problems arising from her past, does she have the time to help another woman in distress?

I am really enjoying this Stillhouse Lake series. Wolfhunter River follows on from book 2 and although it can be read as a stand-alone, I feel it is better to read these books in sequence. Rachel does not annoy returning readers by droning on about the history of her characters. 

I love the linear time scale and that the four central characters, Gwen - Sam - Connor and Lanny each have their own first person narrative chapters. The relationship between Gwen and Sam was very strongly developed in Wolfhunter River. Male readers will fully identify with the emotions running through Sam when he receives a new job offer with very good pay and conditions.

I liked how there were 2 plot lines running through Wolfhunter River and the dynamics of living around Wolfhunter were very creepy. I think this book is a GOOD reliable 4 star read and a series I am very comfortable living with.

Wolfhunter River is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2019.