Free to Be Tegan by Mary Grand.

Tegan is 27 years old and suddenly she is thrown out of her home within The Last Week Community in London. Tegan has lived with this religious cult for 22 years, so how will she manage alone in the big wild world? Thankfully relatives living near Aberystwyth in west Wales give her a hand to cope with modern secular life. Follow Tegan on her journey to Wales, freedom and love.

I was put onto Mary Grand by a friend on Goodreads which was welcome as she had not crossed my radar before. Mary was born in Cardiff where I have lived since 1991, so I felt a connection there. When I started to read this book, I fell in love with Mary’s writing style. My wife Gail has lived in Cardiff all her life and Mary writes the way Welsh women talk and tell stories. That local character and voice really shines through, even to an Englishman living in Wales, like myself. Free to Be Tegan was her debut novel.

Free to Be Tegan is NOT a mystery or a thriller. The plot is very obvious because of the strong hints from the very beginning. There are no surprises in this story. But what you do get is a warm, cosy, loving tale of a young woman thrown into modern day life from one of religious oppression.

I liked the way this story was told. The writing is articulate and of quality. Character development is good and I quickly developed an empathy for Tegan. Nicely explored within the story was the place for women within religion and society in general. Religious cults were explained and how leavers can adjust to mainstream society. But all this was told in a light, gentle and loving manner.

Being an Atheist I found the religious aspects of this story funny. But then most of this book is told in a light mocking tone for example…

‘I hope you’re right.’ Hannah looked at her watch. ‘OK, you two, out of here. Someone needs to make an effort for this evening. I shall be wearing this season’s Ralph Lauren. Impressive, eh?’ She looked at their blank faces. ‘No, you don’t get it, do you? Might as well be Primark.’

...And...

She tried to block out the cold rainy days back in Wales, those endless bloody fields, people always wrapped up in layers of clothes.

...So as I read through Free to Be Tegan, her life got better, she recovered from her time with the religious cult and she found love in Wales. This story has a happy ending. The really nice thing about this book is the feel good factor that leaps out from the pages. From the start, although Tegan has been thrown out onto the streets of London, there is hope that family back in Wales would make things right. 

Ah, there’s lovely. I think that Free to Be Tegan is a 4 star TIDY read. Thanks Mary for writing such a good, loving family story that can be enjoyed by both men and women.

Free to be Tegan was written in 2015 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

Rope Enough by Oliver Tidy.

The subtitle for Rope Enough is (The Romney and Marsh Files #1). Oh, I thought, that rings a bell, Romney Marsh, I have heard of that before, isn’t it a nature reserve in Kent? Yes indeed, “Romney Marsh is a sparsely populated wetland area in the counties of Kent and East Sussex in the south-east of England. It covers about 100 square miles (260 km2).” according to Wikipedia. So Oliver Tidy does have a dry sense of humour for his police procedural crime thriller set in Dover along the Kent coast in England.

The central character of this novel is Detective Inspector Romney and he is an old school policeman. To balance this out is the new copper on the block, Detective Sergeant Joy Marsh and she is the modern face of British policing.

I enjoyed reading Rope Enough as it ticks all the boxes for a regular police procedure crime thriller. Character development was good, the plot was good and I liked the way this story was told. I think it would make a good television drama. Oliver shows great talent with the format of his book which made for a very comfortable read. I thought the pace was right and I was impressed that the crimes featured were very unusual. I thought it was brilliant how the motive for the crimes was fully explored and explained.

All the odds and ends were tidied up at the end which left me with a good impression of Case Closed. Rope Enough covers a lot of ground but Romney and Marsh get to the bottom of these crimes by using their very good detective skills. This was not a case of some police specialist finding the key to these crimes but good old fashioned thinking of “what if?”.

I found Rope Enough a very entertaining read and it gave me all I want from a novel. Rope Enough gets the top score of 5 stars from me and whenever I glance at a table, a smile spring’s to my face.

Rope Enough was written 2012 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

Marsh Heirs by Rufus Miles.

Let's run back to the 80's and imagine we are in Suffolk, hiding around an old country estate that has been handed down from generation to generation. Welcome to Marsh Heirs, a very British black comedy.

Forget that we are now living in 2019, this black comedy is a HOOT! It is told very much in the style of the successful television comedy Benidorm. Forget Political Correctness, this is how people talked in the 80's AND how old people talk and think now.

I really enjoyed this book AND found it VERY easy to relate to. It is all about old people behaving badly and should simply be viewed as a bit of fun. I told my wife (who is 7 years older than me) about this book and she did not find it funny and told me NOT to talk like that. Words and phrases that I use every day are used repeatedly in this book YET she declares I should NOT use them! Oh well, I found this book awfully British and at 60 years of age thought it was a GOOD read.

I think that the character development of these elderly people is VERY good, especially Freddie's trips across the marshes. The dialogue between the characters is SPOT ON and it is how our generation talk and think.

Okay, Rufus has taken a few risks with his novel but lighten up folks, this is labelled a black comedy on the cover. Old people DO have views on sex AND skin colour BUT don't call us perverts or racists. At least we enjoy the life we have AND believe the same as the murdered British MP Jo Cox when she said "We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us."

The whole theme of this book is one of community and what binds us together.  Although there have been critics of this book, please simply read this story as a black comedy and enjoy it for what it is, a fun 4 star read.

Marsh Heirs was written in 2011 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

The Evil Beneath by A.J. Waines.

Juliet Grey is a psychotherapist working in London. She receives a text message from a withheld number that starts a voyage of discovery for her.

I found this crime thriller to be an okay read. There were plenty of codes that became clues for Juliet to decipher from anonymous text, email and voice messages. There was a good range of suspects who fit the frame. There was plenty of detail that pointed to each suspect. But a lot of things were convenient for Juliet and the plot. There was no need for Juliet to stick her nose into the police investigation. It was unrealistic how Juliet could work alongside the police in the solving of the murders.

The writing of the story made for a cosy read but as it went on became a little tiresome. When the police thought the bad guy may have gone away I would have been happy for the book to end as unsolved crimes. I found it a little tiresome towards the end but ALL the loose ends were tied up in the epilogue, which is good. One guy I had big suspicions about did not have ANY part to play in the crimes and this book was GOOD at misdirection.

Although I found the plot AVERAGE, I did enjoy the extra bits concerning Juliet's day job and the inclusion of a character with Asperger's. It was good to see our world from a different mindset. All in all, I found this book to be a 3 star bread and butter read.

The Evil Beneath was written in 2013 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

The Girl in the Bed of Snakes by RJ Law.

Claire Foley goes off with Dominic on a little adventure. What could possibly go wrong after being charmed by this wealthy man?

The Girl in the Bed of Snakes is a short thriller of just 34 pages. At the end it asks "Get Claire Foley's whole story in the full-length novel. (All you need is an email address!)"

This short novel got off to a bad start, I could not connect with Claire or Dominic. Page after page droned on and on with scene setting where nothing significant happened. Character development of Claire and Dominic was extremely shallow. This reading experience was like being a passenger on a bus in an unknown city watching but not understanding the other passengers who boarded or alighted.

I found very little meaning in this novel and the dramatic ending made no sense. It all seemed like a little teaser for the full novel. But it did not tease me as I found it a bore. I thought the writing quality was VERY POOR and the plot PUERILE.

Will I bother to get the full novel? No chance! On the strength or rather the weakness of this taster, I will not waste my time reading such low grade, childish rubbish. This wannabe author gets the minimum score of 1 star from me as I have read more interesting bus timetables in my life.

The Girl in the Bed of Snakes was written in 2019 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

Mind The Gap! By Kim Guinan.

Mind The Gap! is a psychological thriller set mainly in London. Gemma Atkinson and her best friend Carly Rogers both have boyfriend trouble, follow them as they sort out their relationships.

I enjoyed reading this novel, it has a great tension running right from the start. The story plays on your mind as you quickly develop your doubts about ALL the characters in this book. All along you have bits and pieces from the nameless bad guy and as you read further ANY character could be them.

Kim's writing quality is good deploying an adult, extensive, intelligent and varied vocabulary. She uses lovely turn of phrases like "get a wriggle on".

Mind The Gap! is a strong character driven novel and her character development is spot on. I found the plot development to be good and it was lovely that there was not one big plot but three smaller plots involving the characters making this novel like a television drama series.

I found Mind The Gap! to be a GOOD read that fits squarely in the psychological thriller genre. I think that Kim shows great potential and her book gets 4 stars from me. I loved the ending to her novel but Transport for London may not feel the same way!

Mind The Gap! was written in 2019 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

What No One Noticed by Sandra Robert.

Can Detective Ted Guttenberg help solve the cases of missing women who are sadly later found dead?

This crime thriller is set in America and Ted is an old school cop who uses his skills to catch the bad guy. The theme of this novel is reflected in the title and revolves around the concept of hidden within plain sight. This bad guy hangs about unnoticed and then abducts the victim. This story is told from two angles, the police and the bad guy.

Sadly Sandra has not had her novel proof-read, the typos and wrong words greatly reduce reading enjoyment as your brain deciphers what Sandra is trying to put across.

The fun had by the bad guy is quite graphic and I was quite surprised that a female author could write in such a randy old man way. Oh the bad guy does like to tickle the victims!

I found the plot quite average but the chase given by Detective Ted Guttenberg went on for a very long time. This drawn out investigation was quite dull and it was easy to begin to lose interest and imagine the bad guy had simply got away and was hiding somewhere else in plain view.

I found What No One Noticed to be an okay 3 star read, let down by lack of proof-reading and a so-so plot with a no-special-techniques routine criminal investigation.

What No One Noticed was written in 2019 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.