​The Tichborne Case occupied thousands of column inches in newspapers around the world from the mid-19th Century onwards when an obese, slovenly butcher (Tom Castro aka Arthur Orton) from Wagga Wagga claimed he was really the English Baronet Roger Tichborne miraculously risen from the dead and who travelled to England to claim his rightful inheritance.
 
His case wouldn’t have got far if the missing Baronet’s grieving mother hadn’t embraced him as her son without question. It set in motion some of the most extraordinary events in English jurisprudence. Hundreds of witnesses swore the butcher was definitely the refined and aristocratic Roger Tichborne and just as many swore he definitely wasn’t, but an illiterate crook and charlatan.
 
Everything about the Claimant was analysed and discussed: his differing height, dodgy memories, his tattoos, the mystery contents of a secret packet, a mystic signature code and even shortcomings with his private parts (which didn’t stop him having upwards of 8 children). In the days before a DNA test would have put paid to the claim quick-smart, the public was enthralled. Everyone had an opinion. Was he or wasn’t he?
 
There’s a maniacal frenzy about the whole affair (including characters already in the lunatic asylum). The obsequious former servants or acquaintances being bribed to remember things, the members of the ruling classes bamboozled into giving the Claimant money to live the life to which a blue blood must be accustomed, the completely out-of-control defence barrister (Edward Kenealy) who ranted for days and abused his client and the judge in the process. You couldn’t invent many of these characters and the scenarios because no-one would believe you.  
 
Then there was the support he had from the common folk who saw his campaign as some kind of banner to follow in their struggles against privilege and the aristocracy. On his first release from prison, rather than being pilloried, the Claimant became a people’s champion and crowds lined the road to wave to him as he made a progress about the country waving from “a wagonette drawn by four fine bay horses decorated with Tichborne-blue rosettes and carrying footmen in scarlet silk jackets.” It is incredible to think that there was even a movement to have Orton/Castro/Tichborne become a member of parliament which in a way disturbingly reflects recent happenings when a whole country was in denial, willing to believe lies and support a man even though he has been proved to be a crook.
 
But it’s difficult to really get a handle on Orton/Castro/Tichborne. At one stage he confessed it was all a put-up job and then retracted. Perhaps he came to believe his own myth. After he served his time in gaol, he turned into a side-show freak, often impecunious and living on the margins of society in both the USA and England. One has to have some sympathy for him, in particular suffering the loss of four infant children with his second “wife”. Although by the time he died in 1898 the majority had come to accept he was a fraud, his coffin still bore the name of the man whose identity he usurped.
 
Every few years someone re-examines the fascinating story of the Tichborne Claimant and this latest offering by journalist Paul Terry presents it in an entertaining and in-depth fashion. A downside is that the book lacks an index although there is a list of some of the principal characters at the front. One name omitted from that list is the man who briefly acted as the Claimant’s secretary, a certain Mr Truth Butts. Not even Gilbert & Sullivan at their peak could have come up with a more agreeable name to reflect this bizarre but true comic opera.

3.5 stars.

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Australia is a young nation built on a primordial landscape. It had no permanent European settlement until the late 18th Century, but its Aboriginal history stretches back more than 50,000 years. For those susceptible to spiritual echoes there are numerous places on the continent where one might be able to connect with either the recent or ancient past.

This, the fourth title in J.G. Montgomery’s investigations into the paranormal, concentrates specifically on Australian ghosts in each State and Territory, plus Norfolk Island. There are tales here about ghostly prisons and pubs, lunatic asylums and lighthouses, that can send shivers down the spine of even the most sceptical individual.
 
Some ghosts are already well-known to Australians, such as Frederici, the actor ghost who haunts the Princess Theatre in Melbourne or Martha Rendell “the last woman to be hanged in Western Australia” who watches over Fremantle Gaol.
 
While perhaps most sightings have a rational explanation, there are others that do not. Even the famous historical fiction author, the late Colleen McCullough, had a strange experience in her house on Norfolk Island that was hardly surprising in “... that this tiny, remote settlement is so haunted given the names of so many places on the island, names such as Ghost Corner, Bloody Bridge, Slaughter Bay and Gallows Gate ...”
 
The book also touches on the inexplicable in the physical landscape, such as the strange oscillating Min Min light formations that occur mainly in the Channel Country of Queensland, and although there may be a reasonable geological explanation for the way Lake George near Canberra seems to disappear and then reappear, sometimes in a matter of days, to many people it remains “an eerie place” that “has built up an enviable reputation for ghosts, hauntings, UFOs and strange phenomena”.
 
This compact book is nicely produced, complete with a few blood splatters, and well-illustrated with colour photos. It also has a comprehensive bibliography for anyone wanting to learn more about the supernatural side of Australia. Just the thing for when you are in the mood to be spooked!
 
(With many thanks to Edelweiss and Schiffer Publishing for the ARC.)

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Once upon a time there was a beautiful captain’s daughter from Maine called Jessie Dermot. Rather than running off to sea like the men in her family, she skipped away from some messy personal matters and went on the stage, changing her name to Maxine Elliott. In due course she would use her sex appeal and savvy business sense to reach the pinnacle of the social ladder and the ultimate prize of a dalliance with King Edward VII.
 
When Maxine decided to retire in the early 1930s, and using the skills of renowned architect Barry Dierks, she built herself a striking confection of a house known as Chateau de l’Horizon near Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera. She began inviting the glitterati of the age to come and keep her company. And what a roll-call of names it was: politicians, royalty, movie stars, artistes. There were the notorious good-time girls of the English upper classes being the three “D’s”, Daisy Fellowes, Doris Castlerosse and Diana Cooper. Noel Coward played the piano. Winston Churchill rode the slippery water slide into the Mediterranean. Edward and Mrs Simpson, later to be Duke and Duchess of Windsor, found it a refuge from the storm around the abdication crisis.
 
Maxine’s reign ended early in World War II when the house was trashed due to the tramping in and out of various armies, and its next incarnation was under the ownership of Prince Aly Khan, playboy religious leader, whose infamous womanising antics dominated the gossip sheets throughout the 1950s. When he married Rita Hayworth in 1949, the lavish reception at Chateau de l’Horizon demonstrated an excess that had a world still recovering from trauma all agog. The house is now under the ownership of the Saudi royal family and the story of the Chateau is far from over yet.
 
There is a strange kind of compulsion in reading about these people with their brilliance, beauty and high achievement mixed with hedonism, immorality and irresponsibility. With so many of them doomed to tragic ends it is all too easy to demonstrate your own inverted snobbery about their shallowness while secretly, of course, you must be a little envious.
 
Mary S. Lovell always writes excellent biographies and although this particular work contains too broad a compass to explore any of the individuals in depth, it is still a most enjoyable way of curling up and idling away your own hours immersed in an era when “the worst possible behaviour was to be boring” and when wit and sophistication, glamour and style were at their peak.
 
4.5 stars.
 
(With many thanks to Hachette Australia for sending me an advance reader’s copy.)

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What does it say about a book that leaves you feeling both exhilarated and irritated? It means it has had an impact, is unlikely to be forgotten, and perhaps even the ultimate sign of great literature. This fictional tale about the Russian aristocrat, Count Rostov, who is confined to Moscow's Metropole Hotel for a good part of the 20th Century certainly qualifies on that score.

Much of its prose is brilliant and reminiscent of the great classics, with its observations of human behaviour and other philosophical meanderings and shades of nostalgia for a lost way of life, but its basic premise is difficult to swallow. If anyone knows anything about how aristocrats, artists, merchants and intelligentsia were treated by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution, they would know that there is no way as a “former person” Rostov would be allowed to continue to live almost in the manner to which he had been accustomed, albeit on a tiny scale and in a much smaller apartment than previously. If not executed out of hand, he’d have been locked up in some ghastly place like the Lubyanka before disappearing into Siberia along with the countless thousands of others like him who were exterminated by that increasingly vicious regime. His access to wines and quality foods in a country always on the brink of starvation, his ability to meet old friends and make new ones, to wander around the hotel at will and, the most implausible of all, teaching one of the Soviet regime's military leaders English, were absurd. Everyone who worked at that hotel would have been looking out for their own skin, everyone an informer, no-one to be trusted, yet the Count sails through all without ever really being at risk of losing his head.
 
It is also just too long and even the finest writing in the world can lose impact when there is too much of it. (My ARC also had some typesetting faults with closing paragraphs displaced at random several pages later which added to the labyrinthine quality, but hopefully this has been remedied in the final print.)
 
If one can pull away from reality and see this book as a bit of fantasy - somewhat akin to that film "Hotel Bucharest" - then it will be a satisfying experience and worthy of five stars. But if you prefer solid veracity when it comes to the background of your historical fiction, then it could be a struggle. 

(Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this novel in exchange for an honest review)

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This novel is disadvantaged from the start with the choice of title as it will inevitably get confused with that other blockbuster book. 
 
Gretl and her sister Elsa are the only survivors when a train bound for Auschwitz is sabotaged by Polish resistance fighters. One of the men, Jakob, comes across the two girls and takes them home to his family to look after. After the war, Jakob arranges for Gretl to be sent to South Africa under a scheme to resettle the orphaned children of German soldiers. When she is on the verge of adulthood, Jakob arrives on the scene, stirring up old memories and secrets.

Translated from Afrikaans, the novel's best attribute is in giving voice to little-known episodes in history including the struggles of the Polish resistance during World War II and the experiences of child migrants to South Africa from non-English backgrounds.

While it should be refreshing to read about an Afrikaner family without the usual accusatory and clichéd aspects of their treatment of black people, avoiding the issue altogether can suggest a form of denial. As a result, it is difficult to believe in all the sweetness and light surrounding Gretl, especially when her adoptive father carries intense suspicions and obstinate beliefs about Jews, Catholics and Communists. After promising opening chapters the novel plunges downhill into a romantic pot-boiler. The early fatherly relationship between Jakob and Gretl is tenderly conveyed but it becomes unsettling, even a bit creepy, when it switches to one of desire.

Also there are some issues with the translation, the word “weird” being overused every time for anything unusual or strange, plus I couldn’t help agreeing with Jakob when he kept continually warning Gretl how “old” he was, implying that she would be bored stiff with him after a few years.
 
Based on its beginning, this could have been a high-rating historical novel but its later chapters are littered with awkward, implausible and romantic formulaic writing that left me very disappointed.
 
Two stars.

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At a time when Western countries are struggling to deal with the ever-growing problem of mass migration and its leaders are displaying increasing intolerance, this is a timely novel from Imbolo Mbue about one young couple’s experiences in New York City just before and after the Global Financial Crisis.
 
Barack Obama is about to be elected President. Living in Harlem, Jende Jonga from Cameroon has overstayed his visa but still manages to get a dream job driving a Lehman Brothers executive, Clark Edwards, and glamorous wife, Cindy. Jende’s wife, Neni, is struggling to juggle family life and gain a qualification in pharmacy. Both are still hopeful that everything will work out.
 
Stories about the “American dream” are not new, but this one reinforces all about that ideal that is shallow or fake and takes on added meaning particularly at this time when the election for the next President has sunk to disgustingly vile lows and has resulted in turning America into a less-than-attractive destination for anyone wanting to better themselves.
 
The Edwards couple and their children suffer from a bit of stereotyping - stressed-out wealthy husband with extramarital “interests” - the wife with empty life and empty liquor bottles - disenchanted elder son off to find himself in India - younger son needing more family time. Jende has his charms and in spite of rejections and deceits remains optimistic about the dream. Neni less so, and she finally takes things into her own hands in an effort to get what she feels they deserve.
 
There are some delightful humorous passages especially in Neni’s relationships with other women from Cameroon and also the swaggering immigration lawyer who knows all the tricks used to pull the wool over the eyes of the authorities, especially fake refugee stories. Descriptions of life in Cameroon are colourful and interesting, and the ending has a certain poignancy but is also satisfying in its way.
 
A very enjoyable read with a humanity and gentle philosophy about the realities of getting what you think you want in life.  Four 1/2 stars.


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There are three places in the world where Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, (also known simply as Jack Simpson) is immortalised in bronze. One statue is in South Shields, England, and the others are outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Simpson’s extraordinary bravery at Gallipoli in 1915 has passed into legend and most Australian children learn his story in their history lessons.
 
A considerable number of books, articles and even plays have featured Jack and with each outing it seems his myth grows even greater, so this recent publication by Kelso McEwan Yuill makes for some refreshing and enlightening reading. The author has taken a different approach and rather than producing another hagiography has gone in search of Jack’s family: who they were and how their genes and the environment in which he was raised combined together to create this brave young stretcher-bearer who, according to Colonel [later Sir] John Monash, his Australian commanding officer at Gallipoli, “knew no fear and moved unconcernedly through shrapnel and rifle fire” in his determination to carry wounded men to safety on the back of a donkey.
 
Some of the fantasies perpetuated in previous accounts are overturned, just one example being the accident which supposedly crippled Jack’s father in 1904 when in fact Robert Kirkpatrick continued to work and did not die until 1909. The story of Sarah Simpson (Jack’s mother) who lived for a time in luxury in Malaga appears here for the first time, and there are further revelations of family feuding, adultery, illegitimacy and mental breakdown, all of which might combine into a saga worthy of anything that other Tyneside legend, the author Catherine Cookson, could have devised.
 
Jack had healthy self-belief and was not backward in offering his opinions - some of which may be considered a touch racist and sexist by today’s standards - about all that was wrong with “louse bound England” or what the womenfolk in his family needed to be doing in his absence. Nor was he above a bit of swagger and exaggeration or deliberate obfuscation when it might suit him. His comments are not edited out of the extracts from his letters as has been the case in some previous biographies. If you have not read about Simpson before you will gain a good sense of what he was really like; fearless and cheerful in spite of the odds but, above all, a young man with a firm conscience about doing what was right.
 
The book is exceptionally detailed, with many photographs. Interspersed within the chapters are paragraphs describing what was happening politically or socially at the time and these help to set the family’s situation in context. Several chapters are devoted to the ups and downs in the career (and love life) of Jack’s sea-going father, Robert Kirkpatrick; a man often forced to take jobs well below his qualifications in order to keep his growing second family off the bread line. This part of the book will be fascinating for anyone interested in what the life of a Scottish seaman was like around the end of the 19th Century. The Appendices also provide family trees and much additional detail about Jack’s extended family, many of whom were also seafarers.
 
Some typographical and editing errors have slipped through in the text, especially in regard to apostrophes, but these are minor issues compared to the extensive research and scale of the information it contains. Not just on Jack Simpson, but in the way people lived at a time when life could be brutal, family tragedies were almost commonplace and there was no social welfare to prop you up financially.

Recommended not just for its new information on the legendary “Man with the Donkey”, but for anyone researching family history in general before and after World War I and it would also be a valuable addition to any historical or genealogical library.
 
With much appreciation to the author for sending me a copy.
 
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This novel takes place in San Francisco and features two main female characters who are linked across time by a beautiful emerald ring.
 
The present-day wearer of the ring, Sarah Havensworth, is procrastinating on finishing a novel for her thesis when she stumbles across a story in an old newspaper about two dressmakers who went missing in 1876. She suddenly realizes she has found the true story she is destined to write. As she digs through archives and visits relevant locations in the city, she slowly becomes aware that she’s unraveling a sinister mystery that is linked to her own husband's high society family. Sarah is also hiding her own secrets about her past and when some unknown individual discovers what it is that she is researching, she is subject to blackmail.
 
In 1876, Hannelore (Hanna) Schaeffer and Margaret O’Brien are two seamstresses at the mercy of an unsympathetic employer. The two young women become close friends, drawn together in their struggle against prejudice towards immigrants, poverty, and violent family relationships. When wealthy cousins, Robert and Lucas Havensworth, visit the shop, events are set in motion that will bring both joy and a terrible tragedy. When Margaret disappears, Lucas and Hanna search for her, falling foul of both the mean streets of the Barbary Coast and a wealthy family determined to hide the truth, no matter the cost.
 
The novel is a fast-paced and easy read and the historical details of San Francisco in the 1870s are especially evocative and well-described. Both Hanna and Sarah are worthy portrayals for their respective time and situation, but there are rather a lot of coincidences and loose threads [no pun intended], plus a hurried and questionable conclusion.

[Spoiler alert.] 

Violence against women can never be condoned, whether in the past or today, but the big downer for me with this particular title is its Epilogue where evil avoids its comeuppance. This may be acceptable in true crime or even a novel in a darker or literary genre, but in one such as this which appears to be aimed at a readership that usually cheers to see justice win over male aggression and privilege, it just feels disturbing.
 
Three stars - with reservations.
 
(Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.)

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In London in 1828, Elizabeth Coxen meets John Gould through her brother, Charles, who is employed by Gould as a taxidermist. The emotional connection between Elizabeth and John is immediate and thus begins a loving, although often challenging, partnership that will see Elizabeth taking on the responsibilities of wife and mother as well as illustrator of John’s books on the natural world.
 
We share at an intimate level the usual cares of a woman juggling her art with the demands of domestic life as well as the deep heartaches suffered in her loss of her babies. When John plans a voyage to Australia to document that continent’s unique fauna, Elizabeth faces her hardest decision in leaving some of her infant children behind in England at a time when life expectancy was fragile and communication took many months.
 
Whether in the hub-bub of London, on the high seas, on the rough streets of Hobart or the windswept Liverpool Plains, the evocative descriptions of 19th Century life and travel can’t be faulted. Many famous individuals of the time also pass through these pages, including Charles Darwin, Edward Lear and Lady Jane Franklin, and their characters are as carefully delineated as Elizabeth’s illustrations.
 
It is not easy reviewing a novel that is as awe-inspiring in the quality of its narrative as watching a bird-of-paradise strut its dazzling plumage. If you are an ornithologist, twitcher or wildlife artist you will adore this book without question. For anyone else with only a mild interest in birds - and less in the skills of taxidermy or the slaughter of beautiful creatures in the name of science - there may be problems with some of the content and its lengthy detail, but there can be no disputing it is a superb imagining of the life of a woman overshadowed by male achievement and must score five stars.
 
(Thanks to NetGalley and Affirm Press for the ARC.)

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Satirist Ben Pobjie has taken the essential stories that make up the history of Australia from its ancient bacterial origins to the arrival of the First Fleet and on to the Rum Rebellion through to the Eureka Stockade, the Burke & Wills debacle, the age of whiskery bush-rangers culminating in Ned Kelly, then on to Federation and Gallipolli, Kokoda, Vietnam and The Dismissal right up to last year's bun fight between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.

It’s one big Pythonesque  mash-up in which the first half is eye-wateringly, side-splittingly, hilarious. But then there’s a switch and while it seems OK to chortle at the antics of Captain William Bligh hiding under the bed or explorers Hume and Hovell cutting their tent in half and fighting over who gets the handle of a frying pan, massacres are tricky to make funny and when it comes to the war-blasted 20th Century it starts to feel more forced. The rambling script between those even more whiskery founding fathers of Federation is just a tad too long-winded.
 
It regains pace when describing the Great Emu War of the 1930s, but slips away again in the last third which is too much about recent Prime Ministers whose finest biographies are those by cartoonists. The book could have kept the wit factor high by concentrating on some other only-in-Australia eccentricities such the Hutt River Colony, the heroics of potato farmer Cliff Young, or even Lady Flo Bjelke Petersen and her pumpkin scones. Speaking of which, women don't get much of a look-in in this history, which is evidence that the Aussie male still secretly harbours the belief that sheilas belong only in the kitchen or the bedroom.
 
If the book had ended with Ned's last stand at Glenrowan, I’d have given it a big tick as an Australian equivalent of 1066 and All That, but after that the circus train fell off the tracks somewhere beyond the road to Gundagai. Three and a half stars.

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This is a modern Australian take on the classic bedroom farce.
 
Janice, a divorced woman in her late thirties, is the narrator. Her sister Caroline has just gone ballistic and destroyed her husband’s suits, with special focus on the trouser crotch, as he leaves for Noosa with new love Martha. Caroline relents and takes off after them, leaving Janice in charge of her two daughters, Mercedes and Paris. Soon on the scene are the couple next door, Lesley and Craig, the typically insufferable macho male, who doesn’t understand why a woman would reject his charms.
 
Enter stage right (or left) Alec, Janice’s ex, who becomes the anchor in the chaos as it is full-steam ahead for nudity, revolving bedroom doors, trellis-climbing, cupboards hiding, doorbells ringing at inappropriate moments, misunderstandings and cross purposes, a lot of self-absorbed adults and a couple of wise precocious kids who, of course, will let the cat out of the bag.
 
It’s all pretty manic with acerbic witty dialogue, fun-poking at the aspirations or disillusions of the X Generation and if you know Melbourne at all, you will enjoy the references to places - and maybe even people! - you recognise.
 
It’s just the sort of book to read when you’re tired of too many other serious books and need a change of pace. The first third is probably the best with the most laugh-out-loud moments, but even good things can go on just a wee bit too long and it does lose momentum when it allows “serious” to bubble up into the narrative.
 
Still, the skillful and savage exuberance can’t be faulted. Toni Jordan has displayed great versatility as a writer in being able to write something wacky like this as well as her magnificent “Nine Days” (my review here).

Good striking cover as well on the Australian edition. Not quite sure of the symbolism of the umbrella on the UK edition - it rains in Melbourne too.

Four stars.
 
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It was not until author Katrina Kirkwood was presented with a collection of her grandmother’s medical effects, a few photos and a beautifully-woven string of beads that she realised she knew absolutely nothing about the life of Isabella Stenhouse, a pioneering woman doctor of the early 20th Century. This is her journey of discovery.
 
Travelling through the past and the present and both real and imagined scenes of Isabella’s service as a doctor during the Great War, we witness her childhood in Leith, the sights and sounds of turn-of-the century Edinburgh and her training during the turbulent era of feminine rights and labour unrest. We are by her side treating the gassed, maimed and broken soldiers in France, Malta and Egypt. Throughout there are many questions; some that will be answered, many others not. Where exactly did Isabella go, what she did do, and who gave her the beads?
 
The narrative format may take a few pages to get used to, but once in the flow you become completely immersed in its pragmatic aspects as well as its contemplative passages, eerie coincidences and connections. Here is what the author says when a friend asked her if she believes in ghosts:
 
“… it feels uncanny when I reach a place … where I know that I am on Isabella’s territory. It is surprising. It is delightful. I could even call it elating, but it is not haunting. I have no sense of her presence. As I loiter where she trod and poke nosily into matters she chose not to divulge, it feels more that I am haunting her, as if I am the intrusive spirit disturbing the peace of her self-imposed silence, not the other way round.”
 
Isabella’s first posting is to the Anglo-Ethiopian Hospital in France. We are not spared the emergencies, blood and gore of a hospital at the front and are also privy to the mundane events that are more common: the waiting for things to happen, the petty bickering and often irrational behaviours of those in charge. Marie Curie turns up to help with x-ray machines and there is a fascinating aside into the couple who originally founded the Hospital, Dick and Lillian Doughty-Wylie. Dick, who supposedly had an affair with the famous Gertrude Bell, receives a posthumous VC at Gallipoli. When she hears of his death, Lillian is obsessed with the idea that Dick’s ghost keeps her company around the wards.
 
We also share the frustrations the lady doctors experience in trying to get their roles correctly defined by way of uniform, rank or full accreditation as military doctors. They have much to endure as they clash with the rigid and uncompromising stance of the male top brass in those War years when suffrage was put on hold. There is added sadness that while all families must grieve for their losses on the battle fields, Isabella has an added burden of a mysterious home tragedy with more questions never fully answered.
 
In a Centenary market nearing saturation in both fiction and non-fiction about WW1, there is a need for books that take the reader into areas that haven’t been explored as fully as they might be, and this one succeeds brilliantly in bringing this little-known aspect of women’s history to light. As well as a tender tribute to a grandmother, it is history-telling at its best: immediate, visceral, heartfelt and ultimately extremely satisfying. Without doubt a five star read.
 
(With many thanks to the author for sending me a copy for review.)
 
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As I have a fondness for historical sagas written in a traditional style with an easy narrative (no literary hi-jinks) and an interesting collection of characters, this title initially appealed to me. Apparently it is the first book in a trilogy and tells the intertwining stories of a group of people in the early pioneering days of South Australia.
 
There is Thomas Baker, who loses all his family just as they are about to make a start in the colony and he must find some way of making a living. The only opportunity is to travel far inland and look after a sheep run. His inexperience and naivety lead him into difficulties and loss, especially when he is the victim of the unscrupulous travelling salesman, Septimus Whitby. Septimus, in turn, has a turbulent relationship with Harriet, a young girl who has escaped life in a brothel and adores him in spite of his often cruel treatment of her.
 
Thomas’s distant neighbours in his far-flung outpost are a family with many sons and one daughter, Lizzie, with whom he falls in love. And then there is an Aboriginal stockman who helps Thomas and acts as the bridge between him and the Aboriginal community who too often fall foul of other settlers and suffer the consequences.
 
The writing is good and the finer details of the pioneering era in Australia are well-crafted throughout. All the characters have their charms whether good, bad, or a mixture of both. But overall, this book feels like a wagon train lumbering off to nowhere in particular when sometimes not an awful lot happens - and even when it does you don’t feel much impact, never mind shock or surprise. Perhaps that is the intention and accurately reflects a way of life in an era when people lived at a slower pace than we do now and is therefore oddly appropriate, but I got so bored and disappointed I abandoned it somewhere out in the South Australian scrub shortly before the end. I so wanted to like this book, but the thought of two more instalments about subsequent generations going at the same pace does not fill me with enthusiasm.
 
This review must be unrated because technically as I did not quite cross the finish line I ought not do a review at all, but I know the fault is just mine. Judging from the popularity of the author and the four and five star reviews given elsewhere, there are many readers who love it to bits and gained much more emotional impact from it than I managed to do.

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​If you are into crime fiction set in exotic locations and with grotesque serial killer scenarios, then this book should appeal to you.
 
At the beginning - and for much of the story - I really liked Inspector Danilov, the Russian who is out of place among the British boors or racist snobs of the Shanghai Police Dept. His anguish over his family who have been lost somewhere in the chaos of Revolutionary Russia and its Civil War aftermath feels genuine and is historically accurate. His relationship with his off-sider, the half Scots-half Chinese Strachan, provides some of the best moments.
 
But I have to admit after some increasingly gruesome and graphic murders by the time we arrived at the final showdown with the revelation of whodunit, I actually couldn’t remember who the culprit was to begin with and mixed him up with another individual - which is utterly disgraceful on my part and shows that I certainly fell off the rails somewhere along the journey or just didn’t pay close enough attention to who’s who, even though I had already figured out the major clue.
 
There are just too many echoes here of numerous novels or TV dramas about serial killers and their twisted motivations to make it unique. I accept I’m in the minority in finding many action scenes - in both books and films -a chore and I often flick through or fast-forward them. And as for those interminable fight scenes in which a man has been stunned, shot or stabbed several times over and yet rises up to fight yet again when any real human being would be well beyond dead after the first blow (unless it happens to be Rasputin) these are seldom convincing. There is rather too much of this towards the end of the book and unfortunately the epilogue foreshadows a continuation of same and on which I’m going to have to pass in spite of my affection for Danilov.

With more "noir" or more subtle suspense this had the potential to score higher. Still, a solid 3 1/2 stars for Danilov and the late 1920s Shanghai setting.

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British India was not all about pukka sahibs in topees and linen suits, or memsahibs in muslin who flutter fans as they lounge on lush lawns surrounded by peacocks and hibiscus while being served gin-slings by dusky turbaned wallahs. While there is a hint of such stereotypes lurking in the background of this novel, it is primarily about the realities of pre-Independence India, when not all European residents were privileged or pampered and had just the same sorts of class struggles they would have had back home in England, but complicated by the racism, caste and political problems that are unique to India.
 
Maisy Brooks and her Mam live a marginal existence in a marginal suburb in Calcutta in the early 1940s. Mam is fond of rather too many gin-slings and similar beverages. After the death of her husband, she manages to get by in providing certain services to various gentlemen or soldiers passing through and who are usually known to Maisy as “uncles”. Mam is in denial about her situation and has the idea stuck in her head that one day soon someone will come along and solve all their problems, that they will be accepted by other white people and even gain access to the prestigious Tollygunge Club.
 
These are all pipe dreams, of course, and Maisy knows it, as does Pushpa, the ayah who has been with them for years. Mam is equally deluded that her daughter Maisy will have a better life, but it seems she is destined for a similar path to her mother, especially after she does the unthinkable and falls in love with Sunil Banerjee, her tutor’s son, and gives birth to a son, Charlie. Maisy catches the eye of Scots jute wallah Gordon, a friend of one of the “uncles”, and accepts the role of his mistress. But that doesn’t stop her searching for her true love, the missing Sunjil, and the implications of her actions will have dire consequences for all.
 
This is not always a comfortable read. There are confrontational passages about the realities of enforced prostitution as it affected Pushpa and others. After the Partition of India, all hell breaks loose and there are many graphic scenes of the atrocities that took place. Maisy can be annoying in her desire to be reunited with Sunil no matter the cost to others, and Mam’s avoidance of the truth is relentless. Pushpa suffers her tragedies yet she remains resilient and is far wiser than her white female companions.
 
A glossary of Indian words would have been useful for the uninitiated and there is a noticeable lack of historical notes on sources or anything about the author’s background in the 2015 library edition. Perhaps this will be rectified in subsequent editions.
 
There are some contrivances and gaps in a plot that meanders like the Hooghly, but the intense ambiance and thoroughly convincing sense of place and time remain constant throughout the novel. It is worth reading just for those aspects alone and I am happy to give it 4 1/2 stars.
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Confidence tricksters are always fascinating characters. Florence Livesey’s life couldn’t be invented in a novel because no-one would find it believable. To give some idea of what it’s about, here is the blurb from the book’s cover:
 
“An attractive young woman from a respectable middle-class family in Manchester, she had over 40 aliases, eight official marriages, four children and five divorces. Her story stretches from industrial England to the French Riviera, from Ireland to New York, Shanghai, New Zealand, the Isle of Man and across Australia. Ethel claimed she was a cotton heiress, wartime nurse, casino hostess, stowaway, artist, opera singer, gambler, spy, close friend of the King, air raid warden, charity queen and even wife of Australian test cricketer Jack Fingleton.
 
When her career imploded (with the abandonment of her glittering society marriage in post-war Sydney just two hours before the guests were due to arrive), the story of the Amazing Mrs Livesey was blazoned across newspapers around the world. But what was fact and what was fiction?”
 
The author, journalist Freda Marnie Nicholls, has done an epic amount of research in tracking Florence’s career and making chronological sense of it, a brilliant project for which she must be congratulated. She has used the style of writing that now comes under the banner of “creative non-fiction”, setting out facts in a journalistic style where the truth is known but using fictional dialogue based on circumstantial evidence elsewhere. For the most part it works really well, but the last third of the book is taken up with the massive amount of arrests, litigation and trials, which are presumably taken verbatim from the actual court transcripts, and it becomes a glaze-inducing slog trying to keep track of the aliases, the assets and non-assets and circumstances under which money was owed to, and by whom. What is surprising is the comparatively small amount of time Florence spent behind bars considering the crimes of which she was guilty.
 
Like all con merchants, she must have had a very persuasive manner and gave Oscar-winning performances in persuading people to part with their cash and believe her crocodile tears. She bamboozled women as well as men. What is even more bizarre, when her career hit the headlines in Sydney, people still came forward believing her sob stories. They offered her accommodation and lent her money - and men still offered to marry her, even when she was well past her prime and weighed more than 19 stone.
 
There isn’t much psychological profiling in the book, so why she behaved as she did isn’t really explored in much detail. Perhaps she was just one of those people born amoral or incapable of real feelings or sensitivity towards others. Cheating adults is all very well, but her worst crimes in my eyes were that she abandoned her children any time she felt like it. Even when she lost her only daughter as a baby, she seemed to soon bounce back and carry on as before.

While I enjoyed learning about Florence to some extent, she is not a woman who deserves any sympathy and I am full of admiration for her son Frank, who was brought up in foster care but was determined to give his own children a secure and loving family life. 

Three and a half stars.
 
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The great cover and snappy tagline captured my attention. One lied. One died. Hard to resist!

This is a tangled twins mystery with a Gen Y cast that purposely all look similar to one another, with fair hair and cute ski noses (a description repeated just a wee bit too often) and who drink a lot of wine and never seem to finish a meal. Their lives are complicated with messy relationships and dark hidden secrets.
 
Abi is a woman teetering on the edge, continuing to grieve for her identical twin sister Lucy who was killed in a car accident while Abi was driving. She also had another relationship that ended badly which caused her to attempt suicide, resulting in ongoing psychiatric treatment. While trying to get her life back on track, she moves away from Balham, London to the city of Bath.
 
Beatrice and Ben are the set second of twins: a dynamic and beautiful couple with wealth, a gorgeous house and designer label clothes, who surround themselves with a group of artistic friends and give fantastic parties. Abi is captivated when she and Beatrice seem to hit it off and before long Abi is invited to move into the house when one of the tenants leaves. Although it’s against the house rules, she starts to get emotionally involved with Ben. And it’s then that creepy things start happening: some of Abi’s letters from Lucy go missing, a dead bird is found in her bed, she is accused of stealing some jewellery. Could it be the increasingly jealous Beatrice’s doings, or is it one of the other tenants, like Cass, who has a major crush on Beatrice?
 
As this novel has been compared to others like The Girl on a Train, which I didn’t like too much (earlier review here), I was a bit wary at the beginning but by the end, I liked this much better and it did keep me glued to the chair without the need to over-analyse what I was reading. There are places where a brisk edit would have sharpened it even more, but the resolution was very neatly put together and the last couple of pages cemented my suspicions that not even the alleged victims in this novel are people you would want to know or have as your close neighbours.
 
(Many thanks to edelweiss above the treeline for providing a free download for review.)

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Both the title and this cover hooked me as I have a weakness for stories about creepy old houses with ghosts, secrets and mysterious doings, and with a recommendation by ghost story writer John Harwood on the front, combined with the blurb on the back cover, made me think I was set for a chilling and enthralling read.
 
It has the usual double-strand story with alternating time periods, tenses and points of view that used to annoy me intensely, but to which I’m now largely resigned as I’ve been forced to accept that this style of narrative is now almost mandatory in modern fiction.
 
Lorna and her fiancé Jon are out in Cornwall looking for venues for their upcoming wedding. When they come across Pencraw Hall, aka Black Rabbit Hall, Lorna is stirred with some sense of memory of the place. It is dilapidated and inhabited by quirky characters but she is determined it is the venue for them even as Jon has his doubts.
 
In the late 1960s, Amber is the elder daughter of four children who spend many happy holidays at the Hall. When tragedy strikes and their father brings his old flame Caroline into the household, things begin to go awry for everyone.
 
The main positives about this book are the snappy prose with some excellent descriptions that avoid cliché, but I struggled with it in places and especially the last third. There are tragedies, but no real sense of dread or anything here to scare you out of your wits and perhaps it is a sign I have now read too many similar books to be overly surprised at the twists and secrets revealed in the last few pages.

For the most part, this is actually a family relationships novel with some heart-tugging episodes, cute children and two leading females who allow their hearts to rule their heads. While Caroline isn’t meant to be an appealing character - stereotypical wicked stepmother - I actually found her quite intriguing and even understood her irritation with everyone at times. 
 
This is a novel with many good points and will probably have broad appeal, but for anyone expecting something darker, more edgy or supernatural, you will be disappointed.

Three and a half stars.
 
(There are an interesting variety of covers for this book in other countries  - above is the Australian version - and some have continued with a semi-Gothic theme, while others such as the one below with the little boy is, for me at least, a charming and far more accurate reflection of the true direction and heart of this story.) 
 
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Booktopia

In 1958, Eleanor (Ellie) Shipley is a young Australian art student struggling to get by in New York and finding it difficult to finish her studies. An art dealer friend of questionable repute persuades her to forge a copy of a painting called “At the Edge of the Wood”, perhaps the only work attributed to one of the few female Dutch artists of the mid-17th Century, Sara de Vos. The original belongs to wealthy patent attorney, Marty de Groot, and plans are put in place to secretly swap the forgery for the original during a party at his apartment. Forward to 2000 in Sydney, and Ellie is helping to curate an exhibition on female artists of the Dutch Golden Age. To her dismay, both the original painting and the forgery are being submitted and she fears her reputation and whole career are at stake should her past catch up with her.
 
The 17th century narrative takes us inside the Amsterdam life of Sara who, in partnership with her husband, manages to earn a living from her art although she is forced to paint flowers rather than the landscapes she would prefer. When tragedy strikes, Sara is on her own and must forge a new life in the countryside.
 
Multi-strand novels of this type are often classified as historical fiction even if the contemporary, or near-contemporary, narratives are more dominant which, in this case, are the stories of Ellie and Marty, with Sara the echo in her own landscape.

This is a profound exploration of art, ethics and the human condition, and there is so much more here than just a story of an art heist. As in a painting, the characters all develop their own shades and layers and the conclusion draws the three narrative strands together in an unpredictable way. The descriptions of 17th Century Holland are especially evocative, and the details behind creating art forgeries fascinating.

An excellent work but not quite five stars from me because I had more empathy for Sara than I did for the others and I should have liked to spend more time in her world and to get to her know her a little better. 
 
There are two covers shown for this book and the USA/UK one with the woman with scarf is far more dynamic and eye-catching than the wintry one which apparently will be on the Australian edition.

Many thanks for NetGalley for the advance proof copy. (Hoping the few editorial slips will be picked up in the final copy, including that medicinal quinine has no connection to quinoa!)

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