There's been a lot about me and my books on the blog lately. It's fair enough, I think: after all, I write it. This week, though, I thought I'd like to switch the attention to another Accent author, Nell Peters.
Nell's books are often quite strange, but in a good way. This is a review of 'Double You', the first of a detective series featuring DI Rose Huntingford.
Double You: Nell Peters
Buckle in and prepare for a very strange ride, featuring homicidal clowns, mysterious cults and psychopathic twins.
Disturbing as the plot often is, as gruesome murder succeeds gruesome murder, it's an effortless read. Nell Peters writes in an easy style that pulls you into her stories. It kept me up past my bed-time, which is praise indeed.
Nell has a taste for the grotesque and a tendency to Grand Guignol that can be disturbing. The plot moves swiftly from the mundane to the weird to the borderline insane, but it does carry you along with it. Apart from the team of detectives (nicely drawn and engaging) the vast cast of suspects, victims, suspects who become victims, victims who may still be suspects, secret agents and casual lovers can be hard to keep track of, especially as so many of them turnout to have double (or triple?) lives. In the end, though, it all washed over me like a pleasantly confusing fog. Think of TV detective Lewis but with less Oxford architecture and more gritty urban life.
I like 'Lewis', as do millions of others. I liked this. You may well like it too.
Thank you for the review, Tom! I've booked an urgent appointment with my therapist :)
ReplyDeleteLike you, I enjoyed this book. As my Amazon review said, it is the only time that I've ever lost count of the number of corpses in a mystery story! The second book in the series, Santa's Slays, is also highly entertaining and just as weird - but with a slightly lower body count.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Frances! I have just started writing #3 in the series, but so far the body count is atypically low - must up my game :-)
ReplyDeleteStrange in a good way is quite a recommendation! Thanks for the TBR lead.
ReplyDelete@mirymom1 from
Balancing Act
And another one on my TBR pile... thx
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, but i also spy a couple of your own books I'd be inclined to read! Burke at Waterloo and Cawnpore.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susannah. I hope you do. They're very different books, though. They're both stand-alone novels, but the Waterloo one is from a series about a spy in the Napoleonic Wars and 'Cawnpore' is a rather more serious look at colonial life in the mid-19th century. Both feature battles, but that's about all they have in common. If you want to decide which one is likely to be for you, have a look at my blog post, 'Apples and Oranges' (http://thewhiterajah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/apples-and-oranges.html) Of course, if you read both, I'll be delighted.
ReplyDeleteLet me know how you get on.