Review of Snap by Belinda Bauer (2018, Black Swan)

When their car breaks down on the motorway, Jack’s pregnant mother sets off in search of an emergency phone leaving her three children in the car. Eleven year old Jack is left in charge of nine year old Joy and baby Merry. After half-an-hour they set off in pursuit, but their mother has disappeared. A few days later her body is found, but her murderer is not identified. Three years later and Jack is head of the household, his father having walked out, the three children acting out a fantasy for their neighbours that everything is okay. To make ends meet, Jack has turned to a life of crime, breaking into houses for food and goods to sell-on, turning himself into Tiverton’s most wanted criminal. In another part of town, Catherine While is expecting her first baby. She wakes one day to find a knife by her bed with a message that states ‘I could have killed you.’ Instead of calling the police, she decides to nothing. But the messages continue and she’s unsure what to do. Jack and Catherine’s worlds are about to coincide, with Jack sure he might be on the trail of his mother’s killer.

While Snap does contain Detective Inspector Marvel, a character from a previous Bauer novel, this can very much be read as a standalone story. The story focuses on two households – the Brights and the Whiles – and snap decisions that link them. The Bright’s have been devastated by the murder of Eileen Bright, who was pregnant when she was stabbed to death. Three years after her death, her grief-stricken husband has abandoned his three children, with her fourteen year old son Jack looking after the family, determined that they are not going into the care system. The While’s are expecting their first child. Adrian is away a lot as a travelling salesman, leaving the expectant Catherine at home waiting for her due date to arrive. Her world though is about to be turned upside down by a stalker who seems intent on scaring her and demonstrating how vulnerable she is. Rather than go to the police, or tell her husband, she decides to keep the incidents to herself. The tale is very nicely set up and Bauer spins it out, adding a third spoke in the form of the police intent on finding a serial burglar who has hit over a hundred houses in the previous couple of years. The way the story is told there are no major surprises or twists, with the identity of the murdered well-telegraphed. Instead, it is the characters and their intersections that drive the narrative along. Indeed, Bauer does a very fine job of creating a set of interesting and believable characters, especially the three Bright children, Jack, Joy and Merry (which as a trio were a delight). Overall, an entertaining, nice written coming-of-age crime drama.

Review of The Beautiful Dead by Belinda Bauer (Batham Press, 2016)

Eve Singer is a TV crime reporter for iWitness News, constantly seeking out scoops for her demanding boss that gives the station fresh angles and the edge over their rivals. She’s also a carer for her father who has dementia and there are plenty of other wannabe reporters waiting to take her place if she can’t handle the pressure. And lately Eve feels like she’s about to crack under the strain. Her life though is about to get a lot more complicated. A killer has started to murder seemingly random strangers in London and he’s singled out Eve to cover his ‘performances’. She’s as desperate for the exclusive inside track as he is for the media attention. Unwittingly, Eve is providing the stage that the killer craves, as well as being the leading lady in the performance. With the police desperately trying to stop the murders and the pressure mounting the question is whether the 'actor-director' and 'actress-reviewer' will survive the finale.

Belinda Bauer has carved out a niche for producing original, thoughtful crime fiction that skirts tropes and genre conventions. In this outing she gives a fresh spin on the serial killer tale, sold with the tag-line: ‘He might kill her. She might let him.’ Her investigator is Eve Singer, a TV news crime reporter who is struggling to balance caring for her ill father with the pressure of a 24 hour news cycle. The killer is a failed artist and transplant recipient who sees his victims’ deaths as both extending his own life and an exhibition displaying the beauty of death. Despite Eve’s revulsion and fear, she and the killer seem to form a symbiotic relationship – she makes her living seeking scoops on gory crimes and he craves attention for his performances. As much as Eve would like to drop the story and try and stop the murders, she is compelled to not only cover them but participate in the performances. The story then follows the twisted relationship between the killer and news reporter, operating at two levels: first, tracking the unfolding of the murders; second, providing social commentary on crime news reporting and the pressures on female reporters. In terms of the former, while it took me a little while to be fully hooked into the tale, Bauer nicely ratchets up the tension and provides plenty of twists and turns as the killer outwits Eve, the police, and the public, leading to a dramatic denouement. Overall, a compelling, entertaining and thought-provoking tale that would make a great thriller movie.

Review of Darkside by Belinda Bauer (Corgi, 2010)

An elderly woman paralysed from the neck down is murdered in her bed.  Local policeman, Jonas Holly, is horrified that someone could be killed in the small village of Shipcott, where he lives with his increasingly housebound wife, Lucy, a MS sufferer.  He’s even more mortified when the abrasive and abusive DCI Marvel turns up to investigate the case.  Marvel chastises Jonas for poor scene management and then punishes him by assigning him trivial tasks.  When Jonas receives a note suggesting he has failed in his duties, Jonas keeps it to himself.  Shortly after another body is discovered, floating in a stream.  Marvel has taken to drink and half the village seem to be suspects.  Jonas is torn between trying to protect his wife and finding the killer despite Marvel’s antics.  And the notes keep arriving.  With heavy snow cutting the village off, the race is on to catch a killer as the body count rises.

Darkside is a psychological police procedural and the second book in Exmoor trilogy.  The story has a lot going for it – nice character development, good sense of place, and a well constructed plot.  PC Jonas Holly is a local man who knows all the villagers and most of their secrets.  He’s opted out of an upwardly mobile career route to care for his wife who has developed MS.  DCI John Marvel is a bully that nobody likes, but gets results.  Lucy, Jonas’ wife, used to be a fit athlete before her illness and is unhappy at being dependent on others.  Bauer’s does a nice job of detailing how these three principle characters are impacted by the case and the evolving tense relationship between them.  She also captures the local landscape, the tight-knitted nature of the village, and its isolation and apprehension during a snow storm as locals become victims.  Darkside is whodunit, and Bauer keeps plenty of potential suspects in the frame, keeps ratcheting up the tension, and it’s not until the final pages that it all becomes clear in a near frantic denouement.  Oddly, though I had decided on the killer early on and despite plenty of hints and clues to misdirect my suspicions, which I took at a couple of points, my initial instinct proved right.  I think this was more of an intuitive guess on my part than any long distance telegraphing.  It was a little surprising that Marvel had not been reined in before and the snow storm conveniently cut off the village from reinforcements, but these were fairly minor plot devices that didn’t overly detract from the story.  Overall, an engaging and entertaining read.

Review of Blacklands by Belinda Bauer (Corgi, 2010)

Twelve year old Steven Lamb lives in small village on the edge of Dartmoor with his mother, younger brother and Gran.  The home is haunted by the memory of Billy Peters who disappeared after visiting the local shop.  Every day Steven’s gran stands guard at the front window waiting for Billy to return.  The rest of the town believes the boy is dead, killed by a serial killer, Arnold Avery, who admitted to killing six other children and burying them on the moor.  Steven believes that if he can locate the body he can heal the rift between his mother and gran and every weekend he treks up on the moor with a spade and searches for Billy’s burial site.  As he starts to lose hope he conceives of a new idea, drafting a letter to Avery seeking his help.  And so begins a cat-and-mouse game as Avery toys with Steven, both re-energised by their exchange of letters.

The strength of Blacklands is the idea of a young boy from a troubled home exchanging letters with the murderer of his uncle in the hope of discovering the location of the body.  It’s a novel take on the crime fiction oeuvre.  Bauer nicely sets up the premise, charting Steven’s unsettled home life, the bullying he receives at school, and his quest to resolve the doubt in his grandmother’s mind as to what happened to her son.  Then she weaves in the perspective of Arnold Avery, a predatory serial killer of children, and how Steven’s letters re-ignites Avery’s psychopathic fantasies.  However, the tale is rather narrow and linear in its telling and having spent so much time setting up the premise and manoeuvring people into place the ending was somewhat underplayed and underwhelming.  This was a shame as the story really does have a great hook.  Nonetheless, an interesting and innovative read.

Review of Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer (Bantam Press, 2013)

Patrick Fort is a a young man with Asberger's Syndrome who, after the death of his father, becomes obsessed with what happens when a creature dies.  In order to try and understand mortality he leaves his exhausted mother and enrols in an anatomy course at Cardiff University.  There he encounters cadaver number 19.  Along with four other students Patrick’s task is to dissect the body to learn about its constitution and establish the cause of death.  Patrick’s diagnosis is murder, an answer nobody seems to want to hear.  But once Patrick gets a notion he follows it obsessively, regardless of the consequences.

Rubbernecker is a wonderful read - witty and smart, with a nice mix of darkness and light, pathos and humour, and a cleverly worked plot.  The three main strengths of the novel are the characterisation, plot, and prose.  Patrick Fort is a lovely creation - truthful, logical, obsessive and unintentionally abrasive - and the other characters are fully formed: his long suffering mother, the students in his shared house, and the staff and patients at the university hospital, especially Samuel Galan locked inside his comatose body and the selfish, uncaring nurse, Tracy Evans.  The plot is nicely put together, with a couple of very nice twists towards the end of the story.  Adding to the reading experience is the crafting of the narrative and the engaging prose.  There isn’t a word out of place, and the story is all tell and no show.  The novel has the feel of a standalone, but I hope that Bauer is thinking of creating another mystery for Patrick to investigate.  Overall, an excellent piece of literary crime fiction.