BOOK REVIEWS
BY JOHN HAGAN
TO THE LIONS
HOLLY WATT RAVEN BOOKS $19.99 Previously published in the UK, Holly Watt received rave reviews for this, her first, novel. Accolades for ‘To The Lions’, included that of ‘Winner of the 2019 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award’, in addition to being acknowledged as one of the thrillers of the year (2019) by the Sunday Times, Times and the Guardian. These have all come Watt’s way – and rightly so. This is a stunning debut novel - superbly plotted, fast-paced, heart-stopping and totally entertaining. While on an undercover assignment, Casey Benedict, an investigative reporter with London’s Post newspaper, overhears a whispered conversation in her favourite nightspot leading her to believe that a coterie of rich and powerful businessmen are committing murder - just for kicks. With Post colleague, Miranda, and former Royal Marine veteran Ed, Casey sets off in search of the truth. It is a journey which takes her from the glitz of St. Tropez to the barren Algerian mountains, and in to war-torn, lawless, deserts of post-conflict Libya, where she is forced to confront the darker recesses of the human mind - including her own.
The twists and turns of Casey’s investigation are fascinating and certainly ring true. Watt has undoubtly drawn on her own experiences as a former investigative journalist with the Guardian, the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, sharing with us some of the tricks of the trade of the professional reporter in search of a scoop. Nothing must stop the press in its quest to document the next big front-page story, no matter the cost. Watt’s punchy prose and graphic narrative helps build genuine tension, perfectly capturing the horror of the deadly situation in which Casey and her companions find themselves. At the heart of this powerful novel, peopled by a cast of convincing characters, is the scope and nature of human evil in the modern world and the gulf between the rich and those almost without hope. This sizzling, richly inventive, page-turning thriller whets my appetite for Watt’s follow up, ‘The Dead Line’, to be published later this year.
THE WILD LAUGHTER CAOILINN HUGHES ONEWORLD $29.99
It’s an old shibboleth in the publishing business that an author is only as good as their second book. I know of many writers who have shot to prominence with a best-selling first novel only to bomb out with their second, sending a promising career into a terminal tail spin. This is Caoilinn Hughes’ second novel. Her first, ‘Orchid and the Wasp’ received rave reviews, as well as winning the prestigious Collyer Bristow Prize (2019), and being named as the ‘Best Book of the Year’ by Cosmopolitan, Sunday Independent, RTE and the Sunday Business Post. Set in Roscommon in 2008, the book follows the loves, indignities and betrayals of the Black family. Head of the clan is ‘The Chief’, a taciturn, hardworking farmer (‘dandruff flakes from his auburn-grey hair fell around him in his own weather system’) coping with his lot on the land following the devastation wreaked by the Celtic Tiger. He is aided on his smallholding by wife Nora, a chilly former nun, (’smooth as a Hunky Dory crisp in her small talk’) and his son Hart. ‘The Chief’s’ elder son Cormac (‘close-eyed, limb-chinned’,
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