Fiction

The Dig

Filed Under: Books Read

The Dig

The Dig by John Preston
Published by Other Press on April 5th 2016
Pages: 233
Format: ebook
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

A succinct and witty literary venture that tells the strange story of a priceless treasure discovered in East Anglia on the eve of World War II  In the long, hot summer of 1939, Britain is preparing for war, but on a riverside farm in Suffolk there is excitement of another kind. Mrs. Pretty, the widowed owner of the farm, has had her hunch confirmed that the mounds on her land hold buried treasure. As the dig proceeds, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary find.

This fictional recreation of the famed Sutton Hoo dig follows three months of intense activity when locals fought outsiders, professionals thwarted amateurs, and love and rivalry flourished in equal measure. As the war looms ever closer, engraved gold peeks through the soil, and each character searches for answers in the buried treasure. Their threads of love, loss, and aspiration weave a common awareness of the past as something that can never truly be left behind.

In 1939 Edith Perry contacted the Ipswich Museum about some mounds she wanted excavated on her property in East Anglia. The museum recommended an amateur archeologist, Basil Brown. Mr Brown went on to uncover one of the most significant sites of medieval history in England. What ensured was a battle between Museums and property owns for the priceless objects found.

John Preston has offered us a fictionalized account of this dig. Using four different narrator’s, Preston covers the period of April through September 1939. The use of these narrator’s was very successful in accounting what happened, which I believe Preston wanted to do without bogging down the story with a lot of character detail. This does leave the story a little unsettled. I for one, am grateful to have the book since it does give us a sense of history.

Wolf Lake

Filed Under: Books Read

Wolf Lake

Wolf Lake by John Verdon
Published by Counterpoint on July 12th 2016
Series: Dave Gurney #5
Pages: 375
Format: ebook
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

Could a nightmare be used as a murder weapon? That’s the provocative question confronting Gurney in the thrilling new installment in this series of international bestsellers. The former NYPD star homicide detective is called upon to solve a baffling puzzle: Four people who live in different parts of the country and who seem to have little in common, report having had the same dream—a terrifying nightmare involving a bloody dagger with a carved wolf’s head on the handle. All four are subsequently found with their wrists cut — apparent suicides — and the weapon used in each case was a wolf’s head dagger.
Police zero in quickly on Richard Hammond, a controversial psychologist who conducts hypnotherapy sessions at a spooky old Adirondack inn called Wolf Lake Lodge. It seems that each of the victims had gone there to meet with Hammond shortly before turning up dead.
Troubled by odd holes in the official approach to the case, Gurney begins his own investigation — an action that puts him in the crosshairs of not only an icy murderer and the local police but the darkest corner of the federal government. As ruthless as the blizzard trapping him in the sinister eeriness of Wolf Lake, Gurney’s enemies set out to keep him from the truth at any cost — including an all-out assault on the sanity of his beloved wife Madeleine.
With his emotional resources strained to the breaking point, Gurney must throw himself into a deadly battle of wits with the most frightening opponent he has ever faced.
Wolf Lake is the page-turning new work by a writer hailed by the New York Times as “masterly” — and it furthers the adventures of Dave Gurney, a detective reviewers have compared to Sherlock Holmes.

This is the fifth Dave Gurney book. Other than the fact that a retired NYPD would be drawn into such complex cases is a little far-fetched, the stories are very interesting and well plotted. I like the tension that Verdon has created between Gurney and his wife, this is something one would expect for a couple that is continually drawn back to a life they have given up.

I look forward to the next Dave Gurney book.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Filed Under: Books Read

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith
Published by Macmillan Audio on April 5th 2016
See it @ Goodreads


Synopsis

A masterful new story charts the circuitous course of the sole surviving work of a female Dutch painter.

This is what we long for: the profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. In his earlier, award-winning novels, Dominic Smith demonstrated a gift for coaxing the past to life. Now, in The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, he deftly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth. In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain—a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, I thought that maybe Sara de Vos was a real person, now I know she is a composite of Dutch women painters from the 1600’s – silly me! This was an absolutely charming story, rather bittersweet.

Dominic Smith has with a mixture of history and deft storytelling woven the lives of three people into a wonderful story of love, loss and redemption. I enjoyed Edoardo Ballerini reading of this book, I felt he was perfect.