Book Review: THE POSSIBLE WORLD by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

 

Title: THE POSSIBLE WORLD

Author:  Liese O’Halloran Schwarz

Read: March 2022

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

 

Book Description:

 

It seems like just another night shift for Lucy, an overworked ER physician in Providence, Rhode Island, until six-year-old Ben is brought in as the sole survivor from a horrifying crime scene. He’s traumatized and wordless; everything he knows has been taken from him in an afternoon. It’s not clear what he saw, or what he remembers.

Lucy, who’s grappling with a personal upheaval of her own, feels a profound, unexpected connection to the little boy. She wants to help him…but will recovering his memory heal him, or damage him further?

Across town, Clare will soon be turning one hundred years old. She has long believed that the lifetime of secrets she’s been keeping don’t matter to anyone anymore, but a surprising encounter makes her realize that the time has come to tell her story.

As Ben, Lucy, and Clare struggle to confront the events that shattered their lives, something stronger than fate is working to bring them together.

 

My musings:

 

At what point do you know that you have found an all-time favourite read? The moment the characters come alive in front of your eyes, vivid images like people you have known all your life? The moment you lie awake at night pondering the dilemma the characters find themselves in and worrying for them? The moment you close the book and feel grief stricken because these characters won’t be a part of your life any more? It was all of those and more with Liese O’Halloran Schwarz’s wonderful book THE POSSIBLE WORLD. I knew very early on that this book spoke directly to my heart and soul, and I was torn between savouring it and to read greedily to find out all the answers.

 

Schwarz is a gifted story teller, who weaves together three separate stories with three unconnected characters until their lives will converge in a heart breaking moment that will stay with me for ages yet to come. With her background as an emergency physician, she is also one of the few authors who can recreate the fictional hospital environment in a realistic and yet touching way that has none of those eye rolling moments I have found in other books (shocking asystole, propping up a spinal patient on a few pillows for comfort, leaving your ICU patient on a ventilator unattended with visitors walking in and out willy nilly etc). 

 

Where do I even start to tell you how deeply this book affected me. I adored all characters equally. Little Ben / Leo, who has survived a horrible trauma. Lucy, the young ED doctor whose career may have cost her her marriage. Clare, an old lady in a nursing home who decides to tell her life story, because she owes it to someone from her past. How do these characters all connect? You will have to read it to find out. At times, I thought that my heart would surely break! Schwarz points her arrows right at the heart where our deepest feelings live, and lays them bare.

 

 There really isn’t much more to say, except that if I could only read one book this year I would choose this one. It will easily make my list of all-time-favourites and I can’t wait to read more from this author in future. Now let me deal with my intense book hangover …

Book Review: THE FAMILY DOCTOR by Debra Oswald

 

Title: THE FAMILY DOCTOR

Author:  Debra Oswald

Read: June 2021

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2

 

Book Description:

 

Paula is a dedicated suburban GP, who is devastated by the murder of a friend and her children by their estranged husband and father. Stacey and the children had been staying with her after fleeing his control, and Paula is haunted by the thought that she couldn't protect them when they most needed it. How had she missed the warning signs? How had she failed to keep them safe?

Not long after, a patient with suspicious injuries brings her anxious young son into Paula's surgery. The woman admits that her husband hurts her, but she's terrified to leave for fear of escalating the violence, and defeated by the consistent failures of the law to help her.

Can Paula go against everything she believes to make sure one woman is saved, one child spared? She isn't motivated by revenge. She's desperately trying to prevent a tragedy . . .

 

My musings:

 

Before I begin, let me tell you a little story we were told in an ethics class long ago, which has always stayed in my mind. A train is racing towards a canyon, where the bridge has collapsed. You have the power to stop the train by diverting it onto an unused line, but a family are sitting on the tracks having a picnic and there is no time to warn them. What do you do? Let the train run its current course and know that hundreds of passengers are doomed, or save them by diverting the train but kill a family in the process?

 

This is the sort of ethical dilemma Dr Paula Kackzmarek faces in Oswald’s confronting and thought provoking novel THE FAMILY DOCTOR. Paula has always been a rock to her friends and family, even through times of personal tragedy when she lost her young husband to cancer. When her long-time friend Stacey and her two kids had to flee their family home to escape Stacey’s violent husband, Paula didn’t hesitate to take them in. But then the unthinkable happened, and Paula came home from work to find her friend and her two children had been shot by her estranged husband, in a terrible murder-suicide. So when Paula encounters a woman and her child in her clinic, bearing the scars of domestic violence, she is determined to help her. With a system often powerless to stop violence against women and legal processes that see many predators freed due to technicalities, Paula feels helpless. Can she stand back and risk another woman being killed by her violent husband, or should she take matters into her own hands?

 

When I picked up THE FAMILY DOCTOR, I had no idea how deeply this novel would draw me in, and keep me captivated in a state of permanent moral conflict. Initially I stood firmly on my own moral highground, but as the story unfolded, layer after layer, I realised what a complex and ambivalent story this had become. Oswald draws her characters so well that I was quickly emotionally invested and could no longer look away or pretend that this was not troubling me on many levels. Even now, I feel like I need to discuss this book with someone! According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1 in 6 women have experienced violence from a current or previous partner. These terrible numbers don’t lie!

 

Throughout the book, I felt the author’s frustration with a legal system that often sets predators free, only to continue the cycle of violence. By exploring the topic through a variety of characters – a doctor, a journalist covering a murder trial where a man has been accused of killing his girlfriend, a police detective plus several victims of domestic violence – Oswald explores all the ethical and moral nooks and crannies associated with this issue.

 

Summary:

 

THE FAMILY DOCTOR is a well researched, well written novel that really got under my skin! I was in a constant state of anxiety trying to sort out my own thoughts about Paula’s situation, and confronting my own moral highground and preconceived ideas about many issues surrounding the topic of domestic violence in our society today. Being set in Australia made it even more relevant, as it described processes I am familiar with through my work and everyday life. This was a profound if troubling piece of writing, which will stay in my mind for a long time to come. I can’t wait to read more from this author in future!

Book Review: EIGHT LIVES by Susan Hurley

Title: Eight Lives

Author: Susan Hurley
Publisher: Affirm Press
Read: March 2019

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 all the stars!

Book Description:

A brilliant young doctor is dead ... and someone has to take the blame.

Former refugee David Tran becomes the Golden Boy of Australian medical research and invents a drug that could transform immunology. Eight volunteers are recruited for the first human trial, a crucial step on the path to global fame for David and windfall gains for his investors. But when David dies in baffling circumstances, motives are put under the microscope.

With its origins in a real-life drug trial that ended in tragedy, EIGHT LIVES is told from the perspectives of David’s friends, family and business associates, who all played a role in his downfall.

My musings:

“When eating the fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.”

What scientist has not dreamed of discovering the drug that will cure cancer or any of the killer diseases out there? It would make them not only a lifesaving hero, but also a billionaire. But I am betting that the average person has no idea of the “behind the scenes” that is necessary before a new medication hits the market. According to one of the interesting facts the author discloses in this intelligent thriller is that only 15% of all drugs that go through clinical trial actually make it onto the market. Which is quite an eye-opener, considering that a clinical trial costs tens of thousands of dollars if not more. Not to mention the political wheelings and dealings that play out between drug companies. So even if you discovered that grandma’s innocuous herb in her vegie patch is the new cure to diabetes, don’t hold your breath that fame and fortune await any time soon.

Former asylum seeker turned protégé doctor David Tran has indeed managed to crack the code that could turn on our own immune system to fight disease, making him the golden boy of Australian medicine and highly sought after by drug companies wanting to cash in on his imminent success. If the drug makes it through all stages of clinical trials, it could be worth billions. But on the eve of the first human trial, David is dead. What happened? Who is to blame?

EIGHT LIVES is one of the most intriguing, intelligent and well-researched medical thrillers I have ever read, and the author’s intimate knowledge of medical research and the pharmaceutical industry became very obvious as soon as the story unfolded. As a health professional, I had no problems with the medical terminology included in the book – in fact, I appreciated the accurate portrayal of medical procedures and processes that often get lost in works of fiction for the sake of entertainment or simply because the author is not familiar with them. With its Australian setting, the book also reflected our own medical system here, which made it easier to navigate for me than US based medical thrillers.

Hurley tells her tale through the POVs of multiple characters, and it was one of those rare books where I found each and every character equally interesting. I also really appreciated the inclusion of characters from different cultural backgrounds, like David (Dung) Tran and his family, who were asylum seekers from Vietnam, and Rosa, whose family were Italian. It added an extra depth to the story and reflected some of the current topics related to immigration in Australia. As the story slowly unfolds through different eyes, and each character’s unique voice, we soon learn that David’s unfortunate death is surrounded by mystery and speculation. Why did this brilliant young man have to die?

Hurley includes many fascinating facts about immunology, pharmaceuticals, drug trials, animal and human testing of drugs and the politics behind having a new medication approved for market, which all made for fascinating reading. I was drawn in very quickly and could not tear myself away! Whilst some characters are not very likeable, there is always some subtle self-deprecating humour and good Aussie tongue-in-cheek at play here, which gave the story a special flair I really enjoyed.

IF you are wondering about the title – it will make perfect sense in the end. An end which is as tragic as it is shocking, and took me by surprise. I would have to be a true mastermind to tie together all the strings on my own, but it was very satisfying to finally have all the answers. What really happened to David Tran? You will have to read it to find out. Make sure to also read the author’s note, which explains the inspiration for this story, which made it even more poignant for me. Also notable are some of the ethical issues raised in this novel, which would make for an interesting discussion in a reading group.

Summary:

Multi-layered, intelligent, gripping and satisfying are all terms that come to mind when trying to describe this book. I highly recommend it to readers who are looking for a smart medical thriller from a writer who has insider knowledge of the industry and is not afraid to showcase it. I really hope to read more from this author in future!

Thank you to Netgalley and Affirm Press for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

Book Review: THE DARKEST PLACE by Jo Spain

Title: The Darkest Place

Author: Jo Spain
Publisher: Quercus Books
Read: October 2018

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

'Island of the Lost was the isle's name long before the hospital was built. In winter, they say the fog falls so heavy there that you can't see your hand in front of your face. Storms rage so forcefully you can be blown from the cliffs. Once St. Christina's was built, the name took on a new meaning. Very few who went into that place ever left.'

Christmas day, and DCI Tom Reynolds receives an alarming call. A mass grave has been discovered on Oileán na Caillte, the island which housed the controversial psychiatric institution St. Christina's. The hospital has been closed for decades and onsite graves were tragically common. Reynolds thinks his adversarial boss is handing him a cold case to sideline him.

But then it transpires another body has been discovered amongst the dead - one of the doctors who went missing from the hospital in mysterious circumstances forty years ago. He appears to have been brutally murdered.

As events take a sudden turn, nothing can prepare Reynolds and his team for what they are about to discover once they arrive on the island . . .

My musings:

Everyone knows that I am a sucker for spooky atmospheric settings, so what would better fit that description than an abandoned old asylum on a remote island? It cries out “spooky”! And even though this is the fourth book in the Tom Reynolds series, and I knew I may be missing some background, I absolutely had to read it.

I really liked DCI Tom Reynolds and I could see that I probably would have benefited from reading the earlier books in the series, as there seemed to be some very interesting history concerning his relationship with his boss, as well as some love triangles happening in the investigative team. That said, Spain provides enough detail that this was no obstacle to enjoying and following the story, but I think that I would have forged a better connection to the main characters had I started the series from the beginning. But I guess it’s not too late to do so!

As the title suggests, this is a very dark and sinister story, and not for the faint of heart – and I’m not just referring to the setting. In fact, the setting was perhaps the least frightening element of the novel, and I felt that it could have been utilised more to give the story a spooky undertone (which I had been looking for), perhaps in the vein of Simone St James’ The Broken Girls. However, seeing how the events the investigation uncovers are based on real historical facts, it made for truly chilling reading!

In The Darkest Place, Tom and his team investigate the disappearance of one of St Christina’s leading psychiatrists, whose remains have recently been discovered in a mass grave containing countless deceased patients who had been incarcerated in the asylum. Seeing that the man disappeared without a trace forty years ago, abandoning his wife and kids without warning, foul play is suspected. As the investigative team descend on the mist-shrouded island, they soon discover that some of the locals are very tight-lipped about the asylum and events surrounding it. A diary, found by the wife of the missing doctor amongst his personal effects, suggests that patients were mistreated, and subjected to cruel treatment regimens, some of which were common practice in the earlier years of the asylum. Trigger warning – some of the treatments described were truly hair-raising, and it was only due to the fact that the characters of the patients are only ever referred to through the POVs of the diary entries and witness accounts– and therefore stay somewhat remote – that the details of the “treatments” did not follow me into my worst nightmares!

Jo Spain paints a bleak and cruel picture of the treatment of the mentally ill and other undesirables in Ireland’s past. As shocking are the attempts by people to hide the truth about the atrocities committed, even in our times, when we have moved on to more humane and effective treatment methods. Incorporated into a present-day murder mystery, the events describe remain somewhat shrouded in mystery, which allows the reader to stay disconnected from the more horrible happenings. Personally, even though I can see how it all ties into the main mystery element, this disconnection took a bit of the emotional impact away for. I would have loved to get a perspective from one of the patients, in whichever form this may have taken – even from a survivor recounting their experiences.

Summary:

All in all, a solid police procedural investigating a cold case anchored in one of Ireland’s dark chapters in history. Whilst it did not give me the same creepy vibes as other books with similar themes, such as the aforementioned book The Broken Girls, I found it to be an engaging read that kept me interested (and somewhat horrified) to the end.

Thank you to Netgalley and Quercus Books for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.

You may also like:

 The Broken Girls, by Simone St James

 The Ballroom, by Anna Hope

 The Asylum, by John Harwood

 Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane

Book Review: FOUND by Emily Brett

Title: Found
Author: Emily Brett
Publisher: Sparkpress
Read: September 2016
Expected publication: 18 October 2016



Synopsis (Goodreads):

Twenty-seven-year-old ICU nurse Natalie Ulster has a desire to see the world, in case she dies young like her mother, and a need to heal, which is compensation for her own damaged heart. Armed with an independence and self-reliance that stems from her father s emotional abandonment and wanting to separate herself from a deranged nurse whose husband just died under suspicious circumstances on Natalie s watch Natalie grabs life by the globe and accepts successive assignments in Belize, Australia, and Arizona. When Natalie meets Dr. Joel Lansfield, a physician who is also familiar with grief, she finds that Joel sees her for the strong woman she is, and loves her for all she has yet to figure out but she s not sure she s ready to make room in her heart for love. Desperate to maintain her emotional distance with Joel, she continues to travel. In each country, however, she finds herself confronted with near-death accidents, from a poisoned drink to a severe food allergy to being thrown overboard in the Great Barrier Reef. Too many coincidences force her to ask herself a frightening question: Is someone trying to kill her?"

My thoughts:

Natalie is a young ICU nurse who loves her job. However, lately her days have seemed somewhat joyless and exhausting and she feels that she is not living life to the fullest. Having lost her mother to cancer at an early age, she is afraid that she will run out of time to do all the things she has dreamed of before the same fate befalls her. When the opportunity to travel as an agency nurse comes along, she jumps at it, taking first an assignment to Belize and later to Australia. But soon Natalie realises that she can’t escape her demons – or her enemies – that easily, and realises that she must face up to the past in order to embrace the future.

Being a nurse myself, the premise of the story appealed to me and I thought I would be able to relate to its setting and protagonist. I really enjoyed the human aspect of Natalie’s patient encounters and the little side stories relating to her work, where the author’s love for her profession shone through for me, as did the common frustrations of our job. I also liked how the loss of her mother at an early age gave Natalie a vulnerable side and affected her in many ways in her adult life, driving some of her actions in the novel. However, I found it very difficult to relate to Natalie’s voice, who is 27 years old but sounds like a stroppy teenager throughout the book, which is totally at odds with her professional side. The pages are peppered with her rather juvenile angry phrases, such as: “You want to go bitch? Let’s go.” Or “What the fuck? This is not my fault, buddy. Hell no!” Do professionals in their mid-twenties really talk like this? Not any of the people I work with – it got a bit tedious after a while. Perhaps this would appeal to a younger audience, but I felt like I was in the room with my sulky teenage daughter, resisting the urge to shake her and telling her to snap out of it!

There were also some glaring holes in some of the medical details in the story, which were hard to overlook. Given the author’s professional background and experience I guess this was for the benefit of entertainment for the not medically trained reader and to spice up the action parts of the story, but it took some of the book’s credibility away for me. I guess it is a fine line between bogging down the story with too much medical jargon and detail, but on the other hand there is always the risk that people who work in the industry read it and roll their eyes in frustration if the facts don’t add up. I have never been good at suspension of disbelief for the sake of entertainment, so this really bugged me. I also thought that the story generally floundered a bit, roaming he streets of different genres like a poor little orphan Annie in search of a home. Was it supposed to be a romance, a mystery, a coming-of-age story? The mystery part was a bit too far-fetched and underdeveloped for me, and I wished that the author had concentrated more on the aspect of a young woman trying to “find herself” and overcome the shadow of her mother’s death and the unhappy childhood that followed. The romance part would have fit into this scheme perfectly.

As it was, the book as a whole did not really work for me personally, but I think that as a general idea the story had a lot of potential. Seeing how this is a debut novel, I look forward to giving this author another try as I think she has some great stories waiting to be written, using the background of her passion for her job and her many experiences as a nurse as a base for future novels.  

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free electronic copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Book Review: INSIDE THE O'BRIENS by Lisa Genova

Title: Inside the O'Briens
Author: Lisa Genova
Publisher: Gallery Books
Read: May 2015



Synopsis (Goodreads):

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Lisa Genova comes a powerful new novel that does for Huntington’s Disease what her debut Still Alice did for Alzheimer’s.

Joe O’Brien is a forty-four-year-old police officer from the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. A devoted husband, proud father of four children in their twenties, and respected officer, Joe begins experiencing bouts of disorganized thinking, uncharacteristic temper outbursts, and strange, involuntary movements. He initially attributes these episodes to the stress of his job, but as these symptoms worsen, he agrees to see a neurologist and is handed a diagnosis that will change his and his family’s lives forever: Huntington’s Disease.

Huntington’s is a lethal neurodegenerative disease with no treatment and no cure. Each of Joe’s four children has a 50 percent chance of inheriting their father’s disease, and a simple blood test can reveal their genetic fate. While watching her potential future in her father’s escalating symptoms, twenty-one-year-old daughter Katie struggles with the questions this test imposes on her young adult life. Does she want to know? What if she’s gene positive? Can she live with the constant anxiety of not knowing?

As Joe’s symptoms worsen and he’s eventually stripped of his badge and more, Joe struggles to maintain hope and a sense of purpose, while Katie and her siblings must find the courage to either live a life “at risk” or learn their fate.

Praised for writing that “explores the resilience of the human spirit” (The San Francisco Chronicle), Lisa Genova has once again delivered a novel as powerful and unforgettable as the human insights at its core.

My thoughts:

Wow – what an emotional rollercoaster ride!

The O’Briens are a happy and close-knit Irish-American family of six all living under one roof of an old triple-decker at the “Bottom of the Hill”  in Charlestown. At 44, Joe O’Brien, patriarch and head of the family next to his devout Catholic wife Rosie, is enjoying the fruits of his labours after spending 25 years  as a cop on the Boston Police Force and raising four healthy children into adulthood. He is thinking that after another ten years of working the job he loves he may be able to retire with a good pension and spend his autumn years watching his grandchildren grow up and having some quality time with his wife and family uninterrupted by the constant demands of his job. His plans are cruelly interrupted though when he starts developing some strange neurological symptoms – muscular twitches and temper outbursts he cannot control and can no longer ignore.

After Rosie forces him to seek medical help and have some tests done, the doctor delivers devastating news: Joe has Huntington’s Disease, an neurodegenerative disease passed down from his mother who died when Joe was only a child. There is no cure, only temporary control of symptoms, and sufferers face a cruel fate as they progressively lose all muscle coordination. Instead of retirement, Joe may be facing a cruel death in ten years’ time after having lost total control over all his bodily functions. But worst of all: there is a 50% chance for each of Joe’s children to have inherited the disease. A simple blood test is all that is required to show whether Katie, Meghan, Patrick or JJ also carry the gene mutation causing Huntington’s. But is it better to know and be prepared or live life in the moment not knowing what cruel fate awaits?

I have read all of Lisa Genova’s novels, but Inside the O’Briens was definitely the one that touched me most – once I started reading I couldn’t stop! Genova’s neuroscientist background is obvious from the in-depth knowledge of the disease and its effect not only on sufferers but also on their immediate family, friends and neighbours. The reader watches in horror as the tight-knit O’Brien family slowly implodes and everyone faces their worst demons – their own mortality and that of the people closest to them. As Joe struggles to come to term with his own mortality and guilt about potentially having passed on a cruel deadly illness to his children, his wife Rosie is struggling with her faith, which in the past has given her strength and hope. Each of their children also face a horrible choice – would they prefer to know their fate or live life not knowing? There is anger, guilt, fear and despair, and each member of the O’Brien family deals with it in a different way.

Inside the O’Briens is written from the perspectives of Joe and his 21-year old daughter Katie, which gave a wonderful insight into family dynamics whilst not overdoing the psychological aspect of the story (as may have happened had Genova given each family member a voice). I really felt for Katie as she is struggling to make decisions regarding her future. How will not knowing if she is a carrier affect her? Will she be paranoid that each trip, each stumble or slip is a sign of Huntington’s? But would going through genetic testing be any better? Would knowing she had the disease stop her from having a relationship, planning a family, embarking on a career? As a yoga teacher Katie tries very hard to live in the moment and look after her health. But she knows that if she is gene-positive for Huntington’s, there is nothing she can do to make any difference – her fate is in her genes, it would just be a matter of time for the symptoms to manifest themselves.

There are so many impossible and heart-breaking choices in this book that it was difficult to fully comprehend the depths of despair a sufferer must face. And yet Genova manages to explore the topic with the family’s sense of hope, humour and love and support for each other. All the characters feel real and genuine, and it is impossible not to feel for them. Genova offers explanations of different aspects of the disease, reflecting the way in which Joe and his family find out the details themselves – the preview copy contained some textbook-type explanations (which may or may not be in the final edition of the book) which provided some background information on this cruel disease. Despite the serious topic, the overall feeling after reading it was positive, engendering a deep and instant gratitude for the health we take for granted. As a mother, I did not even want to imagine some of the horrible choices and devastating emotions experienced by the parents and would-be parents in this novel.

Inside the O’Briens is a complex and layered story of the emotional effects  of a cruel genetic disease on a family, which cannot be done justice in a review, so I will leave it at that. I think that Genova has done an outstanding job exploring this topic. Very highly recommended. Definitely a novel to go on my favourites list and one whose ethical dilemmas will stay on my mind for some time to come.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free electronic copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

 

Book Review: WEB OF DECEIT by Katherine Howell

Title: Web of Deceit
Author: Katherine Howell
Publisher: Macmillan Australia
Read: September 20 - October 10, 2013

Read an Excerpt: click here


Synopsis (Goodreads):

When paramedics Jane and Alex encounter a man refusing to get out of his crashed car with bystanders saying he deliberately drove into a pole, it looks like a cry for help. His claim that someone is out to get him adds to their thinking that he is delusional.

Later that day he is found dead under a train in what might be a suicide, but Jane is no longer so sure: she remembers the terror in his eyes.

Detective Ella Marconi shares Jane's doubts, which are only compounded when the case becomes increasingly tangled. The victim's boss tries to commit suicide when being questioned, a witness flees their attempt to interview her and a woman is beaten unconscious in front of Jane's house.

Ella is at a loss to know how all these clues add up and then a shocking turn of events puts even more people in danger...

My thoughts:

I have always thought that paramedics would make great protagonists of a crime novel, coming in contact with all sorts of different people and crime scenes. I was thrilled to see that not only did Katherine Howell realise this potential, but she also executed it with such skill that she has created a truly remarkable series of police procedurals featuring charismatic detective Ella Marconi as well as various paramedic teams – and as an extra bonus, they are all set in Australia.

Paramedics Alex and Jane are called to a motor vehicle accident in Sydney, car vs power pole. The driver, Marco Meixner, appears unhurt, but extremely distressed, claiming he is being followed and in danger of his life but unwilling to give more information about his alleged pursuer. At first Alex and Jane put his claims down to a psychiatric disorder and delusional thoughts, but when he is found dead under a train later that afternoon, they start to believe that there may have been a sinister truth to his claims. Detective Ella Marconi, who is sent to investigate the incident, discovers that Marco was the sole witness of a murder seventeen years ago, leading to the conviction of the perpetrator, who has just recently been released on parole. When she starts digging into Marco’s past it soon becomes apparent that there are secrets he has hidden from his wife and friends – which someone is trying to protect at all costs and may just be the reason he had to die.

I love Howell’s writing style – whilst Ella Marconi features in every book in the series, she introduces different paramedics in each novel, their lives providing a parallel storyline to the crime under investigation. Here we learn of Jane’s secret affair with a famous lover, which goes terribly wrong, whilst single father Alex battles with his recalcitrant teenage daughter Mia. Their experiences on the streets of Sydney provide the reader with many interesting snippets of the everyday work of a paramedic. Drawing on her own experiences in the profession, the stories are believable and engaging, the information accurate and detailed enough to also hold the interest of readers who are in the medical profession. Her “warts and all” approach paints a realistic picture of life on the city streets and the city’s inhabitants. This is no glorified Hollywood movie - unlike many other crime novelists she is not afraid to unmask the boring and tedious side of police work, which form a large part of any investigation, such as workplace politics and restrictions such as funding cuts and red tape. Neither does she hold back when it comes to the everyday experiences of her paramedic protagonists, which can be horrific enough to result in lasting mental scars for Alex, who still battles with PTSD after attending an MVA resulting in the death of a teenage girl a few months ago.

Ella herself is a likeable protagonist, who struggles with issues in her own personal life, such as her new love affair with a young doctor who is suddenly giving her the cold shoulder. In fact, the dynamics of human relationships underpin every part of Web of Deceit – a parent worried about his teenage daughter, a jilted lover, a jealous girlfriend, an abused partner, a bereaved wife … each emotion presented in a heart-felt fashion which instantly grabs the reader and drives the storyline. I was especially touched by a scene describing the reaction of a young pregnant wife when told by police that her husband had been killed – it read heartfelt and true, like so many of the emotion driven scenes in Web of Deceit.

I loved this book so much that I immediately rushed out to get an earlier book in the series – Frantic – and I am deeply engrossed in it already. Katherine Howell is evidence of the great talent we have in Australia when it comes to crime fiction, and it is easy to see why Web of Deceit was nominated for the Ned Kelly Award 2013. I can see the writing on the wall that this will be one book series that will be utterly addictive and hold me in its grip for many hours yet to come. Highly recommended.