Growing up Mormon during America’s early-1980s satanic panic, Bigelow escapes the religion’s bland conformity by playing Dungeons & Dragons. After graduating from high school in 1984, he dives into sex, drugs, and the counterculture via Salt Lake City’s punk and new-wave scenes, as echoed from London, New York, and especially Los Angeles.
As Bigelow explores the underground, he rejects myths of supernatural good vs. evil, living instead by the D&D concept of chaotic neutrality. During LSD trips, however, he starts sensing an unseen dimension. Then Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel The Stand gets him reconsidering good vs. evil. After an alarming otherworldly attack, can Bigelow find spiritual protection in Mormonism’s processed, regimented, corporate culture?
The woods that frame the housing estate uncover a series of heinous acts, drawing onlookers in to a space of clandestine, queer sexuality: a liminal space of abject and uncanny experience.
A question echoes in the odd borderlands of being, of fear-fascination, attraction-repulsion, of sex and death…
For over ten years he was the first detective on the scene when a murder was committed in south London. In the confusion and horror of the crime scene he identified the forensic clues that would later be needed to convict the killer in the calm and measured atmosphere of the Old Bailey; calling out the necessary experts from pathologists to ballistics specialists; protecting the scene against contamination. One slip and a case would crumble; one moment of inspiration and the Yard would have its man.
He was the natural choice when the UN were looking for an experienced detective to create a trail of evidence linking the mass graves of Bosnia to the people who ordered the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Second World War.
From the Flying Squad to Investigating War Crimes tells of the rise of forensic evidence against the true story backdrop of a detective who has spent a career at the front line in the war against murder – the ultimate crime. It traces the development of forensic science and techniques from the days of the fingerprint to the battery of tests now available to homicide investigators. It is told in the no nonsense style of a pioneer cop who has seen the worst that human beings can do to each other.
This is a review of Testing Pandora (Xandri Corelel #0), Failure to Communicate (Xandri Corelel #1) and Tone ofVoice(Xandri Corelel #2), but that would make the blog post title really long.
I am caffeinated, sorry. Been to Maccys for breakfast with my sister and we had two Millionaire’s Lattes each. Might make this review a bit bouncy.
In the far future, genetic engineering is used to strip all sapient species of disability. But when humans have a brief fad of natural birth, disabled children start reappearing. They’re quickly termed “Pandoras,” the value of their very lives brought into question, and laws are put into place to prevent their births from happening ever again.
Xandri Corelel is one of these Pandoras, a young autistic woman scorned by her family and fighting to eke out a living on the streets of Wraith. Then she meets Chui Shan Fung, captain of the first contact and refugee ship Carpathia. Captain Chui has been watching her, and knows about the talent for understanding alien species that Xandri has cultivated. She wants Xandri as part of her crew–but first, Xandri must pass a test to see if she’ll even fit in.
Wary but hopeful, Xandri joins the Carpathia at Psittaca, a newly-discovered planet peopled by parrot-like sapients. Learning to understand this new species is the easy part compared to trusting her new crew mates. As Xandri continues her diplomatic efforts with the Psittacans, it becomes apparent that the Carpathia’s crew aren’t the only ones to have discovered the planet, but these other visitors don’t have good intentions. In order to protect this beautiful new world, Xandri must find it in herself to overcome years of abuse and neglect, and trust in her new crew.
As one of the only remaining autistics in the universe, Xandri Corelel has faced a lot of hardship, and she’s earned her place as the head of Xeno-Liaisons aboard the first contact ship Carpathia. But her skill at negotiating with alien species is about to be put to the ultimate test.
The Anmerilli, a notoriously reticent and xenophobic people, have invented a powerful weapon that will irrevocably change the face of space combat. Now the Starsystems Alliance has called in Xandri and the crew of the Carpathia to mediate. The Alliance won’t risk the weapon falling into enemy hands, and if Xandri can’t bring the Anmerilli into the fold, the consequences will be dire.
Amidst sabotage, assassination attempts, and rampant cronyism, Xandri struggles to convince the doubtful and ornery Anmerilli. Worse, she’s beginning to suspect that not everyone on her side is really working to make the alliance a success. As tensions rise and tempers threaten to boil over, Xandri must focus all her energy into understanding the one species that has always been beyond her: her own.
Xandri Corelel has spent six months living among the Ongkoarrat after her unceremonious firing from the crew of the Carpathia, and though she misses her home, she has settled into her new life. Then Diver arrives with news that changes everything.
The Hands and Voices–squid- and whale-like symbiotic aliens–are masters of bio-engineering and grow a wide variety of species of coral. Now they are in the process of creating coral that can withstand vacuum, with a most stunning end goal: To grow entire spaceships out of living organisms. The Starsystems Alliance is desperate to lure the Hands and Voices into the Alliance and bring this new technology into the fold. And the Voices and Hands are willing, with one stipulation.
They will only negotiate with Xandri and the crew of the Carpathia.
Returned from exile, Xandri is given the lead on this new mission. She quickly discovers that willingness isn’t the problem; the Hands and Voices want to join, but they want full equality in their membership–including the ability to attend council meetings in person. Amid the sunshine and surf of the tropical, idyllic planet of Song, it seems the biggest hardship Xandri and her friends will face is the task of re-rigging a spaceship to carry creatures the size of killer whales.
I’ve got Testing Pandora and Tone of Voice as ebooks, and Failure to Communicate as a paperback, and I’ve just realised I can get Tone of Voice as a paperback too, so I’ve ordered it. As I write I’m still only 43% of the way through Tone of Voice, but I love these books so much I had to tell you all about them.
You’ve read the very comprehensive book descriptions, right? You don’t need me to re-cap, do you? Because I can. But there might be spoilers.
I won’t then.
Just talk about the writing, Rosie, and try to focus.
Kaia Sonderby is a very fluid writer and her characters spring to life. There are no stereotypes or caricatures. In Xandri we have a sympathetic, realistic depiction of an autistic woman. She is complex and traumatised from years of abuse, and the Carpathia is the first place she feels at home, but she struggles to trust her colleagues.
She battles the inner voice that tells her not to show too much emotion, or any, in case it’s the wrong one; it’s her mother’s voice. The same voice tells her she’s not good enough and nobody will like her, and why can’t she be ‘normal’? The voice of abuse, control and punishment. Her new crew, and friends, help to drown out that voice with acceptance and love. She’s confused by these feelings, too.
She’s not supposed to be able to feel them or empathy. Not according to her parents. Or the ‘experts’ they took her to as a child. Yet, she is an expert at identifying the mannerisms of other species, at reading their body language and negotiating with them. She’s learnt to be, in order to survive. She’s fascinated by the universe, by all the wondrous beauty around her. The descriptions of synesthesia make me slightly jealous, to hear colours and taste sounds must add so much depth to perception of the world. I love the descriptions of Xandri’s experiences as she navigates life. I recognise those experiences as something we have in common. The feeling of utter joy in beauty and beauty in everything, the wonder at the universe, confusion in personal relationships, the feeling of the physical power of a crowded place forcing air out of the lungs, something you can touch. Shutting down. The need for quiet. Forgetting to eat. Being absorbed in an interest to the exclusion of all else.
Kaia writes from personal experience of being autistic and assigned female at birth. Her characters range across species, gender and sexuality, relationship arrangements, as well as neurological designations. They are sympathetic, even when totally alien and/or the bad guys.
I adore the Psittacans, introduced in Testing Pandora. They are parrot-like and very playful, and their relationship with Xandri is a lovely continuing storyline. The Hands, in Tone of Voice, cephalopod-like symbiotes of the whale-equivalent Voices, are also creeping into my ‘aww they’re so cute, I want one!’ book. I hope they make appearances in future novels.
The developing friendship/romantic relationship between Kiri, Diver and Xandri is by turns sweet and frustrating as they all try to work out where they stand with each other. The alternating perspectives of Xandri and Diver inTone of Voice really illustrate this well as they reflect on events as they happen and the reader sees things from different angles. They love and support Xndri for who she is, not who they think she should be.
The planets the Carpathia crew visit are interesting and different. They make reference back to Ancient Earth when they want to explain something, like the gravity or the air. Song is mostly an ocean planet with heavier than standard gravity, Psittacca is a jungle, with a thick atmosphere and lighter than standard gravity, Stillness has invisible predators, Wraith is dark and heavy, highly populated and urban.
The tech seems reasonable. An advanced sentient species from another solar system that develops FTL travel (slingspace), arrives on Earth and saves humanity from ourselves by sharing tech and finally inviting the Earth sentients to join the Alliance is a different take; normally humans centre themselves in that bit of the back story or plot. As the humans are the ones who are a bit behind, it’s perfectly reasonable for the tech to be a bit different. The AI is particularly advanced, Carpathia is a character in her own right.
I found the idea that people would use gene editing and screening to remove disability from the different species in the universe quite disturbing. Not unexpected, given that in Iceland people selectively abort foetuses with Down’s Syndrome and genetic screening of embryos can be used to prevent Tay Sachs during IVF treatment even now. While germ-line genetic manipulation is illegal, gene therapy for single-gene mutation disabilities and diseases can be treated – although it is extraordinarily expensive. Autism, and neurodivergencies in general, are much more complex, very few autistic people have the same genes that are related to the differences in brain wiring, so deleting us is not happening soon, but frighteningly, it’s something some researchers are working towards in the name of ‘curing’ us.
The only way to cure us is to kill us off and screen all embryos for any of the 1000+ genes involved.
Sonderby touches on this in her novels as the ‘Pandora Question’ is brought up in Tone of Voice. After the fad for children au naturale shows that disabilities continue to exist in germ lines, it’s banned and all people are given free embryo screening if they want children. Later, after the Anmerill muck-up, the questions return. It’s debated in the Starsystems Alliance council meetings and on the news casts. Even Carpathia crew are scared of Xandri. Whether people like Xandri should be allowed to exist, whether they’re dangerous, or even real people, are normal topics of conversation.
Sounds familiar if you have any understanding of the history of autism and the way autistic people are treat still.
I love that the author touches on these subjects, as well as the abusive ‘treatments’ Xandri was subjected to, while other characters try to find out more information from Ancient Earth to change the narrative about the Pandoras, just as Neurodiversity activists work to change the narrative about us now. They may be set 4000 years in the future but they reflect our current situation. Children are subjected to abusive ABA, autistic adults are discriminated against, people debate whether we have the right to exist or should be ‘cured’ as though it were a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
These strands to the narrative aren’t heavy handed, they’re background and if you aren’t involved in the online autistic community you might not pick up on them. I like that, these novels are good stories, not polemic. It’s good autistic representation within a complex universe and with a strong plot.
I have so many Pen & Sword books to review (because they keep releasing so many that I want to read!) that I’m doing multiple reviews in a single post. Today I’m writing reviews for the true crime books I’ve read recently.
On the evening of 21 August 1983, Metropolitan Police detectives raced to the cells of London’s Clapham Police Station to find a prisoner dead and his cellmate sat cross-legged and quiet in the corner.
Kieran Kelly, a labourer from Ireland, quickly confessed to strangling the prisoner – and then stunned officers by confessing to dozens of unreported and unsolved murders over the previous 30 years.
Detectives believed they were in the presence of Britain’s most prolific serial killer yet Kelly was convicted on just two of his admissions and his story went unnoticed until 2015, when a former police officer who worked on the case claimed the killer’s crimes were covered up by the British Government.
Strangulations, murders on the London Underground, an internal Metropolitan Police review – as the story’s elements whipped the international news media into a frenzy, journalist Robert Mulhern set off on a methodical search for the truth against the backdrop of an ever-increasing body count.
I had not heard of this case before, and I was intrigued because I thought I’d heard of most of the major serial killers in Britain in the last fifty years, There has been a lot of speculation and sensationalisation about Kieran Kelly, much of it encouraged by former Police Officer Geoff Platt, alleging that Kieran Kelly had murdered 31 people, 12 on the tube. He wrote a couple of books about it and apparently does cruises. He also says the crimes were covered up by the government for some reason.
Robert Mulhern does an excellent job of chasing down as much of the truth as possible after so long. The only certainty is that Kelly killed his cell-mate William Boyd in August 1983 and Hector Fisher on Clapham Common in 1975. He may have also killed five or six other homeless people, but the police weren’t able to prove anything and his own solicitor called Kelly a ‘fantasist’.
As much an investigation in to the life of Kieran Kelly and an investigation into the claims that were making headlines and their author. Mulhern travels from London to Ireland and back, trying to check the details and speaking to people who knew Kelly as Ken.
Mulhern spoke to a lot of other people, including more police officers involved with the Kelly case in 1983/1984, and Geoff Platt himself. Among those Mulhern spoke to was ‘Officer A’, who had access to a lot of the paperwork and the new Inquiry, and retired D.I., Ian Brown, a detective on the Boyd case, who objects to being called a liar.
The evidence suggests Kelly murdered five or six homeless people during drunken rages, but had nothing to do with any deaths on the Underground. It also suggests that Platt is making hay from his minor part in an unusual case of murder in a police station. There’s some really good investigative work in this book, with multiple interviews from the people who were there.
Serial killer Patrick Mackay was dubbed the most dangerous man in Britain when he appeared in court in 1975 charged with three killings, including the axe murder of a priest. The Nazi-obsessed alcoholic had stalked the upmarket streets of West London hunting for victims and was suspected of at least eight further murders.
Now, after more than 40 years behind bars, where he has shunned publicity, Mackay has been allowed to change his name and win the right to live in an open prison – bringing him one step closer to freedom. For the first time, Britain’s Forgotten Serial Killer reveals the full, untold story of Patrick Mackay and the many still-unsolved murders linked to his case. https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Britains-Forgotten-Serial-Killer/p/16439
My Review
Patrick Mackay is a bit of a sad sack, who took out his own insecurities first on his mother and sisters, and then on local kids, before moving on to murder people who tried to help him. Usually elderly women. I’ve heard about him before so I couldn’t understand the title of this book. And then I got to the last chapter.
Patrick Mackay’s crimes were sensational at the time – priests found hacked to death in their baths will cause a fuss – but over the years he’s been forgotten. Murderers with higher body counts have pushed him into the background. He’s changed his name and now lives in an open prison. Brady or Sutcliffe would never have been allowed to do that.
The author sets out a biography of Patrick Mackay and his potential involvement in other unsolved crimes that match the crimes he was convicted for. If you’ve never heard of this particular serial killer, this book is a good place to start.
Britain has its fair share of unsolved murders. Crimes that have both fascinated and horrified in equal measure, with many as baffling today as they were when the stories first hit the headlines in the national press. Spanning 100 years between 1857-1957, this book re-examines thirteen of these murder cases and retells the stories that have endured and confounded both police and law courts alike. Each chapter provides an account of the circumstances surrounding the killing, of the people caught up in the subsequent investigation and the impact it had on some of their lives. It also explores the question of guilt and to whom it should, or should not, be attached. Each of these murders poses an undeniable truth; no-one was ever proven to have committed the killing despite, in some cases, accusing fingers being pointed, arrests being made and show trials taking place. Consequently, notoriety, deserved or otherwise, was often attached to both victim and accused. But was it ever merited?
From the questionable court case surrounding Scotland’s now famous Madeleine Smith, and the failed police investigation into Bradford’s Jack the Ripper case of 1888, to the mysterious deaths of Caroline Luard and Florence Nightingale Shore at the start of the twentieth century, this book disturbs the dust, sifts the facts and poses the questions that mattered at the time of each murder. Did Harold Greenwood poison his wife in Kidwelly? Who was responsible for the Ripper-like killing of Emily Dimmock and Rose Harsent? Why did Evelyn Foster die on the moor near Otterburn in what became known as the Blazing car murder and who strangled Ann Noblett to death in 1957?
This book covers thirteen murders from 1857 – 1957, some quite well-known and some less so. The author gives the details then discusses the possible killers, as far as he is able to after so long. Each chapter is detailed and the photographs and images provided are helpful. It’s a fairly easy to read book that you can pick up to read a chapter or two then go back to later.
A good place to start if you’re interested in unsolved murders.
Throughout our islands’ history we find tales of thieves, smugglers, thugs and murderers. Books have been written retelling tales of bandits, footpads, highwaymen, et al, attacking the lone traveller, the horseman, the coachman, shipping line, locomotive engineer, lorry or van driver and even pilot. Yet for almost two centuries the majority of goods travelled on Britain’s famed canal network. This also attracted felons of all kinds and yet many of these tales had been ignored, until now.
Within these pages all manner of crimes are covered. From murders to muggings, parental problems to pilfering, arson, assault, smugglers, counterfeiters and even road rage (albeit canal-style). But it is not all morbidity and misery, humour also plays a significant part in these tales. Why would a hungry man steal the inedible? Follow the policeman on foot chasing down a thief on board the narrowboat. Discover what really lies beneath the waters of the canal. Learn about canal etiquette, the hardships, the kindness and the cruelty.
From an author whose fascination with etymology has produced many books on origins of place names, leading to an interest in the historical modes of travel across our islands, this book is the latest to follow old routes and those found along them. https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Crime-on-the-Canals-Paperback/p/16206
My Review
Well, this one was different. Since the network of canals around England were first dug in the early years of the Industrial Revolution to the modern use of them for pleasure, crime has taken place. Murder, mugging, coal theft.
I found this book sludgy going at times, although at others it was really fascinating.
Two
women at opposite ends of the social scale, both brutally murdered.
Principal
Officer Dan Foster of the Bow Street Runners is surprised when his old rival
John Townsend requests his help to investigate the murder of Louise Parmeter, a
beautiful writer who once shared the bed of the Prince of Wales. Her jewellery
is missing, savagely torn from her body. Her memoirs, which threaten to expose
the indiscretions of the great and the good, are also missing.
Frustrated
by the chief magistrate’s demand that he drop the investigation into the death
of the unknown beggar woman, found savagely raped and beaten and left to die in
the outhouse of a Holborn tavern, Dan is determined to get to the bottom of
both murders. But as his enquiries take him into both the richest and the
foulest places in London, and Townsend’s real reason for requesting his help
gradually becomes clear, Dan is forced to face a shocking new reality when the
people he loves are targeted by a shadowy and merciless adversary.
Can Josiah solve the puzzle
before more people die, or is he out of his depth?
In 1841, at the height of the
industrial revolution in the North West of England, Josiah Ainscough returns
from his travels and surprises everyone by joining the Stockport Police Force,
rather than following his adopted father’s footsteps into the Methodist
ministry.
While Josiah was abroad, five men
died in an explosion at the Furness Vale Powder Mill. Was this an accident or
did the Children of Fire, a local religious community, have a hand in it. As
Josiah struggles to find his vocation, his investigation into the Children of
Fire begins. But his enquiries are derailed by the horrific crucifixion of the
community’s leader.
Now Josiah must race against time
to solve the puzzle of the violence loose in the Furness Vale before more
people die. This is complicated by his affections for Rachael, a leading member
of the Children of Fire, and the vivacious Aideen Hayes, a visitor from
Ireland.
Can Josiah put together the
pieces of the puzzle, or is he out of his depth? Children of Fire won the
Writing Magazine’s Best Novel Prize for 2017
When a body is found floating in London’s Royal Albert Dock, successful public relations expert Kay Christie is sent to quiet the media, but things get complicated when it emerges that she knew the victim.
As events spiral out of control, Kay discovers that those close to her may be harbouring another secret – the story of a missing girl. Can Kay discover the truth before her life unravels and she risks losing everything?
In the Wake questions whether we can ever truly leave our pasts behind and explores the lengths that we will go to protect the people that we love.
Charles and Ada: the
computer’s most passionate partnership
The partnership of Charles Babbage and Ada
Lovelace was one that would change science forever.
They were an unlikely pair – one the
professor son of a banker, the other the only child of an acclaimed poet and a
social-reforming mathematician – but perhaps that is why their work is so
revolutionary.
They were the pioneers of computer science,
creating plans for what could have been the first computer. They each saw
things the other did not; it may have been Charles who designed the machines,
but it was Ada who could see their potential.
But what were they like? And how did they
work together? Using previously unpublished correspondence between them , Charles and Ada explores the
relationship between two remarkable people who shared dreams far ahead of their
time.
Hallowed Ground: The Mystery of the African Fairy Circles
This magical story is inspired by the most haunting and
least explored country in the world – Namibia – with its foggy Skeleton Coast,
buried goldmines, shocking secrets and awe-inspiring sand dunes.
Spread across the face of its deserts are hundreds of miles
of ‘fairy circles’ : vast enough to be seen from space. They grow and die with the same lifespan as
humans, yet no-one has been able to explain why or how they appear.
Then one day, three teenagers and their families arrive from
different parts of the globe. Helped by bushmen, the buried possessions of a
Victorian explorer, and a golden leopard, they solve the mystery of the African
Circles. What will be discovered beneath the hallowed ground? And how will it
change the future of the planet above it?
Everything Is Better With Dragons 