Lady Life | Ahmet Altan

For almost five years Turkish journalist and author, Ahmet Altan, was jailed after being charged with providing “subliminal messages” to incite those behind the coup attempt in 2016. In this period, Altan released two books: Lady Life, a literary work, and I Will Never See the World Again, his memoirs. On April 14, 2021, Altan was released from prison despite having received a life sentence.

At the centre of Altan’s story is Fazıl, a young man accustomed to a comfortable life. After “a major country” announced it would no longer be importing tomatoes from Turkey, his father unexpectedly declares bankruptcy. Fazıl and his family’s lives are drastically altered when their father dies from a stroke just one day after facing financial ruin.

Fazıl aspires to become a literary critic and hopes to spend his life “… among people who loved literature, who taught it, who discussed it” despite his sudden plunge into poverty. A week after his father’s funeral, he boards a bus bound for Pera. Fazıl compares himself to a baby turtle without its shell, “helpless, unsheltered, and weak.” He sells everything he owns, including his clothes, books, laptop, and phone, and moves into an old boardinghouse in a sketchy neighbourhood. Immigrants, sex workers, activists, and busboys from all over the world make up the boardinghouse’s diverse inhabitants.

Fazıl gets a job as an audience member in a television programme featuring podium dancers in order to help fund his education. In this unlikely setting, he meets two women who will change his life. He can discuss literature with the pessimistic young student Sıla, with whom he shares a family background. When the government took over her father’s company, she too lost everything.  Sıla’s only objective was to get out of Turkey as quickly as possible and join her cousin in Canada. Fazıl is also attracted to Hayat, the show’s star, an ebullient, sensual, and unapologetic older woman who leads a happy life free of regrets. Hayat, who does not read, satisfies her thirst for knowledge by watching television documentaries, impressing Fazıl with her exceptional memory. Sıla has meticulously planned for their future together. Hayat, on the other hand, does not believe in planning for the future and would rather live life to the fullest in the moment.

“Time would teach me that to understand such things as they were unfolding one needed a certain kind of experience, a maturity that was shaped by coming into collision with “real life:, something I lacked then.”

Fazıl exhibits the actions of a young man who lacks maturity and self-awareness, as he is caught between these two women. He’s unable to deal with reality since he’s unrealistically modelled his life after the novels he reads. Subsequently he’s frequently sulky, changes his mind at the drop of a hat and disappoints the two women in his life.

“Time would teach me that to understand such things as they were unfolding one needed a certain kind of experience, a maturity that was shaped by coming into collision with “real life:, something I lacked then.”

Lady Life is so colourful and captivating that it is hard to imagine Altan was incarcerated when he wrote it. Undoubtedly, the Turkey he portrays is a troubled nation run by an authoritarian government, plagued by political and economic hardships.

“It was as if we were sitting in the palm of a giant who, whenever he wanted, could make a fist and crush us in it.”

When Fazıl is offered a new editorial post at a newspaper he learns of all the horrific actions of the government that are never heard of due to severe censorship. At night pro-government men loiter in the street of the boardinghouse, beating up people who are dare to oppose the government.

Altan doesn’t gloss over these grim realities, but he balances it by painting vivid cityscapes that captivate our attention by describing the sights, sounds, and scents.Through exquisitely rendered vignettes, Altan presents Pera’s everyday life, offering an insightful look into contemporary Turkey.

Lady Life is more than just a poignant coming-of-age story, it’s populated with philosophical ponderings and life wisdoms. Although it depicts a carefree youth, there’s more to discover beneath the surface.

The Golden Age | Amy Chua

Set in San Francisco in the mid-1940’s the main plot of The Golden Gate revolves around the murder of a wealthy industrialist and presidential candidate in The Claremont, the largest hotel on the West Coast. It’s a time of turbulence and excess despite the ongoing war.

Homicide Detective Al Sullivan was having a drink with Nicole Bainbridge, a socialite from one of the wealthiest families in the Bay area, in the hotel bar when Walter Wilkinson was murdered. This wouldn’t be a problem if one of the hotel cleaners hadn’t noticed one of the Bainbridge girls leaving Wilkinson’s room and Nicole had briefly left their table at the same time. The question is whether Al will be able to separate his professional and personal lives and investigate Wilkinson’s murder without being swayed by his emotions.

As Al digs deeper into the family history of the Bainbridges he wades into murky waters. Ten years earlier seven-year-old Iris, a cousin of the Bainbridge sisters, fell 9 stories to her death in a laundry chute in The Claremont. While Iris and her sister, Isabella, were playing hide and seek their mother was upstairs in a room with her best friend’s husband.

Their mother, the beautiful and popular Sadie Bainbridge Stafford suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to an insane asylum in Napa. Word had it that Iris still haunts The Claremont. Robert Stafford, their father, was also dealing with his daughter’s death and his wife’s depression. Isabella, who now had an absent father and mother, went months without speaking. When she did, she frequently adopted her sister’s voice and mannerisms.

Iris’s death was ruled an accident, but when Al is warned about the Stafford/Bainbridge women’s sanity, he begins to have doubts, particularly about Nicole: “…a kind of insanity runs in the women in her family. It manifests itself only episodically, so they appear deceptively normal most of the time. “

Mrs. Genevieve Bainbridge, the family matriarch who took on the role of surrogate mother for her three granddaughters, is at the heart of the Bainbridge family and their stories. Al interviews their grandmother, and these exchanges are woven throughout the main narrative. He intends to exert pressure on the guilty party to confess by doing this.

“We know one of your three granddaughters is a murderer. I can convict all three as coconspirators, or you can tell me which one did it, and I’ll spare the other two.”

Thankfully, Al Sullivan’s character is well-developed and not the cardboard cutout cliché that occasionally appears in detective novels. He’s a man with a moral conscience who also struggles with his own identity and heritage, which is why he changed his name from Alejo Gutierrez to Al Sullivan. His mother was an Okie from the Dust Bowl, and his father was from Mexico. The majority of people therefore assumed he was white. He gained some advantages from this, but he never felt like he belonged anywhere. He also vividly recalls the police taking his dad and brothers away to deport them to Mexico.

Nonetheless, Al was the Berkeley Police Department’s youngest detective. History repeats itself when he has to forcibly remove Japanese residents from their homes following the attack on Pearl Harbour. Historical details such as this enrich the reading experience of The Golden Gate. Chua depicts a period in history when people were classified and treated differently based on their race and class. The disparity between The Claremont Hotel and its residents and the poor and homeless just down the hill is staggering. Poverty and racism was the reality, immigrants were not getting the American Dream they’ve hoped for.

These are issues that we are still dealing with today, not only in America, but around the world. There will always be immigrants, yet we haven’t accepted that other people’s perspectives and cultures are essential and beneficial to our world.

For fans of crime fiction who appreciate a good mystery and a strong sense of place, Amy Chua’s debut historical thriller blends fact and fiction to create a captivating, thought-provoking, and alluring read.

The Golden Age is published by Corvus, an Atlantic Books imprint, in the UK and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball publishers. Thank you to the team at JB for sending me a review copy.

Fyneshade | Kate Griffin

Murder, sex, and witchcraft are all on the menu in Kate Griffin’s new dark and twisted gothic novel. At the centre of it all is Marta, an utterly vengeful, ruthless and opportunistic protagonist, who draws us in with her narration and, against our better judgement, wins us over.

Marta isn’t an unreliable narrator; she does not pretend to be someone she is not, at least not to the reader. We meet her, appropriately enough, at the funeral of her grandmother and the woman who raised her, a native of France who was largely despised by the community because of her prowess with herbs and potions. Marta is in a relationship with Nathaniel Van Meeran, the vicar’s son, who she plans to marry. Right from the beginning it’s clear that Marta is a gold-digger.

“I like Nathaniel well enough. But most of all I liked the fact that one day he would be rich.”

Marta’s plan is thwarted when Nathaniel’s mother practically forces her to accept a position as governess in Derbyshire. Marta is aware that it is a ruse to separate her from her son, but she couldn’t be bothered. The mere thought of the Fyneshade estate and its potentially wealthy owner gives Marta renewed hope for the future. Sir William Pritchard was a widower whose wife, Sophia, had died during childbirth ten years before and the child, Grace, needed a female companion.

Less than two weeks later, one cold February morning, Marta is en route to Fyneshade. When she arrives things aren’t quite what she expected. The girl is “different” and will require special care and Sir William is nowhere in sight. Despite her repeated inquiries about his whereabouts, the motley crew of servants either avoids the question or simply replies that he is away.

At first glance Fyneshade looked more like a grey, forgotten fortress than a home, a maze of ancient walls made of stone. With Grace’s help, Marta discovers alcoves and hidden levers that open drawers and doors leading to secret passageways. She despises the practically mute and often unresponsive girl, but also knows she needs her as an ally.

Marta’s future looks bleak until she and Grace run into Vaughan Pritchard, the heir to Fyneshade, and her aspirations to become Lady of the estate take a different turn. However, Vaughan is the black sheep of the family and isn’t allowed to cross the threshold of Fyneshade until his father dies. He has a reputation and isn’t “a gentleman,” the housekeeper Mrs. Gurney claims, which only adds fuel to Marta’s fire. Marta, as we know by now, is no innocent wallflower and will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.

Griffin doesn’t hide Marta’s true colours from her readers. Instead, she reveals who she is through her observations of Grace and the other women in the house. Of Mrs Gurney she says “The woman’s accent was as broad and flat as her face” and her “…prattle was as numbing as the snow.” She refers to the other girls as plain, “squat and spotted like suet puddings” and to one in particular as a “… shrunken mole creature”. She does not consider herself a servant, but rather a person of higher standing who is destined for greater things. “I knew I was born to feel the finest cloth next to my skin” she tells us. Marta, despite being completely unlikable, is fascinating.

According to Griffin her novel was inspired by Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, because she had always wondered what kind of person James’s Miss Jessel was. Fyneshade is Miss Jessel’s ”origin story” and offers a potential explanation for the woman she became.

At its best, this is a spooky, gothic thriller. It is terrifying and suspenseful while also being razor-sharp and darkly humorous. Fyneshade will keep you captivated, tempting you to savour each delectable sinful bite.

Fyneshade is published by Viper in the UK and Jonathan Ball, its distributors in South Africa, kindly provided me with a review copy.

Unnatural Ends | Christopher Huang

Canadian author Christopher Huang’s new crime caper might not have the brutal one-liners of Succession, but it does have an unscrupulous patriarch who takes pleasure in manipulating and pitting his three children against one another – even after his death.

April 1921: Sir Lawrence Linwood has been violently bludgeoned to death in his study, presumably by someone he knows. His untimely death brings his three adopted children back home where they’re met with an unexpected request in their father’s will. An unorthodox clause states that, in the case of his unnatural death, the child who finds his killer will inherit his estate.

Read the rest of this review on Crime Fiction Lover where it was originally published.

The Lock-Up | John Banville

Detective Inspector Strafford and Doctor Quirke return in The Lock-Up, the third instalment of John Banville’s crime duo series. The story picks up where April in Spain finished and deals with the murder of a young Jewish woman, Rosa Jacobs, in Dublin in the 1950s.

The 27-year-old postgraduate history student is discovered dead in one of car mechanic Perry Otway’s central Dublin garage lock-ups. Rosa committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide fumes from her car’s exhaust. John Strafford is called out to investigate and the still grieving Doctor Quirke is on-site to give his opinion on the case.

Continue reading the full review on the Crime Fiction Lover website where it was originally published.