"Little Children" by Angela Marsons (bookouture, 2025)

In a 1.5 page prologue a reporter, Steve Ashworth, threatens to expose policeman Kim's behaviour.

Woody, Kim's boss, tells her that the Blackpool force has a whistleblower. They want to know whether the allegations are true, and who the whistleblower is. In addition, 2 young boys have recently disappeared in Blackpool. So Kim's unit of 4 (!) go over to help. Kim gets them to play various roles (distrust of female bosses etc) in order to get the Blackpool police to talk. So there are several characters, some assuming roles.

• Blackpool - DCI Miranda Walker, Red (Mike Butler), Roy Moss, James Dickinson, Adil, Carly Walsh
• Birmingham - Kim Stone (boss), Stacey (female), Bryant (role: about to retire, wants an easy life), Penn (role: very ambitious)

Then there's the corruption issue and the missing boys to deal with. This is all presented in the first twenty pages or so, using short sentences, paragraphs, and chapters -

Stacey found herself still thinking about the exchange between the teams that had taken place in the briefing.    How the boss was keeping hold of her temper she couldn't even imagine, as all the hostility seemed to be aimed at her. The rest of them were being met with mainly silence and strange looks.    That had remained the case once the boss and Bryant had left, with Penn not far behind.    The other team had gradually filtered out ...

One of the missing boys, Noah (11), (his PoV) is locked in a dark room. Lewis (12) was last seen in an arcade. He's left home before. His brother Kevin seems a nasty piece of work. His stepfather Bobby Stevens doesn't like him. A schoolmate says his parents have discussed how to get rid of him. Roderick Skidmore is a local paedo, a millionnaire. He has a locked cellar. After being interviewed he suddenly disappears on a business trip

A piece of paper is left for the Birmingham team with 3 names on it. The team interview them. Jasmine Swift has been pestered by Red and Roy. Dean Jackson was assaulted. Pippa Jacobs has sex with Roy in return for silence. Re-examination of CCTV recordings of the arcade when Lewis disappeared show that Kevin and Skidmore were there though both said they weren't.

Halfway through, we get Kevin's PoV. He's not a baddy. He's helped his young brother Lewis through his problems.

Bryant is disgusted by Roy, who is sexist and uncaring. They're called to a murder - of Jasmine Swift. Penn thinks Dickenson is gay and moral - the snitch? Kim and Penn have to return to Birmingham for a murder case - Josh, a 15 y.o. boy beaten up (strung up and used as a punchbag), missing since has was 12. Josh and his twin Harry had been adopted when they were 6 by a lesbian couple.

Further CCTV footage shows that Lewis had been abducted by a woman in a van, with help. The same van was around when Noah disappeared. From Lewis's PoV we learn that he's imprisoned with another boy. Lewis's family admit to the Birmingham police that they sold Lewis for £5k to a boxing coach. Roy tricks Bryant to the top of a multistorey car park. Red helps to save him just in time. Photos on Roy's phone show that he's murdered before.

On the dark web they discover that an illegal boxing event is due. Ashworth interrupts Kim while she's on her way. He says that a 14 y.o. girl had gone to her to say she'd been abused by her father. Kim had destroyed the father's life. He'd killed himself though he was innocent. Kim tells Ashworth to follow them to report a real crime. They attend the boxing event. Kim hides in a van and is taken with Lewis to a hide-out. She frees the boys. The police get there in time before Kim is hurt. The boys were being held by the sister of Miranda Walker, who'd provided info to her sister. Ashworth praises Kim on TV.

Re-examinining a case means that the boring routine questioning can be omitted. It's fast. Sentences are short and snappy, style sacrificed for speed - "Her expression said that every word in that sentence travelled up her throat with razor blades". Red (like Kevin) turns out to be not as bad as first feared. The other police are good or bad - nothing inbetween. The Frost subplot doesn't seem useful - I presume it's from a previous story. What about the lesbian parents?

Other reviews

• jen med (Twenty two books in and Angela Marsons’ Kim Stone series shows no signs of going stale.)

"Sun dog" by Monique Roffey

An audio book.

August (33, ginger, 6ft 4) runs a London deli owned by spinster Rose. When he loses himself dancing he feels natural. Elsewhen he feels inadequate. Henri (female) works for him. He fancies her. Jim and his deaf brother Gabriel are August's best friends. His mother Olivia still pops round. She said that his dad Luke died when he was little. He and his mum used to live in a commune, Stonegate House. Cedric (old, writes rude doggerel) is a customer. Leola, a new customer who works opposite in a florists, pops in. He sees Cosmo for the first time in decades, someone who was at the commune and went away with his mother for months, but Cosmo doesn't recognise him. Cosmo's going to become a neighbour. Henri fancies him though she already has a french boyfriend Eve (Yves and Henri speaking French together, and Henri increasingly speaks in French with August). Rose goes on an antarctica tour and meets a man, Salvador. She says that a sun dog is an illusion in antarctica - a fake sun.

August develops a skin condition after fearing that Cosmo might be his father - frost in winter, buds and twigs in summer, then cracks. He tells Cosmo who he is. He says Olivia was chucked out of the commune and that he should ask her about Edward. August has a flashback about her mother being chucked out for sleeping around too much. He and Henri suddenly try sex but she's alarmed by his growths.

He goes to the house of the Chalmins (Luke's parents) in Harrow. They'd chucked out her mother when he was 2 weeks old. Nobody's in. Next time he goes he discovers from the widowed mother that when Olivia was living there with Luke she had an affair with the gardener Edward causing Luke's death somehow.

Yves and Henri break up. Rose's dog disappears. Cosmo asks August to sell stuff on his stall - craft objects. Cosmo dumps some merchanise at August's place. August sees Leola with Cosmo and talks with her after. Neither have been abroad. Both would like to visit antarctica.

The police visit August. Cosmo is a small-time smuggler. He's left the country. Cosmo tries to track down Edward. He finds his brother in Tunbridge Wells. Edward died just when August's skin problems started. August finds Rose's dog locked in a cupboard. He discovers that Rose used to be Ross. He gets a date with Leola. It's autumn - suddenly his hair falls out. Leola's ok with that - they have sex on their first date. He tells his mother (who's been off the scene for months) about Edward.

He returns to Stonegate House, thinking that Edward buried something for him there. He finds a buried, rotten spade. At home he finds that the house plant he bought at Leola's is still alive - the first plant he's not killed. And his hair is regrowing.

The gardening theme is sustained. How does Rose's sex-change fit in? Were Jim and Gabriel worth including? I'm unsure if the title's an allusion to a son (August) and a dog (Rose's). The author adds unnecessary words to the ends of sentences - "Next day snow fell from the sky"; "Her clitoris was just visible between her legs". The reader pronounces "buoys" "booees". I like "When I was with him it's like being in a space cleared by a Atom bomb"; "a fullness as if the world had a swollen lip", "Trees turning their back to him ... as curious and unsure of him as he was of them".

Other reviews

• thebookloversboudoir (I think it’s Roffey’s best.)
• Arifa Akbar (Structured around the seasons, it is a family drama and love story - flecked with magical realism and absorbing on all counts - but best read for the pleasure of sinking into Roffey's lusciously rendered everyday world.)
• Prabha Srishti (On occasions it turns blunt and bold to the extent it makes the reader feel obtrusive for invading the privacy of its characters which stands testimonial to the author’s rich character developing skills. Having said that, much of the development that the side characters see come from the protagonist’s viewpoint and hence is scattered and irregular. It is raw and lost in artful nuances at some places)

"The Old Woman With the Knife" by Gu Byeong-mo

An audio book. Korea. Hornclaw is 65. Her old nickname was Nails. She works for an agency of assassins - has done of 45 years. Are people hinting the she should retire? She's unsure herself - she thinks she's making mistakes. She sympathises with the old people she sees in the subway. She gets regular health checks. Her dog is her age in dog years. She kills about 6 times a year, researching the victim first. She works with Bullfight. She'd been adopted and ended up being a housemaid, then a sexclub worker. We learn about old cases, how Ryu and Hornclaw started the business. Ryu's wife was killed.

Dr Kang's wife is killed. He's her doctor. His father owns a market shop. His kindergarten daughter is kidnapped. Why is her agency out to get him? His father is resisting the building of a supermarket. Or maybe Bullfight (who she's never trusted) is trying to make her suffer. She fights of a group of thugs, then comes face to face with revengeful Bullfight.

Years later an old woman is charged half-rate at a nailbar. It's Hornclaw, with one hand left.

[I was distracted while reading this, not giving it sufficient attention. I thought the fight scenes were too long. Nevertheless I liked reading about the problems of being an aging assassin, and the plot held together well.]

Other reviews

• tonyreadinglist (it’s fairly clear where we’re going from very early on, probably a little too early for me. The story can stall a little, especially with the many flashbacks where Hornclaw remembers her mentor, and it does plod along a little in some places)

"Promise Me" by Harlan Coben

An audio book.

Edna, 63, sees a girl who she thinks is an advertised runaway.

Myron Bolitar was a national-standard basketball play who had to give up because of a knee injury. He has a law degree from Yale. Now he runs an agency with bisexual Esperanza. He tells a girl Amee to phone him if ever she's in trouble. She does. He picks her up. She doesn't want to be dropped off at her parents but in a distant house. She disappears.

There are strange similarities between the Amee and the other runaway Katy - same school, same ATM used on the day they disappeared.

Myron's girlfriend is a 9/11 widow. Jessica had once wanted to marry him. She mysteriously turns up at 3am after 7 years.

The police are suspicious about Myron - the last person to see Amee. He agrees with Katy's mum, Lorraine, that he'll investigate. Katy's dad is aggressive. Wen, Myron's friend, has to kill 2 of the father's heavies heavies. Aimee's boyfriend's dad, Big Jake, is aggressive too. Are the girls pregnant? van Dine (teacher, 37) bought lingerie for Amee. He shares a secret with another teacher, prizewinning Harry. Amee's father Eric is having an affair - maybe that's why Amee left home? Myron finds that Katy's alive. He gets her to phone her mother. Myron's being tailed by Katy's dad's people.

Myron finds Katy with Rufus. He owns a sex club. Neither Katy or Rufus know about Amee. Her boyfriend Randy is a dealer. The rumour is that Randy's dad paid people off. Amee briefly appears on social media. In a coded way she says she's in trouble. Joan, Randy's mother has been beaten up by Jake, who knows that she knows something about Katy. She doesn't speak.

We learn (Eric's 3rd person PoV) that quiet Eric (Amee's dad) had been a coward all his life. But now he's going to fight back. He takes Harry captive and shoots him in the foot. He says that Van Dyne (another teacher) was Randy's drug supplier. Jake blackmailed Harry (who'd had a brief affair with a student) to keep quiet about Randy, and change his grades on the school computer. Amee had been suspicious about this and had tried to break into the school computer. Jakes was angry. Harry says he told Jake about Amee. Myron talks to Harry then Eric. He visits Katy's mum, Lorraine. Van Dyne is dead. Lorraine claims responsibility, then Jake does. They find Amee. She says she went to get an abortion (preg with teacher's child). Maybe she left Van Dyne and wanted to start a new life.

Enid comes back into the story. Her troubled, estranged son is no other than Van Dyne! Enid kidnapped Amee, offering an abortion but planning to make her keep the child. Some loose ends are tidied up.

[I dislike "with an audible bang" or "He strapped on his calmest voice". I like how, when a man is slow getting to the point, he's told "pretend I'm your wife. Cut the foreplay". I like how people new to porn shops look around as if in the Louvre. The basic plot points are ok. The way they're joined up stretches credibility, and everything's amped up - murders, Ivy League degrees, etc. Eric's Jeckyll/Hyde change is unconvincing. The extended sections of realtime dialogue save the day.]

Other reviews

• bookreporter (plot takes some weird and seemingly inexplicable twists and turns between two disappearances that are eerily connected in some ways and not related at all in others.)
• brandywinebooks (Many of today’s mystery heroes have psycho killer friends—scary, dangerous guys devoted to the hero for some reason, who are useful in the situations of extreme violence such stories tend to involve. We don’t like our heroes to be killing machines, I suppose, so we need the psycho killer friend to keep the hero alive. I found Win Lockwood a kind of unconvincing PKF. He’s supposed to be the scion of very old money. As a boy, after a serious incident of bullying, he devoted his life to learning all the killing arts. Now, apparently, he just enjoys his wealth and watches Bolitar’s back for fun. ... I found him sort of a flat, amoral deus ex machina.)

"The patron saint of liars" by Ann Patchett (4th estate, 2003)

Part I is from Roses's PoV. In 1906 there are miracles at Habit - Joan Clutterbuck was 3 when she was saved. A posh hotel was built for pilgrims. After the stock market crash it was abandoned and taken over by Catholic nuns and called Saint Elizabeth’s. Rose, after 3 years of loveless marriage with Thomas, pregnant, escapes across the States to the Catholic haven where 25 unwed mothers are staying until they give their babies away. They all have stories to tell. Sun, 45, has been odd-job-man there since we was 18. Son asks Rose to marry him. She agrees, lives with him, has a child in 1969, Cecilia, continues working in the kitchen.

Part II is Son's PoV. He was engaged to a Cecilia. After Pearl Harbour he enlisted, got shot in the knee during training so never served. Cecilia didn't want a wounded husband. She drowned - he'd tried to save her then ran away. He thinks that Rose doesn't care much about Cecelia. After a while, he thinks that Rose cares little for him too. Joan dies, leaving Son and Rose some land and her house. Son and Cecilia move into their new house, Rose stays.

Part III is from the PoV of Cecilia, 15. Rose gives Cecilia driving lessons (she's kept the car that she arrived in). When Son has an accident, Cecilia drives him to hospital. It brings Son and Rose back together. Only now does Rose tell Cecilia about her parents. Rose disappears in the night. A week later, Thomas arrives, looking for Rose to tell her that Rose's mother had died. Thomas tells them that they'd been married. Cecilia seems not to suspect that Thomas is her father. Maybe Son and Thomas have a chat about it. Thomas leaves the next day.

This first novel has similarities to Barbara Kingsolver's first - The bean trees). In both a young woman leaves in a car, religion and babes/children are involved, and there are plucky old women. Part II is the least interesting. The language is elsewhere entertaining

• My mother liked to watch me get ready, like I had watched her get ready when I was a girl (p.15)
• There was a way she watched me when I was looking in the mirror. She thought I didn't see her. She would stare at me so intently and I knew she was trying to see me like a strange would (p.16)
• Everywhere you went you heard the water, the same way you heard your breathing, and would later hear the highway, or trains, or women's voices. But the sound was so much a part of everything that you couldn't hear it at all then (p.18)
• My mother had married Joe the spring after I left, and it made me sad in a way, not her marriage, but the fact that she felt she had to wait for me to go (p.28)
• We had three full nativity scenes, each as complicated as a chess set (p.94)
• It was one thing that my mother was forever missing my attempts to be close to her, but the fact that she didn't get my digs at her either made me insane

Other reviews

• shutupheathcliff (There is no magic cure, however, for the fear and sense of entrapment that brought Rose there. Ultimately, Rose can’t deny the person she truly is — and her attempts to pretend otherwise end up hurting people who care about her. Is Rose a likeable person? A good one? I would say no to both questions. But her story is beautiful.)
• plumlibrarian (Rose, the main character, calls herself a liar. She does lie. Big, huge, rending lies she tells. But that isn’t her greatest fault. Her greatest fault is cowardice. And her second husband Son and daughter Cecilia think she’s strong. Perhaps because she’s quiet and cold and doesn’t allow herself to be told what to do. But again, she’s not so much strong as she is cowardly. ... I believe that we, the kind and gentle readers, are expected to undergo a shift in what we feel for her. The first third of the book is told from her perspective and she’s clearly sympathetic. ... Who’s never felt trapped in a relationship we didn’t want as much as the other person? Who can’t relate to the fears and anxieties around being pregnant when you don’t want a child? And who can’t feel for a young woman putting a baby up for adoption? But the second third of the book is told from Son’s perspective. And he deserved much more than to marry a woman who didn’t love him and didn’t want to make him happy despite the fact that he took on her daughter and raised her as his own and never questioned her about her past. ... The people in Rose’s life are good people. They handle the situation with resounding aplomb and by their grace her own lack of courage is shown in even starker relief.)
• theliteraryflaneur (Towards the end, Rose becomes harder and harder to fathom, so it was quite good to have seen her perspective earlier.)

"One for the river" by Tom O'Brien (Ad Hoc, 2021)

A novella-in-Flash, maybe. I like the first Flash, "The best picture I never took", where Barry, who's conscious of being overweight, goes into the countryside with his camera and sees a boy die in a river. The pace slows in the next section when we learn about onlooker Aidan (brother of Colm, the dead boy), who hurt his leg in an accident that day and takes painkillers.

Barry's partner is Elle-Marie.

There are interesting asides (e.g. about chisels) which wouldn't have been out of place in a short story.

Barry has a darkroom. We get the standard darkroom imagery. He feels more comfortable behind the camera with a zoom lens. He photographs Aidan, who considers himself a sort of town fool. He starts taking photos for the local paper. We get the 5 stages of drowning and the 5 stages of grief. "The Weight" is a return to form after having lost momentum.

The best passage is "Aidan takes a blister pack of tablets and a chisel from his coat, laying them side by side. Several of the little coffins are empty, the foil folded back like an advent calendar"

"Summer Secrets" by Jane Green

An audio book.

Prologue - London, 2014. Cat has a daughter 13. She's been apart from her partner for 18 months. She's lonely and turning to alcohol.

London, 1998. When Cat was a young teenager she felt she didn't fit in, which is maybe why she writes. We learn about her early encounters with boys and vodka. Her current friend Jamie can't cope with her drinking. Her mother always seemed depressed but she cheered up when her father died. Her best friend is a gay colleague, Sam.

London, 1969. Audrey, a 24 y.o. American orphan au-pairing in London, is having a good time. She marries Richard. Her friends have babies. Her US aunt (surrogate mother) is moving house, so Audrey flies over to help. She's attracted to her aunt's neighbour Brooks, an artist, and has good sex with him.

London 1998. Cat's mother tells Cat that Brooks is really her father, and arranges a phone call. Cat wakes up with someone she doesn't remember. He's Jason, a recovering alcoholic. He takes her to an AA meeting. She recovers. Cat flies over to see her family (2 half-sisters - Julia and troubled Ellie). She wants to be liked. She socialises, stopping at 3 drinks. She finally feels that she belongs. She gets hopelessly drunk and sleeps with Julia's boyfriend. The sisters cut her off. When she returns, she loses Jason and her journalism job. She recovers, goes freelance, gets Jason back. They marry. Annie is born. Cat relapses when Annie's 4. She recovers. In her mid-30s all is ok. She has a glass and still feels ok. She relapses. Jason leaves with Annie. Cat goes to a clinic in the States. She recovers. Jason can't trust her and divorces her. She keeps hoping they'll get back together, but when Cara, 29, comes on the scene, it's difficult.

London 2014. She's at the stage of alcoholism recovery when she has to "make amends". She flies to Nantucket with Annie and Sam to make amends in person to her half-sisters. This time she goes to an AA meeting. Julie says that Cat saved her from marrying a bad man. Ellie is unforgiving. Cat meets Eddie, 42, an AA person's son but he turns out to be gay. Annie and Ellie's daughter are involved in a serious traffic accident - no lasting harm. Jason rushes over to the States. He tells Cat that he's broken up with Cara. Cat's sexual yearnings, awoken by Eddie, are now fixed upon Jason. Jason stays out after midnight. She starts looking for him. She finds Jason and Julia kissing on a bar. Julia sees her and smiles - Julie's revenge. Back in London at an AA meeting she recounts the Nantucket trip, and her relationship with Jason. At the end she realises Jason's there in the room! She goes to mum for comfort. She meets Matthew. She gets on with him, slowly.

The language is rather plain. "there is an audible gasp" - aren't all gasps audible? And there must have been a way to avoid her monologue in the final AA meeting repeating so much.

Other reviews

• bookreporter (Ultimately, SUMMER SECRETS is the story of three pivotal summers separated by decades - summers affecting the lives of Cat's mother, Cat herself, and even Cat's daughter, who's a teenager at the novel's close. This broad focus can make the novel seem unfocused at times, although Green does tie most of the threads together successfully (still, one wishes that we would have heard more from Cat's mother as an older woman rather than primarily as a young bride).)
• acomfychair (Her book is lovely, but I have to admit that it was a little forgettable. )