The Barra Boy by Iain Kelly is carefully-crafted and intriguing exploration into Ewan Fraser’s childhood and an absolute pleasure to read.

Ewan Fraser is an ageing lawyer in a London office. He grew up in Glasgow but that was a long time ago. He’s on ‘close friends’ basis with a woman who works in the next building and they meet daily for morning coffee. Ewan Fraser’s life is predictable and safe until one morning, from the train, he sees a face from the past. Billy Matheson. Ewan is reminded of a summer on Barra and the unanswered questions he left behind when he departed suddenly to attend his mother’s funeral. Seeing Billy Matheson’s face, it wasn’t him of course, it was so many years ago, Ewan is sufficiently troubled as to immediately take leave and fly to Glasgow and then to Barra.

It is 1982 and 13-year-old Ewan has been dispatched from his home in Glasgow to Barra to live with his aunt and uncle, leaving his father to attend to his dying mother.

Ewan is downbeat; instead of helping his sick mother he’s facing a tedious summer on remote and sparsely-populated Barra. His aunt is well-meaning and his uncle, Ewan’s father’s brother, is rather grim. To add to Ewan’s first and less-than-positive impressions of the island’s inhabitants, he sees a younger boy hiding in a cave at a beach. The boy runs off without speaking. Ewan’s aunt and uncle make it very clear that Ewan must have nothing to do with Billy, but refuse to say why. ‘You’re too young to understand.’ The boy, Billy Matheson, appears again on another day making Ewan feel he is being followed.

Ewan makes friends with a local girl, Laura, and together they explore the island by bicycle. One day they’re joined at a beach by Billy and his mother Mhairi. Mhairi and her son are shunned by the other islanders and Ewan wants to know why. He and Laura overhear a snippet of a heated conversation between the Catholic priest and Mhairi and that leads Ewan to the church where he eavesdrops on a conversation between the priest and Laura’s mother which leads him, eventually, to the truth about Mhairi and Billy.

Ewan’s father calls; his mother has died and he leaves without time to say goodbye to Laura which is why Ewan Fraser, the ageing London lawyer finds himself back on Barra, knocking on the door of Laura Roberston’s house.

Haven’t we all got memories from childhood that don’t make sense? Wouldn’t we all like to travel back in time or place to get the answers to questions that have ached inside us for years?

I loved this book. The characters are carefully crafted, the plot skips along at a very readable pace, indeed the characters are the plot. As we would expect a small community like that on Barra would be complicated and tense and this is communicated to the reader in vivid clarity. The language supports the locations and the destination is well worth the journey. The closing chapters were the perfect ending to the book’s well-constructed literary question.

The Poison Machine by Robert J. Lloyd is an absolute cracker of a book which I thoroughly enjoyed reading and whole-heartedly recommend to lovers of suspense, crime, and historical fiction. It is the sequel to The Bloodless Boy but is very readable on its own.

The protagonist, Harry Hunt, ex-apprentice to Robert Hook of the Royal Society, is charged with solving the murder of the Queen’s dwarf. But as word spreads that he is solving this crime he is approached by a Countess to find a missing/stolen diamond and to find a man now impersonating the Queen’s murdered dwarf in France. In doing so, Harry discovers an elaborate plot to kill the Queen of England and this becomes the book’s central plot line.

When in Paris, staying with the Countess’ sister, Harry has his letter of introduction stolen and soon falls foul of Paris’ head bureaucrat. Very soon he is arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille from where he escapes with the help of an inventor’s flying apparatus. He, a trusted friend and ally and the dwarf whom he found in Paris, make their way back to the coast and then across the channel to London where they begin in earnest to solve the plot against the Queen’s life.

I’d like to share more of the plot but the second half of the book is all unravelling the conspiracies and double-crossings and building to the big finish and it’s all simply too well-crafted to reveal any of that here.

The book is superbly written, borrowing quirky language from the era and using occasional sentences in French for authenticity. The plot is relatively simple and easy to follow. There backdrop of intellectual and scientific discovery through the Royal Society gives the book a strong sense of place in time. The characters, the main ones as well as the supporting characters, are crafted magnificently with eloquent descriptions of both physical appearance and behavior. The book develops some strong relationships between the characters to give the whole story authenticity. All of that is excellent, but the last chapter is a simple and satisfying resolution to the whole story.

Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib is an odd read, not quite a thriller, not quite murder-mystery. Perhaps a suspense, but no, not quite that either. I’ll call it an interesting and perhaps even an intriguing read. Certainly a recommended one.

Divorced from his wife, Todd has been parenting his now 5-year-old son, Anthony since shortly after birth. She is in Italy or maybe somewhere in the US but has resurfaced and been contacting Todd, discussing a way back into Anthony’s life. Todd recently moved to a new town, where Anthony is starting school and Todd is beginning a new teaching assignment. He certainly is not interested in the added disruption to his and his son’s life of his ex-wife’s reappearance.

While walking along the beach with Anthony one evening, Todd recognizes Jack, last seen about 15 years ago in high school, when and where they did not get along. Indeed, Todd’s memories of high school are not good and Jack was a factor in that. Jack invites himself to dinner with Todd and then weasels his way into staying the night at Todd’s house – new in the town, nowhere to stay, no one to stay with… you know.

As uncomfortable as the situation is, the memories of Jack at high school are even more discomforting. Jack stays longer and continues to push himself into Todd’s and Anthony’s life, including answering a call from Todd’s ex-wife in which he tells her that Todd is now living with his boyfriend. Not just does this give her more reason to become aggressively intent on becoming Anthony’s active mother, it gives Todd reason to tell Jack to leave. Jack reveals he is gay and makes an advance on Todd, they fight and Todd beats Jack to death. Over the next few weeks Todd hastily creates a girlfriend relationship with Anthony’s teacher to show his ex-wife that he is not gay, and he gruesomely and methodically disposes of Jack’s body, piece by piece and over several weeks, into the sea.

Yes, I hear you… what an odd combination of plot threads… sexuality issues, high school bullying issues, divorced spouse/parent and oh yes, a gruesome murder clean–up as well. And I’m not at all sure they work together.

The book is well-written, the plot trots along at an interest-holding pace and the characters all feel genuine and either likeable or not, as the story requires. The book is certainly not a ‘murder and who did it?’ because the murder is less central to the story than many other elements and anyway, we know who did it. At times it felt like a coming of age book, but via memory. And then it ended. What I mean is, I was expecting more of an ending.

Better the Blood by Michael Bennett is a detective story set in Auckland, New Zealand.

Hana Westerman, a detective and single, divorced mother receives a short video file on her phone leading her to the scene of an apparent suicide by hanging. But there are indications that it was a murder and pathology quickly confirms this. Soon, evidence of other deaths are sent to her suggesting she is hunting a serial killer. Perhaps too remarkably, Hana discovers a link to an historic crime in Auckland and as the murders continue it becomes clear that present-day relatives of a colonial-era killing of a Maori chief are the targets and this seems to include Hanna or her ex-husband or perhaps their daughter. The murders seem to be utu/revenge/pay-back for the earlier killing.

In Hana’s early years as a police officer she and her colleagues were required to break up a protest, causing pain and humiliation to some tribal elders. This seemed to be the trigger for the killer whose mother was arrested and dragged away by Hana. The killer was a small boy at the time and it seems he blames Hana personally for the humiliation suffered by his mother.

Superficially, the story is one of chasing down a serial-murderer, but the author clearly has another story to tell, that of generational pain and suffering associated with colonial-era wrongs and their effects on the injustices expereienced in modern-day, New Zealand. I’m not sure the two stories work together and as the book developed, the serial-murder thread seemed to be overwhelmed by the politics, grief and injustice thread/theme. There are clearly two compelling stories to be told and in my opinion, they should’ve been told separately.

The writing is sound, the characters are developed well-enough although Hana’s daughter, partner and ex-husband all seemed cliche. More back-story and more inter-play between the characters would’ve made the story work better and perhaps give the reader more reason to empathise with the potential victims and therefore care more about the story’s ending. It felt like Hana solved quite obscure ‘clues’ too easily/quickly and sometimes just by sheer chance. There seemed a lack of that old-fashioned, tiresome detective work and not enough dead ends and red-herrings. This is breaking the basic rules of the Agatha Christie murder-mystery and gave me a sense of being cheated; I want a fair chance to solve the crime before the detective.

I enjoyed much of the book, especially the unique setting, both the physical and cultural context. I liked that history played a role in the crime, but the two separate stories muddled together rather dampened the experience.

Tucked away in a chic inner-city courtyard is one of my favourite cafes and nean roasters – Quahwa. ‘Quahaa’ means coffee is some exotic language that I’ve forgotten and isn’t really important to this review. What is important is everything else about Quahwa.

Covid has kept me away from Zagreb and Quahwa for almost 3 years, so it was with a little anxiety that I sought out my dear old favourite and some relief to see it still there on Nikola Tesla Street as fragrant and vibrant as ever.

They roast and grind beans from an eclectic array of origins. If you’re drinking at one of the courtyard tables, as you should because it’s a jazzy cool spot to rest your legs and recharge your head…, ask about the ‘rarities’ on the menu. You’ll hear words like Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, Kenya and… Ethiopia (second only to Yemen for flavour, in my opinion).

My strategy has always been to try three (or five) different beans from Quahwa’s rarities range and then get a bag of my favourite beans to take home. This way my legs and head get a proper rest, my taste buds get to go on an adventure and my bag gets to smell more than delicious for a few days.

There are cutesy little sugar sachets on the table, but as you know by now, if you want sweet coffee, order something grown at altitude, Yemen, Ethiopia, Kenya… Catchy old (aka ‘real’) music such as the Eagles, the Animals, CCR (and who sings ‘I’ve got a brand pair of roller skates…’?) wafting around the space is surely the cherry on the top of the icing on the cake.

Quahwa doesn’t serve food, but that’s the perfect reason to walk just a block away to Oranž, pron. Orange) for Torte Pavlova with fruit (pron. OMG).