Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                                 Losing Hope by Nikki Dee. "You always want to make out everything is clean and nice, and everybody is good inside and the world's a happy place. It's a crock." What a tangled web of deceit, distrust and malice as we weave and wend our way aimlessly through life living on the brink of disaster, losing hope. Nikki Dee presents us with a readable  but hardly plausible portrayal of extremes: self-righteousness contrasted with nihilism? A child abduction is tragic but can make excellent reading or viewing. Take for instance, the recent tv drama The Missing on BBC1 starring James Nesbitt as Tony Hughes and Frances O'Connor as Emily Hughes. The plot is intricate and sustained, the characters are thoroughly intriguing and realistic with the suspense building up momentum. Brilliant. My kind of excellent drama. With Losing Hope we have a clever pun on hope/H...

                      A Tale of Two Villages by Christine Smith. "Trees and foliage were being swept along, down in the raging torrent, and then suddenly, we saw a car being swept down the road, over where a wall had been demolished, and come to rest on its side, in the mud." For all you expats and lovers of Spain I pose an interesting question: Is Spain a haven of "sun, sea and sangria" or is it overrun by "concrete, fish and chips and all day breakfasts?" To continue this line of thought, do you find the esplanades full of cheap shops selling tourist junk and blaring music "disgorging lager louts" from your local bars?  I'm not just referring to Benidorm. And finally, are Spanish destinations a "carbon copy of UK seafronts, but with more guaranteed sunshine?" Christine Smith chose to live in the real Spain, uninhabited by tourists and like many of us, spent some time exploring possibilities and travelling ar...

                           The Counsellor. Film Review. "To aspire to the stone's endless destiny. Isn't that the meaning of adornment? To enhance the beauty of the beloved is to acknowledge both her frailty and the nobility of that frailty." Star-studded actors: Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz, Penelope Cruz and of course husband, Javier Bardem, wonderful scenery of Texas and California from the acclaimed writer Cormac McCarthy who made his screenwriting debut here with his wit, dark humour and a nightmarish scenario with graphic images more akin to horror. Well it is an 18 and not suitable for children. McCarthy is seen as one of the greatest American living authors. You may remember "No Country For Old Men" (2007) which left me cold, also starring Bardem as the baddie, Anton Chigurh who embodied pure evil. " The Road" (2009) was just as bleak. McCarthy's trademark is the frequent use of ...

                  The C uckoo's Calling by Robert Galraith. "Her head had bled a little into the snow. The face was crushed and swollen, one eye reduced to a pucker, the other showing as a sliver of dull white distended lids." A dramatic opening, the death of a beautiful supermodel in suspicious circumstances, having fallen from her Mayfair penthouse caused a big stir with the paparazzi. Detective Inspector Roy Carver and Detective Sergeant Eric Wardle were on the case. Lula Landy, like the late Princess Diana was one of the most photographed women in the world. It seems that both women were hounded to death by the pressure of celebrity and attention. Her death dominated the news showing her "flawless face, her lithe and sculpted body" but within three months "The frenzy wore itself into staleness." Lula was an interesting character, having been adopted by a wealthy white family. She had been investigating her biological r...

            The Shock of the Fall. Nathan Filer. " I looked in the rain clouds, fallen leaves, sideways glances. I searched for him in the places I had come to expect him. In running tap water. In spilled salt. I listened in the spaces between words." The book won the Costa Book Awards in 2014 and was the first debut win since 2006. The main character is Matthew Homes a 19 year old boy suffering from schizophrenia. He has been sectioned and is receiving psychiatric treatment. Matthew is a convincing character suffering a cruel disease, trapped in the ever changing world of mental illness. Comparisons have been made with "The Curious Incident." Mark Haddon. Both boys suffer pain and confusion which the authors convey powerfully. Ten years previously, Matthew and his older brother, Simon who was a Down Syndrome child, went on holiday with their parents to a caravan park in Dorset. Children were forbidden from going down to the beach themselv...