Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                         The Escape by C.L.Taylor. "She isn't afraid of going outside, she's afraid of situations where she can't escape or get help." It seems that some things are impossible to escape: tragic incidents in the past, something we can all relate to. Bury the skeletons and what happens? Eventually, things will surface and we have to attempt to deal with the impossible. Taylor has created a credible character in the form of Jo. Blackmore, still grieving over the loss of her baby son and suffering from agoraphobia. Her husband, Max, an investigative journalist (or a crime reporter) is portrayed less sympathetically, seems to be far too protective of Jo and obsessive with his young daughter Elise. He has been instrumental in the conviction of Ian White who had set up a national chain of money-lending shops that charged extortionate interest rates for vulnerable people such as ...

                            Apple Tree Yard TV Drama 2017. "Dear X whatever it was between us it was never meant to bear much reality. That was the point, wasn't it? No real life. No feelings, no mess." I had read Louise Doughty's book and wasn't disappointed with this tv drama which is available to buy on dvd produced by Doughty, Lucy Richer, Manda Lewin and Amanda Coe. It was Doughty's seventh novel. " Crazy Paving" was her debut novel back in 1995. Her sixth novel took the media by storm :"Whatever You Love" pulling her sharply in focus as one to watch and this has proved the case with Apple Tree Yard. It stars Emily Watson as Dr Yvonne Carmichael, an eminent scientist who lives a conventional suburban life in a comfortable and stable marriage but sexless and at 50+ it seems that Yvonne would like some excitement and danger to spice up her life. She addresses a Select Committee on a subject she is k...

                 Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. This was Smith's debut novel, the first of a trilogy featuring former MGB Agent Leo Demidov set in Stalin's Soviet Russia. Imagine a combination of Gorky Park, Silence of the Lambs with Kafka. The novel was inspired by crimes committed by Anderi Chikatilo also known as the Rostor Ripper alias the Butcher of Rostor or even the Red Ripper. He committed 52 murders in the Soviet Union during the 70s and 80s. The state initially refused to admit he existed although he was eventually caught and executed. "Yesterday I was asked to denounce Raisa. My superior officers believe she's a traitor. They believe she's a spy working for a foreign agency." Leo was a Stalinist secret policeman interrogating and torturing citizens. A senior apparatchik or a grim reaper perhaps? The MGB was an omnipresent secret police, a forerunner of the infamous KGB. Leo was part of this brutality having ordered the exe...