Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                 My name is Leon by Kit de Waal. "A brother chosen. A brother left behind. And the only way home is to find him. And a family where you'd least expect it." The story is set in the 1980s with the breakdown of a family set against the 1981 riots and the Royal Wedding of Diana and Charles. The protagonist is a young boy called Leon, coming up to nine. He is keenly observant of people around him and protective towards his mum, Carol Rycroft, 25, who suffers from extreme post-natal depression after the birth of her second son, Jake. Home is a London council flat near a dual carriageway. His father, Byron is in prison. "I want you to always love each other. Look after him and look after yourself." Leon is mixed race and Jake is white, blue-eyed and blonde, the exact opposite. For the first four months Leon tries to look after his sick mother and half-brother until the money runs out and the boys go hungry. Carol won'...

                      Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. "Robots will take over Earth, says royal astronomer." Daily Mail. April 2017. He follows Professor Stephen Hawking who has said that artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. (Victoria Allen. Science Correspondent) And on this premise, this is where I begin. Perhaps the author's name seems familiar? One of his well-known books is " Remains of the Day." The book under review was published in 2005, a sad and haunting book presenting a dystopian society. Deeply disturbing and frightening. "We demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being." Organ donations, cloning, artificial intelligence, gene editing and robotics interested Ishiguro who believed that they could transform the way we live and int...

                         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...

    The Witness For The Prosecution by Agatha Christie. "I'm like a man caught in a net-the meshes of it all round me, entangling me whichever way I turn." The story was first published in the USA as "Traitor Hands" in 1925 and contains the original ending which was subsequently rewritten by the author herself for the play version and much more dramatic. Billy Wilder's 1957 film version starred Laughton, Power and Dietrich which was a huge success followed by the more recent Sarah Phelps' t.v. drama (December 2016) following on from her success the previous year of "And Then There Were None." Sexed-up and given a modern outlook which didn't go down well with some Christie die-hards because of a number of liberties taken with the original and which contains a  very different and unsatisfactory ending to Christie's. Mayherne was a small man, neatly dressed, shrewd with a reputation which stood very high as a solicitor. Hi...

                Farrel's Last Case by Gerald R Wright. " Four years of celibacy had weighed heavily upon him. It was like being a starving man, close to death having a sumptuous meal set before him. Would the man choose to starve?" Ian Farrel is considered as being a good, small-town cop. He started out as a beat officer, giving out parking tickets which was rather tedious for an ambitious guy like him. Promotion to the Criminal Investigation Department allowed him to gain respect as well as a fearful reputation. As his career soared his marriage floundered. His excessive work schedule seemed to be the main reason why his wife left him four years before the action begins. When she realised that his job came first she wanted out. He was twenty when he joined the force and had almost completed twenty-two years of service. Described as grumpy and on the tetchy side, Farrel didn't suffer fools gladly. He had a tendency to become cynical ...