The Next Victim by Helen H. Durrant: Book Review

 This book, the first to feature DCI Rachel King, hits the ground running by given us the killer's point of view quite early in the narrative while opening up the world  the characters inhabit around the tightly constructed plot. Of course the nucleus of the story is the life of Detective Rachel King, late Thirties, divorced (fictional lead detectives usually are), two teenage children and an hectic work and home life balance. Add to this the fact that Rachel is still very much in love with (even if she doesn't want to admit it to herself) an old flame who just happens to be a notorious gangster, and you have a heady mix indeed.

This last element added a lot to the character of Rachel and promises much for later books in the series. It really is an intriguing aspect to the premise and when Rachel and Mr gangster team up towards the end of the book this offers an original twist on that old chestnut; the ill-matched pair. It's more Hart to Corleone than Hart to Hart. Although joking aside, this part of the plot works really well, is handled with panache and seems perfectly natural to the story that the author tells. In fact, it left me eager to get into the second book in the series and find where this relationship will go next.

The blurb -

A young man’s body is found burnt and tortured by a Manchester canal.

Detective Rachel King investigates. But she has a secret, the love of her life is a well-known villain. He has recently come back on the scene. But what does he really want?

A brutal serial killer with a taste for good-looking young blonde men.

A student who believes she has a lost brother. But even her own father doesn’t believe her. 

Helen H. Durrant

The Next Victim is one of those books that grips the reader very early on and I found myself rooting for the main character and becoming invested in her messier than messy private life, while she tried to juggle a heavy work load and stop a serial killer. All of the characters ring true and the pacing of the story is faultless with events happening naturally in the narrative and carrying the reader hurtling towards the final denouncement with that twist, that to be honest I'd figured out by the last quarter of the story but nevertheless kept me enthralled.

An excellent book.

Available in eBook, print and audio versions.

2021 - The Colour Kindle

 Rumours are rife on technical websites that Amazon are to finally release a colour eInk version of the Kindle for 2021, and this now looks to be a sure thing. 

The current range of Kindle devices are more that three years old. 

Amazon didn't release any new Kindles last year due to the fact that their hardware is made by Foxcon in China and given the Covid situation the factory has been running at only 30% capacity.

 Several times during 2020 Amazon's Kindle range were completely sold out, before stock was replenished so the market is obviously out there.

At the moment there are a few colour eReaders due out in the first quarter of this year and these will use the second generation Kaleido colour ePaper which has great contrast and its greyscale will work fine with front lighted displays. The format will work on screens from 5.84 to 10 inches and eInk have said that they are ramping up production of colour screens both in California and China.

This serves as a threat to Amazon because any eReader that runs Android will be able to use the Amazon Kindle App, which of course will see Amazon losing out on hardware sales.

Add all this to the fact that Amazon have become a reactionary company in terms of new technologies - waiting for rivals to try out new technologies and iron out the bugs, before stepping in with their Kindle version - then it looks like the smart money is on the Kindle finally going colour.

2021 then, is certain to be the year of the colour kindle.

King's Reach by John Sander's: Book Review

 

Whilst I found this book deeply interesting and very readable I was hugely disappointed in that the book was not what I expected it to be. Billed as the story of 25 years at the top of comics, I expected this to tell the story of the creative process behind some of the iconic British comics that Fleetway/IPC published during the glory days when newsagents everywhere stocked their titles.

Although titles like Battle, Action and 2000AD are mentioned it is only in passing as the narrative is more concerned with the business side of comic publishing, rather than the creative nuts and bolts. It's kind of ironic that John Sanders uses the phrase Bean-counter to describe the men in suits who were only interested in the bottom line of the comic business and yet his narrative paints him very much as a bean counter himself.

In fairness though if you are looking for an overview of the business side of British comic publishing then this book certainly delivers that, and it is quite fascinating, but it rarely mentions any of the creative geniuses who led British comics during the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's and when they are mentioned we get a surge of bitchiness towards Dan Dare creator Frank Hampson that would make a street corner gossip blush.

In all I would say that this is a good book but it's not a real examination of the comics that made up the childhood of readers of my age, but rather an examination of the business of comic publishing with Sanders often coming across as the be all and end all of the British comics industry, which of course he certainly was not.

The book comes good in the end with a frank account of the Maxwell days and the demise of one arm of British comics, but I was expecting a very different book.

Digital Book sales boom during Covid Crisis

 With the world closed down and book shops having to shut their doors, readers were moved to look to digital books in order to get their reading material. The online resource, Publish-drive recently issued a white paper that looked at the boom in digital publishing during these troubled times.

We’ve been reporting the trends and data on our blog since March 2020, where indies selling digital books via PublishDrive saw growth by at least 20%. In April 2020, we reported another 23% growth. In May 2020, sales increased by 60% in one year. In June 2020, sales increased by 66% in one year. Demand is high right now.

Genre fiction did particularly well.

In July, summer book trends were obvious. Romance genres became even more popular than before, with a 47% growth rate compared to the previous month. Other popular genres under fiction included Mystery (27%), Action & Adventure (10%), Literary (6%), Thriller (4%), and Fantasy books (13%).

Non-fiction titles maintained solid growth, especially Religion (45%), Family & Relationships (4%), Education (2%), and Music (2%). Compared to July 2019, the largest growth overall came from Fantasy (174%), Literary (29%), Music (412%), Religion (121%), Sci-Fi (60%), Self-Help (68%), Social Science (135%), Thriller (115%), Family & Relationships (235%), Business (58%), Health & Fitness (82%), and History (67%).

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