Rillington Place – Ethel

Rillington Place

Episode 1 – Ethel

After 9 years apart, John Reginald Christie and his estranged wife Ethel reunite and move into 10 Rillington Place. As war breaks out, the fractures in their relationship reappear beneath the thin veneer of married respectability.

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I watched this for three reasons, the preview looked good, I’m interested in true crime, and I’ve seen both Tim Roth and Samantha Morton put in some very very good performances in the past.

The first of three episodes is seen through the eyes of Christie’s wife, Ethel, and as a result you see little of what Christie himself is up to, only a portrait of an unhappy marriage as seen through the eyes of a passive woman who almost meekly goes back to a husband who she finds in jail and who cheats on her and abuses her.

The era and the environment are very well recreated in this BBC drama, and both Tim Roth as John Reginald Christie and Samantha Morton as Ethel put in wonderful performances, but the lack of action and the slow pace ultimately drag this down. I was tempted after watching this opening episode to forget about watching the rest, but checking IMDB I see that the following episodes are seen from different characters’ perspectives, so I will give them a go and hope it gets better.

Mirror Mirror – an honest review

Mirror Mirror

Jessica Jesinghaus

Nearly twenty years ago a teenage girl was murdered…

Samantha Carlson was just a young girl when her cousin, Emily, was brutally raped and killed in her own home. As a child, Sam’s family did their best to shelter her from the gruesome details. Now, working the crime beat for the Portland Tribune, Sam has the resources at her fingertips to investigate the case for herself.

Through the eyes of a killer…

After inheriting a family heirloom, an antique vanity table that once belonged to her murdered cousin, Sam begins seeing visions in the mirror’s depths. Like watching an old home movie, she bears witness to Emily’s murder. As if that weren’t frightening enough, she starts to see other things too: fleeting glimpses of the killer himself! Are the things she sees just a figment of her imagination or could something otherworldly be trying to communicate with her? When the killer strikes again and leaves clues behind meant specifically for Sam it becomes a race against time to try to catch him.

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I was gifted a free copy of this book for an honest review, and here it is.

First, the good – there’s a good plot, likeable characters, and an interesting plot device in the mirror of the title; the plot device is used cleverly, without being overused, and never becomes boring or annoying (I actually think it could have been used a little more, without detracting from the book). The identity of the murderer remains a mystery until late in the book, which is good, there’s some nice misdirection that makes you think about someone else, and enough hints that if you’re paying attention you might figure out who the real killer is, but you can’t be sure until the author is ready to let you know.

The bad – the writing is not as good as it could be, and there are occasions where phrases and words are used either unnecessarily or incorrectly, and this can be jarring. It’s a short while before you get to the main plot, and while that isn’t really a terrible thing, it might have been better if there was an opening scene that featured the murder of Emily – had there been such a scene, I think I would have minded less that it took a while to get things moving, because I would have already had a sense of what was going to happen.

Overall, this is a decent book, that ends with a twist I didn’t see coming; with better writing it could be great, so if you like a thriller, this might well be for you.

My first release

I debated with myself over how I was going to handle releasing my titles, when they were ready, and finally came to the conclusion that I would go with Amazon and the kdp select program.

I realise that in the future it may be a good idea for me to spread my wings a little further and to have my titles available on multiple ebook platforms, but right now I feel kdp select, despite the exclusivity it requires, offers me the best chance of getting noticed at this, the beginning of my writing career.

To that end I have released a short story, Exposed, ahead of my first full novel, which should be out in January. I would like to simply give away this short, so that people can get a sense of my writing and hopefully encourage them to buy my novel when it’s released, but that isn’t possible on kdp – I have to price it at 99c, which is the lowest I can, and make it available for free for 5 days during the next 90.

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Exposed

Alex R Carver

Some secrets should remain hidden.

All Julian wanted was as normal a life as was possible, when Adam and Harry come into the petrol station looking for trouble, though, their actions threaten to expose his secret, a secret that would make him a wanted man – wanted by lots of people for lots of reasons. Now he has to leave behind the life he’s been building and start over again, but before he does that he wants to make Adam and Harry pay.

This is a short story of approx 8,000 words

If you like the sound of it then make sure to follow this link Amazon get it for free today and tomorrow

The Dark Place

DeeJayBee (Wattpad user name)

Following the death of her mother 11-year-old Tamicka Moon and her father move from Canada to Eastlake in England, where they both struggle to come to terms with their grief. Jack Moon becomes engrossed in writing about Munford House, the estate where they are staying, while Tamicka is left to explore the house that no-one in Eastlake, save the housekeeper, Mrs Hughes, will go near.

Why won’t anyone go near the house, though, and who is the spirit that offers to make everything better for Tamicka – friend or something else? When Tamicka befriends a local girl, Penny, the spirit warns her she can’t be trusted, and that seems to be true when Penny’s friends play a cruel trick on her; is the spirit telling her the truth, or even everything, however?

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I’m sure some of you will be a little confused by the two sets of star ratings I’ve given this book, so I’ll explain.

First off, this is a 4* book, the story is a good one, with plenty of twists, a nice Gothic touch on occasions, some good characterisation, with people you’re interested in and whom you want to see either prosper or get their just desserts. The writing is nice and tight, without a lot of padding (this is something I’m guilty of in my writing and seeing who short and sharp the writing is here has helped me to work on my own books to pare the padding) which keeps you close to the action at all times. The dialogue is good as well, it fits the characters.

There’s a short epilogue which ties a few things up, with one thing that wasn’t a surprise and another that really was – I didn’t see it coming at all – and I think it’s good that you get an, albeit brief, idea of what’s happened to the characters after.

The reason there is a second rating to this book is because it’s a first draft. DeeJayBee has released her book on Wattpad, as I am in the process of doing, to get feedback and generate some interest. Because it’s a first draft there are typos that might put people off, and a few areas where a tweak might be needed, and I have deducted .5* for that. Once the edited and polished version is available this will be a 4* all the way, and I look forward to it being sorted and released for Kindle and other devices because I think it will do quite well.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, then you can start reading it here (by the way, this is a former winner of Wattpad’s Best Wattpad Reads in Paranormal so it’s not just me that thinks it’s good.)

 

A deadly bath

Among my many, varied interests, is a liking for true crime stories, and tonight, while battling my usual sleep issues, I caught an interesting film from ITV about a British serial killer from the 1940’s.

John George Haigh

(24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the Acid Bath Murderer, was an English serial killer in the 1940s. He was convicted for the murder of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. He used acid to dispose of the bodies after battering them to death or shooting them because he believed it was an undetectable method of destroying their remains. Haigh dissolved corpses in concentrated sulphuric acid before forging papers to be able to sell the victims’ possessions and collect substantial sums of money.

During the investigation, it became apparent that Haigh was using the acid to destroy victims’ bodies because he misunderstood the meaning of the term corpus delicti, and mistakenly believed that, if the bodies could not be found, a murder conviction would not be possible. Despite the absence of his victims’ bodies, there was sufficient forensic evidence for him to be convicted for the murders and subsequently executed.

(source – wikipedia)

A is for Acid 

This is a TV movie of better quality than is the average, thanks in large part to a wonderfully subtle performance from Martin Clunes, who plays serial killer John George Haigh with a mixture of polite gentility and almost savage violence that makes it easy to understand how he was able to lure people to their deaths and get away with it for a time.

Having seen Clunes in a number of things over the years I was already aware that he is a good actor, but this is perhaps one of his best performances; he plays Haigh as a softly spoken and polite figure who outwardly gives no sign of the violence that lurks within him.

The writing is decent, as is the period setting, though I can’t speak to the accuracy – my research indicates that few liberties have been taken with events, the problem is mostly that the film is perhaps a little too superficial in some areas, at least for my tastes. I would have liked a bit more time to be taken over the development of the relationships between Haigh and his victims prior to their being killed; these were not sudden murders of brutal violence, but killings that were planned and executed for gain, financial or otherwise.

The cast, like the writing, is good enough for a TV movie, with a nice performance from Keeley Hawes as Haigh’s girlfriend, but it’s Clunes that lifts this and makes it something more than average.

If you like true crime stories, this is one to watch, it’s not fantastic but it is enjoyable.

Guilty Pleasures

It’s the end of a busy day, and there’s just time for me to post up a new review before I head off to bed, so here it is.

Laurell K Hamilton

In a world where vampires and other paranormal creatures are openly acknowledged, and in some cases have legal rights and responsibilities, Anita Blake is an animator – she raises the dead for a living. When she’s not doing that she’s a consultant to the police on paranormal incidents, if someone gets attacked and the attacker isn’t human she gets asked to identify the creature and to help deal with it; she’s also the legal executioner of vampires that have gone rogue.

In the first book in this series Anita Blake is called in to help the police with a series of murders. The city’s vampire leader wants her help as well because some of the victims are vampires, and when the killer isn’t found quickly enough Anita finds herself caught between an impatient and angry master vampire and a killer with the strength to rip a person’s heart out.

This book is never going to be considered a masterpiece, or be considered a classic work of literature, but I found it a very enjoyable read. As a fan of mythology and the paranormal, I’m always interested by books about vampires, and in this case the vampires are characters in their own right with enough ambiguity about them to make it tough to say they are all evil and should be killed.

That’s the problem Anita has, she doesn’t really like vampires but the more she deals with them the more she realises that in many ways they’re as human as anyone else – not necessarily good but not necessarily evil either.

What really makes this book enjoyable is the character of Anita Blake; she’s small, has a bit of an attitude problem, and won’t back away from a fight – I like her.