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The BookViral Review:
A sleek, riveting and stylistically slick thriller Towles takes her readers on a harrowing journey into the heart of corporate greed with Salt Island certainly not slow off the mark!
If a crime thriller is to be convincing it has to feel utterly plausible and yet far too many releases in the genre prove disappointing with constant, often pointless and gratuitous action and that’s something Towles refreshingly avoids.
Yes, the pacing is relentless but Towles’ forte is in delivering taut, compelling reads with superbly executed plots and here she proves a vivid and insightful writer with an impeccable eye for detail. She has a fine eye for the pressures and poignancies of her characters and it’s this combined with her ability to craft an intricate and intelligent narrative that rapidly draws her readers in. She’s quick to build intrigue and suspense as she establishes the emotional groundwork and here she gets inside our heads to keep us on edge page after page.
First and foremost amongst Towles’ characters is former CIA operative and private investigator Mari Ellwyn with Towles notably managing to avoid trite genre tropes to bring a well-worn familiarity to her persona whilst imbuing her with more endearing qualities than readers typically expect from a protagonist in the genre.
Crafting Mari with attention to detail, sharp dialogue and subtleties of nuance Towles gives us a protagonist who’s gutsy and self-reliant with just the right amount of vulnerability whilst her partnership with former detective Derek Abernathy is perfectly pitched.
Salt Island is further elevated by its broader cast of characters, like Duga and Ivan who are robust, well-conceived and imbued with a real-world presence whilst the wider intrigue that relates to Mari’s elusive father creates a connecting narrative for the series.
Powerful and highly entertaining, Salt Island is the second release in Towles’ E&A Investigations and is recommended without reservation.
Measured in his prose Stephen Watts gives us a dense, intricate read but unlike many historical biographies which are sketchy in the way they deal with the world beyond their principal character, Watts adds a compelling element of social texture with the inclusion of Charles Watts’ many letters.
Beginning with the marriage of Erc of Dalriada to his first wife Marca at the age of fifteen and covering the period up until his death in 474AD, Strittmatter gives us a rousing historical novel and a fine example of what can happen when good writing and extensive research come together.
It’s a question that’s courted more than a little controversy over the years, but there’s a significant difference between paying for a book review with no influence over the resulting review and paying for a review that is guaranteed to be overwhelmingly favourable,
Whether it be a spine-tingling ghost story, the sighting of a UFO, stories of Gods and Deities, or the fascination of the occult, most of us are curious in one way or another about the supernatural.
Why Romantic Fiction Wouldn’t Exist Without Soul Mates! Pixie Woodstock looks at our continuing obsession with finding a soul mate.
Are we desensitising our young people with the graphic offerings of modern media? And going even further, do the conclusions of ‘Bandura and the Bobo doll’ still hold true in the modern era?
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