Book reviews: April 2022
New releases to check out this month
The Water’s Dead:
A DI Nyree Bradshaw Novel
Catherine Lea
Nationwide Books
$28
Reviewed by Bruce Thorpe
This locally written book was a page-turner, with the author doing a great job of creating narrative, pace, and tension. Set in the Bay of Islands, detective inspector Nyree Bradshaw (who hails from Whangarei) has been called in to determine who’s responsible for the death of a young woman whose body was found at the base of a public waterfall and to help locate a missing six-year-old girl.
The poverty of the local area, the drug-ridden subculture, and police procedures all ring true. What doesn’t are the side plots about police infighting and the main character’s private life, which could have done with better research.
That aside, the narrative moves from witness interviews to sudden revelations at a great pace and there are countless suspects and scenarios to keep the reader on edge to the end.
Will
Will Smith and Mark Manson
Penguin Random House
$40
Reviewed by Steve Atkinson
If you’ve ever wanted to see how inflated an ego can get, then I suggest you grab this off the bookshelf and have a read. The single-word title and the visual similarities of the cover image to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King paintings strongly suggest that you’re in for a heck of a ride.
Fair play to the Big W though; he delivers a warts-and-all life-telling that reels you in like only a true professional can. Before long, you’re adding sticky notes to interesting quotes and underlining the odd lesson that will make life so much better. Then it slowly dawns that it was all a weird Hollywood-styled ruse, and you close the book not too far from the end. Strange, oh so strange.
The Library of Unfinished Business
Patricia Bell
Cloud Ink Press
$34.95
Reviewed by Steve Atkinson
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This book by Kiwi writer Patricia Bell is probably more suited to the philosophically-minded readers and definitely something quite different to what most of us would normally read.
Having a grasp on Sunday school teachings before starting is a good idea, as fairly quickly, our main character Maurice meets a sudden end to his earthly existence and finds himself at the Pearly Gates.
Only thing is that heaven isn’t the clouds and endless fields of swaying wheat we were taught all those years ago. Oh no, it’s more of an old-style holiday camp, complete with matching tracksuits and small gaudy apartments to stay in.
Ok, there are a few angels there, but they’re looking after things for God, whose office sits empty. Where’s the big guy and why has he gone into hiding?
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