#BlogTour THOSE WHO KNOW by ALIS HAWKINS @DomePress @Alis_Hawkins

A huge delight to be stop today for the fabulous Blog Tour for THOSE WHO KNOW by ALIS HAWKINS.  My thanks to Emily Glenister at Dome Press for putting this tour together and letting me be part of it all!  

ABOUT THE BOOK

Harry Probert-Lloyd has inherited the estate of Glanteifi and appointed his assistant John as under-steward. But his true vocation, to be coroner, is under threat. Against his natural instincts, Harry must campaign if he is to be voted as coroner permanently by the local people and politicking is not his strength.

On the hustings, Harry and John are called to examine the body of Nicholas Rowland, a radical and pioneering schoolteacher whose death may not be the accident it first appeared. What was Rowland’s real relationship with his eccentric patron, Miss Gwatkyn? And why does Harry’s rival for the post of coroner deny knowing him? Harry’s determination to uncover the truth threatens to undermine both his campaign and his future.

PUBLISHED BY DOME PRESS

PURCHASE LINKS

Publisher Website

hive.co.uk

blackwell’s

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. After attending the local village primary school and Cardigan County Secondary school, she left West Wales to read English at Oxford. Subsequently, she has has done various things with her life, including becoming a speech and language therapist, bringing up two sons, selling burgers, working with homeless people, and helping families to understand their autistic children. And writing. Always. Nonfiction (autism related), plays (commissioned by heritage projects) and, of course, novels. Alis’s first novel, Testament, was published in 2008 by Macmillan and was translated into several languages. (It has recently been acquired for reissue, along with her medieval trilogy of psychological thrillers by Sapere Books). Her current historical crime series featuring blind investigator Harry Probert-Lloyd and his chippy assistant, John Davies, is set in Cardiganshire in the period immediately after the Rebecca Riots. As a sideeffect of setting her series there, instead of making research trips to sunny climes like more foresighted writers, she just drives up the M4 to see her family. Now living with her partner on the wrong side of the Welsh/English border (though she sneaks back over to work for the National Autistic Society in Monmouthshire) Alis speaks Welsh, collects rucksacks and can’t resist an interesting fact.

Social Media & Links 

Twitter: @Alis_Hawkins

 Website: http://www.alishawkins.co.uk

MY REVIEW

Book 3 in the series and Harry and John are back! And this time their cases prove to be more complex than ever.  Especially with Harry having his head turned by the lure of local politics.  He is aiming to be elected coroner full time, but it isn’t proving an easy task.

The death of a popular local teach has raised some alarm bells. He was found on the floor, seemingly having fallen out of a loft.  Did he fall or was he pushed?   And when the local magistrates want the case closed quickly, the irks Harry as he’s never one to just settle!  He wants to find out what really happened and if he has to ruffle some feathers to get to the truth, he doesn’t care!

As always, we have the alternating points of view of Harry and John which works so well for these characters as it gives you time with them both to watch things unfold.

The more they delve into the life of the deceased teacher, the darker the plot becomes. His aim was to prove how good small welsh schools could be, but many were against this, and they uncover family feuds too so the list of suspects begins to grow.  Despite their own battles personally, their focus rarely waivers from the case.

The sense of history surrounding the story is as strong as ever, showing up the treatment of women and how society expected them to behave was especially illuminating.

This is a story full of secrets and scandal, and I just loved how determined and clever Harry and John were in getting to the bottom of the mystery of just how the teacher died.  I also really appreciated the notes at the back of the book that gave more historical insight into the times when the book was set. 

A fantastic novel, and a series that I hope will carry on for some time to come!!

★★★★★

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#BookReview THE BLACK AND THE WHITE by ALIS HAWKINS

ABOUT THE BOOK

A thought-provoking Medieval mystery you don’t want to miss! Perfect for fans of S D Sykes, L C Tyler, Karen Maitland and S J Parris.

Not every corpse put in a pit has died of the plague…


England, 1349

The Black Death is tearing through the country and those not yet afflicted are living in fear.

Martin Collyer wakes up in his family’s charcoaling hut in the Forest of Dean to find his father dead on the bed beside him, half-sewn into his shroud. As Martin’s most recent memory is of being given the last rites, he cannot account for why he is alive and why his father – whose body bears not a trace of the plague – is dead.

With no home to go to and set free from the life of virtual servitude that his father had planned for him, Martin sets off on a journey across England to seek salvation for his father’s unconfessed soul.

He befriends another traveller on the way. But the man – Hob Cleve – seems to be harbouring dark secrets of his own.

As more suspicious deaths occur, Martin is left wondering whether Hob can be trusted.

What is Hob hiding? Is Martin travelling with a killer?

And what really led to Martin’s miraculous recovery?

THE BLACK AND THE WHITE is a chilling historical mystery set during the Medieval plague era.

PUBLISHED BY  SAPERE BOOKS

PUBLICATION DATE – 3OTH MARCH

PRE-ORDER LINKS

Amazon  99p

MY REVIEW

A timely read considering the world we find ourselves living in, and I was utterly absorbed by this historical tale, set during the Great Plague and following a man on a mission of discovery. Not easy when you are joined on your journey by a man who has completely different values and outlook on life.

Martin finds himself waking up alongside his dead father, while the plague ravages family and villages, and wonders why he’s been spared. He wakes up clutching a figure of Saint Cynryth, a figure his father idolised, and Martin sees this as a sign to seek salvation for his father and to spread the word of this Saint that may, or may not, have saved his own life.

Martin is a quirky character! He is utterly devoted to doing the right thing and playing by the rules, but is troubled by nightmares – during the day he’s lonely, by night he’s terrified by demons.  As he travels from village to village on his way to Salster, where the shrine to the Saint is said to be, he is joined by Hob, who appears from nowhere to save him from being attacked. 

Wary but glad of the company, they make an odd duo travelling along and I loved watching their different attitudes towards the ‘miracle’ – Hob is a cynical soul and is bemused by the hold that this Saint has over Martin!  The way they challenge each other and their way of thinking was a fascinating part of the journey for me, and wondering if either of them really trust one another.  There are also a number of strange goings on that happen along the way which were an added twist to try and unravel!  It’s a story that plays on the emotions of the characters – Martin especially as he’s trying to find meaning amongst grieving for the loss of his family and finding himself alone.

It’s a slow burner of a story but that allows you to immerse yourself more in the characters and get to understand their state of mind, and I thought the ending was particularly bittersweet and unexpected!  

★★★★

#BlogTour #GuestPost #BookReview In Two Minds by Alis Hawkins @DomePress @Alis_Hawkins

Excited to be here today to share with you my thoughts on this wonderful series, along with a guest post from Alis herself all about Victorian Crime Fiction! My thanks to the Author and Publisher for letting me be part of this tour!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor’s clerk John Davies as his assistant. When a faceless body is found on an isolated beach, Harry must lead the inquest. But his dogged pursuit of the truth begins to ruffle feathers. Especially when he decides to work alongside a local doctor with a dubious reputation and experimental theories considered radical and dangerous. Refusing to accept easy answers might not only jeopardise Harry’s chance to be elected coroner permanently but could, it seems, implicate his own family in a crime. 

Published by The Dome Press

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. After attending the local village primary school and Cardigan County Secondary school, she left West Wales to read English at Oxford. Subsequently, she has has done various things with her life, including becoming a speech and language therapist, bringing up two sons, selling burgers, working with homeless people, and helping families to understand their autistic children. And writing. Always. Nonfiction (autism related), plays (commissioned by heritage projects) and, of course, novels. Alis’s first novel, Testament, was published in 2008 by Macmillan and was translated into several languages. (It has recently been acquired for reissue, along with her medieval trilogy of psychological thrillers by Sapere Books). Her current historical crime series featuring blind investigator Harry Probert-Lloyd and his chippy assistant, John Davies, is set in Cardiganshire in the period immediately after the Rebecca Riots. As a sideeffect of setting her series there, instead of making research trips to sunny climes like more foresighted writers, she just drives up the M4 to see her family. Now living with her partner on the wrong side of the Welsh/English border (though she sneaks back over to work for the National Autistic Society in Monmouthshire) Alis speaks Welsh, collects rucksacks and can’t resist an interesting fact.

Website

Twitter

GUEST POST – VICTORIAN CRIME FICTION

When people hear the phrase ‘Victorian crime fiction’, their minds immediately go to 1890s London. I know this. I’ve seen it. Because Victorian crime fiction has always had one huge, overshadowing presence, hasn’t it? Holmes.

But the Victorian era isn’t limited to the last decade or so of the nineteenth century when Watson and Holmes were doing their thing. Victoria was on the throne for 63 years and the world changed almost as much between the start of her reign in 1837 and the end of it in 1901 as it did between 1937 and 2001. In other words, a lot.

Nor, obviously, is the Victorian era geographically limited to London.

So, the Victorian crime fiction you’ll find between the covers of In Two Minds (and the first in the series, None So Blind) differs substantially from the goings-on inside 221B Baker Street and the gaslit streets of the capital.

For a start, the books are set at the beginning of the 1850s. Victoria is neither old nor fat. Nor is she yet dressed in black or unamused. She’s barely into her thirties and Prince Albert still has a decade to live. Isambard Kingdom Brunel is doing extraordinary things with the new railways, to say nothing of iron ships, and the Great Exhibition has just taken place in the Crystal Palace – a feat of engineering that astonished the world. The world and the empire is young and vigorous and full of promise.

And, instead of the grubby, corrupt, crime-ridden streets and hellish rookeries of London, we’re in the clean air of south west Wales, amongst the wooded tributary valleys of the river Teifi and on the busy Cardiganshire coastline where merchant ships plied up and down the coast from Liverpool to Bristol and London and across the Atlantic to America.

It’s a very different time and a very different place. Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t’ve known what to do there or how to go about understanding what was going on. But Harry Probert-Lloyd does, because it’s his time and his place and he may be blind, but that doesn’t mean he’s ignorant about how things work here.

So, what were things like in the Teifi Valley in the mid-nineteenth century? How did society work?  

What were the people like?

Quite lot like us, is the answer.

Of course, they lived with different expectations, different fears – fears that were a lot more immediate, in many ways, than our own. Without antibiotics or the welfare state or health and safety, life was a lot more precarious – which is always good for a crime writer, especially if her sleuth is a coroner. But people were still people and the past is only the present which happens to have taken place a while ago. It was still now when it happened and we should never forget that.

It’s with that attitude in mind that I write my books. I don’t think of Harry and John as historical figures, living in a quaint, sepia-tinted version of the world. In my mind, they’re living, breathing, vital, hot-blooded, sometimes violent young men, living in a full-colour world which is every bit was real to them as mine is to me. Which, when it was now, was every bit as modern and cutting edge as 2019 is today.

In the last two decades, the internet has changed our world out of all recognition. The railways are doing the same to theirs. Harry and John live in a time of political turmoil when many ordinary folk don’t feel that the toffs in government represent them. We live in a time of political turmoil when many ordinary folk don’t feel that the toffs in government—’ Well, you get my drift.

One of the most pleasing things anybody said about None So Blind, when it came out, appeared in an Amazon review:

Although the setting was historical I didn’t feel that I was being told what that time was like, rather I felt like I was a contemporary of the characters able to visualise the people and places. I learnt about the time almost by experiencing it.

The reviewer couldn’t have pleased me more, because that’s what I’m aiming for. That the reader is there, walking alongside Harry and John seeing what they see, hearing the truths and half-truths and lies they hear, feeling the things they feel. Just like you would if you were reading contemporary fiction.

MY REVIEW

In the second of the Teifi Valley Coroner series – but can easily be read as a standalone so worry not if you haven’t read None So Blind yet! – we are reunited with John and Harry as they combine their crime solving skills to get to the bottom of yet more intriguing deaths, and these deaths are a little more gruesome this time round so pose quite a challenge for them to get to the bottom of.

Harry is going blind, so relies on John to be his eyes and they work so well as a team that Harry wonders how he’d cope without his trusty sidekick!  His father would much prefer he lived a quieter life, but Harry is driven by the need to carry on with his work so does all he can to prove how valuable he is especially when faced with such intriguing cases – no ID on the first victim, and no skin on his face either – doesn’t make it easy to identify him.

What I love about Harry and John is although they work so well together, they are also fascinating characters when working under their own steam.  Their stories are told in alternating points of view and allows them to spread their wings a little and cover more ground in getting to the bottom of various threads.  They aren’t afraid of using unconventional methods in their thorough investigations and I just loved how dogged and persistent they both are in their quest to uncover the truth – despite the interference of others!

As with the first in this series, this book really transports you back to a dark and gritty Wales in the 19th Century and deals with the darker sides of life, especially when they start to uncover the truth behind the victim and how his story goes a lot deeper than any of them could have imagined.

A gritty and stylish piece of historical crime fiction – more please!!!

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#BlogTour None So Blind by Alis Hawkins #Excerpt #BookReview @DomePress

Delighted to be the latest stop on the Blog Tour for the wonderful NONE SO BLIND by ALIS HAWKINS. My thanks to the author and the publishers, The Dome Press, for inviting me to be part of it all!

Will be sharing my review of this book today along with an extract which will hopefully give you a little flavour of what the book is abut! It’s one you need to add to your TBR pile!

About the book

West Wales, 1850.

When an old tree root is dug up, the remains of a young woman are found. Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has been dreading this discovery. He knows exactly whose bones they are.

Working with his clerk, John Davies, Harry is determined to expose the guilty. But the investigation turns up more questions than answers.

The search for the truth will prove costly. But will Harry and John be the ones to pay the highest price?

Published by The Dome Press

Purchase Links

The Dome Press  £6.29

hive.co.uk  £7.75

book depository  £8.99

About the Author

Alis Hawkins grew up on a dairy farm in Cardiganshire. She left to read English at Oxford and has done various things with her life, including bringing up two amazing sons, selling burgers, working with homeless people and helping families to understand their autistic children. And writing, always.

Radio plays (unloved by anybody but her), nonfiction (autism related), plays (commissioned by heritage projects) and of course, novels.

Her current historical crime series featuring blind investigator Harry Probert-Lloyd and his chippy assistant John Davies, is set in her childhood home, the Teifi Valley. As a side effect, instead of making research trips to sunny climes, like some of her writer friends, she just drives up the M4 to see her folks.

Alis speaks Welsh, collects rucksacks and can’t resist an interesting fact.

Twitter: @Alis_Hawkins

Website: http://www.alishawkins.co.uk

None So Blind – extract

Gus’s curiosity was palpable as we stood in the stableyard waiting for the horses. Only his wariness of listening ears was saving me from an interrogation. Having told him that human remains had been found, I had avoided any questions he might have asked by fleeing upstairs, ostensibly to change but, in actual fact, to quell the shaking that had taken hold of me.

Bones confirmed what I had always feared. She was dead. But buried? Buried implied a second party. It implied – no, surely it was evidence of – murder.

A stable boy led the horses out and held them while we mounted up. ‘How far is it?’ Gus asked, nodding to the boy and taking up the reins.

‘Five minutes or so.’ In fact, had we set out to walk instead of changing and waiting for the horses, we would almost have been there by now. But it would not have done to arrive on foot. Williams of Waungilfach would have felt slighted and it was altogether too soon to allow my father to begin finding fault with me.

In two minutes we were trotting through the gates at the end of the drive. I urged my little mare up the hill towards Treforgan and we passed the hamlet’s open-fronted forge, made our way down the steep little hill past the silent, weekday chapel and the mill with its rhythmically thumping wheel, and found ourselves on the edge of the river meadows where the flat pasture was bounded by the wooded slope of the Alltddu.

Eyes averted so as to give me an impression of the path ahead, was aware of the stiff, leafless cages of last summer’s brambles lining the edge of the path and my mind’s eye conjured up memories of an exuberance of black-spattered bushes rambling up the slope. Blackberries and wild strawberries and damsons – we had picked them all. My mouth puckered at the memory of the sharp sweetness of those damsons, those days.

A sudden greeting snatched me back to the present. ‘Henry Probert-Lloyd!’

William Williams. The sound of his voice brought a slew of unpleasant recollections and I fought down an old anger. ‘Good day to you, Mr Williams.’ I dismounted and found my reins being taken by Ianto Harris.

‘I barely recognised you,’ Williams sounded somewhat resentful.

‘You look quite different!’

My hand rose involuntarily to my beard; even I was not used to it, yet, but its novelty did not excuse his tone. I gave what I hoped was a sufficiently forced smile to act as a dignified rebuke and proceeded to introduce Gus before clarifying why I had come instead of my father.

‘Yes, I see,’ Williams said. ‘It’s good of you to come yourself, of course, but I think I would rather wait until your father can attend to this himself.’

I stiffened. I might have been little more than a boy the last time Williams and I had had dealings with each other but I was a barrister now and more than competent to deputise for a magistrate.

‘Is it not,’ I suggested, ‘simply a case of confirming that these remains are human and sending for the coroner?’ Both of which Williams might have done already, had he not been so afraid of being seen to overreach himself.

‘Your father is a county magistrate—’

‘That’s hardly a necessary qualification, surely?’

‘No but, I think we should wait—’

‘And I am quite sure that he would wish us to act like sensible men’ – let him take that as a compliment if he felt so inclined – ‘and deal with this ourselves.’

Unable to look Williams in the eye and utterly unwilling to tell him why, I turned my head towards the wooded slope beside us. She was up there. That was where she had been for the last seven years. Despite all my desperate hopes and wild imaginings, she had been here all along. Dead, as I had feared. But murder… I had not, for a second, entertained that thought.

MY REVIEW

The dark and brooding cover gives you a little glimpse of what to expect when you start reading this new historical mystery series, and it’s compelling stuff from the first page to the last!

There’s a very dramatic prologue that jumps you straight into a chaotic scene and really helps set the atmosphere for what is about to follow!  When a body is found it sets everyone back to remembering one dark night, none more so than  Harry Probert-Lloyd who was dreading this discovery and is put in charge of investigating just what went on to end in such tragedy.  He is a barrister who is beginning to lose his sight, but refuses to admit defeat,and teams up with a clerk, John Davies, to track down those responsible.Both characters are quite headstrong so often go off on their own quests and I found these characters, who both have flaws of their own, make for much more interesting people to follow!

Their investigations take them amongst family and friends, and over to Ipswich as well to track down those who have moved away, and you’re always wondering why they keep finding dead ends or those who are just plain uncooperative.  The closer they get to the truth, the more troubling it is for them to want to believe.

Harry and John work so well together as a team! They upset a number of people with their questions but also aren’t afraid to work behind each others backs – they know they’re not perfect human beings but they don’t care and I think they respect that in each other!  

This is a book filled with  dark secrets and  lies, lost loves and plenty of twists and turns to keep you turning the pages with anticipation!  Can’t wait for more in this series!!

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My thanks to The Dome Press for my copy in return for a fair and honest review. Please check out the other stops on the Blog Tour!

Happy Reading!