April 5, 2020

What a departure from my usual genres this book was!

The description caught my eye, so I thought I would give it a go. I’ve always enjoyed “older” mysteries from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. I love the whole “noir” genre. Imagine my surprise to find that Blood on the Tyne fits right in with them.

I loved the setting from the time period to the location. The mid-50s is a ripe playground for exciting characters, and the author gets them all in there: the chanteuse, the homebody sister, the gangster, the bad boy ex…it’s a great gallery of personalities.

The premise is good also. Rosie has returned home from London for her mam’s funeral. While she is there, she gets embroiled in a police investigation. Young ladies are missing and then found murdered. And they all have a connection to the very places and people Rosie is around. (Don’t want to give too much detail and give anything away).

One thing I especially appreciated was the way the author wrote dialectically. I think it takes great talent to portray an accent or lexicon accurately. When an author takes the time to do so, it adds a whole new layer to the story for me. It also usually takes me longer to read because I read all of it as written to get the full effect. (Plus, the theater-geek in me still likes to work on accents).

I was pleased to see that this is the first in what might be a series, or at least there will be a book two. I enjoyed this one very much, and I look forward to the further adventures of Rosie Robson.

About Colin Garrow

True-born Geordie Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland and has worked in a plethora of professions including taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor, and has occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. Colin has published three stage plays, six adventures for middle grade readers, two books of short stories, the Watson Letters series and the Terry Bell Mysteries. His short stories have appeared in several literary mags, including: SN Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Grind, A3 Review, Inkapture and Scribble Magazine. These days he lives in a humble cottage in North East Scotland where he writes novels, stories. poems and the occasional song.