Author Archives: Ernest Lilley

The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken

A London Travelouge That Shows the Road Back from Grief and Loss

A writer travels to London to mourn/discover/bury her mother, dead now for 10 months. The author claims, with great frequency, that it’s not a memoir, no matter how much it seems like one. The lady doth protesteth…

The unnamed narrator is a modified version of the actual author, McCracken tells us in a fourth wall breaking aside to the reader. I read the book cold, with no previous knowledge of the author’s work or life, and was willing to believe her, but really hoping that this secondary narrator, the actual author popping up from time to time, was an unreliable narrator…and that she’d made it all up whole cloth because if she had, it’s pretty amazing worldbuilding. You’re on your own for finding the answer to that.

The protagonist, who may or may not be the hero of the book, if indeed such a thing even exists, is a writer in her late 50s whose mother has died almost a year before and has been taking care of all the details involved. What she isn’t is ready to close the lid on her mother’s life, and she’s gone to London, where they went together three years earlier, and wanders around the town, rabbit holes of recollection looming like open manhole covers on the streets they’d trod together.

It’s not a memoir, she asserts. No, it’s an exercise in self-indulgence and grieving. I say that like it’s a bad thing, but it’s not. The fictional author is out there processing grief in a melancholy travelogue of a city they shared as she looks for the mother of her memory in museums and theaters, both of which her mother had loved until at last she can accept that its time to open the collection of photos the realtor has sent her, showing a house far too neat, far too empty, and accept that her mother is gone.

Anyone who’s dealt with the decline of an aging relative will find this resonant, and as to whether it’s fact or fiction, as an instructor in a writing class tells the protagonist in the book, said, “If I know one thing, it’s that it doesn’t make any difference. Call it what you want.”

Living Memory by David Walton

Living Memory
by David Walton

Pages/Format: Kindle Unlimited 240 pages
Publication: October 18th 2022
ISBN: B09RW81ZRJ
Goodreads /  Amazon

Publisher Information:

We always thought we were the first.

When paleontologists Samira and Kit uncover dinosaur skeletons in northern Thailand, they also find the remains of an ancient genetic technology that nations will kill to control. Catapulted into a web of murder and intrigue involving the Chinese Ministry of State Security, a powerful Asian crime syndicate, the CIA, and a beautiful Thai princess, Samira and Kit don’t know who they can trust. Torn apart by competing factions and stranded on opposite sides of the world, they race to discover the truth before the world goes to war. Can they bring the past to life before it kills them all?

Living Memory is the first book of a globe-spanning thriller series by the author of The Genius Plague.

“Walton has brought hard sci-fi roaring back to life.” —The Wall Street Journal

“The literary heir of Michael Crichton . . . David Walton consistently delivers exciting thrillers packed with likable characters and big ideas.” —Craig DiLouie, author of THE CHILDREN OF RED PEAK

“David Walton is one of our very best writers of science-fiction thrillers.” —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Quantum Night

 

Abstract

When a team of paleontologists on a remote site in Thailand discovers what appears to be a fossiled graveyard 66 million years old, they don’t know it yet, but mankind’s place in the evolutionary order is about to be challenged. Amidst international tensions, two teams work to uncover the secrets the incredibly well-preserved dinosaur fossils hold, and their impacts on two civilizations separated by millions of years. Fast-paced action for dino-fiction fans, along with some thought-provoking ideas about interspecies communication and social dominance.

Continue reading →

Mav and Buzz – Two Heroes With Dfferent Paths


You know the square jaw, the steady gaze, the proud bearing. He stands alone, confident that he’s the best of the best, ready to do the job singlehanded because anyone else would slow him down. He’s a hero; heroes never quit, never fail, and never need a hand.

Tom Cruise’s Maverick and Disney’s Buzz Lightyear are cut from the same cloth, but the fictional fabric that makes up their movies is as different as night and day. Continue reading →

Diamond and the Eye

Diamond and the Eye (Peter Diamond #20)
by Peter Lovesey
Format: 336 pages, Hardcover
Published: October 12, 2021, by Soho Crime
ISBN: 9781641293129 (ISBN10: 1641293128)

CID chief Peter Diamond is back for his 20th caper solving mysteries in Bath, England. Diamond, for those of you who haven’t met him, is one of those classic slightly-offbeat British detectives, brilliant, hard to get close to, and a bit eccentric. He’s backed up by a small team of solid investigators; Ingeborg, the ex-journalist, the hardnosed Haliwell, the recent hire Jean Sharp, and the OCD-driven John Leaman, all of whom dutifully gather up grist for him to mill over. In Diamond and the Eye, however, he gets a hand from an outsider, Johhny Getz, Private Eye. Continue reading →

London Bridge Is Falling Down (Bryant & May / Peculiar Crimes Unit) by Christopher Fowler

London Bridge Is Falling Down (Bryant & May / Peculiar Crimes Unit) by Christopher Fowler
Review by Ernest Lilley
Bantam Hardcover / eBook  ISBN/ITEM#: 9780593356210
Date: December 7, 2021

Links: Author’s Website / Amazon Link / Show Official Info /

 

If you’re not familiar with the PCU (Peculiar Crimes Unit) of the London police force, this is either the best or worst place to start. As the cover copy says, “Bryant and May’s twentieth-anniversary case brings an ending and a new beginning to London’s most peculiar crimes unit and all who work there.”

 

Now, you may think that starting at the end, as I did, is crazy, but in this case, it’s perfect. Though this is far from the first time that the PCU has been threatened with being closed down, this time it’s for real, and even Arthur Bryant, the unit’s legendary senior detective, can’t stop it. He can, however, stall it for a little while so that he can come up with an exit strategy that leaves the team with options.

That stalling takes the form of calling up the PCU’s favorite coroner and asking what he’s got handy on the slab, which leads to an investigation of a little old lady who appears to have died of natural causes in her immaculate flat. Undeterred by appearances, Arthur and the team forge ahead, only to discover not only was this murder but that it’s just the first of more, all somehow tied to something from the past. Something code-named London Bridge, a secret kept by three women who would rather die than let it be revealed.

The past figures heavily in this twisty investigation both because that’s the way Arthur works, by tasking his widespread network of informants, all brilliant corkscrew minds in their own right, as he digs for a connection between the increasing body count. Before it’s done he’ll have to face down the CIA and the Home Office as well as rogue elements left over from Cold War espionage, and will ultimately find that the investigation comes full circle to the PCU itself.

London Bridge is Falling Down is both a tour-de-force and a tour of past cases which manages to close a chapter in this long-running series and pave the way forward for London’s most peculiar crew of crime stoppers.

Highly Recommended.