Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
After discovering seven men murdered aboard their yacht – including two Senate rivals – Israel Pike is regarded as a prime suspect. A troubled man infamous on Salvation Point Island for killing his own father a decade before,Israel has few options, no friends, and a life-threatening secret.
Fergusson and Morpurgo win Historical Fiction Awards". harrogate-news.co.uk. Harrogate Informer. 23 October 2015 . Retrieved 22 May 2021.
The setting remains the same, 1960's London, sleaze and scandal abound, seedy pubs and potentially corrupt police officers, gangsters and criminals. Even the notorious Kray twins feature amongst the plot. The whole story is the perfect blend of crime thriller/legal thriller. I enjoyed the parts in court as much as I did outside of it. The author certainly doesn’t go over board with legal jargon and does it in a way that Joe Bloggs would understand, which for me was great as with legal thrillers especially, I can find myself losing interest if they go to ‘technical’. Simon Michaels does it in a way though that keeps it all feeling very authentic whilst not taking anything away from a truly gripping story line.
Michael Koryta's best book" (Stephen King) opens with a yacht full of bodies, a woman hiding from killers on a nearby island, and a man trying to prove his innocence and save his life—in a breathtakingthriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Wish Me Dead. Israel Pike was a killer, and he was an honest man. They were not mutually exclusive. When the auctioneer asked Diogenes "in what he was proficient," according to Diogenes Laertius, the mischievous philosopher replied, "In ruling men." Kind of an odd thing for a slave to say, but Diogenes persisted. He spotted a rich man in the crowd named Xeniades and said, "Sell me to this man; he needs a master." This book was a wonderful historical fiction about young love and family obligations. Fergusson’s writing is lovely and I’m so glad I gave this book a chance! Oz and Ralf are wonderful characters! Ralfi is a freshly-graduated son of a British therapist and German pharmacist living in West Berlin in 1989 in the lead up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the summer before starting university he had hoped to grow closer with his friends and girlfriend, but his summer plans hit an abrupt snag when he falls in love with an Oz, a Turkish man of mystery who is helping West Berlin in its counterintelligence efforts against the East. Gaslighted into misperceptions about his own love, Ralfi comes to terms with his sexuality, his history, and the society of Cold War-era Berlin all in the same span of a summer. Did Diogenes dislike Alexander? We don't know. But what we do know is that Cynics like Diogenes prized one thing above all else: autarkeia, a Greek word that roughly translates into autonomy or freedom. And Diogenes knew that a "boon" from Alexander wasn't just a gift, but an attempt to buy his loyalty.What Fergusson truly excels at is brining the divided Berlin to life. The setting is vividly rendered, and Fergusson creates and maintains a rather anguishing, bittersweet atmosphere. Ralf’s narration is filled with youthful descriptions and observations. His narrative is sensual, as he always seem to loose himself in the bodies of those around him, describing bodies, someone's details almost with the painter's accuracy. I had the uneasy feeling that I was just old enough to see these things shifting for the first time, a snapshot of a much longer cycle, a split second in the inestimable history of my own deep time.’ But for all that," continued the lawyer, "there's one point I want to ask: I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the child." Ralf is a complex young man, coming to grips with himself in a totally relatable way. “I was constantly second guessing what people wanted from me, always aware that there were many thoughts and feelings I was necessarily burying.” (p58). As his family, Berlin and the communist bloc unravels around him, Ralf embarks on his own personal journey of unravelling as he navigates himself. Ultimately, Ralf is very courageous, and there is a resolve that is realised as the wall succumbs, symbolic of the breakthroughs in Ralf’s own life. I was absolutely thrilled when Urbane Publications recently announced that the third novel in the Charles Holborne series, The Lighterman, will be published in June 2017. An Honest Man ends with a tantalising hint of what’s to come, and I can’t wait to see what Holborne gets up to next.
Perhaps the ending is a bit rushed, and the reader is left with a longing for a more satisfying confrontation between Ralf and certain other characters, or a better exploration of the outbreak of AIDS of those years (only hinted at), and the aftermath of the fall of the Wall in these characters' lives. Utterson is very interested in the case and asks whether Enfield is certain Hyde used a key to open the door. Enfield is sure he did.This is 1960s London: police corruption and warring criminal gangs are part of the territory, and Charles’s involvement in this case puts him (and others) in danger. Will Charles be able to retain his integrity?
An Honest Man sees a welcome return to reading about the adventures of Charles Holborne, whom I first read about in The Brief. This book although follows on, can be read excellently as a standalone. And this might have been my lasting memory of summer 1989. Even that moment I might have forgotten, recalling only my A levels and the Wall if people asked what that year had meant to me. But of course, in the end, 1989 meant neither of those things. It just meant Oz, and espionage – how grand that word sounds now – and I suppose my family and the terrible things we did.’ The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then "Enfield," said Mr. Utterson, "that's a good rule of yours." As well as a poignant love story, it’s also a gripping, original thriller; a final twist I definitely didn’t see coming sets a powerful climax in motion just as the Wall comes down. But this is a novel as much about the end of innocence, the limits of ideology and the pain of realising the people we love are far from perfect – in this case very far indeed. Part thriller, part courtroom drama, Charles Holborne and this series hasn't lost it's spark for me. Charles Holborne is a bit of an enigma, his love life is a disaster and whilst making correct decisions in some areas, he makes completely silly ones in others. What remains true throughout is that he is one hell of a character and a top notch Criminal Barrister.Did you ever remark that door?" he asked; and when his companion had replied in the affirmative, "It is connected in my mind," added he, "with a very odd story." Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Sapere Books for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes. What Fergusson truly excels at is brining West Berlin to life. The setting is vividly rendered, and Fergusson creates and maintains a rather bittersweet atmosphere. Ralf's narration is filled with youthful descriptions and observations. His narrative is sensuous, as he always seem to loose himself in the bodies of those around him (noting the way the light illuminates someone's hair or face). Xeniades, for example, placed Diogenes in charge of tutoring his young sons and, in time, the philosopher became part of the family. He lived in Corinth with Xeniades' family for the rest of his life and died there at the age of ninety. His cause of death has been given as either severe food poisoning from eating a raw ox's foot, rabies from a dog bite, or suicide by holding his breath.
Great Deal 
New Comment