Friday 3 June 2016

Review- The Wrong Kind of Clouds: Amanda Fleet



The following review has been published on Amazon UK & US, Goodreads and NetGalley.

It's hard to believe that this psychological mystery is a debut novel, such is the quality of the writing. A bit slow at the outset, but intriguing enough to carry on reading.

The book, set in Edinburgh, starts off with the mysterious abduction, assault and disappearance of Patrick Forrester, occupation indeterminate, a womanizer, gambler and cheat whose saving grace is that he helps disadvantaged children in Malawi to achieve an education by supporting a charity out there.

During his abduction he manages to make an alarming call for help to his ex girlfriend Summer Morris, a photographer with synaesthesia, which is a condition I've never heard of before but is explained on the NHS UK site here:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/synaesthesia/Pages/Introduction.aspx
In Summer's case emotions are felt as colours.

 Summer tries in vain to enlist police assistance in Patrick's disappearance, but at first they're not interested until it is discovered that a female government minister and Patrick have had an affair. Before that discovery though and subsequent police involvement, Summer visits his flat and not very sensibly removes items to try to find out what has happened to her ex-boyfriend with whom she hadn't parted very amicably from.

With several trails to follow, including the mysterious disappearance of children in Milawi and a number of suspects apparently seriously annoyed with the missing man, police involvement when it appears is in the form of the rather enigmatic DS LB Stewart.

I liked the dynamics between the detective and Summer as together they try to unravel the mystery and find out what happened to Patrick Forrester, although if I was being critical the mutual attraction and holding back from the pair of them did go on a tad too long and I felt like shouting at them to get a room, but no, tlme was critical and a man's life could be at stake.

 I think and hope there might be more books involving these two intriguing characters because only parts of their personal histories were revealed and there's more I'd like to know about them as individuals.

Altogether a cracking good read.
To Purchase the book

1 comment:

  1. This sounds like a definite for me, Caryl! A mystery that goes to Malawi sounds right up my street!

    ReplyDelete