Latest news with #NeverFlinch
TimesLIVE
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Scott Turow, Susan Lewis, Stephen King
Presumed Guilty Scott Turow, Swift **** (4 stars) Scott Turow was a creative writing lecturer at Stanford who subsequently studied law at Harvard and became an assistant US attorney in Chicago for eight years before — thankfully — becoming a novelist. This experience powers his latest legal thriller Presumed Guilty, the third in a series spanning nearly 40 years, set in the American Midwest and involving Rožat 'Rusty' Sabich, a prosecutor and judge. It's definitely time to revisit Presumed Innocent (1987) and Innocent (2010). The pace is sedate, in line with the slow progress of the law — so much more measured than the irrational outbursts that drive some people to violence. But the tension builds to the point of unputdownable as the now-retired Rusty is propelled back into court to defend his fiancé's son Aaron Housley, an African American accused of murdering his rich white girlfriend, in a racially charged case and country. It's no surprise that Turow's 13 legal thrillers in all have sold 30 million copies. — William Saunderson-Meyer Don't Believe a Word Susan Lewis, Harper Collins **** (4 stars) This captivating read begins with a disturbing scene: a tiny two-year-old sits alone on a freezing beach in treacherous weather, seemingly abandoned until a caring woman picks her up and carries her into her warm holiday home. Fast-forward two decades and pretty Sadie Winters, a young woman raised by her two wealthy aunts, is encouraged by her best friend to find out who she is and where she came from with the help of a true crime podcast team, who agree to take on her case as the focus of their next series. Through the telling of the story, the rolling out of episodes begins a saga that reveals lies and opens secrets and sheds light on some deeply dark truths. As they unravel the mystery in real time, broadcasting an episode a week, podcasters Cristy, Connor and the Hindsight crew manage to keep their audience captivated as the story breaks at a rapid pace to its surprising conclusion. It's a worthy read indeed. — Gill Gifford Never Flinch Stephen King, Hodder & Stoughton *** (3 stars) Sometimes the problem is that illustrious writers are not edited enough. Never Flinch is bloated and could have had some major cuts to make it pacier. Also, King can write a cliché and make it fresh, but somehow with his latest, it feels like he has lost his mojo. In Never Flinch we are once again in his favourite hero's world — private investigator Holly Gibney, a neurodivergent person who uses her off-kilter skills of seeing patterns, off-the-chart knowledge, elephant memory and razor-sharp observation skills to solve weird cases. Some of the cases are on the supernatural gradient, but this one stays mostly in the pedestrian world of catching a serial killer. It's fairly predictable, but there are a few twists here and there. Not Stephen King's best is still better than most others' dredge. — Jennifer Platt
TimesLIVE
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
‘Presumed Guilty', ‘Don't Believe a Word' and more
Presumed Guilty Scott Turow, Swift **** (4 stars) Scott Turow was a creative writing lecturer at Stanford who subsequently studied law at Harvard and became an assistant US attorney in Chicago for eight years before — thankfully — becoming a novelist. This experience powers his latest legal thriller Presumed Guilty, the third in a series spanning nearly 40 years, set in the American Midwest and involving Rožat 'Rusty' Sabich, a prosecutor and judge. It's definitely time to revisit Presumed Innocent (1987) and Innocent (2010). The pace is sedate, in line with the slow progress of the law — so much more measured than the irrational outbursts that drive some people to violence. But the tension builds to the point of unputdownable as the now-retired Rusty is propelled back into court to defend his fiancé's son Aaron Housley, an African American accused of murdering his rich white girlfriend, in a racially charged case and country. It's no surprise that Turow's 13 legal thrillers in all have sold 30 million copies. — William Saunderson-Meyer Don't Believe a Word Susan Lewis, Harper Collins **** (4 stars) This captivating read begins with a disturbing scene: a tiny two-year-old sits alone on a freezing beach in treacherous weather, seemingly abandoned until a caring woman picks her up and carries her into her warm holiday home. Fast-forward two decades and pretty Sadie Winters, a young woman raised by her two wealthy aunts, is encouraged by her best friend to find out who she is and where she came from with the help of a true crime podcast team, who agree to take on her case as the focus of their next series. Through the telling of the story, the rolling out of episodes begins a saga that reveals lies and opens secrets and sheds light on some deeply dark truths. As they unravel the mystery in real time, broadcasting an episode a week, podcasters Cristy, Connor and the Hindsight crew manage to keep their audience captivated as the story breaks at a rapid pace to its surprising conclusion. It's a worthy read indeed. — Gill Gifford Stephen King, Hodder & Stoughton *** (3 stars) Sometimes the problem is that illustrious writers are not edited enough. Never Flinch is bloated and could have had some major cuts to make it pacier. Also, King can write a cliché and make it fresh, but somehow with his latest, it feels like he has lost his mojo. In Never Flinch we are once again in his favourite hero's world — private investigator Holly Gibney, a neurodivergent person who uses her off-kilter skills of seeing patterns, off-the-chart knowledge, elephant memory and razor-sharp observation skills to solve weird cases. Some of the cases are on the supernatural gradient, but this one stays mostly in the pedestrian world of catching a serial killer. It's fairly predictable, but there are a few twists here and there. Not Stephen King's best is still better than most others' dredge. — Jennifer Platt
Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Stephen King to narrate ‘Hansel and Gretel' retelling
Stephen King is bringing his voice and signature storytelling to a haunting new retelling of Hansel and Gretel. The acclaimed horror author will narrate the audiobook version of the classic tale, reimagined with eerie artwork by the late Maurice Sendak, best known for Where the Wild Things Are. The audiobook and print editions will be released on September 2. King, 77, says he was inspired by Sendak's illustrations, which were originally designed for a stage adaptation of the Hansel and Gretel opera in the 1990s. 'Two of his pictures in particular spoke to me,' King shared. 'One was of the wicked witch on her broom with a bag of kidnapped children riding behind her; the other was of the infamous candy house becoming a terrible face.' In this version, King leans into the darker, more psychological aspects of the Brothers Grimm tale, staying true to its roots while adding his signature twist. 'To me, it was the essence of this story and, really, all fairy tales: a sunny exterior, a dark and terrible centre, brave and resourceful children,' he explained. 'In a way, I have been writing about kids like Hansel and Gretel for much of my life.' Sendak's illustrations, paired with King's narration, promise to breathe new life into the centuries-old story, giving it fresh relevance and a deeply sinister tone. The Maurice Sendak Foundation's executive director Lynn Caponera praised the audiobook, calling King's reading 'captivating and thrilling.' Known for more than 60 novels, King received the Audio Publishers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. His latest book, Never Flinch, was published in May. The illustrated edition of Hansel and Gretel is available now for preorder.
Sydney Morning Herald
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ten new books to add to your reading pile
What's good, what's bad, and what's in between in literature? Here we review the latest titles. See all 51 stories. Looking for some psychological suspense? A reimagining of literary history? Perhaps a deep-dive into the work of the late Australian historian John Hirst, or a gripping real-life account of women working for the French resistance during World War II? Our reviewers have these and more covered in this week's reviews. Happy reading! FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK Famous Last Words Gillian McAllister Penguin, $34.99 A nightmare day – one that seems too strange to believe. Camilla is dropping her daughter Polly off on her first day at school, and husband Luke, a mild-mannered writer, isn't there. He isn't responding to messages, which is unlike him. Her annoyance quickly escalates into alarm when the police arrive asking to talk to her about her husband, and shock sets in when she's told the news of an unfolding hostage situation in London. He's being held hostage, she thinks. She's incredulous at viewing video evidence of Luke as the hostage-taker. How on earth did her husband become a violent criminal, without the slightest warning? At a gut level, Camilla refuses to concede that Luke could possibly do what she is seeing him do with her own eyes, but she agrees to assist DCI Niall Thompson conduct hostage negotiations, hoping to defuse the crisis without bloodshed. The game will change, and the inexplicable will become clear in this taut and twisting thriller. Fans of Liane Moriarty (and superior, character-driven psychological suspense generally) should lap this one up. Stephen King's private detective Holly Gibney returns in Never Flinch, with more than enough to keep her occupied. There seem to be two cases, though her friend, Izzy Jaynes, a detective at Buckeye police department, is handling one of them. It starts with a sinister letter sent to police from a would-be serial killer who promises to mete out lethal vigilante justice to 13 guilty persons and one innocent, to avenge a grave wrong committed. The threat isn't idle. Chapters told from the killer's perspective are interwoven as the body count climbs, but when Izzy turns to Holly for assistance, Holly is temporarily indisposed: she's moonlighting as a bodyguard for feminist author Kate McKay, who fears being stalked by a radical religious activist on a speaking tour. Never Flinch is a rather tortured and over-realised novel for King. It really should have been split into two novels, as without radical condensation and extremely brisk exposition, there's simply too much here to merge the two narrative threads successfully without one pulling focus from the other. 'The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other.' So begins this revenge thriller from Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters. It's a killer line, and for Birdie Keller, vengeance has been a long time coming. The ice-cold nature of her rage is amplified by the casual way she goes about her daily domestic routine, as if nothing had changed, as if Jimmy Maguire – the man who murdered Birdie's sister 18 years earlier – had not been released from jail, as if she didn't have a gun and wasn't about to head into London to use it. The Sunshine Man layers multiple perspectives, including Maguire's, and flashes back to the events surrounding the original crime, where lurking in the westering fields of her childhood in Devon and Cornwall, a terrible truth lies in wait. It would have been easy for this one to misfire. Revenge is a basic human impulse, but without complications it isn't always thriller material. Stonex is excellent, though, at playing with the reader's sympathies, allowing elements of the story to be shaped by memory and character, so that provisional judgments jump around until the picture becomes more complete. The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson Belinda Lyons-Lee Transit Lounge, $34.99 Where did Robert Louis Stevenson get the idea for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Well, his Calvinist upbringing influenced his psychological fable, but there was, too, a charming man of his acquaintance, Eugene Chantrelle, who was later tried and hanged for murdering his wife, Elizabeth. Geelong-based writer Belinda Lyons-Lee goes behind the scenes, reimagining a piece of literary and criminal history from the viewpoint of Stevenson's wife, Fanny, herself a successful author, who fell in love with the younger Robert after divorcing her wayward husband in the US. In Lyons-Lee's telling, theirs was an intellectual, literary and romantic bond, and their encounter with the two-faced Chantrelle is one of many episodes – including a seance with the Shelleys and a haunted wardrobe – that lace literary biography and an eerie, gothic sensibility. Some of the prose isn't polished to the sort of sheen that might make this dark material truly glisten, but it's fascinating literary historical fiction, nonetheless. Awake in the Floating City Susanna Kwan Simon & Schuster, $34.99 Seas have risen and climate change has caused disastrous flooding in a future San Francisco. Just turned 40, Bo – an artist whose desire to create has dried up, even as the rain refuses to abate – is set to leave the city as part of anexodus of residents. She plans to flee the sodden streets and crumbling buildings and head to Canada, but when the day to leave arrives, she discovers a note urging her to stay. Her elderly neighbour, Mia, is 130 years old, and she's been abandoned to her fate. Taking up Mia's offer to be her part-time paid carer, Bo befriends the supercentenarian and eventually, her muse returns: she begins to make art inspired by Mia's long life, finding a way to be creative in the shadow of catastrophic destruction. Awake in the Floating City is literary cli-fi that proceeds from a positively Biblical extreme weather event. The disaster is evoked in spartan but atmospheric detail, and the characters have some depth, but the plot itself is stretched too thin over the length of a novel, and it sometimes feels like the barest frame for philosophical musing on human nature and need. NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK John Hirst: Selected Writings Edited by Chris Feik La Trobe University Press, $36.99 John Hirst (1942-2016), as this collection of essays and commentaries amply attests, was a historian who went his own way. No stranger to controversy, evident, for example, in his views on colonisation and the dispossession of Indigenous Australians. History in its British imperialist incarnation is almost presented as a kind of impersonal force, indifferent to and beyond moralising by 'liberal fantasists' who, seeking some sort of reconciliation with the wrongs of a shameful past, imagine the tragedy could have been avoided and ignore the inevitability of the brutal 'phenomenon' of European expansion. A point that fellow historian and friend Robert Manne addresses in his commentary, stating historians are also humans and will make judgments. Mind you, at the same time, Hirst was morally outraged with the Stolen Generation and the damage done to Aboriginal culture. Whether talking about his politics over the years, multiculturalism, his pro-republic views or the democratic legacy of the convict years, this is a distillation of a contrarian mind that couldn't help but challenge orthodoxy (especially on the left). Overall, it's impossible not to be impressed by the scope of his works. The Scientist Who Wasn't There Joanne Briggs Ithaka, $36.99 When Joanne Briggs was growing up, her scientist father (who'd been a member of a research team at NASA) was the font of all wisdom. Even when he left his marriage and children, she defended him, saying her father knew all there was to know about science. But the charade of his life crumbled in 1986 when The Sunday Times ran an exposé headed 'The Bogus Work of Professor Briggs'. His daughter's investigation into the fabricated life that was the enigma of her father (who died mysteriously in 1986) is a compelling tale of delusion and deception – Briggs, at one point, imagining him as a spy with another whole hidden life. The story, which ranges from Britain, to the US and Deakin University in Victoria, involves, among other things, questionable research findings for pharmaceutical companies and faked qualifications. The fact and fiction of her father's life is mirrored stylistically in a highly imaginative way, Briggs frequently borrowing from fiction. Often very moving, this is amazingly assured for a first book. The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck Lynne Olson Scribe, $37.99 The eponymous sisterhood refers to four French women – Germaine Tillion, Anise Girad, Genevieve de Gaulle (niece of Charles) and Jacqueline d'Alincourt. All were members of the French Resistance during the war, though part of different networks, and all were caught and packed off to Ravensbruck, the all-female concentration camp in Germany. This thoroughly researched, absorbing tale incorporates the lives of many other female resistance fighters, and a key theme running through the book is that the vital role of women in the movement has been either ignored or played down. It's a story of incredible individual bravery that also emphasises the crucial importance and intensity of the lifelong bond between them that was forged in the hell-hole of Ravensbruck. Each of these women is worthy of her own biography. Tillion, an anthropologist, helped POWs and allied servicemen escape until she was betrayed by a Catholic priest working for the Germans who infiltrated her network. She survived the camp, lived to be 100 and, with Girad, is now buried in the Pantheon along with the greats of French history. Among other things, this is an inspiring study of character, courage and grace under pressure. If Hamlet had taken Tibbits' advice and forgiven all concerned so that he could move on, he might have been a happier character. Mind you, there'd be no play. But this is precisely Tibbits' point – that revenge and anger always end badly, and are emotionally, physically and psychologically destructive. A dead weight that anchors you to the pain of the past. The only effective way out is forgiveness. It doesn't mean absolving the other person of guilt, but the act of forgiving is the most effective way of letting go and conceiving of the future with hope. And it doesn't need to be reciprocal, he points out, quoting Oscar Wilde – 'Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much' – in this self-help guide with step-by-step strategies. Tibbits is a counsellor as well as a sports coach, and often enough the advice comes across like a half-time revving. And there's the inevitable, rousing 'you can do it' rhetoric, but he's got some pretty valid points. In a recent experiment, scientists placed a number of white volleyballs among a flock of geese hatching their eggs. The geese, attracted by the large, white objects, left their eggs and attempted to hatch the volleyballs. The geese were in the thrall of what Niklas Brendborg calls 'superstimuli' – his point being that humans are no less susceptible to it than geese. To prove it, he looks at food, sex and online screen superstimuli. Obesity, for example, is not the result of increasingly sedentary lives, but the rise of ultra-processed foods designed by food companies to make us eat more, thereby changing our biology. Similarly, recent surveys point to declining sex in relationships being caused by the rising consumption of the sexual form of superstimuli – glossy, air-brushed pornography. Brendborg makes his points entertainingly, while also drawing on copious research material. But there are also occasions when it feels like he's taking a long time to point out the obvious. Capitalism has always been greedy, grasping and devious.
New Statesman
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
From Stephen King to Noah Eaton: new books reviewed in short
'I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer' edited by Mary Beth Norton The world's first personal advice column came about by accident. In early 1691, the Athenian Mercury was a new broadsheet that sought to provide talking points for coffeehouse patrons by answering assorted questions of the day. However, the three-man editorial team quickly started to receive queries of a more intimate nature from their subscribers and found that matters of marriage, lust and courtship interested their readers more than those on medicine, law and the military. This book, nimbly edited and introduced by the historian Mary Beth Norton, contains a broad selection of questions and answers, and plus ça change. 'It is my misfortune to be red-haired,' laments a correspondent with his eye on a woman with the 'greatest aversion' to the shade and asking for a method to turn his locks brown; 'I've a dreadful scold of a wife,' writes another, asking 'how to tame her'; if a man finds his fiancée in bed with another man, is he still duty-bound to marry her? We may now have Mumsnet and Reddit but, nevertheless, many of these three-centuries-old quandaries still come with a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God warning. By Michael Prodger Princeton University Press, 203pp, £20. Buy the book Never Flinch by Stephen King When it comes to reading books by the 'King of Horror' it's best to go in with an open mind and without assuming what will happen next – unless you want to be let down by your deducing skills. This rule clearly applies to King's latest book, Never Flinch. Though a standalone novel, it features a much-loved private investigator, Holly Gibney, and those associated with her investigation firm Finders Keepers. Although the reader is introduced to the murderer from the get-go, this by no means spoils the fun. You may think you know all there is to know, but King's mastery of withholding those final important pieces of information will have you working alongside Holly, perhaps not on unveiling the identity of the criminal, but on their motives. And let's not discard King's signature parallel plotlines which in the end collide to bring everything to light. With a killer on a revenge mission and a religious zealot targeting a celebrity feminist speaker, Never Flinch is not as graphic or as scary as King's previous novels. What makes the book unnerving and impossible to put down is how real and plausible everything described can be. By Zuzanna Lachendro Hodder & Stoughton, 429pp, £25. Buy the book A Perfect Harmony: Music, Mathematics and Science by David Darling 'Math and music are intimately related,' says composer and lyricist Stephen Sondeim. While to many music might seem remote from maths and science, their shared intricacies have been studied for centuries. We all recall Pythagoras' theorem (some more fondly than others), but what about Pythagorean tuning to create the interval of a perfect fifth? Though its mathematical precision fell out of favour by the end of the 15th century, Pythagorean tuning and its 'circle of fifths' remains at the heart of harmonic theory today. It comes as no surprise that many scientists were also musicians. A Perfect Harmony serves to solidify just how interlinked the fields are. From the Neanderthal bone instrument that mimics the musical scales we commonly use today, through musica universalis of the Middle Ages combining arithmetic, geography, music and astronomy, to the two Voyager spacecrafts' cosmic LPs, the disciplines co-exist in perfect harmony. Darling's observant musical odyssey across time reinforces that 'music and maths are endlessly entwined… nourishing one another' and have done so for millennia. After all, at its simplest music is melody and rhythm, and rhythm cannot exist without maths. By Zuzanna Lachendro Oneworld, 288pp, £10.99. Buy the book The Harrow by Noah Eaton The Harrow is a local newspaper – for Tottenham. Not, as its hardened editor John Salmon is sick of explaining, for Harrow: 'As in 'to harrow', to rake the land and drag out weeds, to distress the powerful. As in Christ harrowing Hell, saving the innocent and righteous. Not Harrow as in that miserable bloody town Harrow!' The paper, each issue announces, is 'the guardian of your democracy'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The reality is not quite so grand. The coverage focuses on villains, not victims, because no one cares about the latter. Salmon keeps a shabby office and three staff above a betting shop and spends much of his time harassing off-licence proprietors who have tried to lower their order. But when the prospect of a last-gasp 'big story' heaves into view, Salmon and his team feel their hopes renewed. At well over 400 pages, The Harrow is on the weightier side for a thriller – and for a debut. But author Noah Eaton keeps the story ticking along at a pleasingly alacritous clip. Sometimes the world Eaton has built is told a little indulgently, but all told the story is complex, amusing and readable. By George Monaghan Atlantic Books, 389pp, £18.99. Buy the book Related
