Reviews of La's Orchestra Saves the World, Far Cry, Blood Runs Cold and Two of the Deadliest.
After her husband leaves her for a Frenchwoman, La (short for Lavender) moves from London to Suffolk.
Shortly afterwards, World War 2 breaks out and the background to the novel is wartime life in rural England, where La becomes a land girl, looking after the hens on a nearby farm.
In an effort to do a little more, she forms a village orchestra with local people and men from a nearby air base.
One of the players is a Pole, Feliks, and just when it seems a relationship will develop, he leaves the area, although he does return for the victory concert that winds up the orchestra.
As always with Smith, the plot meanders as gently as the lanes of Suffolk and the characters are a little thin, but somehow that does not matter at all in this elegant novel of gentle defiance in the face of tribulation and possible defeat. - Gillian Vine
Detective Inspector Will Grayson and his partner, DS Helen Walker, are called in to a perplexing case of history apparently repeating.
Ruth and Simon Pierce had taken a romantic break but it was shattered by news that their daughter Heather, holidaying in Cornwall with her best friend's family, had disappeared.
The loss ruined their lives and marriage.
But years later Ruth has a new husband and a second daughter, Beatrice - until she receives heartbreaking news.
The two detectives are drawn into this testing mystery, while Grayson also contends with worries about a recently released child-abuser and Walker faces her own personal problems. - Geoff Adams
There is a lot of spoken dialogue in the text, in colloquial American and slang, and Special Agent Ren Bryce (a woman with secrets of her own) also adds her own inner dialogue of thoughts and reactions.
I got tired in the end of all the chit-chat - as the maniacal judge in Boston Legal used to say: Too much jibber-jabber! - Geoff Adams
It provides two dozen new short stories written by female writers, and selected by George, who includes her own "Lusting for Jenny, Inverted".
All of the contributions take a look at two of the deadliest sins: lust and greed.
They wreak their havoc in varying ways.
You'll find mystery, mistakes, misunderstandings and murder. - Geoff Adams
