THE PIANO TEACHER OF MONTPARNASSE, bet this'll be a bestseller

THE PIANO TEACHER OF MONTPARNASSE
HEATHER MORRIS
Blackstone Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz returns with a masterful new novel that captures the astonishing bravery of ordinary people in extraordinary times.

In 1942, the Nazis come for a Jewish family living in the Montparnasse area of occupied Paris. In the chaos of their arrest, eleven-year-old Josephine runs to the only person she can her piano teacher, Andrée Levallois, a secret French Resistance operative.

Andrée takes her in as a member of the family, spreading their rations and risking everything to keep her safe. But soon the authorities close in, and both Andrée and Josie are caught in a desperate race to stay alive.

Epic in scope and based on real people and historical events, Heather Morris has written a story of breathtaking beauty, at once gripping, heartbreaking, and uplifting.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: An intimate story of bureacratic bungling saving a child's life because of a quick-thinking mother, a brave family keenly aware of the injustice being done in their country, and how ver simple a miracle truly is. The real woman said of miracles: "I think maybe miracles are just people being kind when they don't have to be. People being brave when it's easier to hide. People sharing what little they have. People lighting candles when it's dark."

That's the heart of the story. It's deeply affecting, all the moreso because it's based on facts. The Holocaust is receding into memory as the few survivors left alive are approaching their 90s. Soon no witnesses will remain. Hence the uptick of scum shouting "fake news" and "hoax" and "it wasn't that bad, those jews are exaggerating" and suchlike idiocy.

This is called "preparing the ground."

We as a species might very well be extinct in the near future, and I'm not speaking geologically, if the "AI" alarmists are correct. I think I'm more worried that they are *not* correct because if we do not all die I fear deeply we're going to see more and more and more genocides modeled on the "Final Solution" as the desensitization and justification scumbags do their evil work. They've never stopped, the Germans weren't the first to think of any of it, and we still pull out a few individual miracles. Like this one. It is a sentimental telling of a story replete with pathos.

It will do your book club proud and, I urgently hope, begin many a conversation about collaborating with evil on a practical basis by being "sick of the rage" or "too tired" to perform even simple actions in support of those actively resisting.

I'm not a fan of this angle of storytelling but I'm damn sure a fan of this story's message, burnished to a high gloss as it is. Shiny things are pretty good mirrors, after all.

TO THE EAST OF THE EAST, LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD in TRANSLATED LITERATURE

TO THE EAST OF THE EAST
PING LU (tr. Jeremy Tiang)
World Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD in TRANSLATED LITERATURE

Min-Hui's travels from Taiwan to Beijing in search of her vanished husband in this multi-layered meditation on marriage and freedom from Taiwan's most sophisticated contemporary voice.

While chasing business opportunities in China, Min-Hui’s husband disappears without a trace, forcing her to uproot her quiet life as a writer in Taiwan and travel to Beijing, where the chaos of the city leaves her reeling. Does the Chinese government truly have her best interests at heart, and how hard are the authorities looking for her missing husband?

Marooned in the ancient capital, Min-Hui encounters the enigmatic Shangjun, a self-proclaimed human rights activist who seeks refuge in her hotel room. As their relationship blooms, Min-Hui allows him to read her novel in progress: a young Qing emperor confined within the Forbidden City becomes fascinated by pirate merchant Zheng Zhilong’s tales of the Taiwanese seas. All the while, Min-Hui contemplates the discord in the marriage she is desperate to save. Exploring the universal longing for freedom with her signature multi-layered narrative, Ping Lu interweaves Min-Hui’s search for her husband and her Beijing love affair with the historical backstory of her novel and unsent letters from her vanished husband.

To the East of the East offers a profound meditation on liberation, destiny and the contingencies of national histories by one of Taiwan’s most sophisticated contemporary voices.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: As best I recall, or can find evidence for, this is my forst-ever encounter with Ping Lu's work. Quite a force in Taiwanese literature, her publisher tells me in this book's attached biographical details "Ping Lu writes on a wide range of topics, including society, culture, gender, politics, history and human rights," then goes on to list Taiwanese literary prizes she has won.

Jeremy Tiang's translation tells me a lot about why that's the case. It's a layered, complex read; Min-Hui's marriage and its anger and stress, Chinese/Taiwanese political intertwining with its sibling/spouse/parent-child resonances that never settle into a predictable, steady state jitter and flare at each other; the history of the ancient culture is presented in an historical novel that's embedded in this modern palimpsest of story.

It's a lot. It's barely over two hundred pages. Pay attention.

I got a vibe as I read the story that I was missing something, that there was a layer of...a resonant bell ringing that I was too far away to hear but I could feel. I looked for reviews by native speakers to see if something was not in the translation. Turns out no, but in a curious way yes. Min-Hui gets two PoVs, one grieving, one knowing; the missing husband gets one; then there's the historical novel. In the observation of people who read the Mandarin version, there is a distinctive and different way the language feels between the PoVs. Like the lack of an English version of "tu" that hobbles Romance-language translations when a tonal shift in character familiarity or intimacy occurs, its shade lingers for the sensitive reader. English gives its speak/readers so much, but not a substitute for tenses, voices, and cases in other languages.

Min-Hui traveling the distance from Mexico City to New York City, with approximately the same change of prevailing culture, and discovering as a result that people who don't communicate are prone (doomed, I'd say honestly) to have different relationships, was a poignant story. Working out her feelings with the historical novel within the novel worked surprisingly well for me. I was not sold on it at first but came to see this technique as almost painfully poignantly demonstrating Min-Hui's functional overthinking issues that condemn her to a half-life of never reaching out, connecting; until one reads the letters it seems literally impossible for her to hope to change.

Never say never.

THE KEY TO A KILLER, third Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #Deathtober treat

THE KEY TO A KILLER (Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #3)
OLIVIA BLACKE
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A woman and her ghost roommate investigate their most personal case yet in Olivia Blacke’s The Key to a Killer, the next book in the Anthony Award winning Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries.

When Ruby Young discovered that her Boston apartment was haunted, she did what any reasonable person would do: befriend the ghost. Their relationship overcame a shaky start—Cordelia Graves never wanted a roommate in life, she certainly didn’t want one in death. After working together to solve a few murders, the two are close friends, but there’s a lingering question neither of them have been able to answer: what led to Cordelia’s death?

Lately things have been adding up that suggest foul play. And when Cordelia’s memories of that day start to come back, the roommates can’t ignore it anymore: Cordelia was murdered. Ruby and Cordelia are going to have to piece together what Cordelia’s final days looked like—otherwise a killer could go free.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Every #Deathtober I get a lovely present from Minotaur Books: a funny, fun mystery about two poorly-assorted roommates who solve crimes together. Their skill sets mesh well. They do far better together than either does apart.

Oh, and one's alive. The other isn't.

This time around the spin cycle of Life, which even the dead have, they're going after the solution to Cordelia's death. This is not a drill, this is the big one, y'all. Cordelia, in life, would've completely rejected Ruby and her youth with a curt dismissal. Now the dirtnapped fortysomething has, over two previous investigations, learned to respect and value Ruby, who returns the sentiments. As Cordelia's memories of her death are absent and as Ruby's learned more about her, she's become sure Cordelia was killed.

Cordelia can't remember if anyone wanted to murder her, or think of a reason anyone might. With fridge-magnet letters, the two go over the facts and Ruby gets a twinge of an idea. She's going to get a job at Cordelia's old firm.

Now here's where I say The Formula℠: Don't start here, or a lot of the really strange established-relationship stuff will feel arbitrary and weird instead of cute and endearing. Ruby gets UGS (United Ghost Service) delivery service of things she needs but can't afford by means I'd just rather not look into so I can keep thinking Cordelia's a mensch. I know she's a mensch because Ruby's arachnophobia means Cordelia's just assumed the role of de-spidering their environment. And Ruby's become convinced foul play that needs addressing took her pal's life before she was through living it.

See how one hand washes the other here? Then, as is reasonable and customary in our US lives in this year of our lord twenty twenty six, Cordelia's newly-released brother Ian, formerly imprisoned for, well never mind, begins breaking into the apartments in their building to search for clues to Cordelia's death.

I boggled a bit at this. As the story flowed on smoothly I allowed my hackles to relax. Ian discovers that he, oddly enough, still has his dead sister's number on a weird kind of speed dial. All us mystery series readers know the scoobygroup is most of the fun of a story in that particular storyverse and Ian is one of the most interesting ones in Ruby and Cordelia's. I'm hoping as time goes on Ian will learn from his oddly ameliorated loss to be a more mature character...I typed and erased "person" a couple times, so you see how my idea of the series is heading.

As a resolution to Cordelia's present unaliveness impends, I was struck by an uncomfortable realization: Cordelia, with her fragments of memory returning, was getting the absolute most abysmal exit interview conceivable. Ruby at her side she was going through hard-to-stomach realizations about the life she thought she was living not matching the one that was really happening. Cordelia has a lot to think about. Luckily she has a lot of leisure time to do it in. And a close supportive friend, maybe also brother, to be there as she does it.

I was a bit...um...the ending had an impact on me. That's IT? I asked my Kindle screen. No matter what the lady next door says I did NOT scream, and who asked her anyway. It's resolved, it makes sense, and I will be hornswoggled if I buy for one instant that this is the last we will hear about this.

Spending a few hours alternating between Cordelia and Ruby's PoVs gave me a real feeling that I was in the room with them as the investigations made progress. I was always happy to see Ian, I think Tosh the neighbor's a sweet nebbishy guy on course to get his heart broken, and truly enjoy the slightly edgier-than-before banter between the now more equal friends. It's been more and more fun to get to know them.

I'm not joking, though. This book's the reward for investing eyeblinks into Ruby and Cordelia. Taking a shortcut to get here won't make it more exciting to be here but less. And it really is worth it for these evolved versions of good people.

NEEDLEMOUTH, latest K-Ming Chang women's wrongs weirdness

NEEDLEMOUTH
K-MING CHANG
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author of Bestiary, three cousins are forced to complete an impossible and violent task set by a vengeful demon.

Cousins Cindy, Yangyang, and Mandy’s hot, tedious summer unfolds in their grandmother’s hauntingly familiar house. Mandy, the eldest, seeks connection online and exchanges emails with a stranger. Yangyang, the youngest, retreats into her own imagination in search of meaning. But every morning Cindy wakes with strange objects in her mouth: a button, a berry, a coin.

One night, a starved figure with a mouth the size of a needle-tip appears at Cindy’s bedside. She is hunger-afflicted, a demon with no descendants to feed from: she is Needlemouth. Part vampire, part hungry ghost, Needlemouth forces the girls into a grim task to end a man’s life.

Cindy, Yangyang, and Mindy are plunged in and out of the demon realm, where they are called to break out of the indifference and numbness of their claustrophobic worlds, and where they are met with the most rageful and resistant parts of themselves. In a quest to satisfy the demon’s hunger, they unravel their shared grief and reckon with the cyclical violence that shaped their family. For readers of Akwaeke Emezi and Carmen Maria Machado, K-Ming Chang has crafted a reimagined coming of age novel that asks: what does it mean to become the monster instead of slaying it?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Cecilia was my intro to the...earthy, primal...fascinations of K-Ming Chang. A writer with a strangely lyrical way of presenting yucky realities of having a female body goes right into the lifeblood (!) of blood in menstruating females and vampires.

Needlemouth wants the cousins who are her targets to figure out a major problem for her: Daddy Dearest is a horrible, abusive, misogynistic, etc etc world without end, bastard who's cursed her...see title...and thus end her pain. Oh, and theirs, because he's involved in their family's losses somehow. (It was explained, I *think* anyway; either poorly or incredibly in the literal sense. I retain no sense of it.) It's your fates, women, to either rebel or collaborate. Passive little Yangyang already collaborates that way. The other two? Ready to ride and/or die to strike a blow for Womankind! Passively Yangyang goes with. Astounding, no? (Why is it Needlemouth, an actual demon {if female-presenting} can't do this herself, exactly?)

To accomplish their task the cousins are transported (disorientingly and that uncertainty I can say with certainty is deliberate) between mudanity and the demon world of the vampires. It is a beautiful virtuoso performance by K-Ming Chang, noticeably, lyrically lovely in sound...I read it aloud at times...and very effectively indicating our frame of reference has shifted. Author Chang does not write workmanlike prose at any time in the two books of hers I've read; this perspective shift still stands out as graceful and intense.

The young women are, as I am learning is usual with Author Chang, aware of the living human body. It is very, very, very present. I'm beginning to wonder if "K-Ming Chang" is not simply Chinese for "Joe Abercrombie" or, at the very least, if she is not his descendant. I thought The Devils was a shitty, as in "shit-filled," story. Hold my beer, says K-Ming Chang. It can, at times, overwhelm my sense of the complexities I'm needing to track in the story. It is a fine balance to get right. It's not always calibrated properly for even my pretty strong stomach.

You will not clutch your pearls upon learning Needlemouth is not always a reliable narrator. She might've left some details about consequences out of her stirring pitch to the cousins. I'll say this about how it all turns out: I was shocked, repulsed, and downright irked at how very much of the human body's workings were made plain, laid bare, and how intense and viscaeral the poetice prose-hallucination was; but the ending was unexpected, was so balanced on a kinfetip let alone edge, that I reattached the full fourth star that slipped off after a particular...facial, let's call it.

My squeamish sensitive souls should not come within hailing distance of the story. All the female rage, all the smoldering hatred of petty tyranny all the shrieking outrage at the tyrannical, unfair patriarchy will not make up for that...facial.

Take my word for it: Revenge and vengeance are only cousins, not siblings, and their goals are not always compatible.

Vengeance is a nobler victor.

THE TWO WILLS: A Novel, from the DISCO WITCHES OF FIRE ISLAND author

THE TWO WILLS: A Novel
BLAIR FELL
Alcove Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A stunningly beautiful LGBTQ+ novel for fans of Hamnet and Song of Achilles.

Willy Hughes, an arrogant young hustler in Elizabethan England, is used to conning drunken men into believing he’s a young woman of ill repute—and then robbing them of their purses. But behind his thievery, he’s heartbroken over his first love, Barnaby Stubb, ending things between them. Not one to lick at his wounds for long, one night, Willy spots a newly famous stage poet in the alehouse. Will is ten years his senior, and he looks at Willy in a way he’s never been looked at before. Rather than robbing him blind, Willy decides that the sharp-eyed poet is meant to be the greatest love of his life.

Will wants Willy as his muse and perhaps as something more, but the older and more experienced poet is playing a dangerous game with people’s hearts. The confusion is driving Willy mad. Willy’s treacherous connection with Will—who is already married and involved in another love affair—becomes even more complicated when Will’s rival poet comes into the picture.

Christopher Marlowe is sexy, stunning, and dangerous. And he’s pursuing Willy with all he’s got. When Barnaby suddenly comes back into his life, Willy must determine once and for all who his heart belongs to. But London’s burgeoning acting companies have a darker side, and, as Willy goes from lowly apprentice to full-fledged star, he must rise to the occasion and stand up against exploitation and abuse.

A love story for the ages, where the loves you thought were lost forever aren’t ever really lost. Especially when the greatest writer in English literature dedicates his books of sonnets to you.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Will Hughes is a hustler in all modern senses of that word. Sixteenth-century London has just as many horny men who want sex from a pretty face as any other time and place. Heartbroken by the loss of first love, Will Hughes targets a slightly older drunken man for hi usual con of pretending a femininity he doesn't possess then robbing the traduced horndog; he chose both poorly and well, as his target is not the least bit embarrassed, but goes on the attack himself.

The Disco Witches of Fire Island did niot prepare me for the tonal shift of this, Author Fell's second published novel. I say "published" because one does not achieve this command of his material unless one has a good chunk of experience behind him. There are novels in the Fell files that cannot see the light of day, with mistakes galore, with ideas that petered out for no obvious reason...I've got one of those about the Cristero War that I'm still salty at for refusing to take any shape I wanted.

This romantic gay love story is not a romance. There's a HFN ending...but not the one you might expect. I was a wee bit saddened by that. I liked Shakespeare's scheming mistress Rose well enough, but...why? It's not my book, so I will confine myself to that whiny single-word complaining bleat. I love all things Marlowe because he can be presented as queer and no one bats an eye, still less bellows an accusation of "wokeness." (Yeah, I'm woke, I don't want to sleepwalk through my life. Idiots.) I like Will Hughes because he doesn't wait around for someone to help him, he helps himself and then reaches back to help others. He's a mensch, he's a man who earns and deserves his happiness.

Will Hughes does get a little annoying in his unrequited pining for "The Poet." That arch convention of reference wears on me fast, Will Hughes' scheming against Rose Williams seems self-defeating, but then again he's in love which state of diminished capacity is well-known throughout history to have deleterious effects on one's intelligence. I can't offer a full five when I spent much of a read wanting to pound some sense into the two leads, but...well...it's a well-made story about interesting people, doing interesting things and each other (not very interestingly) while the turmoil of Elizabethan London roils and upsets many a person's plan.

So, a quarter-star onto the four it absolutely earns on its merits represents my appreciative pleasure in a take on Willy Shakes I haven't had the pleasure to meet before. Definitely think this one should make its way onto your reading shelf wherever you keep it.

THE LOCKUP PERIOD, debut Silicon Valley thriller

THE LOCKUP PERIOD
VINCE THOMPSON
Dubious Ventures Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
99¢ ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 90 Days to IPO Riches–if they can just figure out what to do with the body!

A fast, fun, and twisty ride through the underbelly of Silicon Valley—where fortunes are made overnight, and everyone is chasing their cut.

Mario Kennedy yearns to be part of tech’s in-crowd. But with an unfair rap sheet and a job slinging pizzas, he’s stuck on the outside. When MenuAi—a startup in which he holds advisory shares—announces it’s going public, he finally gets his shot. That is, if he can survive the ninety-day lockup period… and the stock lives up to the hype.

Driving that hype is Ravi Singh, a rising star in venture capital determined to land his first unicorn—no matter the cost. Covering the frenzy is Jamie Villanueva, a young reporter caught between breaking the story and settling a personal score.

On the night of the IPO, a troubling twist: A dead body turns up in the CEO’s apartment. Expose the truth, and everything collapses. Conceal it until the lockup period expires, and walk away rich.

In Silicon Valley, it may be that making a killing… isn’t just a figure of speech.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Glossy surfaces are hard to limn without feeling that tacky and brummagem have become their limits. That's what happened here, that was what I honestly expected to happen, and I suspect it's what Author Vince intended to give me.

It's a satire, it works itself into a knot showing me its satirical intent, and I still feel myself curling my lip at Mario as well as Ravi and Noah all the while thinking "wow I wish MenuAI was real." Jamie might just be the most relatable character in the story because she's passionately *determined* to end this tentacle of AI's viabiity and existence before finding she has more passion for a person in place of A Cause.

And I despise her too.

Which is the strength of Author Vince's writing, he's made all-there characters into people. Most debut authors would make the easy choice of making the story about the satirized action, like a medieval mystery play. I'm very glad he chose not to and that he possessed the skill at characterization to make it work. It's also notable that Author Vince kept the action moving, no one sat on their butt and thought and thought then moaned for a chapter or two about how sore their butt was. Navel-gazing "Я" not us. Also missing is the expected jargon-heavy, whether tech talk or finance speak, wodges of stodge. I'm probably happier about that than any other facet of the read.

It's distasteful to me that these amoral fools do not see that they're well and truly screwed no matter what happens so are better off being honest and taking theirr lumps instead of making everything worse for everyone. Like Martha Stewart going to prison rather than pay a fine when the Feds had her dead to rights on that insider trading mess.

I'll stress again that this is me wagging my finger at naughty fools, not thundering Old-Testamently as I chuck the works under a bus. Author Vince got me to buy in when that was a longshot; kept me involved when that was unexpected; and made me very glad I'd been on the trip as I finished the read.

It's unexpectedly easy to say that y'all did oughta read this story even if you *hate* tech stories/people/procducts, revile all things financial/bankster connected; and do not care if all these people end up dead and buried in a ditch.

All of those statements applied to me, too, and here I am offering the read to you in honest expectation you'll like it.

COFFIN ROAD, an unposted 2017 review of the best PETER MAY novel I've read

COFFIN ROAD
PETER MAY
riverrun press
$6.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In his latest mystery set in Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, award-winning author Peter May spins a tale about three disparate cases that may or may not be linked...

On the remote Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, a man washes up on a deserted beach, hypothermic and completely disoriented. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his condition is a map of the island showing a desolate, ancient path called the Coffin Road. With a sense of dread and no clear idea what lies at the other end, he knows he must follow the trail if he has any hope of discovering his identity.

Meanwhile, homicide detective George Gunn makes the rough ocean crossing to a remote, sea-battered lighthouse on a rock in the northern Atlantic, twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides, to investigate a brutal murder. Despite its isolation, the tiny island has seen its share of tragedy: more than a century earlier, three lighthouse keepers disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. And now there is a new tragedy, and Gunn must figure out what happened.

At the same time, a teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that her father would willingly abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that suicide had nothing to do with it.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER IN 2016. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ten years ago I flew through all 400pp of this read, and excitedly left this note:

Far and away the best book of Peter May's that I've read. An exciting and involving read. More later. Or earlier, I suppose, depending on which end of the telescope you're looking through.

When I went looking for my notes made to write my weekly summary post for GBBO over on LibraryThing, I found my unposted review! (Not the notes I wanted, though.) So I'm posting it here for this year's #Deathtober blogging, and in sad acknowledgment of Author May's death on 25 September 2026. I suspect I never came back to post it because that was about the time I ran seriously afoul of the Spoiler Stasi abd decided "hell with it" and forgot it existed.

The story opens on a beach. Don't get too excited, it's a Scottish beach so colder than a Republican's heart. A man awakes cold and confused:

I have no idea where this is. And for the first time since consciousness has returned, I am aware, with a sudden, sharp and painful stab of trepidation, that I have not the least notion of who I am.

That breathless realisation banishes all else. The cold, the taste of salt, the acid still burning all the way up from my stomach. How can I not know who I am? A temporary confusion, surely? But the longer I stand here, with the wind whistling around my ears, shivering almost beyond control, feeling the pain and the cold and the consternation, I realise that the only sense that has not returned to me is my sense of self. As if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance.

Nothing like the smell of the North Atlantic Ocean in the morning. As he searches for a name (it's Neal, for now), for a way to discover who he is, ID or any other details, belongings...anything...he encounters a woman who seems to know him as she walks near the beach. Sally helps Neal-for-now home, some data starts coming into his slippery memory and mostly slides right out again having nothing to stick to:

They say that all any of us are is the sum total of our memories…Take them away and all you are left with is a blank. Like a computer without software.

It's true, and it scares me, as it does most people or writers would not use the trope with the regularity they do (particularly in thrillers where the need for the main character to act fast and to have a great urgency to do something is acute). Our hero reflects, "{it's a}s if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance," as he attempts to unferstand what on Earth has landed him in a situation where:

Nothing, absolutely nothing since I found myself washed up, semi-conscious, on the Traigh Losgaintir, has made sense. My memory loss. My failure to find a single clue to my identity, beyond my name, even in my own home. My affair with Sally. The book on the Flannan Isles mystery that I am not writing. Beehives on the coffin road. My missing boat...someone trying to kill me. And someone else stepping in to save me. The weight of it all is very nearly crushing.

As he puts together who he is and what he is doing, why he us at great risk of death, many truths and dacts sort themselves into an extremely ugly pattern:

Politicians and political parties, particularly in America, rely on {corporate criminals} to fund election campaigns. They are powerful lobbyists. Which is why the US has not banned the use of neonicotinoids, and thousands of tons of the stuff are still being used on crops there every year. Biggest usage is on oilseed rape. They coat the seeds with insecticide, so that, when it germinates, the insecticide is diffused throughout the plant, including the nectar and pollen that’s harvested by the bees.

Neal-for-now's discovered, conveniently near a cursed murder site in a lighthouse, evidence that chemical companies researched neonicotinoids and knew what effect the pesticide would have:

‘The first summer I was here, I landed one day to find that the Lighthouse Board had sent in decorators to paint the place. Everything was opened up. The guys were okay with me taking a look around and we got chatting. The forecast was good, and they expected to be here for a few days. So I spun them the story about writing a book and said I would probably be back tomorrow. And I was. Only this time with a pack of Blu-tack. When they were having their lunch, I took the keys from the inner and outer doors and made impressions. Dead simple. Had keys cut, and access to the place whenever I wanted thereafter.’ The final panel falls away in my hands, and I reach in to retrieve a black plastic bag. I hand it up to {Bad actor}, and he peels back the plastic to look inside. As I stand up, I lift one of the wooden panels. I know that this is the one chance I will get, while he is distracted, and I swing the panel at his head as hard as I can. The force with which it hits him sends a judder back up my arms to my shoulders, and I actually hear it snap. He falls to his knees, dropping the hard drive, and his gun skids away across the floor. {Bad actor} is so startled, she barely has time to move before I punch her hard in the face. I feel teeth breaking beneath the force of my knuckles, behind lips I once kissed with tenderness and lust. Blood bubbles at her mouth. I grab {a hostage he's rescuing} by the arm and hustle her fast down the corridor, kicking open the door and dragging her out into the night. The storm hits us with a force that assails all the senses. The wind is deafening, driving stinging rain horizontally into our faces. The cold wraps icy fingers around us, instantly numbing. Beyond the protection of the walls, it is worse, and I find it nearly impossible to keep my feet as I pull {the hostage he's rescuing} off into the dark. Only the relentless turning of the lamp in the light room above us provides any illumination. We turn right, and I know that almost immediately the island drops away into a chasm that must be two or three hundred feet deep. I can hear the ocean rushing into it. Snarling, snapping at the rocks below and sending an amplified roar almost straight up into the air. I guide {the hostage he's rescuing} away from it, half-dragging her, until we reach a small cluster of rocks and I push her flat into the ground behind them. I tear away the tape that binds her wrists, then roll her on to her back to peel away the strip of it over her mouth.

As you'll see from my rating there were some issues with the way the story unfolded, plot holes, a looseness with the timeline; but you also see how exciting the story is. This is proof Author May began writing in the vineyards of television...you can see the above in your inner TV room, I'm sure...before retiring to the vineyards of the South of France to write exciting novels. I like this one best of all of them I've read.