Over the next week I’m going to share posts I’ve written over the years about various books I’ve read, some I’ve enjoyed, some not so much, some not at all!
Tuesday book review:
A deadlock is a type of lock without a key in which the mechanism is inactive – the door (or whatever) is locked and the only way to open/unfasten/access it is to use the key to open it. You can’t turn a handle or doorknob, it has to be unlocked. It’s also called a dead bolt/deadbolt; as well as being a physical device, the word can also be used figuratively to mean something which cannot be undone – like a negotiation which has become deadlocked. It is also a term used in computing – but I’m quite ignorant about that technology so all I can tell you is, it’s ‘a situation in computing where two processes are each waiting for the other to finish’.
However, I’m not going to write about locks, dead or otherwise, or negotiations stalled or not, or computers hanging around waiting for processes to complete… Dead Lock I’m thinking of is much more exciting and engaging than any of those! Dead Lock is the new novel by my favourite writer Damien Boyd. If you haven’t read it yet – then buy it and do so! If you’ve never read anything else by Damien then lucky you because you have seven others to read!
Dead Lock is the latest in the series about D.I. Nick Dixon, a detective serving in Somerset and coincidentally, my daughter is based at the police station where Nick works – him in his fictional world of course. This particular novel which is gripping, interesting, and with an unexpected but believable twist at the end, is focused on the canals in Somerset and Wiltshire, including the now abandoned Somerset Coal Canal – not many people outside the area, and many in Somerset don’t realise there was coal mining round here!
Here’s a link to Dead Lock:
http://www.damienboyd.com/dead-lock/
Damien uses real locations in Somerset, all the places mentioned exist which is exciting for us who know the area, but must also make the scenes more vivid to people from other places. In Deadlock a lot of the action takes place between our little village of Uphill on the coast and Burnham, the next town to the south of us. When one of the suspects is taking a back road and clips a kerb on a sharp bend and ends up in a concealed pond, I know where that is! When another suspect has his cut-flower business turned over by the police, it’s in the same village where my husband and his band rehearse!
In my novels, apart from Flipside which was set in Oldham where I used to live, my settings are all in imaginary places – the town of Easthope and the small city of Strand and the villages I’ve created round and about them. Maybe I should write something set in our little village – maybe my character-without-a-story, Gus, should live here in Uphill, go to the Wharf Café, buy a newspaper in the Village Shop, drink in the Dolphin and join in the quiz… maybe he could go to the village market held once a month in the Victory Hall…
It’s my book club tonight, and I shall certainly tell my friends there’s a new Nick Dixon novel available… maybe we could choose it as the next book to discuss?!!
Here’s a list of Damien’s books:
- As The Crow Flies
- Head In The Sand
- Kickback
- Swansong
- Dead Level
- Death Sentence
- Heads or Tails
- Dead Lock
PS without giving the game away, there is a very clever clue in the title of the novel!
Here’s a link to find out more about the Somerset Coal Canal
and here is a link to my books:
PS Since I wrote this review of Damien’s book, he has published more absolute stormers:
- Beyond the Point
- Down Among the Dead
- Dying Inside
… and Damien’s next book, out in 2022 is Carnival Blues
Lois Elsden 