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WORK TITLE: Orkney Twilight
WORK NOTES:
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NATIONALITY: British
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/26/my-dad-undercover-policeman-cop-clare-carson * https://ravencrimereads.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/coastal-crime-clare-carson-the-salt-marsh-simon-booker-without-trace/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, novelist, and anthropologist. Works in international development with a specialty in human rights.
WRITINGS
Contributor to newspapers and websites, including the Guardian (London, England).
SIDELIGHTS
Writer and novelist Clare Carson is an anthropologist who works in the field of international development. In her professional life, she specializes in development as it relates to human rights.
Growing up, Carson knew that her father had a special but secret type of job. When she became an adult, she was better able to reconcile the oddities of behavior that he demonstrated with her memories and with the truth of his occupation during that period. “My father was an undercover cop in the 1970s,” Carson wrote in the London Guardian. “As a child, I knew he was doing something secret, but I didn’t know quite what. It wasn’t until a documentary named him in 2002, three years after his death, that I realized he had worked for the Special Demonstration Squad, a secret police unit that infiltrated political organizations on the grounds of public security,” she further remarked. When this realization about her father’s past, “the strange memories of my childhood began to make more sense.,” she stated in the Guardian.
Years later, Carson’s father’s history has also influenced her fiction writing. In her debut novel, Orkney Twilight, she presents a father and daughter duo whose lives are made increasingly more difficult by the father’s job as an undercover police officer. Eighteen-year-old Sam Coyle and her father, Jim, have something of a fraught relationship. She knows he is an undercover cop and is frequently absent from her life. When he does show up, he sometimes makes an embarrassing mess of things, such as when he came late and drunk to her birthday party.
Sam senses that her father is involved in something that he’s not talking about. When he suggests that they take a vacation trip to the Orkney Islands off Scotland, a place they’ve visited and enjoyed in the past, she agrees. She believes that, whatever happens on the island, it will involve more than just a pleasant father-daughter trip. Accompanied by her friend Tom, Sam begins to follow her father around the island, discovering a number of mysterious behaviors. He visits an abandoned watchtower and holds nighttime meetings in a strange stone circle. He develops an interest in Norse mythology. He moves cautiously, trusting no one, not even Sam. At the same time, an unknown man begins to show up more and more frequently, leading Sam to believe he is connected with her father. Soon she is caught up in her father’s hidden life and secrets too deeply to escape easily.
In this novel, Carson “does a fine job piling up atmospheric details,” while her “descriptions of the land and sea are often lyrical,” commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Bookbag reviewer Ani Johnson had a similar reaction, stating, “Clare can definitely write; her lyrical descriptions of Orkney once the characters arrive are really evocative of the island’s haunting beauty.” When the end of the story arrives, “it leaves you shocked and cold; making you reassess your relationships with your own family members and hoping that none of them harbor dark secrets that you know nothing about,” remarked Amanda Gillies, writing on the website Euro Crime.
The Salt Marsh, sequel to Orkney Twilight, takes place two years after the first novel. Here, Sam is still grieving her father’s death from when he was shot by a hit man two years earlier. Seeking a sense of purpose, she protests a nuclear power plant at Dungeness, along with her boyfriend, Luke. When Luke disappears, Sam finds out that she may be under surveillance by government agents who believe she could be a terrorist. A former housemate, Dave Daley, an environmental researcher, may also be under suspicion. Sam’s already difficult situation gets even more problematic with an unexpected suicide, an offer of help from a former hit man, and the machinations of a corrupt police officer. “Nothing is simple or straightforward” in this novel, remarked a Publishers Weekly writer. “The use of the coastal locations in this book (as Orkney was in the first book) firmly root us in the strange territory between the strength, desolate beauty, and mythical nature of the natural world,” commented a reviewer at Raven Crime Reads.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 24, 2017, review of Orkney Twilight, p. 69; August 28, 2017, review of The Salt Marsh. p. 108.
ONLINE
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (April, 2015), Ani Johnson, review of Orkney Twilight.
Euro Crime, http:/eurocrime.blogspot.com/ (December 2, 2015), Amanda Gillies, review of Orkney Twilight.
Linda’s Book Bag, http://www.lindasbookbag.com/ (July 13, 2017), “A Guest Post by Clare Carson, Author of The Salt Marsh.”
Raven Crime Reads, https://ravencrimereads.wordpress.com/ (December 12, 2015), review of Orkney Twilight; (July 9, 2016), review of The Salt Marsh.
My dad, the undercover policeman
As a child in the 1970s, Clare Carson knew her father, with his bushy beard and secretive ways, was a funny sort of copper. But it was only as an adult that her memories of their strange suburban life began to make sense
Clare Carson
Tue 26 May ‘15 12.45 EDT Last modified on Sat 25 Nov ‘17 02.34 EST
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My father was an undercover cop in the 1970s. As a child, I knew he was doing something secret, but I didn’t know quite what. It wasn’t until a documentary named him in 2002, three years after his death, that I realised he had worked for the Special Demonstration Squad, a secret police unit that infiltrated political organisations on the grounds of public security. Then the strange memories of my childhood began to make more sense.
A unit of recruits from the Met’s Special Branch, the SDS was created in 1968 in response to what was seen to be the increasing violence of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. It was part-funded directly by the Home Office until 1989, and closed in 2008. A police report published in 2013 suggests that, until the later years, few people outside Special Branch knew the SDS existed. That doesn’t quite capture the surreal dimensions of its operating principles. As a young child, I knew my dad was a funny sort of policeman, and that he was part of this strange secret thing called “The Hairies”. I’m not sure anybody told me this in a direct way. I just grew up knowing.
Looking back, I can see my family was like an undercover cop version of The Sopranos. We attempted to live a normal life in the suburbs, turning a blind eye to my father’s membership of this clandestine organisation. The secrecy about my dad’s work was my normality. As a child, I was told not to talk about his job. My parents didn’t explicitly give me a cover story for my dad. I told people he was a policeman, and usually left it at that.
Of course, I was curious. I must have opened a mental file, classified it “confidential” and filled it with my observations: a child’s eye view of her peculiar father and the dark arts of the secret state. At some point in the early 70s, my dad grew a prolific beard. Sitting in the garden, I asked him why and he told me he was a hairy. I must have guessed the beard was part of some subterfuge. I asked him if it was his disguise.
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“No,” he said. “The disguise is when I shave it off.” That reply captures the essence of my father and my relationship with him. He was always bantering. I never knew whether he was being serious or not, and I’m not sure he did either. I suspect that, like many undercover agents, particularly those involved in monitoring political organisations, he wasn’t always entirely certain on which side of the line he stood.
He wore a donkey jacket and dirty jeans. He drove a very old Bedford van. When he wasn’t working, he left it parked on the verge outside our house. It was covered with dirt and lots of people had written on it. Somebody once scrawled, “I’m a dirty Bedford.” The Bedford had been crossed out and replaced with “bastard”. One day, I decided to write my own name in the muck. My dad caught me and went mad. At the time I felt he was being unreasonable. If everybody else wrote rude messages, why couldn’t I write my name? Later, I realised that he was trying to protect me and maintain a barrier between work and home. He left the suburbs and drove, I suppose, straight into his other life. The wall between the two now appears incredibly flimsy but, I assume, was easier to maintain in those nearly unimaginable pre-internet days.
He was pretty much an absent father. We never knew where he was going or when he would be back. Sometimes we didn’t see him for weeks. There was no number to call or person to whom we could speak if we were worried. Not knowing what he was doing was, at times, quite scary. When he did turn up, he was often tense. He was a heavy drinker. He sought escape in the countryside beyond the commuter belt. He bought a decrepit boat, moored it on a river in Kent. We kids hared around the meadows while he patched it up or, much to my mum’s despair, piled on board and gleefully cast off downstream with Dad at the helm to see how far the boat could travel before it started sinking.
I thought at the time that he was a difficult dad. When I look back as a parent now myself, I’m almost impressed by his restraint, the way he managed what must have been a stressful job. We, his family, managed him by laughing about it, on the whole.
There was an edge of absurdity to his job and our family life. Occasionally we went out together to the theatre. He would park the car some distance away and then instruct us to walk off in a different direction from him. He didn’t want to run the risk of being seen with us, he said. I didn’t entirely believe his rationale. I always suspected he used the Official Secrets Act as a way of dodging whatever he didn’t really want to do. He had a habit of failing to turn up for the first half of anything. We would inevitably find him during the interval, sitting at the bar, chatting up anybody within earshot.
Some neighbours were wary of him. He was charismatic in a slightly domineering, argumentative way. Despite the popularity of television cops, in reality policemen had, and still have, something of an untouchable low caste status. Plods and plebs. And anyway, it was obvious that my father, with his Jesus hair and beard, didn’t fit the Z-Cars or Sweeney mould. The “he’s a policeman” line probably prompted more questions than it answered. He certainly jarred in the conservative fringes of London. Some of my school friends weren’t allowed to visit our house because their parents thought my dad was a dirty hippy. The friends that did visit loved hanging out at our place because it had a less restrictive atmosphere than the average suburban home. A touch of excitement, danger even.
It was difficult for us as children to outdo his unruly habits. I did sometimes envy my friends’ seemingly more stable, calmer families. My mum’s response was, “Well, would you prefer somebody boring for a dad?”
My father ended up running the unit for a couple of years in the late 70s. I remember sitting with him around this time – 1978 – and watching a television programme called The Sandbaggers. It was about a unit of secret agents. Neil D Burnside, the man in charge, spent all his days in Whitehall negotiating with ministers and bureaucrats. I thought it was the most tedious programme ever. My dad loved it because, in his view, it was completely realistic. That was why, he said, he left that job in the end; he couldn’t be bothered with the paperwork and the politics.
He was politically liberal. He didn’t believe in capital punishment. He was pro immigration. He argued about it with less liberal neighbours. When he chose to go back to uniform and was in charge of a police district, he appeared in the local paper twice. The first time because he said drug users needed help not prosecution. The second, because he refused to move a group of Travellers as they had nowhere else to go. He didn’t try to stop me from joining activist groups. He didn’t ask me any questions, just as I had learned not to question him. I spent the first half of the 80s involved in exactly the kind of political activities the SDS are now known to have targeted. I went to peace camps. Got arrested. Lived in a squat.
My political activism made me speculate about his undercover work. But by that time, it was in the past. He left the SDS in 1979, and left the police in the mid-80s. Moved on. He always was a person who lived in the present. He died in 1999, when he was 60.
In 2002 True Spies, a documentary about undercover policing, named him as the SDS cop who infiltrated Peter Hain’s Stop the Seventy Tour. This was an anti-apartheid campaign trying to prevent the all-white South African Springbok rugby team from touring Britain. It was a shock to hear my dad’s name spoken. Even now, ingrained reflexes of secrecy make me wary of writing his name here.
It took me a while to work out that the SDS was the official title of the Hairies. Then the fragments of my childhood memories added up and I could see he was an undercover cop who not only monitored a political organisation but became part of it. He had a whole other identity and a second life.
The puzzle for me is that the identity he adopted wasn’t so different from the liberal father I knew. The activities of an anti-apartheid organisation? Why? He would have supported their goals. I can’t help seeking the most positive interpretation of my father’s actions. Obviously he was following orders, and he believed in doing his public duty. Still. Fifteen years after his death, 45 years after the event, it unsettles me, makes me question my memories. I don’t know all the facts and it’s hard to reconcile the ones that have been disclosed. I suppose the true identity of somebody who was once a spy is unlikely to be straightforward.
Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson is published by Head of Zeus at £12.99). To order a copy for £10.39, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call the Guardian Bookshop on 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
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A Guest Post by Clare Carson, author of The Salt Marsh
JULY 13, 2016
LINDASBOOK
BAG
cover
I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations for The Salt Marsh by Clare Carson. The Salt Marsh was published by Head of Zeus on 16th June 2016 and is available for purchase in e-book, hardback and paperback from Amazon, Waterstones, W H Smith and directly from the publisher as well as to order from all good bookshops.
Today Clare has kindly provided Linda’s Book Bag with a guest post all about the inspiration of birds and her protagonist Sam.
The Salt Marsh
cover
A haunting thriller set in the windswept marshes of Kent and Norfolk, from the author of Orkney Twilight
It is a year since Sam’s father died, but she cannot lay his ghost to rest. Jim was an undercover agent living a double life, and Sam has quit university to find out the truth about his work. Her journey will take her from the nightclubs of 80s Soho to the salt marshes and shingle spits of Norfolk and Kent. Here, in a bleak windswept landscape dotted with smugglers’ huts and
buried bones, Jim’s secret past calls to her like never before. Now Sam must decide. Will she walk away and pick up her own life? Or become an undercover operative herself and continue her father’s work in the shadows…
Sam And Her Barn Owl
A Guest Post by Clare Carson
orkney
Birds feature in both the novels I have written – Orkney Twilight and The Salt Marsh. These are stories about Sam, the daughter of a police spy. The links between birdwatching and spying are numerous. Many spies have been keen birdwatchers. The quiet skills of observation and identification are common to both. In spying slang, a birdwatcher is a spy. But the main reason birds appear in my books is because a sense of place is part of all thrillers and, as far as I’m concerned, birds are part of every place.
I love watching birds, but I’m no twitcher – I don’t always have a pair of binoculars to hand and I wouldn’t go out of my way to spot a rare species. I prefer the serendipity of finding birds in unexpected places. I came across an off-course whimbrel in London’s Saint James’ Park when I was taking a breather from the office because I was fed up with my job. I was eyeballed by a kestrel which had landed on the balcony of my south London flat one morning when I was beginning to wonder what on earth I was doing there. A head-banging pileated woodpecker cheered me up when it appeared in the garden of the unfurnished Washington D.C. house I’d just moved to, after travelling across the Atlantic with two toddlers in tow.
In The Salt Marsh, Sam feels a particular kinship with barn owls. I’ve had three close encounters with a barn owl. The first was on holiday in Corsica with my husband, tipsily swaying back late one night from a restaurant along a dark mountain road, we almost tripped over a pair of round eyes staring up from the tarmac. A barn owl chick had fallen from its nest, Disneyesque in its white, fluffy cuteness. We stood guard, flagging down approaching cars and asking them to wait as it took its bearings, hopped away and disappeared in the maquis. The second barn owl was in Norfolk. We had been to visit an old friend who had bought a house in the middle of nowhere. Driving back in the dark we lost our way, pulled over to look at the map and caught the wise bird in the headlights, sitting on a gate post. It couldn’t be bothered to budge and watched with disdain as we argued about which C road we were on.
The third barn owl was in Norfolk again – out on the north coast. The first evening of a summer holiday after a tetchy day stuck in traffic, I dragged my family with me for a walk. As we reached the path across the marsh, the ghostly bird swept by our heads, its blunt face glowing in the dusk. It stopped and hovered a few feet further on, wings flittering like a moth, before it gave up on whatever creature it had been tracking, swooped away and vanished in the dark. When I was searching for a bird which would provide Sam with solace in The Salt Marsh, this was the one that appeared in my mind.
About Clare Carson
clare
Clare Carson is an anthropologist and works in international development, specialising in human rights. Her father was an undercover policeman in the 1970s. She drew on her own experiences to create the character of Sam, a rebellious eighteen year old who is nevertheless determined to make her father proud.
The Salt Marsh
Publishers Weekly.
264.35 (Aug. 28, 2017): p108.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Salt Marsh
Clare Carson. Head of Zeus (IPG, dist.), $26.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-78408-098-3
Set in England in 1986, Carson's convoluted sequel to Orkney Twilight finds 20-year-old Sam Coyle still
grieving for her father, Jim, an undercover agent, who was shot dead by a hit man two year earlier. Jim used
to like to whistle the theme from The Third Man, the classic Cold War film, and recurring references to the
tune reinforce the book's pervasive sense of unease. Sam and her boyfriend, Luke, take part in protests at
the Dungeness nuclear power station on the south coast of Kent. When Luke disappears, a friend warns her
that she's being monitored by MI5 as a possible terrorist and that her former housemate, environmental
researcher Dave Daley, may be under suspicion as well. An unlikely suicide raises the stakes. Meanwhile,
Sam must deal with a hit man called Sonny who offers his help, and a corrupt cop, Superintendent
Crawford, who's investigating the suicide. Nothing is simple or straightforward. Readers may wonder why
the bad guys didn't get rid of Sam early on. Agent: Oli Munson, A.M. Heath Literary Agents (U.K.). (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Salt Marsh." Publishers Weekly, 28 Aug. 2017, p. 108. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502652617/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e48b0a3c.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502652617
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514141548869 2/2
Orkney Twilight
Publishers Weekly.
264.17 (Apr. 24, 2017): p69+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Orkney Twilight
Clare Carson. Head of Zeus (IPG, dist.),
$14.95 trade paper (368p) ISBN 978-178408-096-9
Sam Coyle, the 18-year-old heroine of British author Carson's uneven debut, is determined to uncover the
hidden truth about Jim, her enigmatic, alcoholic, often bad-tempered father, ostensibly an undercover
policeman. Sam accompanies Jim on a midsummer trip to Scotland's Orkney Islands, where his enigmatic
behavior-operating in shadows, trusting nobody-leaves her frustrated and suspicious. What draws him to the
old watchtower? Why is he so interested in Norse mythology? The problem is that his behavior is more
annoying than intriguing. And Sam reacts predictably: one hot day, after Jim goes off on one of his
mysterious errands, she frets: "Anxiety gnawed at her stomach, the events of the previous day eating away,
the shadow of the Watcher hanging over her... the ever present ticking of the clock audible through the
doorways, marking off the seconds, minutes, hours." Carson does a fine job piling up atmospheric details,
and her descriptions of the land and sea are often lyrical, but readers will struggle to care about her flawed
characters. Agent: Oil Munson, A.M. Heath Literary Agents (U.K.). (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Orkney Twilight." Publishers Weekly, 24 Apr. 2017, p. 69+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491250810/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=73fe7217.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491250810
Coastal Crime- Clare Carson- The Salt Marsh / Simon Booker- Without Trace
I don’t know.
You wait ages for crime thrillers set around the location of Dungeness, and then, like buses, three turn up at once.
So following my review in May for William Shaw- The Birdwatcher here are two more recommended reads that both draw on this haunting and desolate backdrop….
Carson_02_THE%20SALT%20MARSHSam Coyle’s father lived in the shadows – an undercover agent among the spies and radicals of Cold War London. That world claimed his life, and Sam is haunted by his absence. He left nothing behind but his enemies; nothing to his daughter but his tradecraft and paranoia. Now, her boyfriend Luke is missing too – the one person she could trust, has vanished into the fog on the Kentish coast. To find him, Sam must follow uncertain leads into a labyrinth of blind channels and shifting ground. She must navigate the treacherous expanse of the salt marsh…
I was absolutely blown away by Carson’s debut Orkney Twilight which remains one of the most lyrical, perfectly plotted crime thrillers I have read to date. The Salt Marsh pretty much picks up from the events of the first book, but, fear not if you have not read Orkney Twilight as the author brings you up to speed quickly with the previous plot. It seemed to me that there was a perfect symmetry in this book, with Carson wholly appreciating the need to provide the reader with an intriguing mystery, but also to explore some more weightier themes both in the emotional facets of her young female protagonist, Sam, and the environmental issues that the disappearance of her boyfriend provides links to. The use of the coastal locations in this book (as Orkney was in the first book) firmly root us in the strange territory between the strength, desolate beauty, and mythical nature of the natural world, set against man’s mission to harness and use these natural resources for sometimes nefarious ends. Throughout the course of the Carson balances the scientific with the philosophical and the harnessing of the alchemical with themes of myth and superstition. It’s intelligent, involving, and raises the book above standard thrillers.
As Sam is increasingly drawn into a dark plot involving environmental activism, the memory and influence of her late father, an undercover operative, begins to put her in the orbit of his former employers who seek to malign or use her throughout the course of the book. Sam is an incredibly well-realised character, strong-minded and set apart from the rest of her family by her refusal to conform, or settle to anything meaningful or what is expected by others. To quote Star Wars (as one should in every review possible) the force is strong in her, and the influence of her father resonates in her more than she at first realises. I love the balance Carson inputs in her character from moments of wilful stubbornness, to her sometimes emotional naivety, but always tempered by an admirable sense of right and wrong, and her determination to confront and challenge both. This also worked as an influence on the reader, as this book consistently makes you question what appears to be happening before you, drawing you into Sam’s confusion and her increasing distrust of those around her. My attention was held completely throughout the book, and I would urge you to read both Orkney Twilight and The Salt Marsh if you like your crime multi-faceted with a more literary leaning. Highly recommended.
(With thanks to Head of Zeus for the ARC)
A Quick Round-Up- Clare Carson, Hans Olav Lahlum, David Lagercrantz, Bram Dehouck, Simon Toyne
With the end of the year so rapidly approaching, and a pretty full-on work schedule to accompany it, thought that instead of just staring at the pile of the books that still need reviewing, I should really be getting on with it. Short and sweet reviews coming up…
carson Jim is a brilliant raconteur whose stories get taller with each glass of whisky. His daughter Sam thinks it’s time she found out the truth about her dad. On holiday in Orkney, Sam spies on Jim as he travels across the island. What has he hidden in the abandoned watchtower? Who is he meeting in the stone circle at dusk? And why is he suddenly obsessed with Norse myths? As Sam is drawn into Jim’s shadowy world, she begins to realise that pursuing the truth is not as simple as it seems.
I heard Clare Carson speaking at a crime event earlier this year, and at last have read her debut thriller, Orkney Twilight and what a rare treat it was. From the outset I found myself completely involved in the unique father-daughter relationship between the shadowy and almost unknowable Jim and the feisty and sharp witted Sam. I loved the way that Carson explores their relationship throughout the book, as their paths of trust and mutual empathy converge and diverge, as the secrets that Jim carries, in his work as an undercover police officer, begin to impact on Sam, as she seeks to discover more about her father. The interactions and dialogue that Carson conjures around them is made all the more powerful by the invisible gaps that have appeared through long periods of estrangement, and there is a real sense of two people so utterly alike behaving as if the opposite was true. I was utterly entranced from start to finish, not only by the strength of the characterisation, with a relatively small cast of protagonists, and the engaging plot, but by the lyrical quality of the prose, underscored by the allusions to Norse myth and Scottish folklore and the beautiful realisation of location throughout. There is a subtle claustrophobia woven into the book, not only in the realms of human understanding, but played out cleverly at odds under the large skies of the Scottish isles that hold sway over much of the action. Outstanding.
(I bought this copy of Orkney Twilight)
Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson
Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson
Category: Crime
Rating: 3/5
Reviewer: Ani Johnson
Reviewed by Ani Johnson
Summary: A thriller partially set in Orkney containing some unlikely moments, but Orkney comes out well.
Buy? No Borrow? Maybe
Pages: 352 Date: April 2015
Publisher: Head of Zeus
ISBN: 978-1784080945
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18-year-old Sam Coyle's dad Jim is an undercover policeman. When he suggests that they take a trip to Orkney, somewhere they've enjoyed holidays in the past, Sam doesn't have to think about it, especially as she can take a friend. However for Jim it seems to be a working holiday, leaving Sam and her journalist student companion Tom to their own devices. Eventually they realise the same person is cropping up again and again, as if stalking them. Who is the watcher and what does he want? Until now her father's doom and gloom speeches have seemed a million miles from Sam's experience but now...?
Clare Carson is an anthropologist, lover of Orkney and daughter of an undercover policeman. The latter two are important as her experiences in life and musing about the tough life of a copper's daughter in a TV series led her to writing this, her debut novel and possibly the first in a trilogy.
Clare can definitely write; her lyrical descriptions of Orkney once the characters arrive are really evocative of the island's haunting beauty. Other reviewers have also enjoyed the thriller component of the story but for me the magic is in the landscape. Indeed, this review should perhaps be prefaced with a comment along the lines that it may only be me but there just seem too many niggles to overlook.
Sam Coyle rebels in a typically teenage way for the era (1980s), getting caught up in the Greenham Common peace camp and smoking the odd bit of weed away from her father's gaze (reflecting Clare's own experience). She's also paranoid as we'd expect from the daughter of someone who predicts his own death during most family parties. However the paranoia rises and is explained away so often that any suspense in it diminished until, when there is the danger Sam fears, the adrenaline-producing side of my brain had almost given up.
There is a moment when the excitement does hit, and I was about to forgive all, forget the slow start and go with the accelerated flow when what (to me) were unlikely circumstances again made me think twice. I won’t give anything away but something plot-changingly nasty is told to someone out of the blue by someone who I'd thought wouldn't reveal it at that moment or to that person. Also, considering Sam's father's fears for his life and Sam's own paranoia, why, irritatingly, does she tell everyone she meets he's an undercover cop?
Indeed I guess the crux for me is that the moments of excitement and peril depend on these unlikely revelations and moments that don't 'sit right', while endangering I don't care enough about. Other parties have also mentioned research errors (e.g. no such thing as internship in 1980s Britain) but that's easy to correct and something I'd happily overlook if I could get involved in the story.
As I said at the beginning, Clare can write; she has a natural talent so it's just a case developing a sense of pacing and suspense. If this novel was an Orkney-set exploration of relationships or something that wasn't meant to thrill, the star rating would shoot up exponentially. It will therefore be interesting to see what Clare does in her second novel as, we've all witnessed many times, a disappointing first book can sometimes be followed by a wondrous stonker of a second.
Thank you, Head of Zeus, for providing us with a copy for review.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 02, 2015
Review: Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson
Orkney Twilight by Clare Carson, September 2015, 352 pages, Head of Zeus, ISBN: 1784080969
Reviewed by Amanda Gillies.
(Read more of Amanda's reviews for Euro Crime here.)
This lovely book is Carson’s first novel and is exquisitely written. It is a poignant tale of the relationship between a father and daughter and focuses on a holiday they take together in Orkney; a place that had been a firm favourite many years ago. Carson herself spent many childhood holidays with her own father in Orkney and her memories are vivid in the telling of this tale.
Jim is an undercover policeman and Sam, his daughter, is convinced that he is up to something. After his disgraceful performance at her birthday party, where he showed up late and drunk then proceeded to embarrass her in front of her friends, she is determined to find out just what this ‘something’ is. When he starts to talk about retiring from the police and finishing his degree Sam’s suspicions grow and she goes to Orkney with him to see if she can catch him and work out what is going on. As she trails around Orkney, remembering things from her past and her relationship with her dad, Sam discovers that the truth is a dangerous thing and is soon far more involved in Jim’s secrets than she had originally planned.
This book has clearly been penned by someone who is loaded with talent and is a name to watch out for. Based on Carson’s own childhood, the descriptions of midsummer Orkney are beautiful and bring the story to life in a very personal way. The relationship between Jim and Sam is very sad – put under strain by his career and need for secrecy and made very evident by the way she not once calls Jim “Dad”. All the way through it is not possible to guess at what the end of this book with be. When it comes it leaves you shocked and cold; making you reassess your relationships with your own family members and hoping that none of them harbour dark secrets that you know nothing about. I am definitely impressed by Clare Carson and will be following her progress with interest.
Highly recommended.
Amanda Gillies, December 2015.