Wulf C. Krueger

She has a death wish, he’d rather retire than help—in “The Wolf Tree” by Laura McCluskey, Georgina “George” Lennox and Richard “Richie” Stewart make for a weird pairing in a complicated story about life and death on Eilean Eadar, an isolated Scottish island.

After months of leave due to having been injured during an operation, George makes it back to the police force and her old partner, Richie. Their assignment is to look into the assumed suicide of a young man from the aforementioned island, due to “inconsistencies”.

At the outset, everything seems fine and the small community of about 200 people is close-knit. And, yet, there is something “off” from early on that neither the reader nor the inspectors can exactly point to.

Sounds good, eh? Sadly, this is just the promising beginning of a story that, for a long time, doesn’t seem to go anywhere. George is bold to a fault, but never hesitates to help if she’s needed. She does take some risks because she can’t help it. On the other hand, George has some serious issues and that might impact her judgement.

Richie, in contrast, struck me as less than interested in the entire investigation: he implicitly asks George to be negligent in her duties - not to help - if it might pose any risk to her. Of course, Richie himself acts just like that. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to just “look the other way”.

We get a good look at the island, the islanders, both primary and secondary characters. What we do not get is anywhere beyond descriptions and character studies. There are very few actual results during the investigation, and only conveniently at the very end do lots of things happen in quick succession, leading to a dramatic showdown at land’s end.

What could have been a highly interesting police procedural, or mystery gets bogged down by endless walking and talking across the island. There were flashbacks to what happened to George that were so distracting, I actually looked up if I had somehow stumbled into the middle of a series. (I hadn’t; I think.)

Everything on the island reads like doom and gloom – the harsh islanders, sometimes referring to outsiders as “mainland scum”, two storms during one week, rain, cold, snow – it’s bleak out there, and so it reads. Some light outbreaks of humour…

»“Mr. Nicholson,” Richie says, stooping to be at eye level with the headstone, “thank you for letting us stay in your home.”

George puts her lips to Richie’s ear and croaks, “I died in that bed.”

Richie glowers at her. “Have a modicum of respect for the dead, DI Lennox.”«

…are quickly stifled by foreshadowing, rain, or people.

The writing itself is captivating - relentlessly bleak, yes, but never forced; the gloom settles around the story and characters in a way that feels both real and essential to the book’s atmosphere. There are a few irritations, like Richie occasionally being called "Rich" just to mark supposedly significant moments, which feels a touch clumsy. The prose isn’t high-brow or particularly elegant, but there’s a genuine accessibility to it that made reading easy and, at times, unexpectedly enjoyable. I genuinely liked the author’s style, if not her story.

In the end, when everything suddenly falls into place, the story becomes very convoluted, rather hard to believe, and hardly anything feels resolved.

Still, “The Wolf Tree” was weirdly captivating. It wasn’t that suspenseful, so I guess I must have wanted to know how it ends. Don’t let that happen to you.

Three stars out of five.

Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam

“Great Big Beautiful Life” by Emily Henry was promised to be just that: The love child of a well-known romance author, centring on two authors set against each other. The prize: To write a book about a famous socialite from a legendary family who disappeared and is shrouded in mystery.

What could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters, while this novel had high hopes of growing up to become Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”, a strong and bold story, “Life”’s story is immensely conventional. Whereas “Life” is “Dallas” or “Dynasty”, “Husbands” is “The Crown”.

Margaret Ives, our former socialite, has no special story to tell our authors. It’s just a rich-girl story with some drama and tragedy and some, very simplistic, family secrets.

Alice Scott, an author at a run-of-the-mill yellow press gossip magazine, senses the chance of a lifetime when she finds Margaret. Sadly, she just isn’t a very interesting or convincing character. She falls in love with her competitor, Hayden, a Pulitzer Prize winner, at first glance. Apart from the friction due to both being after the same job, there is practically no chemistry between them.

Hayden is portrayed as the typical “grumpy” love interest which is pretty much all he is throughout the entire novel. He hardly has any discernible character, and despite spending almost as much time with Margaret as Alice does, we never see his perspective. In stark contrast to the tediously detailed interviewing sessions between the two female leads, we’re told only sparingly about his own experiences.

Seemingly worried we might not understand the dual timelines of the narration, Henry plasters a huge “The Story” over every part that tells Margaret’s story (as narrated by Alice). What follows is a brief, one-sentence ‘Their version’ headline from the yellow press, and then a much longer “Her version”.

In between, we get encounters between Alice and Hayden, but most of the time they simply hold back or occasionally even push each other away. Their story is just as boring and superficial as all the family drama around Margaret is conventional, convoluted, and rarely believable.

The writing is typically Henry: adequate but nothing special. Compared to Henry’s romance novels, this one feels like she tried to write a romance/family story crossover, but thoroughly failed at both. Emily Henry is to Taylor Jenkins Reid what Katherine Heigl is to Meryl Streep: they may share a profession, but they are not in the same league.

Two stars out of five.

Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam