Catherine Raynes: 'Smoke' and 'The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle Flying Club'

Catherine Raynes is here to review some books with Jack Tame. 

Smoke by Michael Brissenden  

Detective Alex Markov has recently returned to her small hometown of Jasper, California, after leaving the LAPD in disgrace, only to find her new colleagues don't want her either. When a deadly wildfire sweeps through Jasper her investigations find a deadly underbelly beneath the smoke - a town for sale to the highest bidder and authorities playing games within games, in which she's the prize pawn. 

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson 

A young woman's life is forever changed in the summer after World War I when she befriends a group of independent, motorcycle-riding women in a seaside town on the English coast - a captivating novel from the bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks at b It.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Is time to get your book picks for this weekend.
Catherine Rains is here with her recommendations. Hey, Catherine, Morning Jack.
Let's begin with Smoke by Michael Brisenden.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
So this is a really eerie opening to it. So
it's that you're in the aftermath in this town of
Jasper after this wildfire has passed through, and the main
character is a character called Alex Markov, and she's a
detective and she's returned to her hometown and she's confronted
with this destruction and actually also the suspected murder of
her childhood friend's partner who's was found in a lot

(00:47):
shed after the wildfires. And you know, she's trying to
conduct this investigation, but she's also under pressure from this
big city la internal affairs about her past conduct and
the time that she's spent their working as a detective,
and she's dealing with aging parents and a bereaved friend.
But she gets that. You get this atmosphere of this
town and it stark and realistic against this backdrop of murder,

(01:10):
and this atmosphere you builds and creates tension, and there's
corruption and crooked cops and sleazy politicians, and it draws
this analogy between the smoke and the smoke concealing things
and hiding the damage, and it destroys beautiful things and
it's insidious and it's unseen, just like the corruption is
and the books about how far trust can go and
how close betrayal can be and how little loyalty can

(01:32):
be relied on. And it's quite dark and twisted and
gripping and lots of tension.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Sounds great.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Unfolds it is, it's very good.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, okay, cool, that sounds really intriguing. And that follows
what Detective Alex Markov, right, who's and she's kind of
been the subject of previous books as well.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
That's great and yeah so, but you don't need to
have read the previous books. It's just you know, it
starts in this small town, in this airy atmosphere and
then just disappears on and the through and how they
track each other on what goes on, and yeah it is.
It's dark and twisted and a little bit creepy, but
it's good.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah cool, okay. Next up, The Hazel Born Ladies Motorcycle
and Flying Club by Helen Simonson.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
So Helen Simonson will wrote a book a wide ago
called Major Pedigrew's Last Stand, and she's really good at
creating characters that you'd actually like to meet in real life.
And this one set in England in nineteen nineteen, just
as the Great Wars wound to a close, and there's
you know, the loss of so many young men, resulting
in what they termed surplus women who now must plan
lives for themselves, and often with really reduced chances to

(02:36):
make a living, and you know who'd work steadily during
the wartime and abruptly really sent back to the kitchen
and the drawing room and pushed back into these positions.
And one of these characters, Constant har All, is drifting
in the early summer of nineteen nineteen, and she'd been
eased out, you know, as a lot of women eased
out of the job that she did her part for
the war effort. She dreads the thought of becoming a governess,

(02:57):
and she actually agrees to be a companion to an
elderly lady at the seaside resort, and she becomes acquainted
with this group of women who had similar looking for
means to support them and as the war changed their expectation,
and she makes friends with a group of young women
who trying to make a living using their motorcycles running
a taxi service, and she develops a taste for this,
and she's got other schools and good at bookkeeping, and

(03:18):
she comes this real asset to the seaside community and
she's really inhabiting this real middle ground. She's not part
of the wealthy, and she knows that she can find
some new opportunities and change your life and you make
a living and you know, and then on the other
hand of those in the war that have fought and
survived and you know, learning how to live within new realities.
And so you get this, you know, Richard Convention and

(03:40):
changing societal norms and these great characters in this seaside town.
And it's really engrossing as you get involved with all
of these different characters and their stories and how they're
coping with life.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah. Nineteen nineteen, Oh superb Okay, cool, that sounds great too.
That's the Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen
Simon's and Catherine's first book, Smoke by Michael Brisenden. Just
like everything for else from our show, Newstook, ZB, Dot, Coda,
and Z for Slash, Jack is the best place to go.
So if you're scrambling around for a bit of paper

(04:11):
or something you're trying to write down something you hear
on the radio, or you're trying to text it to
yourself or something like that, don't stress out. You can
always go to our website and you'll find all of
the stuff that we recommend to you.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks ed B from nine am Saturday, or
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