Catherine Raynes: The Surf House and The Oligarch's Daughter

The Surf House by Lucy Clarke  

Wish you were here? Think again... High on the wave-pounded cliffs, far from the bustling souks of Marrakesh, sits The Surf House. A hidden gem on Morocco's shores, the house is a sanctuary for the surfers, travellers and dreamers who wash in. But the idyll is built on something rotten. And when Bea arrives, relieved to find refuge after a dangerous encounter in a Marrakesh alleyway, she soon gets caught in the swell of a deep, dark mystery. Because another young woman went missing one year ago - and the last place she was sighted was The Surf House. 

  

The Oligarch's Daughter by Joseph Finder  

Paul Brightman is a man on the run, living under an assumed name in a small New England town with a million-dollar bounty on his head. When his security is breached, Paul is forced to flee into the New Hampshire wilderness to evade Russian operatives who can seemingly predict his every move. 

Six years ago, Paul was a rising star on Wall Street who fell in love with a beautiful photographer named Tatyana—unaware that her father was a Russian oligarch and the object of considerable interest from several US intelligence agencies. Now, to save his own life, Paul must unravel a decades-old conspiracy that extends to the highest reaches of the government. 

 

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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.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Catherine Rain's, our book reviewer, is here with her two
great reads for the weekend. Hey Catherine, Morning Jack. Okay,
let's begin with a new book by Lucy Clark called
The Surf House.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
So this joins a genre of books that I hadn't
really heard of called destination thrillers. And it's filled with
danger and mystery and secrets and lots of blackmail. And
it's set initially in Marrakesh in Morocco. And Bee's fed
up with his modeling assignment that she's on. She's sick
of being told how to stand, what to do, and
so she decides to walk off the set, not really

(00:44):
knowing where she's going, and ends up straying from the
hustle and bustle of the market and gets mugged in
this alleyway and this woman, Marnie, steps in, and they
managed to escape, and money offers this place to stay
while she kind of gets herself back on her feet,
and it's called The Surf House, and she ends up
kind of running the place to basically pay for her board.
And then this new visitor arrives a guy called Seth,

(01:05):
and he's looking for a sister, Savannah, who's been missing
for the last year, and the last, of course location
that she was seen at was the surf house, and
so he asked me to help her find out what's
going on. And the plot really centers around Savannah and
this group of people dealing with some pretty big issues
and this van that drives off into the unknown and
the surf house by the beach, and it adds kind

(01:27):
of like this almost haunty, eerie feeling to the whole thing.
And then you lay it in that atmospheric, breathtaking Moroccan
landscape and you get this intriguing characters and menacing plots,
and you'd help with a great thriller, novel holds you
to turn the pages.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
I was being a little bit cheap, I thought when
you said the model walks off off set in Marrakesh,
it turns into a thriller. Was like, okay, are you
but that sounds good, sounds really enjoyable.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, look it does. I mean with lots of these books,
you do have to suspend a little bit of reality
the point, Yes, you would need to do that with this.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's the whole point. That's the entire
points exactly. So that's the Surf House by Lucy Clark Love.
It tell us about the Oligarch store Joseph Finder.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
So you probably also want to suspend a healthy days
of reality on this one and enter the world of
a spy thrillers. And you meet this guy, Paul Brightman,
and he's a hedge gun manager on Wall Street and
at a party he meets this woman, Tadiana, who's a
pretty successful photographer, and he falls very hard for it,
and soon they end up in a relationship together and
it becomes time for him to meet her family. And

(02:29):
Tadiana had always told Paul that her father was a
very successful businessman, and he soon finds himself being offered
a role in her father's business. He doesn't really want
to take the job, but the offer is amazing, and
then he makes the decision to go and work and
move to the offices where her father works. And of
course he obviously, as the title suggests, he turns out
to be a Russian oliagarch, and Paul finds himself escalated

(02:52):
in this world of hidden agenda's surveillance, betrayal and as
he gets closer to her family, he unwittingly sort of
steps into this game of financial power, market manipulation and
Russian intelligence, and then of course the American FBI and
CIA get involved, and he's now really in over his
head and finds himself on the run. And yeah, those

(03:12):
after him have some very sophisticated methods of tracking. And
it's an excellent sptral. It reminded me really of John McCarey, right, really.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Well told HERB. Yeah, okay, great, I love it. But Lacurrey,
so that could be me. I reckon. That's The Oligarch's
Daughter by Joseph Finder. Catherine's first book, The Surf House
by Lucy Clark. Make sure both of those are on
The News Talk's EDB website.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Thanks Katherine for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame.
Listen live to News Talks EDB from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio