REVIEW of 'BLACK VELVET'

 

By Jim E Palmer, Editor,  “Writer’s Muse Magazine”

 

Re-printed with kind permission from Issue 70, June 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot has happened since Sheila very first wrote a short story for Writer’s Muse that, in itself, began life as a response to an exercise in a Creative Writing group. A lot has happened since I reviewed the final product of the journey above – the novel Red Stiletto (reviewed in Writer’s Muse issue 53, February, 2010).

            The latest happening is Black Velvet – the long-awaited sequel. Again, it follows the ups and downs of Rachel Hodges, a private eye in Hull.

            Black Velvet doesn’t have as gory a hook in the opening pages as its predecessor. It does, though, have a tense opening – Rachel wakes up after, we quickly learn, being overpowered, knocked out, kidnapped and tied up. The readers are dragged straight into Rachel’s world once again, wondering how the hell she got into this mess and – how she is going to get out of it! Black Velvet, I thought, is a more cerebral novel than Red Stiletto. There is a definite puzzle threaded throughout it all, posing a challenge for a logically-minded reader to solve it before Rachel. Every so often, thanks to the first-person narrative (and being able to look into Rachel’s mindset) the reader is offered a possible answer or clue – then shortly afterwards has that theory dismantled by another twist in the plot. All the above work as continual hooks and they keep the momentum surging forward.

            Like all good crime and mystery novels, Black Velvet is full of red herrings and the reader has to pay attention to sort the deliberate wheat from the deliberate chaff – a skill Sheila uses very well.

            There are, though, a multitude of plots that intertwine – diamond smuggling, valuable paintings going missing, cyber criminality – all linked, or not? And the list of accomplices/suspects begins to grow.

            As Sheila successfully accomplished in Red Stiletto, seemingly innocuous happenings need to be logged and remembered by readers. Sheila positions the reader into empathising thoroughly with Rachel; Rachel/reader needs to look at all happenings in a wide context to filter out the real red herrings; some are filtered out and dispatched, others are not and raise their heads further along in the plot to tease the reader – sometimes being finally discarded, to be replaced with yet more clues to tantalise the reader’s logic cells.

            Rachel’s tangled love life with Steve Rose (a police inspector) is a continuing thread also running through the novel, with Rachel’s paranoia over her on/off relationship kicking in quite early (conveniently Rachel forgets her own peccadillo with Pete the computer geek!). The on/off episodes appear incidental but at the back of a reader’s mind – surely – should be the suspicion that, knowing Rachel’s penchant for landing in hot water, it’s possible that she could be in dire straits during one of her ‘cooler’ periods in the relationship and result in real trouble for her. Incidental these on/off periods may appear but they are subtle plot twists and add realism and the potential for development of the plot.

            They remind me of the plotting of The Sopranos, the Mafia serial drama. In that, often, seemingly irrelevant characters and plots would surface or be mentioned, sowing seeds for the viewer and sometimes developing later and gripping the viewers; at other times they disappeared without trace—for a season or two! Those structures in The Sopranos, as in Black Velvet, keep the plot moving, the characters interesting and the reader/viewer guessing. 

            In Black Velvet, Sheila has, again, kept a great pace throughout the book but also keeps the tempo just right so that all becomes clear at the right moments and adds further impetus to flare into the climax of the novel – just as it should.

            In (almost) conclusion, I must mention for those who read Red Stiletto, some old favourites appear in Black Velvet: mum and dad, and gran (still enthralled by The X Factor!). A new character is introduced,Carly, Rachel’s boyfriend Steve’s sister. Carly begins working with Rachel as the workload increases but, knowing Rachel’s potential for getting into real danger, the reader (justifiably) should be asking if Carly is introduced as one of the red herrings, or will she face danger, also?

            I’m saying nothing...!

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