Quick Book Reviews with Philippa Hall

Five days, twenty strangers, eighty-four miles of whitewater and no way out. Today I am talking to bestselling thriller author Noelle W. Ihli about The Last to Drown, the book that has put me off whitewater rafting for life. Before that, three book reviews, and a swimming pool mystery I need your help with.

Three book reviews

• A Knock at the Door by Louise Candlish (out 5 November). A three-year-old goes missing on a weekend break. Eighteen years later, a young woman arrives at the door claiming to be her. I thought I knew where this was going and I was wrong. This could be Louise's best book yet, and she will be joining me to talk about it in a few weeks.
• The Angel of Death by Trevor Wood. The third DCI Jack Parker book. An anonymous killer in Newcastle is offering the terminally ill a dignified escape, while Jack tries to hide his own early onset dementia diagnosis. Superbly written crime with a fascinating lead, and now published by our friends at Orenda Books.
• Wreck by Catherine Newman. I listened to this on audio while swimming and laughed out loud in the changing room. Funny in places, much more moving than I expected, and a family you want to sit with at the dining table. The narration is spot on.

Author interview: Noelle W. Ihli on The Last to Drown

The Last to Drown follows Kaia, recently widowed, on the rafting trip her husband always wanted to take. Seven years earlier a guide murdered a group of rafters on the same stretch of river, and the true crime community has never stopped asking questions. We talk about:

• The family rafting trip in Idaho that gave her the idea, and why her guides were "slightly concerned" by her questions
• Writing 500 to 1,000 words a day, and making herself sit there like a naughty child in time out
• Why she cannot write on a plane or in an airport
• Grief at the heart of the book, and the conversation with her husband that inspired it
• Writing with real survivors in mind, and the line she will not cross
• Being a true pantser who does not know how her characters will get out
• Survival as a group effort and not something you do alone
• Where to start with her books: The Last to Drown or Gray After Dark
• The candy drawer that powers the words: peanut butter M&Ms and Twizzlers

Noelle is reading

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• The Witch by Freida McFadden
• The forthcoming book by John Marrs

And finally

If you wear a swimming cap but leave all your hair out underneath it, please tell me why. I am intrigued.

Watch on Apple Podcasts

Get in touch - links:

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's past my bedtime, my microphone has given up the ghost, and I've got something to get off my chest: the National Year of Reading. I've been having a dig into where the money is going, and by my calculations the £150,000 set aside for libraries works out at around £41 per library. That's a fair few biscuits, but not many books.

So I'm putting forward some ideas of my own for getting adults reading again:

• Book monitors: volunteers in tabards helping nervous shoppers find the right book, the way a good cheese shop lets you try before you buy
• Making reading cool again, with more famous faces seen with a book in hand
• Audiobooks and graphic novels as an easy way in
• Five minutes a day, with reading streaks to keep you going
• Libraries on trains for long commutes and delays
• World Book Day for adults: a book voucher for everyone, no dressing up required (and maybe a free biscuit)

Are my ideas ridiculous? Have you seen the National Year of Reading making a difference in schools? I'd love to know what you think.

Then it's our October book club roundup of The One You Least Suspect by Brian McGilloway. I've read the second quarter, up to around page 188, and share how it's making me feel, with no spoilers. If you're not reading along, you can stop listening at that point.

I'll be back on Monday with an author interview.

Watch this episode on Apple Podcasts: Quick Book Reviews with Philippa Hall on Apple Podcasts

Get in touch - links:

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is a special one — a full interview with Ian Rankin on The Heights, his first standalone thriller in nearly two decades. But first, a confession: I've just been away for the weekend and had a small crisis about how some people can remember every name — actors, characters, everyone — while I can't hold onto a single one. Is it just me? Answers on a postcard (or better yet, in your own colour-coding system, which is apparently what I need).

Then it's on to the books. I'm reviewing three with no spoilers, before sitting down with Ian to talk about how a short story character, Detective Gillian Gish, refused to let him go; why Tottenham and a gleaming Hyde Park high-rise became the perfect collision of two Londons; and why he thinks readers have fallen out of love with police procedurals in an age of institutional corruption. Ian also tells me how the book was written almost entirely at sea, and what would happen if I sent him to write in a tiny, sweltering Tokyo apartment instead. Plus: his verdict on the correct way to eat a chocolate hobnob.

This week's reviews:

• Someone Just Followed You, Liane Child — a propulsive, unsettling look at the world of kidfluencers, told mostly from a teenager's perspective
• Hum, Helen Phillips — winner of the Climate Fiction Prize 2026; gripping, reflective, slightly dystopian, and hard to put down
• The Eyewitness, Naomi Williams — a quick, twisty read about a woman whose eyes shut tight for 48 hours at a time, and the fear that someone is watching when she can't see

Featured book:

The Heights, Ian Rankin

That's this episode — spoiler-free reviews of Someone Just Followed You, Hum, and The Eyewitness, plus Ian Rankin on The Heights.

Get in touch

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My Book Haul Confession + Book Club Begins

I have a confession: despite trying to go all-in on ebooks, I found myself with an hour to kill, a closed independent bookshop, and a chain store that was open — and I came out with a stack of books I need to tell you all about. This episode I'm running through my haul, including Naomi Alderman's The Strangers, Elizabeth Macneal's The Burial Plot, Benjamin Stevenson's Everyone in This Bank Is a Thief, William Boyd's The Predicament, Ross Montgomery's Murder at World's End, and Jon Ronson's The Castle — plus a slightly spicy admission about book four of Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series and some very poorly timed public listening moments.

Then it's the first week of our October Book Club, discussing the opening quarter of The One You Least Suspect by Brian McGilloway. I share my honest, no-spoiler thoughts on the first 93 pages — what surprised me, how it compares to what I expected, and why I ended up reading it in the early hours after a very different night than planned. I'd love to hear your thoughts too — get in touch using the details below.

Book club pick:

The One You Least Suspect, Brian McGilloway

This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts — watch it here.

Get in touch links

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Conversation with Ann Cleeves: The Dying Light

This is a special Wednesday episode — Ann Cleeves joins me to talk about The Dying Light, the fourth Matthew Venn novel, out this Thursday. We talk about the white Art Deco bungalow that started the whole book, why she never knows who did it when she begins writing, and how a hint of resentment over second homes in Devon became the beating heart of the story. Ann also opens up about Matthew's evangelical upbringing and why she thinks it drew him to policing, what forty books' worth of experience has taught her about pushing through a block, and why long train journeys are the best plotting tool she's found. Plus: Irish dancing at Harrogate, imposter syndrome at the big literary festivals, and a very disciplined approach to dunking a digestive.

Featured book:

The Dying Light, Ann Cleeves

That's this episode — Ann Cleeves on The Dying Light, out Thursday 8th October.

This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts — watch it here.

Get in touch

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Conversation with Linwood Barclay: Not a Word

This episode is a special one — Linwood Barclay returns to talk about Not a Word, a family secrets thriller that opens with a horrific discovery and spirals into a story spanning three generations, inspired in part by the real-life opioid scandal in North America. We talk about why the book was originally titled The Pond, his rule that a twist has to land at the end of a chapter or it loses its punch, and his refreshingly no-nonsense take on writer's block ("there's no plumber's block"). Linwood also explains why his dream writing location is just... upstairs from his kitchen, and delivers a very firm verdict on cookie dunking.

Before that, a spoiler-free look at three very different things I've been reading and watching:

• The Distance, Ben Norris — a play performed almost entirely on a treadmill at the Edinburgh Fringe, and just as gripping to read as it clearly was to watch
• A Schooling in Murder, Andrew Taylor — a wartime boarding school murder mystery that needed a slow, immersive start (audiobook helped) before I couldn't put it down
• Fruit Fly, Josh Silver — raw, dark, and not for the cosy crime crowd; one that's stayed with me since

Featured book:

Not a Word, Linwood Barclay

This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts — watch it here.

Get in touch - Links:

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alison Barrow, PR Director at Transworld, joins me again to lift the lid on what's really happening in publishing right now — from late-night manuscript reads and "beauty contest" pitches for new books, to why the Christmas run-up is the busiest time of the year for gifting, self-purchase, and special editions. We talk about how author expectations around social media have changed, why debut authors are usually held back for spring rather than launched into the autumn scrum, and Alison gives us a look inside her own experience of seeing a book cover for the first time — as the author.

Plus, it's the first Friday of October, which means the launch of our October Book Club! We're reading The One You Least Suspect by Brian McGilloway over the course of the month, 93 pages a week. I run through my seven pre-reading questions about the book — my expectations for pace, twists, and what I think I'll come away feeling — and I'd love to hear your answers too. Join in and come back each Friday in October as we discuss a quarter of the book at a time.

Book club pick:

The One You Least Suspect, Brian McGilloway

This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts — watch it here.

Get in touch

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 500! In Conversation with Val McDermid and Jo Sharp: This Door of the Seas

A huge milestone — this is episode 500 of Quick Book Reviews! Thank you to everyone who's been listening since the very start (sadly the first few episodes were lost in a platform move years ago, but the memories remain).

To celebrate, I'm joined by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp to talk about This Door of the Seas, their first book written together, and the latest in Polygon's Darkland Tales series. It tells the true and largely forgotten story of the Darien Scheme — Scotland's disastrous 17th-century attempt to found a trading colony in Panama, an event so significant it helped push the country into union with England, yet one neither of them were taught in school. We talk about how the idea was born on a very long drive down the A9, why they chose to tell the story entirely through letters (including real historical figure Dr James Wallace), and the moment Val discovered — almost as an aside — that there was a murder in the story she hadn't been told about. Jo also describes the genuinely moving experience of holding one of the original 1698 letters in the National Library of Scotland, and we talk about what it's actually like to co-write a book with your spouse.

Plus: the Darien colonists' extraordinary questions from the era's leading scientists (yes, including one about an animal that breathes through its navel), what Val and Jo are both reading right now, and their verdict on the classic Quick Book Reviews question — the biscuit that powered the words.

Featured book:

This Door of the Seas, Val McDermid and Jo Sharp

This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts — watch it here.

Get in touch - links:

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is a special one — Kate Atkinson joins me to talk about Our Noble Selves, her wonderful new novel set at the 1951 Festival of Britain. We talk about her traumatised journalist hero Harry Flynn (nearly named Quinn, and nearly given a much darker backstory), the real dog behind fictional character Mrs Betty, and the working title she changed at the very last minute. Kate also reveals her dream writing location is not a beach or a cabin, but Specsavers, and delivers the most devastating answer in this podcast's history to the crucial biscuit question.

Before that, a spoiler-free look at three books I've been reading:

• Endless Night, Agatha Christie — no Poirot, no Miss Marple, a slow start that turned into one I couldn't put down
• Call Me By Your Name (graphic novel edition), André Aciman — a beautiful, reflective illustrated edition of the love story, not one for the kids
• Whistler, Ann Patchett — a book everyone else is raving about; I liked it, didn't love it, and that's entirely on me

Featured book:

Our Noble Selves, Kate Atkinson

That's this episode — spoiler-free reviews of Endless Night, Call Me By Your Name, and Whistler, plus Kate Atkinson on Our Noble Selves.

This episode is available as video on Apple Podcasts on your browser — watch it here.

Get in touch

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A shorter episode this week, but a packed one. Philippa has an announcement, a question to answer honestly, and a book-related confession she has been sitting on for a while. Brace yourselves.

October Book Club: The One You Least Suspect by Brian McGilloway

Philippa is launching a relaxed, no-pressure book club in October. Each week she'll read 96 pages and share her thoughts at the end of that week's episode. You can join in, get in touch with your thoughts, or simply skip that section if it's not for you — it'll always be at the end of the episode so nothing is missed.

The book: The One You Least Suspect by Brian McGilloway. Katie is a barmaid in Derry who is approached by two detectives wanting her to become their informant. Trapped between the police and the dangerous brothers she works for, her only hope is to remain the one nobody suspects.

Available in paperback, audiobook, and at most libraries. No quiz. No dress code. No deadline. Just books.

Am I Being Paid to Review Books?

Someone recently asked whether Philippa charges for book reviews — prompted by another reviewer apparently charging $200 to listen to an audiobook and $800 for a video review. The answer is no. Philippa receives books for free and earns a small amount from podcast advertising, but has never been paid to review a book and would never recommend something she didn't genuinely love. She also declines paid video offers — partly on principle, partly because she suspects publishers would be politely horrified by the result.

The Confession:

She said it. She means it. She is ready for the hate mail.

Prologues grind her gears — the running-through-a-forest opener followed by a gentle chapter one that has nothing to do with it, the bones discovered in a field that are never referenced again until page 300, the dramatic peril that is forgotten by the time the story gets going. Philippa's view: just start the story. She acknowledges you may disagree. She welcomes the debate.

Get in touch — whatever your views are on prologues

Quick Book Reviews Facebook Group | Instagram | [email protected]

Quick Book Reviews: author interviews and book reviews with no spoilers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.