** My thanks to Alison Brodie for my copy of this book **
Description:
Devious, ruthless, and loyal.
Zenka is a capricious Hungarian with a dark past.
When cranky London mob boss, Jack Murray, saves her life she vows to become his guardian angel – whether he likes it or not. Happily, she now has easy access to pistols, knives and shotguns.
Jack discovers he has a son, Nicholas, a male nurse with a heart of gold. Problem is, Nicholas is a wimp.
Zenka takes charge. Using her feminine wiles and gangland contacts, she will make Nicholas into the sort of son any self-respecting crime boss would be proud of. And she succeeds!
Nicholas is learning fast that sometimes you have to kill, or be killed. As his life becomes more terrifying, questions have to be asked:
How do you tell a mob boss you don’t want to be his son?
And is Zenka really who she says she is?
My Thoughts & Review:
Zenka was a book that I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first heard about it, I’d seen it reviewed by other bloggers and was curious about it as they’d raved about it.
What can I say about Zenka? It’s an adrenaline packed, madcap, vortex of crime fiction, black humour with a smattering of romance thrown in for good measure. Now to try and break that down into something that resembles a review without regurgitating the blurb….hmm this could be tricky!
There are so many strands to the plot of Zenka, for a start, Zenka is the name of our protagonist. She’s Hungarian, a pole dancer in one of the clubs owned by Jack Murray (a gangster) and when Jack saved her life she decided to become his “guardian angel”. Simple enough so far….
Zenka’s attempts to help Jack and his son connect are disastrous, but they make for entertaining reading.
The clever use of the letters written by Zenka to her friend explain so much about this character, and I found that the more I read, the greater my understanding of her became. I was initially a little hesitant with the accent that Zenka had, but it grew on me through the book and I ended up hearing her speaking in that accent as she spoke.
Characterisation in this is superb, you really get a feel for the personalities and the quirks of the main characters and it’s hard not to become invested in them.
The humour woven throughout the book is excellent, I found I was chuckling out loud at certain scenes, Jack and Trevor at Christmas, Jack and Zenka trying to “toughen” Nicholas up are just some of the ones that immediately spring to mind.
It’s a well written crime thriller with a difference.
You can buy a copy of Zenka via:
[…] The Quiet Knitter reviews Alison Brodie’s self-published Zenka saying “it’s a well written crime thriller with a difference.” Everywhere and Nowhere writes, “This book definitely took me by surprise, I am glad that Ms. Brodie keeps finding new ways to grab my attention and I am looking forward to the next book that I get to read.” Bits About Books says it “a humorous, quirky novel of violence and romance”. […]
Thank you, Kate, for this great review of ZENKA. I appreciate your kind support.