Mark Eklid – Family Business

‘Family Business’ by Mark Eklid is a mystery novel that had me at the first paragraph. Graham Hasselhoff (the surname had me from the start! Had to banish Kit from my head immediately!), is a librarian and a specialist in genealogy. He loses his job, so we find him spinning like he has lost his axis and then his son, Andreas, turns up from nowhere.

Andreas is the owner of a large, successful haulage company, so is not without money. He offers Graham and his wife, Janet, a new life. This comes with a cottage also! How bad can it be? Well, let’s just say, Graham has never experienced anything of the like in his days at the library! Graham gets embroiled in drugs, murder and the like. Even the first night in their cottage brings an unpleasant surprise when the police ram their front door in looking for someone they have no clue about. This is the beginning of the end and they don’t even realise yet. I really felt bad for both Graham and Janet, they are the ultimate nice couple who would go out of their way to help, just want a simple quiet life.

This is a book that I have been hearing a lot about and jumped at the chance to join the blog tour and I am happy I did. A totally original story, that has a lot of dark humour in it. I even found Andreas an almost caricature of a thug, and on the face of it all an unpleasant man, but then we dig a little deeper and start to understand and empathise a little.

I got to admit I was with Graham and Janet all the way. This poor couple, being uprooted and stuck in the middle of all this illegal goings-on. I understood how they would feel. I likened them to my own parents, which made for some comedic thoughts in my head. Graham bumbling about and Janet being the backbone, I truly enjoyed my time with Family Business and thank Random Things Tours and Mark Eklid for the book.