Murder by Natural Causes

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This book had me rooting for the villain – Cilla is a curious character who manages to steal your heart. Her story is sad and heartbreaking. I loved all the information about her childhood and the experiences she faced. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex Muswell Press has landed Murder by Natural Causes, a thriller about a female assassin by début novelist Helen Erichsen. We follow Cilla in her present day life, working, part time, for Vlad - drug lord, club owner, impaler! - definitely not a man to be messed with. What do you thinks makes a psychopath? are they born or can they be trained? read this book and you may find some answers.This is the story of a young girl who is taken from her family by the Soviet authorities and trained to be a killer . What marks Cilla, as she becomes, is her ambivalence to her family and her unquestioning loyalty to the regime. Is she a natural psychopath or can she be trained.

This week's blog is from bridge player and novelist Helen Erichsen, her debut novel " Murder by natural causes" launched this week in London. Overall, the grammar and syntax are good! Erichsen enjoys using semicolons, something I fully approve of. Variety is important, even when it comes to punctuation.

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In a nutshell. Five thoroughly merited stars. If you want the version with a picture in it, you have to go here: The historical strand follows her shattered and disturbing childhood. Living in a rural family that is struggling and largely uncaring, we discover that Luna the dog is the only one she holds affection for, she is selected to go to a special school, Academy 43. Here their special talents are nurtured, but also, they are gradually desensitised to suffering and killing, to become highly trained killers.

As the storyline unfolds, we learn of Cilla's childhood and education - born in a very communist Soviet Union, she was whisked away at a young age and trained at the specialist academy 43 where she excelled. Cilla used to live a normal, merely boring life. The days and weeks passed on and all resembled the same routine. This was a decently enjoyable read, as you got to see both the beginning and the end of Cilla’s career as a contract killer- what made her the way she is, and both why and how she decided to move on from killing people. This isn’t my normal sort of read, but I did find some fascination in the way the story makes you increasingly sympathetic to Cilla. I listened to the audiobook of this, and it was narrated skillfully by Natalie Pela.They are trained in all manner of covert killing, but are assessed for their special quality to be harnessed in service to the state. Cilla enjoys botany and its importance in toxicology, making a myriad of poisons from plants in the Academy’s greenhouse. Her favourite subject, though, is English. She is thoroughly immersed in every aspect of English culture, which will eventually serve her well when she eliminates targets overseas. But never neglected is the children’s indoctrination into Soviet state dogma.