Till Sudden Death Do Us Part

Newest in Simon R. Green n' tremendously exciting Ishmael Jones paranormal/sci fi series, TILL SUDDEN DEATH DO US PART finds Ishmael vitally concerned that his original alien self is near to manifesting and taking over, after successful repression over the course of nearly 60 years. Called upon by a former friend with whom he worked for a clandestine organization many years before, Ishmael is tasked to halt a long-standing family curse. Unmasking a murderer, Ishmael discovers that legend is not always without foundation. I read each new novel in this series before I read anything else, and always come away purely gratified.

I received a copy of this novel in return for an honest review





Anyone who knows me will tell you I love Simon R Green. I don't read his Drood series or his intense Science Fiction, but I've read everything else. And his new series about Ishmael Jones? It is great!



This series is primarily closed room murder mystery types, taking place in mansions, tiny towns, old inns, and archeological sites.



In the last book we found out what Ishmael really is and in this book he struggles with worrying about whether his old self will storm through his barriers and take over, erasing everything he likes about himself and destroying the woman he loves.



I adore this authors world building, all his words link together. Nightside, Drood, Ghost Finders. They all exist in the same world of weird underground organizations, hidden unseen places and spaces and the abnormal covered by a thin layer so us normal folks never discover it. If we do? We are covered up and cleaned up as efficiently as possible.



So please go and enjoy this creepy murder mystery, but I'd recommend reading it with the lights.....on.

I've loved everything I've read by Simon R Green and this is no exception. A fast paced murder mystery, it's got everything you want from a new series - a great micro story with hints of a massive macro story line that's got a lot of depth to it.

Ishmael is called in to help an old friend dodge a family curse that affects newlyweds. Nobody has survived their wedding night for generations and with the bodies piling up, it looks like the curse is still going strong.

It's a short read that's more of a taster of what's to come than an in depth story, but it's still fun and it made for perfect reading while I was away for the weekend.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.

Ishmael and Penny are summoned to the home of an old associate of his to help guard his daughter and husband to be on her wedding day and night. There is an old curse regarding the families bride's not living through their wedding night, but there hasn't been a girl born in the family for generations, so getting information isn't exactly easy. The timing isn't great for Ishmael as he's having a personal crisis of who he really is and is it going to take over his life, a real fear of losing himself completely, and what will happen to Penny is a huge concern.
This book is a small town murder mystery set in a lonely location. It is nice to have an old friend of Ishmael that just accepts him as he is. Not as much snarky conversations between the main couple, but the action takes precedence in this who or what done it. Enjoyable fast read lots of good twists and turns looking forward to the next one.

I didn't read this book, I inhaled it. It was so engrossing that I couldn't turn pages fast enough and I read it in one setting.
I'm a fan Ishmael Jones and I thinks this one a very good installment.
The usual mix of thriller/paranormal/sci-fi works/horror works very well as well as the description of the small town dynamics and the character development.
I think that one of the theme of the book is the past that is haunting the present, the fear of the unknown consequences of the past.
The mystery part is excellent, full of red herrings, and it kept me guessing till the end.
I look forward to the next installment.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I have been a huge Simon R. Green fan ever since I read his Nightside series. I love how Green mixes sci-fi and horror elements along with a healthy splash of humor....makes for very enjoyable stories! I started reading Ishmael Jones when I finished the Nightside books. For me, this new series filled the void left by the ending of the Nightside storyline. Quirky, a bit scary, definitely entertaining!

Ishmael Jones has a deep, dark secret.....he's actually an alien. He knows he's an alien, but he's been stranded on Earth for a very long time. And he doesn't remember exactly where he is from, or even what he really is. He's been working for various secret organizations for decades doing various strange and dangerous investigations. Now he teams up with his human girlfriend, Penny Balcourt, to investigate mysterious, strange cases around the UK.

Till Sudden Death Do Us Part is the seventh Ishmael Jones story. Ishmael and his sidekick are once again on the case.....but this time it's a bit different. Someone from Ishmael's past hunts him down to ask for help. The family is cursed. Each time a female family member gets married before the sun rises after the wedding night, people will be dead. Ishmael wants to prevent a dead groom and wedding party members..... At the same time, he's dealing with his own inner demons. Literally. It seems he might be remembering who he is.....and his alien self might be trying to pop out into the sunshine.

Great story this time! Green never disappoints me! I enjoyed the story of the family curse and also the character development for Ishmael in this newest book. The ending of the story surprised me a bit....I wasn't expecting either of the two reveals. Nice!

Love this series! I'm definitely on board for the next book!

**I voluntarily read an advanced readers copy of this book from Severn House via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.**

I pulled this one from somewhere in the midst of the virtually towering TBR pile because I finished a book in one of this author’s other series for a Library Journal review and realized that I was still in the mood for his particular brand of snark and that I wasn’t caught up to Ishmael Jones yet.

So here we are. Or rather, there Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny Belcourt are, in another play on a country house ghost story. One in which the ghost may not be real, but there really is something out to get Ishmael, Penny, and whoever either invited them or whom they need to protect from something that has gone loudly, seriously and with malice very much aforethought bump in the night.

Ishmael’s been invited to a wedding in Bradenford, Yorkshire, a rural town he’s never been to before and hopes never to be again even before the mess of this case.

The thing about Ishmael – well, honestly there are a LOT of things about Ishmael, most of which Penny Belcourt knows (because they met on a case in their first adventure, The Dark Side of the Road). Ishmael and now Penny work for a mysterious organization rather coyly named The Organization because Ishmael needs something that clandestine to hide him from all the ubiquitous security devices and agencies that have cropped up all over the world since he crash-landed his UFO in 1963. And hasn’t aged a day since.

He looks human because his ship fixed that before it went defunct. But it didn’t do a perfect job. It’s not just the lack of aging, it also locked away all his memories of who and what he was before.

But this is a case that seems designed to bring back more of his past than he has any desire to meet. Both his past passing for human AND his past as an alien monster. He’s not even sure which reveal is going to be worse.

Still, he and Penny come to Bradenford because he owes an old colleague more than he can ever repay. Even if his attempt at that repayment is going to reveal at least some of the secrets he’s been keeping. Because it’s been 40 years since Ishmael and Robert Bergin have met. Bergin shows every single one of those years – while Ishmael displays precisely none.

But Bergin reluctantly recognizes that he’s not the man he used to be, while Ishmael still very much is. And that’s exactly who Bergin needs, a skilled operator used to dealing with all the terrible and secret things that no one wants to admit exist.

There’s a curse on the Bergin family and it has reached out from the past to grab his daughter and everyone involved with her wedding to an actor who probably isn’t nearly good enough for her.

But no one deserves to get sliced to pieces by some monster with fangs, claws and a 200-year-old vendetta.

It’s up to Ishmael and Penny to figure out whether there really is a curse – or just someone taking advantage of the old legends for grisly purposes of their own.

Escape Rating B: This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. The author is very much an acquired taste – but one I acquired so long ago that when I get the craving nothing else will do.

What brings me back over and over is the snarkitude. Whoever the protagonist is in one of his series, they are all cut from the same snarky, wry, sarcastic cloth, thinking all the things we wish we’d thought at the time, making all the smart-assed observations – and still managing to get the dirty job done no matter who they piss off along the way.

Because there’s always someone – and usually multiples.

Part of what makes Ishmael Jones in particular so interesting are the built-in ironies of the whole setup. Ishmael is an alien investigating weird shit who doesn’t believe in demons, ghosts, spirits or any of the other psychic phenomena that the people he’s investigating are generally desperate to blame for whatever has gone wrong. He knows there’s weird shit out there, but he’s very much aware that there’s always a human agency behind it. Every once in a while, it’s a human agency he used to work for.

From Ishmael’s perspective, this is a story about his own past coming back to bite him. Both in the sense that he learns stuff he still didn’t want to know about his old friend Bergin and their mutual employer, but also because he’s feeling like his old identity is emerging from the shadows he’s kept it buried in for almost 60 years. He’s afraid of his own past and his inability to control it because Ishmael is the persona that Penny loves and he never wants to lose that.

But this is also a murder-mystery. Everyone in town wants it to be the old curse because no one wants to think there’s a brutal murderer roaming their peaceful little town. A mysterious curse brings tourists while a rampaging mundane murderer will drive everyone away. At least it ought to.

I have mixed feelings about the way the murders get solved. It could be interpreted as a bit of a cheap shot that got redeemed at the end with a clever twist. You’ll have to decide for yourself.

Howsomever, I enjoyed my journey with Ishmael and Penny, so I’ll be back to see how Ishmael’s reconciliation between his past and his present continues in Night Train to Murder the next time I have a taste for extreme snarkitude blended with mu