4-5 stars Karma is a cleaner. Maria is an excellent cleaner, she’ll leave your surfaces gleaming and carpets pristine. She cleans for elderly Elsie, sadly losing the battle against dementia. Elsie has an awful husband and a world-weary nephew with his eyes on the prize of Elsie’s house. She cleans for Brian near Crouch End who offers her dubious tea concoctions as he tries to find the wherewithal to tackle his bully of a boss. Then there’s mysterious nightclub owner Balogan whose luxury flat in Southbank with its wonderful views of the London skyline is blighted by dreadful neighbours. Maria works incredibly hard, she’s long suffering and financially strapped. However, one way or another Maria is a survivor, she’s world-weary that’s for sure and underneath the somewhat silent exterior she’s stewing pot of fury. This one grabs me from the startling start to the very satisfying finish. It’s darkly funny and very easy to read as it’s refreshingly different and I glide through it. At one point there’s quite a shock (okay, there are quite a few shocks!) often followed by a sprinkling of glee (sorry!) then a chuckle or three. It’s very well written with excellent dialogue especially when Elsie is around and who couldn’t love her and her cats. Whilst Maria‘s tension is absolutely palpable, she’s a bag of nerves a lot of the time and brim full of fear which she tries to scrub from her mind but with limited success. You can’t help liking her as life really has chucked a lot of lemons at her, in fact more like a whole tree load of sour tasting unpleasantness. She is extremely kind and loving to Elsie which in my book makes her a good person. Overall, this is a cracking read. It’s a really good combination of the dark, there’s violence but also a lot of humour. Maria will not be easy to forget.

Maria cleans for a living. She'll clean up after a party, she'll clean your dirty kitchen floor, and she'll probably help you cleanse your life of that seriously irritating person that you just can't stand. Maria is a good person. In fact, I'd quite like to meet her and have her in my corner, as I've a feeling I'd be more than happy to employ someone with those skills; and talking of skills, this is another extremely clever and immensely enjoyable tale of dark humour and originality from Tina Baker. Some beautifully drawn characters really enhance the story - old Elsie, who Maria looks after when she's not busy cleaning and burying the bodies, is wonderful, and Elsie's nephew has a few walk-ons that really made me laugh (as well as want to punch his lights out, but let's not go there). I'd say that one of Tina Baker's strengths is her strong and varied characterisation but that does a disservice to do much else. There is humour, a great plot, she definitely knows when "less is more" and, for me, that is so important in a thriller. Not many crime writers can make dark comedy work, but Baker successfully does. My thanks to Viper Books and Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy of this novel.

After enjoying watching Tina Baker on TV some years ago, I was intrigued to read her first novel Call Me Mummy, which came out in 2021. It was absolutely brilliant and became the best book I read that year. Make Me Clean is her third novel and straight away, you’re taken into the story with an exciting first chapter that leaves you wanting to know more. The lead character is Maria, who cleans for a variety of people. She lives in a tiny bedsit in London, has no family and is struggling to cope on the amount of money she earns. The story is a good example of how hard cleaners and carers work. She has no time for anything else and rarely gets enough sleep. Maria’s favourite client is 76-year-old Elsie who has dementia and four cats. She also had an ex-husband, but not anymore. Sadly the bedside rug had to go, because Maria just couldn’t get the blood out. Throughout the book, we learn about Maria’s past and her relationship with her husband Joby. This is important because what happened in the past still affects her now. It’s also interesting to have the story flitting between past and present, filling in the gaps in Maria’s story. Elsie is a great character and completely believable. Her flashes of clarity amongst the memory loss are often witty and it’s easy to love her, as well as sympathise with her plight. She comes up with some hilarious comments and the relationship between Elsie and Maria is a lovely one. It’s also incredibly sad to see Elsie struggling sometimes. As Tina Baker writes – “So much of Elsie’s identity is now past tense.” I read 39% of the book pretty much straight off and only stopped reading because I had to go to bed. Wow, what a page turner! I completed the whole book in about a day and a half. There’s something about Tina Baker’s writing which is absolutely compelling. Her characters are quirky, flawed, yet intriguing. Although Maria couldn’t be described as a “lovely” person in some respects, we still root for her and hope she will have a good outcome in the story. Call Me Mummy was very sweary, which I know put some people off (My mum really wasn’t keen!) but Make Me Clean is much less so. It still has incredible punch and impact though. Tina Baker has this wonderful writing style which is so real, so visual – her books would make brilliant films or TV series. They also make you think. While reading this, I was thinking all sorts of questions – Is it ever right to kill? If you kill a bad person, does that make you a bad person too – or a good person doing a bad thing? Does anyone ever deserve to die? And if they do, does their killer deserve to be punished, or allowed to remain free? This book is absolutely brilliant and I’d definitely recommend it. Now to bump up her second novel to the top of my To Be Read pile…

Deliciously dark and quintessentially quirky, Make Me Clean is such a joy. Protagonist Maria is a wonderful multilayered character; the more I got to know her while progressing through this book, the more I wanted to envelop her in the biggest hug. Maria's close relationship with Elsie is supremely written, in terms of both dialogue and implication. Although this is the main focus of the plot, Tina Baker wraps each of Maria's intertwining concerns around it. This book is unpredictable, moving, funny, compelling, and a bit grisly. What a combo!

Tina's books are just fabulous. Her characters have so much depth to them and you can tell that they are written from the heart and drawn from experiences in real life as they are so believable. Maria is an exceptional cleaner and has several clients she cleans for. She has grown very fond of one in particular, Elsie who has dementia and an awful husband, so Maria would do anything to keep her safe in her own home, even murder! As the story slowly unfolds, we learn about Maria's tragic past, which explains why she is like she is. Chapters fluctuate between the past and present perfectly to reveal just a bit more of both timelines. I don't want to spoil too much about the plot as you really do need to read it yourself, but just know, there are more clients and more murders! This is a dark story with humour. I think I might have laughed way too much at the relationship with Elsie and her singing! Tina has a brilliant way of writing dark humour. This is the third book of hers I have read and enjoyed. This is a journey and discovery of a woman who has lost her way, been forced to make bad decisions and who struggles to trust. Absolutely loved it and read it in one day as I was totally immersed and invested in the whole story. Maria was a wonderful character and Elsie was just hilarious.