PETRONA

Petrona has moved

2010-12-14T21:00:33+00:00

This blog, and its associated archive of book reviews, has moved.

Please do visit the new Petrona, and adjust your bookmark or RSS feed accordingly.

Thank you very much for reading Petrona and the book review archive.

Petrona's new address: http://petronatwo.wordpress.com/ (if you list Petrona on your blog or website, I would be very grateful if you could please update the blogroll or link list on your blog or site).

Book review archive new address: http://petronareviews.wordpress.com/

Best American Mystery Stories 2010, ed. Lee Child

2010-12-06T21:16:49+00:00

Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Edited by Lee Child, Atlantic Books

The fourteenth of these annual collections of short stories first published in the previous calendar year arrived courtesy of the publisher, Corvus (Atlantic). Although I am not usually a consumer of the short-story format, I had just read a novel that upset me so much that I needed an antidote before embarking on another one, so a few short stories seemed to be just the ticket.

Each year, Otto Penzler reads all the submitted entries (more than 1,000 for this collection) – the rules are explained in his series forward. He makes a shortlist of 50 and a guest editor (this year the ubiquitous Lee Child) makes the final choice of 20. I had read four of the authors in the 2010 book before: Dennis Lehane, Jay Brandon, Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Margolin. All provide well-observed, twisty tales that I enjoyed reading. Margolin’s, in particular, manages to be both funny and sharp. Of the authors new to me, I liked the entries by Doug Allyn and Phylis Cohen – but there are plenty of others to attract your interest, ranging across place and time.

I am never sure how to review a short story because even a sentence can give away too much of the plot for a short-form piece. However, real-estate brokers, barmen, female vice cops, jewellery thieves and lawyers in the wild west all feature in a well-put-together set of stories.

At the end of the book there is a brief biography of each author, together with a short paragraph about how he or she came to write the story in the collection. I’m not sure for how long many of these will stick in my memory, but dipping in and out of this book was a pleasant experience, and on occasion a haunting one.

Book Review: The Screaming of the Innocent by Unity Dow

2010-11-25T21:14:32+00:00

The Screaming of the Innocent

Unity Dow

Spinfex, 2002

This novel is one of the saddest books I have ever read. It’s a superbly told story of village life in Botswana. The first chilling chapters are from the point of view of Mr Disanka, a successful businessman at the village level. He has a wife and several children to whom he is outwardly devoted (so much so in the case of his youngest child that she’s obese from all the sweets, ice-cream and other “treats” she demands and receives), he has a mistress who has all the same things as his wife but not quite as good, and he has various liaisons. None of this is sufficient to satisfy a very dark desire, however. He plans how to achieve his malign goal with two other local “dignitaries”.

After this mesmerising, and menacing, start to the novel, the reader is plunged into life in this country of ignorance, poverty, superstition and extreme sexism. Attitudes to women and to the poor are deeply ingrained and maintained by long traditions, supported by those themselves who suffer. The police, as well as other low-level “government officials” in their cosy jobs for life, keep everything under control and make sure any benefits are kept among themselves. The country is going through a period of positive change, typified by occasional poor children being able to attend school, and the odd inside toilet (greeted with derision for, from their perspective, very practical reasons by most of the villagers).

Five years after the start of the novel, a young woman called Amantle Bokaa takes up an internship at a remote health centre. As she begins her duties assigned to her by the lazy, unpleasant nurses who run the centre, we read of her life-story. She’s the seventh child of a typical poor peasant family, the first sibling to be able to go to school, and wants to be a doctor. She’s a determined, brave woman who uncomplainingly accepts the menial jobs meted out to her by the nurses despite the fact she’d clearly be better both with the patients and in diagnosing their illnesses. One of her tasks is to clear out a storeroom, and there she discovers a box inscribed with the name “Neo Kakang”, containing some bloody clothes. Amantle remembers that this is the name of a girl who went missing, presumed killed by an animal or drowned, five years previously.

The rest of the novel describes what Amantle does about her discovery, involving a lawyer friend whom she’s met previously when unfairly accused of inciting a student riot. In the process, the reader learns many details of the entrenched culture of poverty and repression; and the lazy, smug attitudes of the (mainly male) people who have been lucky enough to be assigned government jobs. These details are seamlessly woven into the narrative, and add a tremendous power and authenticity to the novel. One of the many aspects that I loved was the positive portrayal of young, professional women (and the occasional young man) who, helped by education, are rising above the history and traditions of their tribal, superstition-ridden society to strike out for independence and freedom of choice. The story is, however, unbearably tragic– the last chapter (which explains the title) is so terribly, pathetically upsetting that I could hardly bear to read it.

---

The author, Unity Dow, has been a prominent human rights activist and is Botswana’s first female high-court judge. This novel is a must-read, if you can bear it. It is an admirable book, and provides a searing perspective and portrait of life in a region whose impact and depth could never be matched by authors from elsewhere who try to reflect similar realities from the outside.

I purchased my copy of this novel, which is published by an admirable, small, independent Australian press, Spinifex.

Other reviews of this book are at: Shotsmag (Mary Andrea Clarke), Mixed Media, one of Michael Stanley's top 10 African crime novels (the Guardian), and quotes at the publisher's website,

From Griffith Review:

"The Screaming of the Innocent (2002), Dow's second novel, is based on a real case of a ritual killing of a child, a practice that has its roots in traditional initiation ceremonies. It is a compelling account not just of how a belief in the supernatural still exists in a society that has adopted many Western beliefs and practices, but also of how powerful figures in a small town – the village head, a school principal and a successful businessmen – can force their will on ordinary people and manipulate the local representatives of government. The novel vividly portrays multi-partner relationships, which have their roots in traditional attitudes to male-female relations and sexuality. The supernatural world again plays an ambiguous role, at worst allowing individuals to escape responsibility for their own actions. "Someone else is doing things to you," said Dow. "You might drink too much, have a car crash, and then blame witchcraft. This really becomes a problem when it's applied to AIDS." "

The best of times, the worst of times. Edition 17: Staying Alive by Peter Browne

Book Review: Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves

2010-11-21T18:15:46+00:00

Hidden Depths

Ann Cleeves

Pan, 2007

Hidden Depths is a classic crime-fiction story set in the small towns and villages of Northumberland (and, a bit, in the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne), north-east England. Inspector Vera Stanhope and her team are called out when a young teenager, Luke Armstrong, is found dead in his bath by his mother, Julie. Julie at first assumes the boy, who had learning difficulties, had committed suicide, but Vera and team quickly establish that he had been murdered. Soon after, the body of another young person, this time a woman called Lily Marsh, is found on the beach, having died in a similar fashion to Luke. Again, Vera’s team investigates.

The former case, that of Luke, has proved hard to tackle for the police due to a dearth of suspects, though Vera quickly picks up on the fact that Luke’s best friend Tom had drowned some time ago, and that although the death was accidental, Luke tried to save Tom and has since blamed himself for his friend’s death. Tom comes from a family of criminals, so Vera visits his father in prison and uncovers a couple of clues, or rather hints.

The second case, that of Lily, presents a richer crew of suspects. Lily is discovered by four men who are celebrating the sixtieth birthday of one of them, unpleasant Peter Calvert, a botanist. Calvert, in common with Cleeves characters in other novels, is both an obsessive birdwatcher and a failed yet pompous academic. Although he is a university lecturer, he has not reached what he considers to be his full potential, and has to suffer the indignity of having research papers rejected from journals, and so on. His smug wife Felicity is much younger than him. She does not work outside the home, spending her time looking after the couple’s youngest child James, cooking and keeping the house and garden beautiful. She enjoys flirting with her husband’s birdwatching friends Gary, a sound technician, Sam, a librarian and writer, and Clive, a museum curator.

Vera and her team search for a link between the two cases. Soon they find that they have almost too many connections, as more characters turn up who have or could have intersected with both victims. The charm and heart of this novel is the personality of Vera. She’s much more central here than she was in Telling Tales, her previous outing, so we learn a bit more about her background and relationship with her father, as well as her investigative methods and attitudes, and her relationship with younger policeman Joe Ashworth. Vera is not the kind of detective, nor Cleeves the kind of author, who is big on procedure and documentation. Rather, Vera goes to see all the characters in turn, gradually digging under their defences and working out how their past or present secrets might be relevant. Whether or not this approach is a realistic depiction of police-work, the result is a compelling, sympathetic and insightful account of the quietly desperate lives led by some people, on the edge of mental illness in some cases, and how they struggle to keep going in a hostile or indifferent world. The character studies here are acute, and while there are so many clues and connections that the solution to the mysteries does have an element of “select any person out of the list of suspects” about it, the novel as a whole is readable, absorbing and enjoyable.

My copy of this book was a gift from the publisher.

There are three books in the Vera Stanhope series: The Crow Trap, Telling Tales and Hidden Depths (links go to my reviews). The next installment, Silent Voices, is out in the UK early next year. Vera will also be a TV character early next year (UK), in which Hidden Depths is currently planned to be the first episode even though it is the third in the book series.

Among her other books, Ann Cleeves is the author of a Shetland Quartet. My reviews of these novels can be read at Euro Crime.

Read other reviews of Hidden Depths at: Euro Crime (Sunnie Gill), Musings from a Muddy Island (Juliet Doyle), Spinetingler magazine (Martin Edwards) and DJ's Krimiblog (Dorte Jakobsen).

Book Review: The Siege by Stephen White

2010-11-20T14:55:32+00:00

The Siege

Stephen White

Signet, 2010 (first published 2009).

How does one write an original thriller in the crowded niche of books about terrorists/hostages? If the author had not been Stephen White, I would not have picked up this book on the grounds that such plots are usually 100 per cent predictable, with the only variations being location, cause of terrorism, etc. Nevertheless, Stephen White is a reliable author, and after completing The Siege I think it fair to say that if you like his Alan Gregory novels, you’ll probably like this one, which although it features series regular Sam Purdy, a Boulder cop currently under suspension, can be read without any reference to the rest of the author’s output.

The Siege does not start promisingly, with a confusing opening chapter that plunges us into the main action, told from the point of view of New Haven cop Sergeant Christine Carmody as she is dealing with an act of violence against a hostage being held in a ‘tomb’ at Yale University. After this horrible yet confusingly described event, the author steps back to relate the story of the previous few days that led up to the crisis. Some of this build-up concerns the aforementioned Sam, who is attending an upmarket engagement party in Florida. He has been invited because his soon-to-be stepdaughter is marrying the son of the squillionaire Ronaldo Calderon and his geophysicist wife Ann. Knowing Sam is in law enforcement, Ann reveals to him that her daughter Jane, a student at Yale, has suddenly stopped communicating with her, and that she’s very worried as the two are usually in constant contact. She asks him for discreet help. Rapidly, Sam surmises that the reason for Jane’s silence is a dreadful one.

Chapters switch between Sam’s quest to find out more about what has happened to Jane, and Christine’s cop duties in New Haven. Luckily, Christine has a boss who is not very bright, so between explanations to him and Sam (who soon arrives at the location) scouting around, the reader is given a quick tutorial on Yale tombs (actually large, stone buildings), secret student societies (reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s novel A Secret History), “tapping” and so on, as well as a useful street map, so one can become geographically orientated about the act(s) of terrorism and other dramatic events in the immediate area.

A third story is being told in parallel – that of an odd couple of investigators, a female CIA agent called Dee, and her occasional male lover, FBI counter-intelligence specialist Poe. Poe is a victim of the Oklahoma bomb atrocity and has never really recovered. He and Dee between them are interested in “evolved terrorism” – where terrorism might go if it stopped being the provenance of fanatics and began to be financed by high-tech big business. They, too, home in on New Haven as soon as they hear news of the hostage crisis.

The Siege is very involving and exciting during the chapters about Sam, Christine, Dee and Poe, as they try to fulfil their various missions with honour and courage, as well as racing against time to second-guess (and hence try to foil) the terrorists. Where the novel falls down is in exactly in the usual failing of “terrorist-hostage” novels: that is, the terrorists are far too all-seeing, all-powerful, able to anticipate any move by the authorities and technologically beyond mere sophistication. Their motivation, when finally revealed, is logical but not that credible, and for me does not fully hang together with their actions towards their student hostages. So, I score the novel 10 out of 10 for the "good guy" characters and the exciting, tense events as told from their perspectives as they converge on New Haven– I particularly liked the geophysical subplot – but far less than that for the routine terrorists and the action-packed (equally routine) outcome and aftermath.

I purchased my copy of this novel. Thanks to Kathy for reminding me the other day in a comment that this book was on my "to be purchased" list.

The Siege at the author's website.

Read other, very positive, reviews of The Siege at: Mysterious Reviews; The Novel Bookworm; and Seeing the World Through Books. (This last review, by Mary Whipple, is excellent both as a review and as a very informative piece about the setting of the novel.)

Crime fiction to give for Christmas

2010-11-18T18:30:00+00:00

Give books for Christmas, writes Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise, and who am I to disagree? Giving crime fiction for Christmas, though, seems slightly counter-seasonal. I am never quite sure how the generalist recipient (as opposed to a dyed-in-the-wool addict) really feels when presented with a dark tome.

Nevertheless, Kerrie has urged bloggers to make their recommendations for Christmas gifts from the titles they have read this year, so I'll give it a go. I've divided my selections into two:

Presents for crime-fiction addicts:

ShadowPlay by Karen Campbell (Glasgow, Scotland)

Kind of Blue by Miles Corwin (Los Angeles, USA)

The Last Fix by K O Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett (Oslo, Norway)

The Build Up by Philip Gwynne (Darwin, Australia)

Rupture by Simon Lelic (London, England)

Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo, translated by Jethro Soutar (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Water Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar, translated by Martin Schifino (Vigo, Spain)

I chose the above titles because they are not by standard, well-known authors in the genre, but are distinctive (and not nth in a series).

Presents for "generalists" or those new to the genre:

Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai (Julundur, India)

Winterland by Alan Glynn (Dublin, Ireland)

The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (Norfolk, England)

B-Very Flat by Margot Kinberg ("Tilton", USA)

Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer, translated by K L Seegers (Cape Town, South Africa)

Thursday Night Widows by Claudia Pinerio, translated by Miranda France (near Buenos Aires, Argentina)

The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson (Venice, Italy, and England)

I chose these titles because they all tell a very good story, as well as involving a "crime". Some of them might not strictly be considered as "crime fiction" but I think any of them would encourage a novice to try a few more in the genre!

Do you have recommendations for Christmas presents? Visit Mysteries in Paradise to add your post of choices.

Book Review: The Burning by Jane Casey

2010-11-17T18:12:00+00:00

The Burning

Jane Casey

Ebury, November 2010 (paperback).

Part police-procedural and part psychological suspense, The Burning is a very good crime novel. From the cover words, one would think that this book is about a serial killer who is attacking young women walking home late at night in south London, and burning them. Although this plot description would usually put me off reading a book, my experience of the author’s previous (debut) novel, The Missing, encouraged me to buy The Burning, and I’m glad I did as the serial killer element is very much a side-issue.

DC Maeve Kerrigan is part of the team working on the case of the murdered women. She’s called out at 3 a.m. one day when it is thought that the killer has been caught in the act. Simultaneously with the discovery that this is not true, the body of a young woman is found – presumed the fifth victim. Maeve and the head of the task force, DI Godley, have their doubts based on some differences in the fifth case from the previous four, so Maeve finds herself assigned to a 'sideline' investigation into the fifth murder. Godley wants to keep the possibility that there may be two killers within his squad and away from the media until he is sure one way or the other.

Maeve is a competent detective plagued by petty sexism and racism (she’s Irish) that never reaches the level of justifiying a complaint, but which is corrosive and unsettling for her. At the same time, she’s impulsively moved in two months earlier with Ian, a banker, and their relationship is not working out, to put it mildly.

Despite her personal insecurities, Maeve pursues her investigation into the “fifth” case with professional vigour, which involves investigating friends, family and ex-colleagues of the dead woman. Most of the book is told from her point of view, but the chapters in Maeve’s voice are interspersed with short entries by Louise, the dead girl’s best friend. By these means, we gradually build up a picture of the woman and her life, as Maeve closes in on what must have happened.

Matters come to a head one night when the police, including Maeve, take part in a large undercover operation. Maeve, with the help of her sympathetic colleague Rob and DI Godley, works out the truth by a combination of deductive reasoning and instinct – but of course, not before she herself is endangered.

This novel is both readable and impressive. Although its context is that of the search for the serial killer, the author is much more interested in the life of the fifth victim and how her death came about, so rather than dominating the novel with clichéd accounts of murders, the serial-killer case is tangential to the main event – constantly threatening and creating pressure on the police team, yet insubstantial rather than in the foreground. In my opinion, this makes the novel both stronger and distinctive. Although the solution to the “fifth” mystery is not much of a surprise, it certainly has impact, due to the reader’s involvement in the characters, particularly Maeve –a determined and attractive protagonist whom I hope to meet again one day.

I purchased this novel on impulse as a half-price offer.

There seem to be no independent reviews of the book yet in the media or on blogs, apart from this very brief one by Cath Staincliffe at Tangled Web. There are some customer reviews at the UK Amazon website.

My review of The Missing, Jane Casey's previous novel.

Jane Casey at AuthorsPlace.

Book Review: December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

2010-11-15T19:03:28+00:00

December Heat

Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza

Translator Benjamin Moser

First published in Portuguese 1998; first published in English 2005.

In the winter heat of Rio de Janeiro, a young homeless boy witnesses an insensible drunk being helped into a car outside a restaurant late at night. From his precious cardboard box, the boy watches as the man is wedged into his car by a woman and the restaurant’s doorman – tantalisingly, he sees a wallet sticking out of the drunk’s pocket. Unobserved in the chaos, he manages to snatch it. After the car drives off, he investigates his spoils but sees that the wallet contains a policeman’s ID. Terrified, the boy takes the cash and drops the wallet back in the gutter. He waits to see who will pick it up.

Later, retired cop Viera wakes up with a dreadful hangover and a severe memory lapse. Realizing his wallet has gone, he’s annoyed about the loss of his police ID card more than anything, as he’s been using it since he retired and can’t get another one. He vaguely remembers that he went out the previous evening with his girlfriend Magali. He assumes that she has dropped him home and gone back to her own flat, so goes there to ask if she has his wallet. She is out, so he leaves his card. After returning to his apartment the phone rings. It is Inspector Espinosa, who has been called out to the scene of a murder – Magali’s. Espinosa’s only lead is Viera’s card.

The first half of this novel is a totally absorbing story of Espinosa’s teasing out of events before and after the crime. He soon discovers the existence of the homeless boy, and manages to make brief contact with him via a “street teacher” Clodorado. The boy is terrified though, as life on the streets is cheap and he has every reason to believe he is in danger.

As in the first novel in which he appears, Espinosa spends much of this novel torn between two women, this time they are Flor, a prostitute who was Magali’s best friend and who takes up with Viera; and Kiki, a young artist who sells her paintings at a road junction and is a witness in the case. Espinosa’s musings over the two women are far less interesting than the case itself, which gradually unravels against a sympathetic and harrowing background of the many poor people struggling to survive in this huge city. About half way through the novel, Espinosa and Viera run out of leads, and for the rest of it, Espinosa is either searching for the same few people, or just missing them (this book was written at a time when communication was by answering machine not mobile phone), or pondering on the appeal of the two very different women characters. Perhaps I found this last aspect a little tiresome as Espinosa spent the previous novel, The Silence of the Rain, similarly torn between two women – neither of whom is mentioned here.

At the end, Espinosa does work out what is happening, but in a curiously detached way, separate from any organised investigation. There are various leads which are not followed up with any vigour, and the explanation, when it comes, is too full of supposition to be very satisfactory. Even so, the novel is an extremely atmospheric depiction of life in Rio de Janeiro which I very much enjoyed reading, despite its slight failings as a convincing crime novel. The perspective of the street people and of those struggling to escape the slums and shanty dwellings to make something of themselves are particularly moving. The translation seems sympathetic, but is in US, not English, English.

I purchased a second-hand copy of the Picador edition of this book.

Read my review of the first in the series, The Silence of the Rain.

Read other reviews of December Heat at: The Bookworm Wannabe (review in English of the original Portuguese version) and January Magazine,

The Silence of the Rain has also been reviewed at: Mysteries in Paradise and The View from the Blue House.

Southwesterly Wind, the third in the series, was recently reviewed at Reactions to Reading.

New UK fiction for February

2010-11-13T19:08:18+00:00

Feeling in an evil mood today, I thought I'd share some of the new books due to be published in the UK in February 2011, courtesy of The Bookseller (5 November issue, starting on p. 25). The Bookseller still has not got around to noting whether any of these are simultaneously published in e-format (or maybe the publisher is not providing the information), but it's worth checking at online booksellers or the publishers' websites, as an increasing number of books are being published electronically and in print at the same time - pricing and geographical restrictions permitting, sadly.

Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End, by Leif G. W. Persson (Doubleday, £16.99) seems to be the only translated crime novel due out this month. The novel, first published in Sweden in 2002, has already been reviewed by Norman of Crime Scraps. It concerns the web of corruption and treachery uncovered by Superintendent Lars Johansson of the Stockholm police when a man dies falling from a tall building. The author is a criminologist and psychological profiler who has advised the Swedish Ministry of Justice, according to the blurb.

Big news for fans of US crime fiction is the publication of Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane (Little Brown, £16.99), featuring his series characters, investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, after a long gap while the author wrote other books. This time a 16-year-old girl is missing -again. She was kidnapped when she was 4, and Kenzie worked on that case. "The search will lead him to Boston's most dangerous streets", apparently. Another very popular US author, Elmore Leonard, has a new book out in February, Djibouti (W&N, £18.99), his 48th! This one is about a documentary film-maker who travels to the Horn of Africa to film pirates.

Other books that will be on my reading list are two series novels - David Hunter in The Calling of the Grave by Simon Beckett (Bantam, £12.99) - see this Petrona preview - and the new Vera Stanhope book, Silent Voices by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, £17.99) - a Petrona preview is here. There is a new Tony Black novel, Truth Lies Bleeding (Preface, £10.99), a police procedural set in Edinburgh in which DI Rob Brennan, recently returned from psychiatric leave, investigates a violent death. And Sophie Hannah will I am sure do well with her latest, Lasting Damage (Hodder, £14.99), her sixth psychological suspense novel in which a woman sees a body in a house while browsing an online property website. Sounds intriguing.

On the thriller front, Simon Kernick offers The Payback (Bantam, £12.99), set in Manilla and about "two cops haunted by the past" - the titular payback being what's in store when they meet. Robin Cook's Cure (Pan Macmillan, £17.99) concerns biotech espionage as the death of a CIA agent is linked to companies dealing in stem-cell research; and Richard North Patterson's In the Name of Honour uses a court martial format to highlight the high cost of war- in this case the US army in Iraq, the case being about a soldier who shoots his commanding officer.

There are plenty of other novels: Sleep like the Dead by Alex Gray (Sphere, £12.99), a DCI Lorimer novel set in Glasgow; Blood and Ashes by Matt Hilton (Hodder, £12.99), in which Joe Hunter investigates a racist conspiracy; a geopolitical thriller End Game by Matthew Glass (Corvus, £12.99), a sequel to Ultimatum once again set in the Horn of Africa; The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing by Tarquin Hall (Hutchinson, £12.99) - a second outing for Delhi detective Vish Puri; and the inevitable "best sellers", in February's case The Confession by John Grisham (Century £12.99) about a man on death row, and Mortal Remains by Kathy Reichs (Heinemann, £17.99), the 13th case for forensic anthropologist Tempe Brennan if anyone is counting. (Which reminds me that the 32nd J. D. Robb novel, Treachery in Death, is out also (Piatkus, £16.99), a series that started well with a fresh idea, but which has long since become mere formula, twice a year.)

Book Review: The Water Widow by Ella Griffiths

2010-11-12T18:28:00+00:00

The Water Widow

By Ella Griffiths, translated by J. Basil Cowlishaw

Quartet books, 1986.

First published in Norway 1977.

The second of Ella Griffiths's two novels that were translated into English, The Water Widow, is another engaging, brisk-paced investigation for detective brothers Sergeant Rudolf and Detective Karsten Nilsen of the Oslo police. The brothers were first encountered by English readers in Murder on Page Three.

The main plot of the book concerns Rudolf Nilsen’s investigation of the death of a man who was last seen complaining of bad toothache. The man, Georg Brandt, is in his 50s and lives alone – it is his elderly mother who reports his absence to the police after he misses a couple of regular visits to the nursing home where she lives. Rudolf spends most of the weekend asking Brandt’s colleagues in the mens’ clothes shop where he worked if they have any idea where he is, and questioning Brandt’s neighbours and landlord. He gets nowhere, but on Monday morning a dentist returns from a trip away and discovers a body in the treatment chair at his surgery.

Rudolf is in his 50s himself, an overweight policeman who is conscious of his age, his inability to climb stairs without getting completely out of breath, and feels guilty for shamefully ignoring his long-suffering wife while he works constant overtime. He embarks on a diet and spends the entire book in a state of hunger. His younger brother Karsten is an alcoholic, having been abandoned by his long-term girlfriend Wendy. As the novel progresses, we realise there is a deeper side to Karsten, bought out by his unlikely partnership with a young rookie cop.

Aside from these personal factors, the novel is a crisp, well-observed investigation into the strange death of Brandt – the only real clue being that a couple of witnesses claim to have seen a person in full widow’s weeds leaving the dentist’s building in the relevant timeframe. By the classic methods of interviewing suspects, witnesses and following up all leads, Rudolf gradually realises that the crime must be connected to the drugs trade, and in particular a theft from a local hospital. The author is particularly strong on conveying the varied tragedies of drug addiction, which is not as embedded as in Sweden or Germany at that time (we are told) but increasingly has an iron grip on too many (mainly young) people.

The ending consists of too many events and hasty explanations, but as a whole the book is a classic police procedural, well-plotted and well-told. I liked in particular in the characters and relationships of the brothers, and the author’s acute observations of several of the sad, pleasant and distinctly unpleasant people they encounter. What is more, this novel (and its predecessor) stand the test of time extremely well.

I purchased a second-hand copy of this novel.

My review of Murder on Page Three.

Euro Crime post in which I first heard about this author.

When I posted my review of Murder on Page Three, the translator, J. Basil Cowlishaw, kindly left a comment. I reproduce part of it here as some fascinating background about the author. “It's years ago that I translated it [Murder on Page Three], along with The Water Widow and a handful of Ella Griffiths's short stories, one of which was adapted for television by Anglia. Ella was my first (but fortunately not my last) Norwegian girlfriend when I came here in May 1945 with the RAF during the Liberation. We lost touch in the intervening years, but someone gave her my name as a translator and we managed to get our act together and as a result she was published in the UK. She died about ten years ago.”

Ella Griffiths at Wikipedia (Norwegian)

Book Review: Raid and the Blackest Sheep by Harri Nykanen

2010-11-10T18:42:00+00:00

Raid and the Blackest Sheep

Harri Nykanen, translator Peter Ylitalo Leppa

Ice Cold Crime, 2010, Kindle format

(first published in Finnish, 2000)

Raid is a young, silent and mysterious enforcer who has been paid to accompany Nygren, an ill, ageing criminal recently released after a long jail sentence, on a journey round Finland. As the odd couple meet Nygren’s ex-associates, it seems that the old man is wreaking vengeance on those who have betrayed him by keeping money that they owe him for his pre-incarceration “investments” into their shady businesses. Raid is a man of few (or, in public, no) words, but his increasingly ruthless methods are effective at extracting what is owed to Nygren even in spots so tight that there is no obvious exit. (Raid is a tad too superhuman for my taste, but even so he’s easy to like.)

Gradually, it is apparent that Nygren’s journey is more elegiac than it seemed at first. Some of the people he visits are people he himself has betrayed; others are lost family members. As Raid drives up and down the country, Nygren tells him stories of his past, and how he has come to this point – and eventually, we come to see why Nygren has chosen this particular companion.

Interspersed with this story is that of some Helsinki police detectives, primarily Detective Janssen, an overweight, balding mid-50s cop who to his disgruntlement has been sent to a health farm for a couple of weeks to get fit. Although he’s been married for many years and has never been unfaithful to his wife (an absent but strong influence on him in this novel), he’s tempted to stray by his easygoing colleague Huusko and, in a different way, by Anna, one of the physical therapists. Soon, his colleagues back at the station contact him about Nygren’s activities, as Janssen has had previous dealings with both him and his mysterious companion Raid. Why is Kempas, the head of the undercover unit, an obsessed workaholic, so determined to find Nygren guilty of something? Unwilling to be pulled into what seems like a witch-hunt, Janssen decides to abscond from his ordeal by health and find out for himself what is going on, with the help of his previous relationship with Raid.

I very much enjoyed this book, which is an unusual mix of themes – police-procedural, epic journey, “mysterious hard man”, and ironic humour. By following Nygren and Raid’s journey, and Janssen’s low-key pursuit, the reader can experience quite a few Finnish locations and life – and appreciate the national sport of cracking jokes at the expense of the Swedes. I did not much like the violent coda to the novel - my favourite parts were about Janssen and his colleagues, whom I hope to encounter again.

The Raid series is very popular in Finland and has also been filmed. According to the bibliography in this novel, the first Raid book was published in 1992 and there have been at least seven in the series since – this one is somewhere in the middle. (There may be more, but as the bibliography is in Finnish, I am assuming that only titles containing the word “Raid” are relevant.) It is great that Ice Cold Crime is translating this series (as well as books by other Finnish authors) for the US market and that this novel is available in Kindle format for UK readers.

I purchased my Kindle version of this novel.

Ice Cold Crime

About this novel at Ice Cold Crime

Other reviews of this novel at: Nordic Bookblog (where I first heard of the book, thanks, Peter!); Scandinavian Crime Fiction (Barbara Fister).

Book Review: The Hunting Season by Elizabeth Rigbey

2010-11-08T20:35:24+00:00

The Hunting Season
Elizabeth Rigbey

Penguin, 2007 (first published by Michael Joseph 2006)

Matt Selekis is a doctor at a large hospital in Salt Lake City. He specialises in endocrine and oncological surgery, and is something of a (lower case s) saint, having spent some years working in Eritrea after graduating from medical school, before returning home. One night, a terminally ill, elderly patient begs Matt to end his pain, and Matt obliges –without alerting the on-call oncologist first because Matt knows the man will be drunk. Despite having been asked earlier by the patient, Mr Zoy, and his wife, to undertake this course if Mr Zoy’s suffering became too great to bear, Matt finds himself and his hospital subject to an ethical lawsuit.

Matt has a self-questioning nature, and reacts to these events by losing much of his fragile self-confidence. He’s always been an outsider from the hospital’s medical establishment, disapproving of the money it makes from performing (as Matt sees it) unnecessary weight-loss surgeries, and in addition he is not one of the LDS (Latter Day Saints with a capital S) who are dominant in this city. Nevertheless he is blissfully happily married to Denise, and they have a young son. Both Matt and Denise have elderly fathers: Clem, Denise’s father, has been a leading LDS figure, now in a self-chosen nursing facility and in Matt’s view dominating his daughter (who has left the Mormon church); Hirsh, Matt’s father, lives in what was the family’s vacation house in the wilds of the Rockies. Matt and Denise visit their respective fathers often.

Elizabeth (formerly Liz) Rigbey is masterful at conveying slow menace. Someone is following Matt in a red car: he is convinced it is the Zoys’ son, but never sees him through the darkened windows of his car so cannot know for sure. The book is told from the point of view of Matt, who is clearly an unreliable narrator as he tries to remember key events from his childhood summers in the holiday house. His mother Hilly was a concert pianist who has died of cancer many years previously, but Matt has many conflicting memories about her last summer and in particular his family’s relationship with their neighbours, the Minellis. Mr Minelli, a real-estate agent, was a bully but seemed to have a hold over Hilly. He died from gunshot wounds, but who was responsible? Matt was best friends with Minelli’s youngest son, Steve, but has not seen him for 26 years since that last summer in the mountains when the tragedy occurred. In the wake of the Zoys’ accusations, Steve suddenly re-enters Matt’s life, both at work and as a photographer of unsettling and questionable art. Steve is obsessed with his father’s death and persists in asking Matt to find out more from his own father, Hirsch. Matt and his father have a pretty silent relationship (Hirsch was a doctor and Matt has followed in his footsteps), and Matt is reluctant to confront the older man.

As well as all this ancient history, Matt himself seems to have secrets related to Denise, his wife’s, first marriage. How did Weslake, her first husband, die, and why is he a constant presence in Matt’s marriage? How is his business – selling a presumed fake slimming mixture – tied up with Matt’s family life and Denise’s father? Did Matt know Denise or Weslake while Weslake was alive?

The last part of this book is about a highly symbolic hunting trip that Matt and Hirsch undertake, in which it seems that many of these secrets may be revealed. That is, if the wild elements do not first defeat the pair, as Hirsch is pretty old and Matt inexperienced at wilderness survival.

There are many aspects of The Hunting Season that are extremely good. It’s a very well written book and particularly strong on the location both in Salt Lake City and in the surrounding mountains. The hospital, Matt’s friends, the LDS and its role in society, and the old locals who live near Hirsch are all portrayed with conviction. The plot is too drawn-out for my taste: the book is 500 pages long and I think that the air of creepy menace and false memories that provide the suspense can’t quite justify that length. Denise, Matt’s wife, is something of an insubstantial yet idealised figure, and though Hilly comes across in sharp relief (though she is only present in the novel in half-glimpsed fragments), Hirsch is slightly unconvincing as he switches from being a universally respected retired family doctor to insisting on an extremely demanding, survivalist and dangerous journey with his son, which seems out of character. The Hunting Season is a very absorbing read about a likeable if rather incurious protagonist (he never looks anything up to answer his doubts and insecurities). By the end of the novel, several mysteries are solved, but one is left slightly in the air, wondering how things will turn out for the characters after the last page has been turned. I'm very glad I read this book, and if the author writes another one (I hope she will), I shall certainly read it.

When she was still called Liz Rigbey, this author wrote an original and distinctive debut called Total Eclipse, about an astronomer. If you can get hold of it, I highly recommend it as one of the novels I’ve read that really stands out in my mind. Her second novel, Summertime, is very good but like The Hunting Season, does not quite match the first. All three books are very well written indeed, with a haunting, involving quality that really conveys what it is like under the skin of some of the characters.

I can't find other (proper) reviews of The Hunting Season so here is the book on Amazon UK with a couple of brief reader comments.

My alphabet post about Liz Rigbey (which led me to discover the existence of The Hunting Season).

Interview with the author about her previous novel, Summertime, at the publisher's (Penguin) website.

Article by the author about The Hunting Season and its lack of Russian elements.

Book Review: A Capital Crime by Laura Wilson

2010-11-06T16:10:00+00:00

A Capital Crime

By Laura Wilson

Quercus 2010

A Capital Crime is a great piece of storytelling. I am glad of my policy of knowing nothing about the content of books before I read them, as had I known that this novel is based on a famous real-life crime, I might not have embarked on it. And I would have missed out.

It is 1950, six years since the traumatic events in DI Stratton’s life that happened at the end of An Empty Death. Stratton and his trusty sergeant Ballard are contacted by the Welsh police because a man has confessed to them that he’s murdered his wife at their previous house, in London. Upon investigation, it turns out that not only has this 19-year-old, pregnant woman disappeared, but so has her 14-month-old baby. Soon, the worst is discovered, and Stratton has to relive personal traumas while managing this case. A man is sent for trial, and the case seems cut and dried.

The main strength of this novel is the author’s sheer storytelling ability. Having established the crime plot, she turns away from that and to the character of Diana Calthrop, from the first novel in this series (Stratton’s War). Diana is soon to be divorced from her weak husband, and intends to make a new life for herself in London. This she does, very capably, soon landing a job at a film studio as assistant to a director. While she is there, she meets Monica, Stratton’s daughter, who is a make-up artist and who is also a major character in this novel. Monica, like her father, is very conscious of the class divide between her and Diana, but again like her father, is attracted to her. Diana, however, with her unerring instinct for disaster, embarks on a course that will bring her into a very different life to the one with which she’s familiar. There is a contemporary resonance to the knife-edge on which Diana lives, and her story is told with real passion and depth.

A few years pass. Stratton and his colleagues hear of one or two disappearances of prostitutes, but cannot make any headway in finding them. Suddenly, a terrible discovery is made, and the policemen are presented with the worst, most upsetting case they’ve ever seen in their careers – careers that have seen plenty of horrors while serving in London during the recently ended Second World War.

Stratton is an attractive, introspective character, conscious of his weaknesses and uncomfortably aware of his inability to communicate fully with Monica and his belligerent son Pete, now doing his National Service. He’s hampered by the conventions of the day, yet sensitive in a way that many of his contemporaries are not. A chance meeting with Diana at the Festival of Britain sends him into a confused state, yet this experience is nothing compared with the circumstances when they next meet.

The middle section of this novel was a compulsive page-turner for me, reading about Diana’s life and about the people she knew while working for the secret service in the War. I was intrigued by Monica and the setting of the film studio. The last part of the book focuses more on the awful crime case, from the point of view of the police investigation. I found this less interesting than the interpersonal stories of the Strattons and their family and friends, together with Diana’s circle. Perhaps that is because I find the true-life case on which this novel is based both repellent and tedious.

Laura Wilson has written an excellent novel in A Capital Crime. Her invented characters, whether central or tangential, are completely realistic and of their time yet with a subtle overtone of present-day perspective. Her observations of the social mores of the day are acute, and her cast-list (with the exception of the criminal) sympathetic yet unsentimental. Her settings are beautifully detailed and convincing throughout. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and so much hope that it will not be too long before the next episode in the life of DI Ted Stratton.

I am very grateful to the publisher, Quercus, for my copy of this book.

About the book at the author's website - including a free download of chapter 1.

My reviews of the first two in the series: Stratton's War and An Empty Death.

Read other reviews of A Capital Crime at: The Guardian, The Independent, Financial Times, Book Geeks, and Tales of a Shirley Scribe.

Spring 2011 books from Pan Macmillan

2010-11-05T18:38:00+00:00

I received the Spring books catalogue from Pan Macmillan the other day, and as well as one or two upcoming titles that have previously featured on this blog, there are one or two more new books due that I am looking forward to.

Silent Voices by Ann Cleeves (February) is the new Vera Stanhope novel, following on (after a gap) from The Crow Trap, Telling Tales and Hidden Depths. Here, Vera discovers a body in the sauna at her local gym (what can she be doing there? I haven't read Hidden Depths yet so maybe that is why it seems an odd place for Vera to be). The ensuing investigation sounds suitably challenging and intriguing.

Little Girl Lost by Brian McGilloway (May) is a standalone crime novel from the author of the Inspector Devlin series (Borderlands, Gallows Lane, Bleed a River Deep and The Rising). In Little Girl Lost, a small girl is found wandering at the edge of an ancient woodland. She's traumatised and does not speak, trusting only the person who rescued her, DS Lucy Vaughn. Lucy is rapidly involved in another case, and has some very interesting-sounding family problems. Definitely one to watch out for.

The Redeemed by M. R. Hall (April) is the third Jenny Cooper novel after The Coroner and The Disappeared. A psychiatric nurse is found dead, suspected of committing suicide. Of course, Jenny Cooper is going to find out that all is not what it seems. We are also promised some revelations about the mysterious trauma in her past - "her whole life has been governed by deception".

The Facility by Simon Lelic (January), author of the stunning debut novel Rupture (1000 Cuts), is about a government facility hidden deep in the countryside, and two people, a journalist and an anxious wife, who try to uncover its secrets.

There are several other novels in this catalogue that I might read, but these four are on my "definite" list. Unfortunately there is no Hakan Nesser due in the Spring, but I hope one might be forthcoming later next year. All the books featured here are said to be available in e-format as well as in printed versions.

Book Review: Kind of Blue by Miles Corwin

2010-11-04T19:56:12+00:00

Kind of Blue

By Miles Corwin

Oceanview, 2010.

Ash Levine quit the LAPD in a mixture of guilt and anger when a witness to a crime he was investigating was shot and killed. He’s very much at loose ends, though, stifled by his family and not enjoying the prospect of law school. He therefore jumps at the chance offered to him by his old mentor, Lieutenant Duffy, to return to the squad to investigate the shooting of a retired cop, Pete Revitch. Levine is full of energy and soon finds some leads which he pursues with vigour, while at the same time suffering some slings and arrows from old colleagues and superiors who are less than pleased that he’s back on the force.

Told in the first person, Kind of Blue (from the Miles Davis track) is a detailed yet fast-paced and absorbing police procedural with plenty of clues and leads to keep the reader on her toes. The author has previously written two non-fiction books about the LAPD, one as a result of shadowing two detectives for some months, and this deep and detailed knowledge is evident in every paragraph of this novel. The author does not fall into the trap of providing too much information, though. Levine is a man with a mission, and single-mindedly pursues the righteous way of investigation, not diverted by the politics of modern policing. At the same time, he has a somewhat troubled personal life: he’s divorced, a veteran of the Israeli army, and suffers nightmares as a result of his military experiences. None of this is dwelt on too much, so does not become a cliché; mainly the reader is caught up in the investigation of Revitch’s death as Levine pursues the few leads he has, re-interviewing witnesses and relatives, until he stumbles across the possibility that the dead man may have been on the take.

Even when the case appears to be solved, there are three or four more twists in the story, twists that address issues of police corruption, gang warfare in LA, and the extremes of rich and poor who live in this city of dreams. I very much enjoyed the book. Levine has plenty of problems and neuroses to cope with, and I think that some of these will settle down a bit so that future novels (of which I hope there will be some) will become more measured as a result. The ending of the book (or rather, the several endings) are to me less convincing than the main story, perhaps because Levine seems to be able to do anything (shoot people, be shot, etc) and be instantly back on the case, which does not seem to me all that likely. Even so, one wants very much for him to solve the current case as well as the old one which is haunting him.

It is likely that this book will be compared to the early work of Michael Connelly, as Levine could develop into a next-generation Harry Bosch. I think the comparison stands up well. Miles Corwin still has some way to go to develop the deceptively easy and mournful, elegiac style that characterises Connelly’s cleverly plotted novels, but on this evidence, he could certainly get there. I very much enjoyed my first encounter with Ash Levine’s life and his LAPD, and hope it will not be the last.

I thank the publisher, Oceanview, for so kindly sending me a copy of this novel.

About the book at the publisher website (including endorsement from Michael Connelly himself).

An interview with the author about this book (PDF).

Author's website.

Other reviews of this novel are at: Mystery Maven, The Mystery Gazette, Bookloons Reviews , Fresh Fiction and Suite 101.

My Euro Crime and Petrona reviews for October

2010-11-03T18:35:00+00:00

My three reviews for Euro Crime during October were of very different books: the latest exciting journalism-crime case for Swedish reporter Annika Bengstrom; a detailed and (seemingly) realistic Scottish police procedural with a senior female protagonist; and a Jack Reacher adventure thriller set in Nebraska. From my reviews:

Red Wolf by Liza Marklund: I found the novel a completely absorbing read and continue to regard this series as second to none in contemporary crime writing. Annika is both a serious-minded, determined protagonist, and a brave heroine for our strange, mixed-up times. *****

Shadowplay by Karen Campbell: Of all the UK police series being written today, I think Karen Campbell's has rapidly become my favourite, mainly for its authenticity and for the character of Anna, a convincingly portrayed woman who is ambitious yet not prepared to sacrifice any of her own personal principles in order to smooth her path. For this reason, she's probably admired by her colleagues more than she realises. I think this series is so far impressively varied (each of the three books has had a very different focus) and well written. I am looking forward to more. ***

Worth Dying For by Lee Child: As usual, my verdict on this novel is that if you like Jack Reacher stories, you'll like this one. It contains all the ingredients that make this series such a success: tough hero adhering to his own moral code and standing up for the "true" American values that transcend officialdom; some exciting set-pieces; easy to read – the prose is not as simplistic as is found in some other bestselling novels but is pretty easygoing; a plot that provides a bit of mystery and suspense without taxing the brain too much; and plenty of wish-fulfillment concerning ethics and values that we'd all like for our society but which are unlikely ever to happen. Don't go looking for holes in the plot as there are very many of them indeed. *

At Petrona I posted 14 reviews, with a pretty good global spread. Some of these books I enjoyed more than others, but there were at least some things to like in all of them, and a lot of things to like in some of them! I've given them one, two or three stars here, to indicate my own relative favourites among this particular batch.

Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay (USA, Canadian author)**
Blacklands by Belinda Bauer (England)***
The Guards by Ken Bruen (Ireland)***
Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave (New Zealand)*
The Reversal by Michael Connelly (USA)***
Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher (Australia)***
Black Ice by Leah Giarratano (Australia)*
The Build Up by Phillip Gwynne (Australia)***
Gone by Mo Hayder (England)***
Sister by Rosamund Lupton (England)***
Audition by Ryu Murakami (Japan)*
Let the Dead Lie by Malla Nunn (South Africa)**
Experimental Heart by Jennifer L Rohn (England)**
Silence by Jan Costin Wagner (Finland, German author)***

Although I very much liked many of these titles, my book of the month has to be Red Wolf by Liza Marklund, translator Neil Smith. Don't let this put anyone off from trying some of the others, though, as there are some very good novels in October's selections.

My reviews so far this year.
My Euro Crime review archive.
Archive of all my book reviews.

Book Review: Our Lady of Pain by Elena Forbes

2010-11-02T17:20:00+00:00

Our Lady of Pain

Elena Forbes

Quercus 2008 (review is of the UK paperback edition, 2009)

The second book about DI Mark Tartaglia is a jolly good read which I enjoyed far more than his debut outing in Die With Me. I had put off reading Our Lady of Pain for a while owing to its title, cover and "teaser" words, which I find less than inviting - as well as a slight ambivalence about the first novel (see my review). As it turns out, Our Lady of Pain is a classic police procedural with nothing to do with the picture (or teaser words). It isn't among the best crime novels I have read this year, but it is a good read, nonetheless.

Tartaglia is the grandson of Italian immigrants who settled in Edinburgh. He and his sister, the matchmaking Nicoletta, both live in London: she is a lecturer in Italian at London University; he is in charge of one of the murder squads based in Barnes, south-west London. He is single, rides a motorbike and is portrayed as very handsome and eligible. He’s called out to investigate the case of a woman who had been murdered while out running in Holland Park, and the bulk of the ensuing novel describes how he and his team carry out their work of interviewing witnesses, searching apartments and so on, to try to find the perpetrator – no easy task.

Rachel Tenison, the victim, was a loner, so it takes Tartaglia and his loyal sergeant Sam (short for Samantha) Donovan some time to find out much about her associates and her life. At the start of their investigation, rather too much of the plot involves Tartaglia or Donovan having to re-interview witnesses who don’t seem to be entirely truthful, in order to get them to admit further details that they consider irrelevant to the investigation. I don’t find this a very satisfactory way of moving a plot along, but it is certainly better than the other genre standby of finding more bodies.

One of the unusual aspects of the case is the discovery of part of a poem by Swinburne on the body (hence the book’s title). This clue leads Tartaglia to a year-old, closed investigation of the death of a woman who was a professor of English literature (including the works of Swinburne) at the university. Tartaglia and Donovan are convinced that the two cases must be related, but how? Their quest is complicated by the reluctance of the investigating officer, Simon Turner, to re-open the old case as it might make him and his recently deceased boss look bad if they failed to unearth any crucial information at the time. Turner reluctantly joins Tartaglia’s team for the purposes of combining the investigations; it is he who finds a crucial suspect, and Donovan who makes the link between the two cases.

Once the second case is uncovered, the pace of this novel picks up considerably. The author weaves in the social lives of the detectives and other police staff into her narrative, as well as a possible romantic diversion between Tartaglia and one of the witnesses to the Rachel Tenison case. There are a couple of twists to the tale, one of which I anticipated and the other I didn’t, but unfortunately the author did not resist repeating her “woman in peril” ending from the first book. The gradual realisation by a female character that she is on her own with a possible murderer is a cliché which renders the ending a bit flat and perfunctory. Another slightly disappointing aspect is that I did not feel that a great sense of location was conveyed, other than the occasional description of a traditional pub or a snowy park which could have been anywhere.

I don’t mean to quibble: this novel is a jolly good, solid police procedural with two characters, Tartaglia and Donovan, who are interesting and individual, if in need of development. I like the juxtaposition of the work and personal lives of the police, and will certainly read the next in this series.

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book.

Read other reviews at: Curled up with a Good Book (very positive but gives away more of the plot than I do here); Curled up with a Good Book again (not so positive); Reviewing the Evidence (Sharon Wheeler), an excellent brief review which sums up perfectly in all ways my opinion of the book!; and Mysterious Reviews (positive).

Interview with the author upon publication of her first novel, Die With Me.

Profile of Simon Beckett in The Bookseller

2010-11-01T18:34:00+00:00

The author Simon Beckett is subject of a one-page profile in the current (29 October) issue of The Bookseller (p. 24). Beckett is author of a series of novels about Dr David Hunter, a forensic anthropologist (a fairly popular profession in crime fiction these days). Having read and enjoyed the previous three in this series, I'm glad to read that there will be a new David Hunter novel in February 2011, The Calling of the Grave (Bantam Press in the UK and Random House in Australia).

As pointed out in the profile, one distinguishing feature of the David Hunter novels is that they are all in different settings, and setting is an important component of each plot. The first, The Chemistry of Death, was set in the Norfolk fens; the sequel Written in Bone took place on a remote Scottish island; and the third, Whispers of the Dead, around the Tennessee, USA "body farm". It was this last location, apparently, that gave Beckett the idea for the Hunter series. He had written three earlier novels but failed to get a publishing deal. (The novels were eventually published by Allison and Busby.) He became a freelance journalist, during which time he went to Tennessee to shadow a group of police officers as they learned about the decomposition of human remains. From this experience, David Hunter was born.

The new novel, The Calling of the Grave, starts eight years in the past when Hunter is part of a team investigating a body buried on Dartmoor. The main part of the novel is about the escape of the person who was responsible.... "absolutely nothing is as it seems, and Beckett skilfully engineers plot twist after plot twist interwoven with the meticulously researched forensic science." The author says that he likes to tackle new ground in each novel to provide not only "elements that people come back to, but you want a sense of development in each one." Part of this process are the gradual revelations about Hunter's past as the series progresses.

It's quite well known that Beckett's books sell better in Germany and Scandinavia than they do in the UK, which is a pity as he certainly knocks the socks off Patricia Cornwell (who covers similar themes) and the like. He says that the series is harder to write as it goes on, which he says objectively is a good thing. "I don't want to freewheel - I think the more you put in , the more the reader can get out of it. ....If I were finding it easy then it might not be altogether a good thing.... for the books, anyway."

Reviews of Simon Beckett's previous three novels at Euro Crime.

Author website (in English and German)

The Guardian and The Times on Simon Beckett, the "unknown crime writer".

Archive of articles by Simon Beckett at The Guardian website.

Book Review: Sister by Rosamund Lupton

2010-10-31T18:23:00+00:00

Sister

By Rosamund Lupton

Piatkus, 2010.

This engrossing, haunting novel is told from the point of view of Beatrice, a young English woman who is a successful commercial art designer in New York, recently engaged to Tod. At the start of the novel, Beatrice is in her sister’s London flat, looking out of the window at the hordes of media clamouring for a quote or interview. Tess, Beatrice’s younger sister, has disappeared. We deduce that the circumstances are dramatic and awful; soon, via Beatrice’s thoughts, we come to understand what has happened.

It is hard to write a review of this novel, because a bare plot description removes the many subtleties of the story of Tess’s life (gradually uncovered by her sister in the days after Beatrice’s precipitous arrival in the UK). Suffice to say that Beatrice decides to find out for herself what happened, dismissive of the official explanation which is universally accepted.

This novel is a very powerful, and convincing, account of a relationship between sisters as well as of grief and its after-effects. It is mostly told in the form of an internal letter from one sister to the other, which adds a beautiful element. There’s also a very moving subplot about the redemption of another relationship – that of a mother and her daughter. The way in which one daughter gradually realises the truth about her childhood perceptions is quite marvellous.

I really loved this book, and would urge anyone to read it. I was lucky enough to start it on a day when I’d booked a holiday from work, as I spent quite literally all day reading it from page 1 first thing in the morning, to the last page in the mid-afternoon. The crime plot is not as good as the rest of the book – the identity of the perpetrator is too obvious; the much-discussed "twist" at the end not a proper twist; and unfortunately the area of clinical research is completely misunderstood (though the author does a good job on describing the science of a single-gene defect). The details of hospital practice and treatment of visitors are also somewhat inconsistent with what I know of reality.

The power of this novel is in its depiction of the relationships of a mother and two daughters, and the inner lives of the girls. I loved it, and am glad that the novel is enjoying such success as a result of being one of the Richard and Judy book club selections this year.

I purchased my paperback copy of this book.

Judy and Richard's reviews of this novel are here; and a synopsis/reader comments on it are here.

Video interview with Richard and Judy, and a conversation with the author.

Author website, including an extract from the novel.

Read other reviews of this novel at: The Independent (brief); Katie's Book Blog; Bioethics Bytes (unusual perspective); and A Booklover Talks.

Some thoughts about restricting e-readership

2010-10-30T16:04:27+01:00

Those of us (and our numbers are increasing rapidly!) who like to read in e-format often bemoan the way in which publishers sell the "rights" to their books on a regional basis hanging over from the world of print as the only reading medium. Of course, print readers (myself included) also find it frustrating not to be able to read a book after perusing reviews of it, if one does not live in the "right" (righted?) region. But for the e-format (including digital audio), this restriction seems even more pointless.

Bernadette, in an excellent post at Reactions to Reading, put her finger on one reason why this regional division is a no-win for publishers - piracy, which as everyone from the CEO of the major publishing companies down to the youngest kid on the internet block, admits occurs on a massive scale. (Never by me or anyone in my house, I am of the honest but frustrated quarter of content users.)

I have two "hats" that I wear in the context of this debate. First, as a reader, I want to read a book as soon as it is published, not wait for some artificially imposed geographical business model. In the world of scientific research, this is the norm. When a paper is published, it is published - people argue about subscription vs "author pays" or the size of the unit of publication, but the argument is how readers pay for access, not about whether one can access at all. Second, my other "hat" is that I work for a publisher - not, thankfully, on the business side, but on the scientific journal/editorial side. So I can see at first hand the large amount of value a publisher adds to the raw material. In the case of scientific publishing, there is an incredibly large investment in the editorial selection process, for example. I am not as closely familiar with book publishing (though my employer is an internationally leading publisher of books). Even so, I can see the resources that are put into both print and e- (digital) books, and am well aware that this is considerable. (There are many other factors in addition to editorial and production costs, of course.)

The point for the reader is not price, it is access. Based on my long experience of scientific publishing, it is not necessary to restrict access geographically in order to run a viable business. This is why news items such as these lose me completely -

Waterstones has removed from its website the ability for anyone outside the UK to buy e-books, with "no plans" to reinstate them.

WH Smith has removed e-books from people's e-readers. That is, people who have paid to download a book. The information provided to these paid-up customers is minimal.

The UK Publishers' Association last week agreed that it would restrict library borrowing of e-books to those who are physically present in the library. (See, eg, this Guardian piece.)

This last piece of news is appalling: "I can't believe the PA has declared war on libraries in this way" wrote Luton's librarian at the Bookseller website. Yes, indeed, the very point of e-books is that people who do not live near, or cannot get to, a library can now read! How ludicrous.

I understand concerns on the behalf of authors, and I understand that publishers want to stay in business (and booksellers, but that is also a slightly different story). I know that issues often seem more simple to those outside a situation than they are in reality, but what I am questioning is what we learnt years ago in the scientific publishing sphere - base your business model on some form of payment per download, not on deciding who can read the content based on where they live. The payment can be made directly by the customer (book purchaser) or library on behalf of its patrons,
or borrower (lending fee). Public libraries could also use a variant of the site-licence model in place at academic libraries, in which the price paid for the content is proportional to the number of readers of that content; as well as providing books and other content for free according to whatever criteria they choose (including providing out-of-copyright books free).

The point of this post is simple - there are technological solutions in place in other parts of the industry for what is termed "e-commerce". Why aren't organisations such as book publishers and governments' library authorities exploring these to reward authors and publishers, instead of exploring technical means to restrict access to non-rights-holders and/or people who have not paid? To paraprhase Bernadette, even if not perfect, the former means some income; the latter encourages piracy. The former also gives the customers (readers) the message that the publisher likes, or even is proud of, its content and actively wants people to read it. (This Telegraph article, for example, is about the increase in library membership bought about by the e-format.) Those new readers might then go on to read more, instead of watching TV or playing computer games - that is, the publisher has a great opportunity to increase its customer base with this format. The latter seems to me bad for business, and provides a rather Scrooge-like image which can hardly be good PR for an industry that is under so much pressure in this era of "instant availability" and from Google Books et al.

I do hope that publishers' organisations will soon find a way to remove the geographical element of their rights arrangements - in their own interests as well as in readers'. We are living in a global community, after all.

Book Review: The Build Up by Phillip Gwynne

2010-10-29T18:15:51+01:00

The Build Up
by Phillip Gwynne

Pan Macmillan Australia, 2008

In the oppressive heat of Darwin, capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, you can’t even swim in the sea to cool off because of the giant jellyfish. Detective Dusty (Frances) Buchanan is a tough, smart, 30-something female cop who is single after the end of a live-in relationship with a lawyer, and who before the novel opens has been instrumental in identifying a leading suspect in the murder of a British backpacker – the region’s highest-profile murder case since Lindy Chamberlain’s baby Azaria was taken by a dingo. The presumed perpetrator, a man called Gardner, is in jail awaiting trial. Dusty is uneasy about his guilt, but is taken off the case by her new boss, “the big C”, and put onto more mundane tasks.

Depressed by the office politics at the station and frustrated by her single status, the resolutely upfront and unspun Dusty keeps herself fit by swimming in the pool in her yard and by running on the beach. For much of the first half of the book we become immersed in her life and that of the people in Darwin, fascinatingly portrayed with great local colour, as we gradually become aware that sinister events are occurring – possibly connected to a local Vietnam Veterans’ group, or possibly related to a local brothel whose location remains obscure to Dusty (and the rest of the police, who are all more concerned about the Gardner case than in anything else).

Dusty is a great character. She gives as good as she gets verbally as well as physically, but at the same time she’s vulnerable and sympathetic. She’s friends with Trace and Miriam, two very different aboriginal Australians, and the author portrays vividly the coexistence of these cultures at the edge of this hot land. As the build-up to the inevitable storms and rains continues, so does Dusty’s conviction that there is a murder to be investigated whatever her boss might say. With the aid of a German birdwatcher (there is a delightful sequence where Dusty picks him up in a bar), Dusty manages to get herself busted back into uniform and ostracised for an almost-fatal accident (which emphatically was not her fault). Undeterred, she makes an unlikely ally and sets forth to follow up what leads she can under the radar – and in the process finds some evidence that completely changes the earlier case.

There are so many great touches and themes to this novel – I can only urge you to read it. It’s full of what I call “grown up” humour, and there are so many clever nuances where Dusty’s straightforward and “straight down the line” methods bring rewards in unexpected ways, not least her caring attitude towards animals – the scenes with the pig, and their part in revealing the plot, are particularly great. The reader eager to learn about life in other regions will be well-rewarded with plenty of vernacular and vignettes. Yet along with the unsentimental and upfront telling, the novel also represents an emotional core – the author is very wise about emotions and failings; above all there is bags of humanity in the book. Combine this with an attractively independent heroine, plenty of action and humour, and a wonderful sense of place and culture, and you could want no more from a book. I do hope very much to meet Dusty again one day.

I thank Bernadette of Reactions to Reading for so kindly sending me a copy of this excellent book. Her review of it is here. The novel has also been reviewed at Mysteries In Paradise, Aust Crime Fiction and Crime Down Under.

Publisher's website.
Agent's website, with the news (2008) that the author has been commissioned to write two more novels in the series.

Interview with the author (2009), mainly about his young adult fiction, but also about his plans for the sequel to The Build Up.

Progress on reading books eligible for the 2011 International Dagger

2010-10-28T18:29:00+01:00

It was late August when I last asked myself how I am getting on with the books eligible for the International Dagger for 2011. To qualify, books have to be translated, and published in the UK between May 2010 and June 2011. Karen has recently updated her essential Euro Crime blog post of eligible titles, now up to 48.

These are the books on the list that I had read when I wrote my 21 August post (links go to my reviews):

The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Italy)
Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo, translated by Jethro Soutar (Argentina)
Bad Intentions by Karin Fossum , translated by Charlotte Barslund (Norway)
The Inspector and Silence by Hakan Nesser, translated by Laurie Thompson (Sweden)

Since then, I have read:

Red Wolf by Liza Marklund, translated by Neil Smith (Sweden)
River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi, translated by Joseph Farrell (Italy)
Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir, translated by Philip Roughton (Iceland)
Silence by Jan Costin Wagner, translated by Anthea Bell (German, setting Finland)
Three Seconds by Roslund-Hellstrom, translated by Kari Dickson (Sweden)
Bunker by Andrea Maria Shenckel, translated by Anthea Bell (Germany); review submitted to Euro Crime
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason , translated by Victoria Cribb (Iceland); review in draft of a copy via the library.

Books I have on my shelf or e-reader waiting to be read:

1222 by Anne Holt
The Postcard Killers by Liza Marklund and A. N. Other

Remaining to read - none of which are yet available on Amazon UK apart from Villain (which is quite expensive):

Basic Shareholder by Petros Markaris
Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder
Villain by Shuichi Yoshida
Rendezvous by Esther Verhoef
The Leopard by Jo Nesbo
The Quarry by Johan Theorin
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell
Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
The Gallows Bird by Camilla Lackberg
Shadow Sister by Simone van der Vlugt
Bandit Love by Massimo Carlotto
Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End by Leif G W Persson
Summertime by Mari Jungstedt
Blood Sisters by Alessandro Perissinotto
An Uncertain Place by Fred Vargas
Inquisition by Alfredo Carlitto

There are around 20 titles left to read if I manage to get through all the above list.

See International Dagger, a collection of all the posts at Petrona on this topic.

2011 International Dagger - list of eligible titles.

2010 International Dagger - list of eligible titles.

The CWA International Dagger page, currently featuring the 2010 winner, The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin, translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Petrona's post about the 2010 winner.

The 2010 shortlist, and my reviews of each title on it.

Petrona posts tagged International Dagger.

Euro Crime list of 2011 eligible titles.

Book Review: The Guards by Ken Bruen

2010-10-27T18:35:00+01:00

The Guards
By Ken Bruen
Brandon, 2001 (reprinted 2010).

For a long time I have been planning to read Ken Bruen, a highly regarded writer, and have finally made good my intention in the shape of The Guards, the first novel in a series about Jack Taylor. Taylor is in his mid-50s and has just been sacked from the Garda after many years of warnings. He’s been told he is good at finding things, so he sets himself up as a private eye in Galway, Ireland. He’s also a complete drunk, which fits this stereotypical bill (his “office” is a pub).

The Guards is a very good book indeed. The plot is ostensibly about the unexplained suicide of several young teenage girls whose bodies are found washed up in the sea at Nimmo’s pier. The mother of one of these girls is certain her daughter did not kill herself, and asks Taylor to find out how the girl died. Taylor’s only friend (by his own admission), the sinister artist Sutton, has his own ideas about how to find out what’s going on, and Taylor is almost a passive partner in the ensuing “investigation”.

Really, though, the investigative aspects are perfunctory at best, and the true subject of the book is Taylor himself – his past, his feelings, convictions, and how he has come to the end of the line. As well as Sutton, Taylor interacts with other vividly sketched people during the novel – Cathy B, a singer whom Taylor pays to help him find out information; the aged barman Sean; Ann, the dead girl’s mother; and various other characters from the street and from the old, traditional days which Taylor inhabits in his mind. Taylor is not an obviously sympathetic person – and someone's alcoholism isn’t intrinsically an interesting subject to read about (how many different ways can someone fall off the wagon and get on it again?). Yet the author has two great things going for him: he’s a very good writer, using various stylistic forms, poetry, wit and quotations to weave a mesmeric whole; and Taylor is a metaphor for all that is tough about life’s essential condition – the grinding boredom of work, the easy distractions of the shallow existence, the inevitability of death, and so on. This having been said, Taylor is not a construct but a warm human being, showing integrity and commitment to people who he likes (even when they are winos and other of life's dropouts). Throughout the book, Taylor has the idea of “escaping” his past and his fate and moving to London. He even buys a ticket - which, of course, he is told by the travel agent can only be one-way. I wonder if he will ever get there.

I was immersed in this book and particularly responded to the observations of life in the city and the sense of the protagonist's separateness from the mainstream (to which he is tied by the symbol of a coat) – a staple of literature as well as popular fiction, and extremely well done here. As a crime story the novel is not that good – there isn’t any detection or suspense or even much of a puzzle element. But the novel is both emotionally honest and true to itself, and achieves something that is very difficult to do – creates a sympathetic portrait of a weak man who has chosen not to take the paths offered to him in his youth by his father and other mentors, but has become a washed-up drunk. I could quibble at the way details of every-day life are skated-over in the novel (where does the rent come from, for example?), but I won’t because I can certainly admit to being a convert to Ken Bruen on the basis of this novel.

I purchased my paperback edition of this novel.

I have been encouraged for some years to read Ken Bruen by Norman of Crime Scraps (primarily) and several others including consistent recommendations by Declan Burke at Crime Always Pays, and most recently by Keishon of Yet Another Crime Fiction blog. Thanks to them for the recommendation.

Read other reviews of The Guards at: The Book Bag, Jen's Book Thoughts, Critical Mick, Allan Guthrie's Noir Originals (review by Charlie Stella)

Ken Bruen's books at the publisher's website.

The Guards at the author's website. (Includes plot summary, reviews and an extract.)

Shots ezine appreciation of Ken Bruen by Ali Karim.

The Guardian: Interview with the author in 2001, just after the book came out.

Crimespree cinema: about The Guards TV movie, including trailer.

New UK paperbacks for February 2011

2010-10-27T18:10:00+01:00

With the first snowdrops will come ever-more books - for those of us in the UK or able to buy UK paperbacks, quite a selection will be available, according to The Bookseller (22 October issue). On the translated front, Three Seconds by Roslund and Hellstrom (Quercus, £7.99) is one to look forward to - a blistering thriller covering drug dealing, an undercover prisoner, government corruption, police investigations and more. The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell (Vintage, £7.99) seems to be the only other translated crime novel in this listing, and it, too, is Swedish. "Links China and the US in the 1860s with present international issues" states the Bookseller entry - it's also set in Sweden, and has three very strong female characters.

Other treats in store are Where the Shadows Lie by Michael Ridpath (Corvus, £7.99) - another fast-moving thriller, this one set in an Iceland of sagas, folklore and volcanoes. A good holiday read, I'd suggest. Open Season by C. J. Box (also Corvus, £7.99) is the first in the author's Joe Pickett series, well-established in the USA but being published for the first time in paperback in the UK (some have been published as Robert Hale hardbacks previously). Corvus plans to bring out 10 Joe Pickett books between February and November 2011. I haven't tried this series yet.

Tom Bale's follow-up to Skin and Bones, this one called Terror's Reach (Arrow, £6,99) is due out, as is Elena Forbes's Evil in Return (Quercus, £7.99), the third in her London (Barnes)-based DI Mark Tartaglia novel (I have so far only read the first, Die With Me.) One I shan't be reading is The Sword of the Templars by Paul Christopher, about which the Bookseller writes "Penguin believes any book with "Templar" or "Code" in the title scores." (£6.99). Perhaps looking up from that period of history is Jeremy Duns's second novel, Free Country (S&S, £7.99), in which it is 1969 and Cold War territory for agent Paul Dark. (His debut is called Free Agent.) And Stephen Booth has another Fry and Cooper Peak District novel out, Lost River (Harper, £7.99), apparently his last before he moves publisher (to Little, Brown).

Among the predicted top sellers and blockbusters are Caught by Harlan Coben (Orion, £7.99), which I enjoyed; Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan, £7.99), a series in which I am woefully behind; This Body of Death by Elizabeth George (Harper, £7.99) and The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith (Abacus, £7.99), the eleventh outing for Mma Precious Ramotswe.

These aren't the only books due out in the UK in February. I keep spotting interesting ones, for example Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson (Faber, £7.99), third in the series that started with An Expert in Murder, in which Josephine Tey researches two women who were hanged for murder. On that topic, and last for this post, is The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley (Orion, £7.99), "the second in the Christie-esque country house murder series featuring precocious 11-year-old sleuth Flavia. They really are charmingly silly books and Orion is having trouble getting the right look - hence the delay." This is not to mention new paperbacks from Faye Kellerman, Louise Penny, Beverly Barton, Quintin Jardine, Lindsey Davis, Andrew Taylor.... the list seems endless, and that's just February paperbacks!

Book Review: The Reversal by Michael Connelly

2010-10-26T18:51:00+01:00

The Reversal
By Michael Connelly
Orion 2010

Michael Haller, the Lincoln lawyer, is presented with an unusual proposition – to be a special prosecutor for a 24-year-old case in which a young girl was taken from her garden one Sunday afternoon and within an hour found dead in a dumpster. A suspect, the driver of a tow truck, was quickly identified and the girl’s sister identified him as the abductor. He was tried and imprisoned for the crime.

Now, DNA analysis of some of the original evidence raises questions about the conviction, and the criminal, Jason Jessup, wins the right for a retrial. Although the detectives and lawyers involved in the original case have all died or are too ill to contribute now, the DA’s office wants an independent prosecution to reduce the damages it will have to pay out if Jessup gets off (as seems likely). Haller, until now firmly on the defence side of the line, agrees to take the case if he can employ his ex-wife, Maggie “McFierce”, as his second chair, and LAPD detective Harry Bosch as his investigator. The main plot of the book alternates the story of Bosch’s (third-person) investigation of the old case, and Haller’s first-person account of the preparation for the trial and, later, the trial itself.

The Reversal is typical, superior fare from Michael Connelly. The book works fine as a standalone but will be more enjoyable if you have read previous novels in the series, particularly the more recent ones (starting with The Lincoln Lawyer) in which Haller appears. As well as a classic investigative plot, the author is interested in exploring the human costs of crime and of the criminal justice system. As an aside I was quite shocked to realise that while a trial is under way in the US, the jurors, defence and prosecution teams all mix together in the breaks between the court sessions.

At the heart of this novel is the testimony of Sarah, the sister of the girl who was killed. Before the trial starts, Bosch and Maggie track her down and find out what has happened to her in the intervening years, since the “shearing of life that happened at that moment” when her sister was taken. This phrase speaks directly to the appeal of Connelly’s books – in modern, materialistic, shallow and crime-ridden America, the author understands this “shearing” of a life that can happen in a single moment and change it forever, and his characters are those who are there for those people in the ensuing years - to speak up for them, defend and protect them. This is big-picture stuff, but there are also plenty of little observations that make this book (in common with others by Connelly) a joy – for example when Maggie is briskly summarising the case at the outset and fails to notice, unlike Haller (Bosch’s half-brother, and more in tune with him), that “Bosch is somebody who still used the phone book instead of the internet.”

Connelly builds up the suspense in The Reversal, but does not end this novel in any of the ways one might think based on the various plotlines. It is as if the author realises he does not need to provide a manufactured climax, but can satisfy the reader by simply telling it like it is.

I purchased my copy of this book in Kindle format.

The Reversal at the author's (very good) website.

Other reviews of The Reversal are at: The Scotsman (2 pages); Mostly Fiction; Irish Independent; Spinetingler magazine; LA Times (a positive review despite the paper not being very positively represented in the book!); the Globe and Mail; and the Daily Beast.

Crime Watch blog features Craig Sisterson's Weekly Herald interview with the author, and a video of Gregg Hurwitz's interview with Michael Connelly at the recent Bouchercon festival.

About Black & White by Lewis Shiner, available as free PDF

2010-10-25T18:18:00+01:00

Via Jenny D. of Light Reading, I heard about a book that sounds excellent, Black & White, by Lewis Shiner. Black & White, which was on several "best crime fiction for 2008" lists including the LA Times, is published by Subterranean Press (2008, 2009) and as well as being a print book is available for free as a PDF at the Fiction Liberation Front site (direct link to the PDF is at the author's website). According to Jenny, the transfer into Kindle format is very easy. There is also a link to an audio-interview, and many reviews and quotes about the novel. Plot summary:

"When Michael follows his dying father to North Carolina, a lifetime of lies begins to unravel. His pursuit of his father's past--haunted by voodoo, adultery and murder--takes him to a place called Hayti, once the most prosperous black community in the South. Now the mysteries of Michael's own heritage become a matter of life and death, as racial conflicts barely restrained since the 1960s erupt again. Rooted in the true story of the US government's urban renewal policy and its disastrous aftermath, Black & White is a literary thriller, a family saga, and a searing portrait of institutionalized hatred."

Lewis Shiner's autobiography is absolutely fascinating, both as a story of a life and an account of how he learnt to write.

I believed that plotting was my biggest weakness, so I read Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald in the evenings and tried my hand at some mystery short stories. One of the first was called "Buyin' My Heartaches a Beer," about a construction worker who gets framed for his wife's murder. I got a nice long rejection letter from ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE for that one, and though I never did sell them anything, it was the first personal response I ever got on a story and it made me think I was on the right track. I followed it up with "Deep Without Pity," featuring an Austin private eye named Dan Sloane. At the time nobody had done a private eye who was a Vietnam vet, and I had dreams that he would catch on and I could do a series of novels about him.

---

Less than a month later my first Dan Sloane story, "Deep Without Pity," sold to the new MYSTERY MONTHLY, and for the first time I dared to think of myself as a real, honest-to-god writer. Unfortunately, I was premature again. The editor at GALILEO was "dismayed" with the rewrite I did for him, and I went a year and a half without knowing (or really much caring) if the story was going to be published at all. MYSTERY MONTHLY folded the month before my story was scheduled to come out. It was another three years before my next sale, when SHAYOL, a semi-professional magazine out of Kansas City, finally bought "Kings of the Afternoon."

There is lots more fascinating stuff about the author's path as a SF, fantasy or mystery writer, and here he explains why he now gives away his work for free (link via Jenny D).

More information:
Arts&Literature: Lewis Shiner reflects on Black & White.
Austin Chronicle: review of Black & White.
Black Clock: A long talk with Lewis Shiner.
Wikipedia.

Book review: Cemetery Lake by Paul Cleave

2010-10-24T14:48:21+01:00

Cemetery Lake
By Paul Cleave
Arrow PB, 2009 (first published 2008).

Theo Tate is an ex-cop turned private investigator, who as this novel opens is supervising the exhumation of Henry Martins, a man who died some years ago. His daughter firmly believed that he had been murdered by his second wife, for whom he had abandoned his first family. The police were not convinced, but the widow’s new husband has also now died in suspicious circumstances, hence the exhumation. As Tate watches the digger at work, he notices what he at first thinks are giant, black bubbles in the lake adjoining this part of the huge cemetery. Soon he realises that the disturbance is, in fact, bodies rising to the surface – a sight that makes Bruce, the man digging up the grave, run away – in terror or in guilt?

After this set-piece opening, Tate embarks on a fast-moving spiral familiar to readers of the genre. We soon learn that the reason he resigned from the Christchurch, NZ, police force two years ago was because his wife and young daughter were victims of a drunk driver. Emily, the girl, was killed and Bridget, the wife, is in a catatonic state and cannot recognise anyone. The man responsible for the accident was caught but given a suspended sentence. He subsequently vanished, and most of his then-colleagues assumed Tate was responsible for the disappearance (we find out whether this supposition is correct later in this book).

When the coffin that has been exhumed from Martins’s grave is opened, an unexpected and gruesome discovery is made. At this point I began to lose sympathy with Tate, as he takes a crucial piece of evidence and begins his own investigation into the case, without keeping his old colleagues in the loop. During the first two-thirds of the book he questions bereaved families a in an unforgivably cruel way in my opinion, as well as impeding the official investigation. Using his inside information to discover more leads and more victims, he creates a “murder room” in the process to record his investigation and leads - presumably setting himself up in competition with the police so he can solve the crime before they do? At the same time, he’s involved in violent altercations with the father of Bruce the absentee gravedigger and with Bruce himself, as well as being drawn into some coded, threatening interactions with the priest of the cemetery’s church.

As well as being a crime thriller, Cemetery Lake provides plenty of shlock-horror set piece descriptions of rotting bodies and various nasty things that happen to them during the course of the novel. I don’t mind these per se, particularly as the rather flat narrative protects the reader from the full extent of the "yuk" factor, but I did mind that I could not believe much of the main story. One example of this is that the police are investigating the bodies in the lake by searching graves in the cemetery – they are also looking for Tate and the gravediggers. Yet if they had conducted even the most basic search, or simply looked at the graves of Tate’s daughter or Bruce’s mother, they would immediately have found crucial evidence in the shape of recently (re)dug grave plots. Unfortunately, I think the author is keener to attempt to shock his readers by his horror-novel descriptions of things happening to decomposing bodies, etc, than in providing a credible plot.

Despite his old mates trying to keep him out of the investigation, Tate ploughs on regardless of the sensitivities of the families of the bereaved. Eventually after a shocking event in his office, he becomes so distraught that he turns to drink. After being on a bender for a month, he follows someone he regards as a suspect and jumps a red light, crashing into a car being driven by a woman whose young daughter is a passenger. Tate has become the man he has spent the last two years hating, but this realization does not stop him from immediately borrowing another car and continuing his single-minded quest.

Cemetery Lake is written at a fast pace and despite its various plot holes it does engage the attention, even though the “solution” to the main case is too extreme to convince. The main problem with the novel for me was the character of Tate, who is potentially interesting but just too unsympathetic even taking into account his tragic past, given all his unethical, cruel and thoughtless actions. His heart is in the right place, but unfortunately his ego is the most important thing to him, which combined with his action-man toughness makes him hard to like or to care much about. I think the novel is fine for those who like lots of events (including revolting ones) and action, but is less successful on an emotional, credible level. I was also disappointed not to come away with more of a sense of Christ Church, New Zealand.

My copy of this novel was borrowed from the local library.

Read other (mostly very positive) reviews of Cemetery Lake at: Euro Crime (Michelle Peckham); Overkill (Vanda Symon); Crime Watch (Craig Sisterson); Reviewing the Evidence (Craig Sisterson again, a different review); DJ's Krimiblog (Dorte Jakobsen); and It's Criminal (Helen).

Here's a post at Crime Scraps, which in a balanced way outlines some of the downsides to this novel. I should have remembered this post before picking up the book from the library shelf!

Feature about the author at Crime Watch (by Craig Sisterson).

Author's website.

Just finished reading: Kind of Blue by Miles Corwin

2010-10-22T18:48:00+01:00

Two or three weeks ago, I was contacted by Oceanview Publishing, who kindly asked if I would like to receive a copy of Kind of Blue, a debut novel by Miles Corwin. The novel looked interesting, as I like police procedurals and in this case the author had previously written three non-fiction books, two of which are about the Los Angeles police department, so presumably knows his onions. I accepted the offer, and have just finished, and enjoyed, the book. I was about to write a review when I see that the publication date is not until 1 November. Instead of a review, therefore, I'll provide an excerpt here, and post a review when the book is actually out.

The novel is about the LAPD, in particular a case that is given to Ash Levine, a detective who quit the force a year earlier. Ash is persuaded to return to work to investigate the death of a retired cop, Pete Relovich. Near the start of the novel, Ash visits the victim's home for the first time:

"Relovich lived near the end of a cul-de-sac, in a ramshackle pale blue clapboard bungalow with peeling paint and a sagging roof. When I was a kid, this had been a working-class neighborhood, populated mostly by Croatian fishermen. But now, homes with a view of the water were at a premium in Los Angeles and property values had soared. Most of the fisherman had sold to investors, who viewed the modest homes as teardowns, replacing them with mammoth two- and three-storey monstrosities, spanning lot line to lot line. Relovich's house, which was encircled by yellow crime-scene tapes, was flanked by two gray and white clipboard Cape Cod-style McMansions that could sell for more than a million dollars.
I pulled out a pair of latex gloves, a few small Baggies, and a flashlight from a wooden box in Duffy's trunk, stuffed them in my pocket, and walked to Relovich's front porch, which faced the harbor. Lingering for a moment, I looked out at the inky black water laced with streaks of silver from the three-quarter moon. Lights atop the graceful span of the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which connected San Pedro to Terminal Island, twinkled in the distance. An offshore wind, brisker here than in the central city, blew off the water, carrying the smell of seaweed, brine, and a hint of diesel fuel.
Duffy opened the front door and flipped on the lights. I followed him inside. The house had an air of dereliction. In the living room, newspapers, unopened mail, fast-food wrappers, and empty Dr. Pepper cans were strewn on the nicked hardwood floor. Fingerprint powder streaked the wooden arms of the sofa, the chipped coffee table in front, two chairs beside a picture window, and every other smooth surface. I took a deep breath and nodded. After a year of disorientation, I finally felt at home again. Yes, this is what I've missed. Homicide. "

About the book at the publisher's website.

Author's website.

Kindle reading report 1

2010-10-20T18:18:00+01:00

When I was given a Kindle (wireless version) for my birthday in September this year (a couple of weeks late, not because the kind present-giver had forgotten the date but because of Amazon's order backlog), I made a resolution only to download a book when I had finished one, that is, only to have one unread book in it at a time. How am I doing on that front? Not that well, unsurprisingly.

The first book I read was one I've been wanting to read for a couple of years, but which I thought too expensive in print version (no paperback available). Silent Counsel by Ken Isaacson was reasonably priced on Kindle, so as an experiment I downloaded it and read it. So far so good: one down, none to go.

Searching my longstanding 200-300-item long Amazon shopping list was not very fruitful, as so few of the entries in it have Kindle editions. Newly published books on Amazon often do have Kindle editions but the pricing is often not competitive and I'd prefer to wait for the paperback. (I'm not surprised about the pricing as I am only too well aware of how much work goes into producing an online/digital edition of content compared with print. ) I did, however, find one Kindle book that is reasonably priced and that I would mildly like to read, The Dying Light by Henry Porter, so downloaded that to read next. The only thing is that I have not read it yet. The lesson I learn from this is only to download a book when I really want to read it, not just because it is on a list of books I might read one day.

In the meantime, I signed up for the NetGalley service, in which if you write book reviews you can request e-copies from the publisher - which are free. With trembling heart because of the intials J.P., but very eager to read anything by Liza Marklund, I requested a copy of The Postcard Killers. Nothing happened.

Another novel I've been meaning to read for a while is Experimental Heart by Jennifer L. Rohn. I read one night on a blog or elsewhere that it is available in Kindle form, so checked out the price. It was reasonable (higher than the previous two books I'd downloaded, but not by that much), so I downloaded and actually read it, straight away (review here).

Getting into the swing of it, I received an email from Amazon suggesting I might like to read the latest Michael Connelly novel, The Reversal. Would I? Yes. The publisher had agreed to send me a review copy, but after 3 weeks or so it hasn't arrived, and I'm very keen indeed to read this novel - all the more so as it is now officially out and reviews are appearing. So I checked out the Amazon page and saw that the hardback is selling for just under £10 (as in the main real-world bookshops), but the basic Kindle edition is priced at half that. No brainer, I have purchased it. Michael Connelly also offers a more expensive, enhanced Kindle version for those who like fun add-ons, but I'm more than happy with just the text.

No sooner had I done this than I received an email from NetGalley announcing that I could have an e-copy of Postcard Killers, so after a bit of tinkering (I realise you can only receive books on your Kindle if you tell Amazon the email address of the sender, what a good idea to prevent unsolicited material), I have downloaded that, too.

So now, I have three unread Kindle books waiting. I have to finish my current print title first (as I am not one of those people who can read more than one piece of fiction at once), then I plan to rehabilitiate myself in my own eyes, and reduce my e-backlog.

I find the reading experience on the Kindle more pleasant than I had anticipated. I feel now that I shall quite happily mix my metaphors and read some books in print, others in e-form.

Book Review: Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher

2010-10-18T18:30:00+01:00

Kittyhawk Down by Garry Disher
Bitter Lemon Press, 2008 (first published in Australia in 2003)

Kittyhawk Down, the second in the Hal Challis/Ellen Destry series of police procedurals set in the fictional Old Peninsula district in southern Victoria, Australia, is even better than the first, Dragon Man, and that’s saying something. The characters have gelled and the author is more assured in his plotting and pacing this time round.

Hal Challis is an Inspector in the Homicide Squad, “tall, thin but hard boned, and looked slightly out of date in his jeans, scuffed flying jacket and plain leather shoes. His sunglasses were not an accessory perched above his forehead but shaded his eyes. He’d never worn a T-shirt as an undershirt or tracksuit pants out of doors. He’d never owned a pair of runners. His hair was straight, dark and lifted a little in the wind. It was cut once a month by a young woman who worked beside her father in a Waterloo barbershop. She was skilful and attentive, and for the sum of $10 returned him to the world with a neatly shaped head.”

Challis is investigating the case of an unidentified dead body that has been washed ashore, and slightly uneasily settling in to his relationship with the editor of the local newspaper, Tessa Kane. His sergeant, Ellen Destry, is herself on the trail of a man who attacks “courting couples” in parked cars at night, and pretty soon gets a good result, thanks to solid policing of the team, including the attractive character of constable Pam Murphy, her less attractive partner John Tankard and the sensitive Scobie Sutton. The thoughts and actions of these five policemen and women are the backbone of the novel, as they go about their professional and personal lives – personal lives that are intertwined in the local community and as such bring them into contact with people who may be of professional interest concerning various petty and not-so-petty crimes.

Challis’s somewhat desultory investigation and his ambivalence about Tessa and his imprisoned wife are swept aside by a series of incidents, starting in a small fashion but escalating way out of control. “The Meddler” is a person who writes anonymous letters to the newspaper complaining about petty infringements of the law by various residents or about failings of the local authorities. Tessa has made these letters into a regular column, but out of this initiative and an (uncharacteristically cruel) article she writes about a man who walks around with a pet ferret on a lead, are the seeds of some ghastly future events.

A lonely and introspective man, Challis has one hobby, which is to restore an old wrecked plane, the Dragon, which in 1942 helped ferry Dutch refugees fleeing the Japanese invasion of Java, from Broome to Perth. The Dragon is kept in a hangar at a local aerodrome, along with other vintage planes, one of which is the Kittyhawk of the title. Its owner is Janice Casement, whom everyone calls Kitty after her plane, and Challis feels more than a passing interest in her. One day, Challis witnesses a crazy incident while Kitty is attempting to land her plane, and feels compelled to investigate. While doing so, he finds some unsettling evidence in Kitty’s “office” area of the hangar that may involve or implicate her in some more serious, drug-related, investigations.

The novel tells the story of these several, apparently unconnected investigations, set against the evocative and vivid descriptions of community life in the Peninsula. Because we are following the lives of several law-enforcement characters, the same people who are questioned by the police in one chapter sometimes crop up in other circumstances – for example one of the policemen has a child at the same school as two “persons of interest” – and this adds a dimension to the novel that is quite unusual in my experience of the genre. While conveying a great sense of place, however, the author never loses sight of his storytelling role, and as the pages turn the reader gradually becomes aware of threads tightening up and connections coming together – how or why is, pretty much, kept obscure until the end, whose tense conclusion is sad in parts, but also satisfying.

I’ll end the review by quoting a passage that summarises one of the appeals of this series for me, concerning Challis’s visit to someone whose husband has been shot and killed. “She was red-eyed, her grief raw. Ostensibly he was there to ask her some gentle questions, but he learnt nothing new and hadn’t expected to; visiting and comforting the bereaved was the other side of a murder investigation. Waves of misery and anger can spread from a single act of homicide and swamp a family and its friends. Challis represented order. Where things were falling apart for the bereaved, he was competent, professional, focused, and familiar with a bewildering system. Sometimes his relationships with bereaved families and individuals lasted years. His was a shoulder to cry on; he was a link to the beloved victim; he represented the investigation itself and so offered hope and justice. He’d provide his phone number and find himself talking calmly, patiently, at the darkest hours of the night, and visiting from time to time, and taking people who’d almost lost heart into the squad room and showing them the desks, the computers, the photo arrays – the sense of justice at work. It often meant a lot and the flow was two-way, for as the bereaved felt valued and encouraged, so did he.” An excellent series, and one which I shall be continuing to read with eager anticipation.

I purchased my copy of this book. Read other reviews of Kittyhawk Down at: Australian Crime Fiction Database; Publisher's Weekly and Booklist; and here's Glenn Harper discussing "redneck noir" in the context of this book at International Crime Fiction.

About the book at Text Publishing (Australian publisher) and Bitter Lemon Press (UK publisher).

My review of the first in this series, Dragon Man.

Spotlight on Garry Disher at Masterpiece Mystery.

Author's website.

Booksellers' choices for the new year 2011 (including a dentist)

2010-10-17T17:21:48+01:00

Every month or so, The Bookseller runs a feature called "Bookseller's choice", in which a panel of, er, booksellers select their favourites of the upcoming titles that they'll be selling soon. The feature in the current (15 October) issue focuses on books that will be on sale in the UK in the new year, and though the selections aren't bound by genre, it's interesting that several of the picks are the same as those I highlighted in my post the other day, New UK fiction for January. I thought I'd share some of the booksellers' choices and views.

Emma Giacon of Amazon picks The Leopard by Jo Nesbo (Harvill Secker) - which, according to its stellar translator, Don Bartlett, may be bought forward to be available before Christmas, I and other readers of this blog will be pleased to know. Emma Giacon says that "fans will not be disappointed with the new Harry Hole thriller.......many a Christmas gift voucher will be spent on this hardback come January."

Several booksellers pick out Snowdrops by A. D. Miller (Atlantic). Sarah Clarke of the Torbay Bookshop calls it a "sophisticated and subtly chilling first novel...It tells the tale of Nick Platt, an English lawyer living in Moscow....Reeking of corruption from the start, the darkest secrets are not uncovered until the final pages." Sue Scholes of W. H. Smith says this "intense psychological drama....has a wonderful sense of place and the plot unfolds with great skill as we get the steady but inevitable slide into corruption, tragedy and the darker side of modern Russia." Rodney Troubridge of Waterstones and Emma Giacon also recommend this novel.

Sarah Clarke likes The Facility by Simon Lelic, his second novel after the stunning The Rupture (aka A Thousand Cuts). She calls it "at times an edgy and uncomfortable read.....it concerns a top-secret institution where a number of prisoners have been taken against their will, supposedly under anti-terrorism legislation. None is a terrorist, and one is an innocent dentist. Conspiracies and frightening repercussions come about when his wife and a journalist try to find him."

Patrick Neale of Jaffe&Neale bookshop (a wonderful place, in Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds) highlights Three Stations by Martin Cruz Smith (Mantle) - more Russia. "A young girl searches for her lost baby and Arkady Renko battles to solve a murder that the authorities want to bury as a drug overdose. Contemporary Moscow, the backdrop for this funny and fast-paced story, is at its most glitzy and chilling. The Three Stations terminus is one of the few places where the rich and impoverished cross each others' paths and Cruz Smith walks you through all of its secret places. Once started, you will race to learn how the tale unfolds."

Sue Scholes also recommends The Holmes Affair by Graham Moore (Century), a historical conspiracy thriller which "cleverly weaves the Victorian London of Conan Doyle with the modern New York of Harold White, literary researcher and Sherlock Holmes obsessive. The plot has twists, turns, murder and intrigue aplenty."

Finally Ruth Hunter of Bertrams singles out two novels I am looking forward to. Darkside (Bantam) is Belinda Bauer's new novel after Blacklands, "set in the same, remote Exmoor village and just as sinister and disturbing." A local policeman investigates a crime while looking after his wife who has MS. "It's a compelling and scary mystery, with a nice twist at the end that makes you reconsider the whole book." Second, The House at Seas End by Elly Griffiths (Quercus) is the third book about Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist - investigating a 70-year-old case while dealing with some personal elements that I won't reveal here in case you have not read the previous two novels in this delightful series (The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone).

Book Review: Experimental Heart by Jennifer L. Rohn

2010-10-16T17:02:16+01:00

Experimental Heart by Jennifer L. Rohn
Cold Spring Harbor Press, 2009

Experimental Heart is a novel in two parts: the first is an account of the biologists in a leading institute in London, and the research they do; the second is a plot-driven story. In chapter 1, Andy O’Hara, a postdoctoral researcher, is working late one night in the lab. This is normal for him; his life consists of 13-18-hour days at work, seven days a week, a vending-machine diet, odd hours in the pub, and snatched hours of sleep inbetween. He’s a loner, despite being an attractive man who the other female characters in the novel either have fallen for in the past or would like to in future. The reason for his driven, somewhat arrogant and solitary nature lies, we are led to understand, in his family background. His father was himself a scientist who died in his 40s of a malignant melanoma, and Andy has chosen a similar career in response, keeping an old photo of his father in his desk drawer as an inspiration.

Andy is interested in Gina, whom he can watch through his window as she works in her own late-night laboratory routine. Unlike Andy, Gina works in the commercial sector, seeking practical medical applications of the research she does. Andy spends quite a bit of time trying to pluck up courage to strike up a friendship (and perhaps more) with her, though is constantly foiled by work and the fact that Gina always seems to be monopolised by other people. While Andy muses on Gina and struggles with his feelings about other female characters, we are told an enormous amount of detail about the experiments that he and his colleagues perform and the possible biological implications; about the working and drinking life of young, childless scientists; and about the publications, seminars and conferences that form the background to their tense occupations. The author is very much on a mission to show the reader what it’s like to be a scientist in a highly competitive environment where there aren’t enough jobs for everyone and where you are in an invisible race to be the first to publish your results.

Because scientific research is such a specialist and intellectual occupation, the characters have a camaraderie (even when they irritate each other) and a sense of “separateness” from the rest of society; the author is excellent at conveying this rather superior alienation. In the background to this story is a group of animal rights activists who are both frighteningly violent and rather well-informed about the research going on at the institute. These activists, as well as several parties attended by the characters where there are some convenient “non scientist” flatmates or guests, provide a platform for us to be told the various ideological positions about genetically modified crops, research on living organisms, and other dangers or benefits of contemporary biology research.

All this is fascinating if you are interested in what makes a small group of scientists tick and in following the ins and outs of their research. It might be a little hard-going if you aren’t. In the second half, however, the author drops much of the explanatory tone and instead gets stuck into a tense story in which Andy and his colleagues realise that Gina may be being dragged into a project that is not only highly unethical but extremely dangerous. This part of the novel is very clever, and the tension the author wrings out of measuring radioactivity or running a gel is truly nail-biting!

For me, the strengths of the book are in the way it explains rather technical and complex scientific concepts in an accessible manner, and the scientific detective story of the second half - not a story in which it is a challenge to work out what is going on and who is responsible, but exciting in the thriller sense. On the other hand, I did not find the half-dozen or so characters that interesting, so could not care that much about their romantic ups and downs, though I was certainly rooting for Andy and Gina at the end.

This novel is steeped in a passion for biological research. Just as many books have appeal because of their beautifully conveyed sense of a particular geographical place, science is the country of Experimental Heart, and it is one that this author conveys authentically and lovingly. It is scientific research that is the hero or heroine of this enjoyable novel.

Jennifer L. Rohn, the author, is a cell biologist and founder of LabLit, a wonderful website that promotes and celebrates science in culture and fiction. Find out more about her at her website. A selection of reviews of Experimental Heart is also available at the author’s website.

I purchased my copy of this novel, in the form of a Kindle edition. It's available also in print form from Amazon and from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Book Review: Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

2010-10-15T20:06:18+01:00

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer
Corgi, 2010

Exmoor dripped with dirty bracken, rough, colourless grass, prickly gorse and last year’s heather, so black it looked as if wet fire had swept across the landscape, taking the trees with it and leaving the most cold and exposed to face the winter unprotected. Drizzle dissolved the close horizons and blurred heaven and earth into a grey cocoon around the only visible landmark – a twelve-year-old boy in slick black waterproof trousers but no hat, alone with a spade.

This is the opening paragraph of Blacklands, the debut novel that won this year’s (2010) CWA Gold Dagger, and deservedly so. The story is that of Steven Lamb, the boy in the opening paragraph, who lives a relatively impoverished life, both materially and emotionally, in a small Exmoor village. Steven lives with his Nan, mother Lettie, younger brother Davey and has experienced a succession of “uncles” passing through (two of whom fathered Steven and Davey). His mother is tense and irascible, always distracted (probably about money), whereas his Nan spends most of her time looking out of the window, barely acknowledging Steven, the outsider in the little family. We soon learn that underlying the family dynamics is the fact that Steven’s real uncle, Billy (Lettie’s sister), disappeared when he was a bit younger that Steven is now. It transpires that he was abducted and presumed killed by Arnold Avery, who is now in prison serving a life sentence for murdering some other children whose bodies he buried on the moor.

Nobody is allowed into Billy’s room, which is kept exactly as it was when he disappeared. Steven becomes obsessed with the idea that if he finds his uncle’s body, his Nan will stop being sad and the family will become close. He spends most of his time outside school in this fruitless task, making a map of the places he’s dug up. After an incident involving his friend Lewis and some Lego, Steven learns the bare facts of Billy’s presumed death from his mother, and conceives the idea of writing to Avery to find the location of the “grave”. Thus begins an extraordinary campaign between the boy and the prisoner, who can only write the most banal, brief letters to each other, but who communicate on a far deeper, more intimate level. Who will “win” this secret, psychological war? Each is determined in pursuit of his goal, but inevitably one will outwit the other.

The novel’s appeal lies not only in this intensely strategic exchange, but also in the depiction of life in a small village among a deprived family, and community, in twenty-first century England. The book is full of telling little details: the effect on Steven of some unusual praise from a teacher; a visit by Steven and his brother to the library in the local town; the ritualised interactions of Steven and Lewis; and Uncle Jude’s attempts at gardening.

I loved the book, though it is not a “crime” novel in the usual sense. Quite a bit of it is from the point of view of Avery, the child killer, but the author maintains a tone of neutral interest that succeeds in avoiding the usual pitfalls of novelistic representations of such people, making the reader interested in Avery’s part in the drama, while not having to become embroiled in the details of his revolting crimes. Towards the end I felt there were a couple of deviations from believability (a section in the prison and subsequently) and in its otherwise admirably cool yet sympathetic and deeply empathetic portrait of Steven in his community environment. Without a doubt, thought the book’s main success is in its portrayal of Steven, who very much reminds me of Harry Potter in his serious modesty, in his feeling that he’s not very good at anything, and in his analytical tenaciousness against what seem to him to be impossible odds. (Right at the end of the novel, an explicit comparison is made, which I felt unnecessary.) Overwhelmingly, though, I admire the achievement of the author for this well-constructed, observant and insightful book, not least because it is her first novel.

I am very grateful to Karen of Euro Crime for my copy of this book.

Other reviews of Blacklands, full of praise for the novel, are at: Euro Crime (Paul Blackburn); Mysteries in Paradise (Kerrie); The Guardian (Laura Wilson); Reactions to Reading (Bernadette); It's a Crime!; and The Independent (Jane Jakeman).

US publisher's website, where you can download Chapter 1 free.

Book Review: Gone by Mo Hayder

2010-10-13T18:53:00+01:00

Gone
By Mo Hayder
Bantam Press, 2010

Mo Hayder is back on form with a vengeance in Gone, her latest novel about detective Jack Caffery of the Bristol major crime investigation unit and police diver sergeant Flea Marley. After two promising but, for this reader, eventually disappointing outings for Caffery in his Bristol persona (Ritual and Skin), the author here delivers a cracking, classic police procedural novel that must be one of the best of its type I’ve read for a good while.

The story is about missing girls, a subject too distressing to contemplate, but here handled in a sensitive way. There are none of Hayder’s trademark obsessions with visceral or pathological details in this novel, leaving us with a jolly good detective story with a classic but clever plot. A man steals and drives away in a car from a city-centre parking garage, as Rose Bradley, a vicar’s wife, packs her food shopping in the boot. Her 13-year-old daughter is in the back seat. Caffery and his team, as well as all the regular police that can be spared, are soon out searching for the girl. Flea, a person given to watery premonitions, feels convinced that the old, buried canal is relevant, so takes her team of divers down the dangerous, dark tunnels to search along the sludge and sunken, abandoned barges – a remarkably atmospheric and convincingly described setting. Nothing is found, and the parents are increasingly desperate.

Before too long, another girl is taken in a similar manner. The description of this abduction is highly suspenseful, as the reader is pretty sure it is going to happen sooner or later – but the circumstances are nevertheless a shock as Janice, the mother concerned, becomes distracted while Emily is waiting in the back seat of their car. We have been witnessing cracks appearing in Janice’s marriage before this crisis occurs, cracks that we feel pretty sure will give way to a full-blown break-up. Yet again, the direction taken by the author in this regard is a surprise.

Caffery and Flea pursue their separate off-the-books investigations. In Caffery’s case, this means a couple of encounters with his alter ego, the Walking Man, for possible enlightenment; and in Flea’s, this means leaving her somewhat demoralised team to the official search while she follows the hunches of her dreams (mainly involving her dead father) into the old canal again. But these somewhat mystical asides are just a fraction of the main action, which focuses on two main elements – the police investigation and the effect of the disappearances on the two families concerned. I’m not going to give away any more of the plot than I’ve already mentioned because it would spoil too much of the pleasure a reader must surely feel in the clever construction of layers that the author has provided. As I have mentioned, although the subject is a horrible one, the author never oversteps the mark into unnecessarily explicit or horrible description, yet she provides a blisteringly paced, tense thriller that you honestly won’t want to stop reading until you have finished it.

The novel is best appreciated if you have read the previous Jack Caffery novels, particularly the last two, although the reader of Gone is provided with a few brief updates of the necessary back-story, not least the misunderstanding that lies heavily between Flea and Caffery after the complicated fallout of the car accident of the previous two books. It is far superior to these earlier novels, though, perhaps even touching on the excellence of the author’s, and Caffery’s, debut, Birdman. I very much hope this signifies the beginning of a fresh burst of life for this series – not least because the author has left things nicely poised for Caffrey and Flea, connected on the astral plane, to stop ignoring each other in the real world and have a meaningful conversation, which could lead who knows where? I don’t, but it will certainly be somewhere exciting on the evidence of Gone.

My copy of this book was borrowed from the local library.

Read other reviews of this novel at: Euro Crime (Michelle Peckham); Tangled Web; Easy Mix; and Reviewing the Evidence.

Mo Hayder's unforgettable debut, Birdman (here reviewed by Nicci Gerrard in the Observer) and its sequel, The Treatment (reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence by Luke Croll) were about Jack Caffery, then a London detective, and his search for his brother. The author then moved on to other books, the remarkably good Tokyo and the remarkably bad Pig Island. Subsequently, she moved Jack Caffery to Bristol and to date has written three novels in a series about him and Flea Marley: Ritual, Skin and Gone. Author's website.

Book Review: Let the Dead Lie by Malla Nunn

2010-10-11T20:51:00+01:00

Let the Dead Lie by Malla Nunn
Pan Macmillan, 2010.

The year 1953 finds Emmanuel Cooper in Durban, no longer a policeman after the Morton’s fork he faced in A Beautiful Place to Die, working in the shipyards with other ex-army men of a variety of racial origins. Manual labour affords him some comfort as he recovers from the earlier events and from his previous wartime experiences, but he’s eager to accept an offer from his old boss and sort-of mentor, Major van Niekerk, to do some undercover work around the docks, identifying smugglers and other low-life. While out one night gathering intelligence, he stumbles across the body of a young boy, whom he quickly establishes has been murdered. After an altercation with three men, Cooper calls the police anonymously to report the death. Although he knows the risks to himself, he can’t ignore the boy’s plight, and so shadows the police as they investigate. Before he knows it, he’s a suspect in the crime. And this is only the start of a huge, and convoluted, series of troubles, scrapes and double-crosses in store for Cooper, involving an increasingly large cast of characters, some of whom appeared in the earlier novel.

For its first half, Let the Dead Lie is a compellingly exciting read, partly as a fast-moving investigation of a crime, and partly as a social commentary on the repressive and evil society of 1950s South Africa. Yet by the second half of this long novel, I felt that the pace was flagging a bit, and the confusion factor was getting unrealistically high as yet more people seem to know about private conversations and actions when they shouldn’t have done; or it is revealed that informants have followed Cooper’s every move – steps that to me often either seemed unnecessary or made me question why he was even being asked to undertake various tasks if the outcomes were already known. Throughout, though, the sense of social justice is a very strong theme, both the racism endemic in this cruel regime, in which even people who are married can’t admit their status, and in which poverty is rife, with many people living in awful conditions, relying on charitable handouts from the religiously inclined to survive.

Cooper is both a participant and an observer of this melee of events and of the lives of the many people he encounters during the novel – and those he meets seem to come from almost every possible race or background, so the reader gets a full picture of Durban life in the build-up to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Perhaps, for a novel, the picture is somewhat too full, blurring the effectiveness of the plot – but whatever one’s feelings about that, nobody could doubt that this is a novel with a big conscience, intent on revealing many shameful injustices that were accepted as the norm in their time but now, thankfully, exposed for what they really were.

I thank the publisher, Pan Macmillan, for my copy of this book. From the press release accompanying the book: Malla Nunn grew up in Swaziland before moving to Perth. She studied theatre in the USA, where she began writing and directing short films. Her first novel, A Beautiful Place to Die, won the Sisters in Crime Davitt award for best crime novel by an Australian female author. It was shortlisted for an Edgar award for best novel. Malla Nunn lives in Sydney.

My review of the first in this series, A Beautiful Place to Die.

Read other reviews of Let the Dead Lie at: Reactions to Reading; Murder by the Book; and The Ember (includes a discussion with the author about this book).

My September Euro Crime and Petrona reviews

2010-10-10T18:20:00+01:00

Two of my book reviews went up at Euro Crime during September, both of rather good novels. One, River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi (MacLehose Press; translator Joseph Farrell) is a classic police procedural set in the Italian countryside. I wrote that it is "a welcome newcomer to the crime fiction genre (in England, at least: it was first published in Italy in 2003). Soneri has many attributes in common with Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbani". The other, Three Seconds by Roslund and Hellstrom (Quercus; translator Kari Dickson), is an "addictive thriller". I wrote: "the book has two elements. In one, it is a great thriller whose pace never lets up, particularly in the second half. It is full of the sort of detail that made Stieg Larsson so popular, for example the scenes in the library and the way in which the police informer tries to anticipate anything and everything that might transpire once he is incarcerated and can't control events. The other main element in the book, again with echoes of Larsson, is the political corruption of the national police force in Sweden and the ministry of justice responsible for its oversight."

My reviews at Petrona during September include some very good novels: An Empty Death by Laura Wilson; Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (translator Philip Roughton); The Woman Before Me, a talented debut by Ruth Dugdale (winner of the CWA debut dagger); Midnight Cab by James Nicholl; and U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton, among a few others. See here for the month's archived reviews. I also reviewed my first (and so far only) Kindle book during September: Silent Counsel by Ken Isaacson.

I'm not going to pick a favourite from these as it would be a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but I can certainly recommend any of them as a very good read indeed.

Book Review: Silence by Jan Costin Wagner

2010-10-09T21:35:41+01:00

Silence by Jan Costin Wagner
Translated by Anthea Bell
Harvill Secker

Silence begins with the description of a murder that took place in 1974, in which a young teenage girl disappeared while riding her bicycle in the Finnish countryside. Her body is eventually found in a nearby lake. The main detective investigating the case is Antsi Ketola, and his failure to find the killer has haunted him ever since.

The main novel opens 33 years later, on the day of Ketola’s retirement. He is given a party by his colleagues, including detective Kimmo Joentaa, whom English-language readers met in the author’s previous novel Ice Moon. Ketola asks Joentaa to go with him to the archive in the basement of the police station to look for a model of the scene of the old crime that Ketola had made at the time. He wants to take it home with him before he leaves the force, so he tells the younger man about the old case.

Six months later, a bicycle is found near the cross marking the disappearance of Pia, the girl who was killed so many years before. Joentaa and his colleagues soon discover that it belongs to a 13-year-old girl who had been on her way to a sports class. Her parents are devastated as it gradually sinks in that their daughter has disappeared. Naturally, the police wonder if the two cases might be related, and Joentaa asks Ketola to help with the investigation.

Silence is a quietly compelling book, dwelling on the consequences of life’s losses and disappointments. Several of the characters are coming to terms with the deaths of children or spouses, and it transpires that Ketola himself has a son who is very disturbed. As may be inferred from the title, most of the characters suffer their pain in internal reflection, sometimes for many years. Others keep silent about nastier secrets, and this is rather hard for the reader to bear, as the consequences of silence are that someone can live a life surrounded by vulnerable and innocent people, and that crimes can proliferate in ways that are not hinted at in this novel, but are all-too obvious, and too awful to contemplate. This overshadows the book, making it almost intolerable to read - and I mean this as a compliment. Yet the novel does not have the haunting other-worldly quality of Ice Moon. Also, the irascibly funny characterisation of Ketola is not reprised in Silence: he’s eccentric, but somehow not the same person as the man portrayed previously. Nor is the outcome of the second (modern-day) crime entirely convincing. But compared with your average crime novel, Silence certainly stands out from the crowd and must surely be among the strongest of the genre published (in English) this year, not least by its ability to portray the pressures arising from years-long guilt and unhappiness.

I am very grateful to Karen of Euro Crime for my copy of this book. Her review of it is here.

Silence has also been reviewed at Crime Scraps .

Jan Costin Wagner is a German national who lives part of his time in Finland. Read more about him here and here (includes a review of his novel The Winter of the Lions, not yet translated into English).

Not the five best international crime novels

2010-10-08T20:56:06+01:00

Some of us know that today's "best" lists are tomorrow's fish and chip wrapping, but even so I will note a strangely non-contextual collection under the title of Five Best Books: International Crime Fiction, by Geoffrey O'Brien in the WSJ.com (link sent to me by Dave Lull). An alternative link is here if the previous one does not work. The five "best" novels according to the WSJ are:

From Nine to Nine by Leo Perutz, 1918
Tropic Moon by Georges Simenon, 1933
The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, 1969
The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martínez, 2005
The Water's Edge by Karin Fossum, 2007

I am sure these are all very good novels and all that (Geoffrey O'Brien's article consists of a brief paragraph about each, and that's it, no context or overview), but the "best" translated fiction? No. I have read two of these novels and would not say that they stand out from the rest of their authors' output. I have not read The Oxford Murders but if it is anything like the awful film version that I once saw on a plane, forget it. I may have read Tropic Moon, but if so, I have forgotten.

As I read quite a bit of translated crime fiction (albeit mostly modern) I thought I would write a list of five books I would recommend to anyone unfamiliar with the genre.

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg.
Jar City by Arnaldur Indridason.
Shadow by Karin Alvtegen.
The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri.
Sun Storm by Asa Larsson.

While not claiming to be the "best", these novels will provide a good but rather modern and European-centric overview of translated (a.k.a. international) crime fiction, from a range of perspectives. If you enjoy these, I suggest you read all ten of the Sjowall/Wahloo Martin Beck series (not just one of them, as they work much better if read as a whole. Geoffrey O'Brien is quite wrong to repeat the erroneous statement that this series "owed much" to Ed McBain; they were conceived and written independently). Then you can fly solo, aided by the great resource of Euro Crime (mainly, but not entirely, European crime fiction.) Of course, any other person could write a list of five different books, which would be just as good as these.

Book Review: Black Ice by Leah Giarratano

2010-10-07T18:41:00+01:00

Black Ice by Leah Giarratano
Bantam, 2009.

The third installment of this searing Australian series finds DS Jill Jackson working undercover, using the name Krystal Peters, in the slums of Sydney. She’s identifying plenty of low-life drug dealers, to the pleasure of her bosses, but is finding it a bit of a strain to maintain her facade. When she was a child, she was kidnapped and abused. Although she has superficially recovered from her ordeal by conquering her excessively ritualised life and achieving a degree of closure (described in Vodka Doesn’t Freeze), she’s still suffering, not least in her difficult relationship with her sister Cassie, a glamorous model and, unknown to her family, drug addict.

Jill’s story is one theme of this book. The other follows Seren (short for Serendipity), a young mother who has been wrongly imprisoned for a crime she did not commit – carrying large quantities of “ice” – and who has been abandoned by the man who was actually responsible, a smarmy lawyer who when he is not dealing drugs himself is getting other dealers acquitted and becoming very rich in the process of both activities. Seren reaches the end of her sentence (after some brutal descriptions of life in a women’s “correctional facility”) and, in order to be reunited with her 10-year-old son, acquiesces to a dull life in a cheap flat and a menial yet horrific job slaughtering chickens at a meat-processing plant. Seren, of course, is secretly plotting revenge on the man who got her into this trouble.

Black Ice has a lot going for it. It has an exciting, gritty plot and an attractively capable list of women characters. I am not quite sure, therefore, why I was not more involved in the story and the dilemmas these women face. Partly, I think the book is too sensationalistic without providing enough depth to the characters, giving the whole a bit of a soap-opera feel. People are not who they seem after being described positively for some time, but it isn’t explained why. Details are glossed-over, for example some pages are spent on describing just how broke Seren is on her release from prison, then in one sentence it is said that she has possessions “in storage” – with no indication of how she pays for this. Everything just seems to be that bit too exaggerated, and too much of the plot depends on accidents and mistakes – for example one character drops a camera being used to secretly film a drug deal, and another is recruited as an informer yet given a mobile phone to use which has crucial information on it leading the villains directly to ruin an investigation. Jill herself is a sympathetic character, but she’s like a moonstruck, wimpy teenager every time she meets a half-way handsome man (two colleagues and a drug dealer), which does not fit with other sections of the novel in which she is portrayed as a dedicated, focused professional.

Black Ice is certainly an exciting page-turner, and raises tough questions about the value of punishment and rehabilitation as well as the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. The relationship between Jill and Cassie is perhaps the strongest element in my estimation. But the harrowing themes of the book are presented rather in the manner popularised by Martina Cole: Seren’s compulsive purchasing of $1,000 designer shoes and her spending every cent of her rent money on high fashion does not gel, for me, with her stated principles and adoration of her son, especially as the pages describing the shoes and the sexy clothes she buys are more detailed and involved than those describing the boy and his life. The physical descriptions of the women (particularly Seren and Cassie) could come from a glossy, airhead magazine. Something about this book’s odd combination of romanticised fiction with the shocking details of drugs and violence does not really ring true for me, although I do not doubt the sincerity of its intentions.

I thank Dorte of DJ's Krimiblog for so kindly sending me a copy of this book. Her review of it can be read here.

Other reviews of this novel at: Reactions to Reading, Crime Watch, and Lawyer's Weekly. (All very positive!)

New UK fiction for January

2010-10-06T18:03:00+01:00

Well, things are looking up for fans of good crime fiction who have access to books published in the UK. The Bookseller's listing of new titles for January 2011 (1 October 2010 issue) has some very tempting reads.

First up for me is the only (I think) translated offering, Jo Nesbo's The Leopard (Harvill): eagerly awaited by many, not least for another chance to read an undoubtedly peerless translation by Don Bartlett. I won't repeat the gruesome-sounding plot here, but according to the publisher the sales of Harry's last outing, The Snowman, a Richard & Judy pick, are up 400 % on Nesbo's previous book (The Redeemer, presumably).

It's also good to know that Elly Griffiths has a new novel out (Quercus), The House at Seas End, in which forensic anthropologist Dr Ruth Galloway investigates some 60-year-old bodies thought to have been involved in a plan to stop a German invasion. I loved The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone, so I am certainly looking forward to this one.

Another novel on my must-read list is The Facility by Simon Lelic (author of the excellent The Rupture). Published by Mantle, this novel is about security and anti-terrorist legislation as experienced by a journalist for a political news site.

Snowdrops by A. D. Miller (Atlantic) looks to be an interesting debut by The Economist's former Moscow correspondent. (The novel is also subject of a feature in the same issue of The Bookseller). The novel is set in "post-Soviet, pre-credit crunch, gold rush Moscow of the mid-noughties" (?!), in which a lawyer looks back over a winter in which he lost his moral bearings.

There really are many other interesting titles, a few of which I'll mention here in case you want to watch out for them. Darkside by Belinda Bauer (Bantam) is set in the close-knit village of Shipcott, as was her first, Blacklands (which I have yet to read). Martin Cruz Smith has a new Arkady Renko thriller out, Three Stations (Macmillan). I stopped reading these after the first three, not sure why as I enjoyed them - well, the first one, Gorky Park, the most, by a long way. Death and the Maiden by Frank Tallis (Century) is the next in the Liebermann Papers series, set in 1903 Vienna. Apparently an earlier novel, Darkness Rising, has been optioned by the BBC. Other new titles include Shatter the Bones by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins), First Frost by James Henry (Bantam), an attempt (I would guess doomed) by someone to continue the delightfully idiosyncratic and rude series of R. D. Wingfield; and Do No Harm by Carol Topolski (Fig Tree), an author I haven't tried but who looks interesting in the "psychological thriller" subgenre, this one about a "gynaecologist with a dark secret". There is also a debut by Araminta Hall that looks worth checking out, Everything and Nothing (HarperCollins), about a shaky marriage and childcare arrangements that go wrong. Likened to Sophie Hannah. Another debut, The Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken (Serpent's Tail) looks good, but strong noir medicine. There are also new books by the usuals, eg JP, Tami Hoag, Clive Cussler, if you fancy a formulaic read.