MORE GREAT READS FOR JUNE, 2013

A Delicate Truth, by John le Carré

Mr Le Carré, long the undisputed King of the Spy novel, has changed literary direction considerably since the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, instead aiming his expository arrows closer to home, his last novel ‘Our Kind of Traitor’

being a perfect example (see review below).  In ‘A Delicate Truth’, the Blair New Labour government and its unpopular alliance with its American counterparts are mercilessly exposed in their relentless use of any method to achieve victory – and profits -  in the War on Terror.

WILDLIFE is the code name for a combined U.S./British Special Forces counter-terrorist operation to capture a notorious jihadist arms buyer at a secret location on Gibraltar.  There is also a mysterious private right-wing arms and security company involved:  ‘War’s gone corporate, Paul!’

Fergus Quinn, a Junior minister of the Crown fuelled more by ambition than good sense recruits a diplomatic ‘low-flyer’ (codenamed Paul) to be his token Man on the Spot, his Eyes and Ears as the top-secret (even from his own government!)  mission is carried out and – the ‘low-flyer’ expects – the wit to abort the operation if the situation warrants it.  Ah, in a perfect world …..!

Things go wrong.  After the collapse of radio and computer contact Paul is literally left in the dark on a Gibraltar hillside until his rescue and hurried evacuation back to England by a young woman constantly exhorting him that the operation was ‘a triumph, right?  No casualties.  We did a great job.  All of us.  You, too.  Right?’

And maybe that was true, because the low-flyer ends up with a knighthood and a very cushy diplomatic post to the Caribbean. 

Enter Toby Bell, aspiring Foreign Office employee and soon-to-be Private Secretary (read minder) to Junior minister Quinn just prior to the Gibraltar fiasco.  Toby has been recommended by his long-time friend and mentor Giles Oakley;  this is a plum job which could lead to even higher things and Toby is delighted by his good fortune, for his origins are humble, his educational distinction and linguistic qualifications gained through intelligence, hard work and scholarships and disguising ‘the brand marks of the English tongue’ – his Dorset burr – in favour of the ‘Middle English affected by those determined not to have their social origins defined for them.’

Yes, Toby has ambition but he also has morals: ‘ he wishes to make a difference, to take part in his country’s discovery of its true identity in a post-imperial, post Cold-War world’;  he is an ethical, decent man, and whilst he is not naïve, he is far from prepared for the corruption he is forced to confront, or its extent.  And this is the fulcrum upon which Mr Le Carré’s fine story turns:  will Toby fold under the pressure of bribes or threats, physical and otherwise, or will he follow the maxim ‘evil triumphs when good men do nothing,’ and act on it?

Yet again, Mr Le Carré has constructed with trademark elegance and style a novel of honourable men -  21^st century anachronisms, their integrity derided and courage discounted -  but not content ‘to do nothing’.  And again, Mr Le Carré demonstrates effortlessly why he leads and others follow:  he still blows lesser writers right out of the water.  Highly recommended.

Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carré   reviewed November, 2010

Dima is a Russian gangster, and proud of it.  He is also an expert money-launderer for the Russian Mafia and has amassed huge wealth for them, and for himself – but a new young ‘Prince’ is coming to the fore in the Mafia Hierarchy, and the Prince doesn’t like Dima;  Dima is too ‘Old-School’, he dwells too much on the old Vor code of Honour amongst thieves (and murderers) and after one last, biggest laundering operation – the opening of a new ‘respectable’ bank in the City of London – Dima and his family will be eliminated, as were several of his dear friends and colleagues already:  it’s time, thinks Dima, to defect with all his secrets and sell them to his preferred country of asylum, Great Britain.  Yet again John Le Carré has crafted an impeccable story of secret service diplomacy, political corruption and life-and-death back-room dealings;  his characters are superb,  almost Dickensian in range and description and utterly, utterly believable.  Mr. Le Carré has the best eye and ear for accents and body language in the business, and his wit, interspersed even at times of great suspense in this beautifully plotted story, is delicious.  This is the master at his best:  highly recommended.

           

GREAT READS FOR JUNE, 2013

Cop to Corpse, by Peter Lovesey

Well, just about the only thing I am going to object to with Mr Lovesey’s book is its title.  Because it sounds like one of those airport or railway station cheapies, dedicated crime readers (and there are so many of us!) might give it the big miss, not realising what a cleverly crafted, beautifully plotted novel it is – unless they have come across Mr Lovesey before.  He has a prolific body of work and a stellar reputation among crime writers, and now that I have finally caught up with him (thanks to a glowing review in a local magazine), it is a real pleasure to meet his main protagonist, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Bath Police force.

Peter is a diamond of the rough variety;  overweight, unfit, and an arch-cynic – there is very little that surprises him anymore about the punters he deals with;  he has seen it all, and experienced more than anyone should, including the murder of his beloved wife – but the scum of society hasn’t stopped him from being a superb investigator and an inspiring team leader.  And he needs these skills now more than ever, because someone has started to murder policemen.

When the story opens, the third police constable has just been shot, turning ‘from hero to zero, cop to corpse’ and within a very short time the ancient Roman city of Bath is in an uproar;  a serial killer must surely be on the loose and no policeman is safe – especially when a note is found in the belongings of the latest victim saying ‘You’re next.’

Oh, the plot thickens nicely, especially when available evidence starts to point to the killings being an inside job:  someone murdering one of their own.  When this theory is posited by Diamond to his team he earns the ire of everyone;  such a suggestion is utterly unthinkable, and he’d better come up with something else or he’d be operating solo in future – and that is what Diamond does, not least to disprove his own disquieting suspicions.

There are great, believable characters in this story;  Mr Lovesey knows his beloved Bath well, and evokes its historic, beautiful buildings,  atmosphere and people with much skill and affection.  He is so credible in his portrayals, not only of the good guys but of the baddies as well, that his story has a gritty streetwise reality not always found in in your ordinary everyday detective yarn;  in fact he elevates the genre to a much higher level, thanks to his great writing skills and the ability to keep all his readers guessing.

So, whodunnit?  I didn’t know until the very end!   Highly recommended.

The Tooth Tattoo, by Peter Lovesey

Here’s a first:  me reviewing two books back to back by the same author.  Well, after reading ‘Cop to Corpse’, I had to go on to Mr Lovesey’s latest effort, and I’m thrilled to say that in my humble opinion, it is even better.  What a superbly entertaining writer he is, and what a clever plot:  two young Japanese women have been killed, their bodies dumped in water, one in a Vienna canal and one in a river in Bath, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond’s stamping ground.

On the face of things there appears to be no connection between the two deaths except for their ethnicity;  then it transpires that both girls were classical music buffs (one with a tooth tattoo, enormously fashionable in Japan, of a quaver) and were dedicated fans of a particular Chamber music quartet, the Staccati – who happened to be giving concerts in the same cities, at the same time that the girls were killed.

A flimsy coincidence?  As Diamond pursues with his team the scant evidence available to him it becomes increasingly obvious that the Staccati, newly re-formed after the disappearance of their violist four years before has a relevance to the murders which cannot be satisfactorily explained by its members:  their stories, whilst plausible, are not watertight and it falls to the team to keep digging until the truth emerges.

And it does.  As before, I had no idea whodunnit, and once again I was delighted by Mr Lovesey’s strong characters and busy plotting.  As my dear old Granny would say:  ‘He knows his onions!’  And as an added bonus, he writes most beautifully about music;  its composition, the musicians who make it, and the instruments on which they play.  It is obvious that Mr Lovesey is a true music lover:  for plot purposes he would have had to conduct exhaustive musical research, but his great love for the classics must have made writing about the mechanics of music a breeze, and has certainly been a true pleasure to read.  Mr Lovesey is a star!  Highly recommended.         

  

LAST GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2013

Girlchild, by Tupelo Hassman

The Calle de las Flores:  a failed housing development now turned into a trailer park just north of Reno, Nevada – The Biggest Little City in the World! – and a  typical resting place for the human flotsam unable to raise the money (and  hope) to live anywhere else.

There are few flowers on the Calle:  its denizens are not remotely interested in trying to improve their surroundings, much less their lot, because their expectations are tiny:  they’ve fetched up here so on the Calle they will stay, taking whatever garbage is dished out to them – but trying, just the same, to avoid as much of it as possible.

Five year old Rory Dawn Hendrix lives on the Calle with her Mama Jo, the bartender with a soft heart and a hard thirst, already the mother of four sons who all left her as soon as they could.  She and Rory came to the Calle at the invitation of her mother, Shirley Rose, who makes a little money babysitting for those lucky enough to have work;  she will watch Rory while Jo makes a new start after her California divorce – life will be good again;  three generations of strong females can look after each other, surely – even though Shirley Rose became pregnant at the age of 15, and at the same age Jo faithfully followed suit.

Rory is a good, obedient child, academically clever and unpopular with her classmates for that reason  - and for the fact that her mama is a bartender, but she chugs along without complaint because she has the loving security of her Grandma during the day, mitigating the mercurial, alcoholic temperament of her mother at night (not to mention Mama’s ‘visitors’). 

Sadly, this relative normality is temporary;  for Grandma, so reliable and caring, has feet of clay:  she is a slave to the pokies, and when she gets on a roll and a binge everything, including collecting Rory from school, is forgotten, causing a huge rift with Jo who swears never to contact Shirley Rose again.

And this is where this brilliant story becomes most disturbing:  Jo’s choice of a sitter for her little daughter is Carol, the daughter of a neighbour Rory calls the Hardware Man because that’s where he works – at Ace Hardware.  He is also a child abuser and he jumps at the chance for his daughter  to ‘watch’ Rory; for at thirteen, Carol is getting a little stale.

I defy anyone to read this part of the book without recoiling in horror.  The story is narrated by Rory Dawn, and Ms Hassman has given her a painfully authentic and observant voice:  her experiences are related with poignant honesty, but despite the bleakness and despair of her young existence she can still regard life with some humour;  she can still sort out the good people from the bad, especially by relying heavily on a dog-eared copy from the school library of ‘The Girl Scouts’ Handbook’.  It is her bible;  her font of all knowledge;  her refuge from horror and squalor and disappointment:  it is her lifesaver.

The novel covers a period of ten years, and it is unclear at the end if Rory’s fate will replicate her mother’s and grandma’s, but she is such a winning, positive character that readers could not imagine her failing at life as did her loved ones, strong in so many ways but weak when it mattered most.

Ms Hassman’s debut novel is a showstopper, full of life as we would rather not know it, but a tribute too, to the resilience and optimism of a very singular heroine.  I shudder to think how much of this fine story might be autobiographical – regardless, despite its wrenching, dreadful themes, I feel fortunate to have been introduced to a great new voice in American fiction.  Highly recommended.

AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE!

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout.

Ms Strout’s eponymous protagonist is an exceptional woman.  She has been a high school mathematics teacher in the small town of Crosby, Maine for many years and has a wonderful empathy for her students, helping many of them with advice that in several cases is crucial:  she makes a positive difference to many  lives, including those she chooses as her friends – and there are few, for Olive Kitteridge does not suffer fools gladly.

Sadly, she regards her own husband and son as wanting:  her frustration with their meek compliance with her whims, their longing for her approval and more importantly, a peaceful, loving atmosphere, turns her into a bully, ashamed of her actions but unable to stop her tyranny.

Ms Strout tells Olive’s story in a series of beautifully constructed short stories;  each one features her either as a major influence on the main character in the chapter or as a remote adjunct, a mere mention, as in the story devoted to the talented pianist at the local restaurant who drinks to disguise her perpetual stage fright, and has more than her share of secrets and regrets.
In another chapter Olive attends the funeral of one of her former pupils, happily married to his high school sweetheart until his untimely death from cancer but once again, secrets are revealed at the wake:  the wife’s cousin had a fling with the dear departed, mentioning it to the grieving widow after a few drinks too many – ‘because I thought you knew!’  Needless to say, the poor widow knew nothing until that moment and it falls to Olive to try to salvage the situation, saving with her innate, intuitive diplomacy the  widow’s self-respect - and the cousin's hide!

Which begs the question:  why is she unable to apply these essential, enviable gifts to her personal life, which as she gets older polarise her more from her loved ones?

Ms Strout provides the answers effortlessly in this wonderful little book, which deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2008.  She has just released another novel ‘The Burgess Boys’ to glowing reviews, and as I hadn’t read anything of hers before, I thought I would make Olive’s acquaintance before going on to meet the Burgess brothers.  And how glad I am that I did, for ‘Olive Kitteridge’ is an unforgettable character:  outstanding, outrageous, a person of lion-hearted courage and lily-livered cowardice;  an Everywoman who has had to endure great grief and pain, but is still able to transcend her sorrow to make sense of her existence.  Olive is simply superb, and I hope you decide to meet her soon.           

MORE GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2013

Wash, by Margaret Wrinkle

Never has man’s inhumanity to man been more amply demonstrated over thousands of years than in the iniquitous practice of slavery.  The Romans called their slaves ‘talking cattle’, and by the time Ms Wrinkle’s novel opens in 1823, the concept of slavery and slave ownership has changed little.

If a negro is lucky, they will have a ‘good’ master who will feed, clothe and look after them in return for their hard labour, even though their women and/or children could be sold in the future.  If the negro is not, cruelty and neglect and a very short life is the fate of his family and himself.

Richardson considers himself a ‘good’ slave owner:  he has a large plantation in Tennessee, and though he originally shunned using slave labour as a young man, realises that his fortunes will never improve without it – even though he fought in the Revolutionary war under Washington with a view not just to kick out the British, but to abolish slavery as well.

Now, at the age of 70, he has repressed his youthful ideals and has many slaves to tend his fields and his horses, for Richardson is also a horse- breeder:  no-one in the state has a finer eye for equine beauty, stamina and speed than he and he revels in his reputation for knowing which of his stallions or mares should service his neighbour’s horses to produce the ideal progeny.

Unfortunately, financial uncertainty forces him to accept the advice of his partner to hire out to stud his stable slave, Wash (short for Washington):  his neighbours are impressed with Wash’s stature, intelligence and strength and desire these qualities in the future children of their female slaves – what a workforce they will have!  And what a boon to Richardson’s income! And what an unforgivable indignity is visited upon Wash, to be regarded as one of Richardson’s studs;  forced to service whichever fearful, shivering female he is taken to in full, interested view of his owners.  He is just another animal to them and he hates them for it, for Wash started out life with a certain degree of freedom, and a mother who was able to cushion slavery’s blows more than most – until a white man strikes him blind in one eye with a hammer for offering an opinion.  He didn’t realise then that he should have kept his eyes lowered and his mouth shut.

Now, he knows the drill but inwardly rails against his lot;  the only protest he can make is to keep himself apart from everyone, refusing to share his inner self with anyone except Pallas, a neighbour’s slave midwife and his true love.  Over time, Richardson finds himself inexplicably drawn to his taciturn and hate-filled piece of property;  he wants Wash’s stories, his opinions – his being, the very thing Wash will never relinquish;  and in his unwanted, drunken  visits at night to Wash’s stable, he eventually unburdens onto his reluctant listener his own stories, hopes, sorrows and disappointments.  The tables are turned.

Ms Wrinkle uses gorgeous language to write of unspeakable cruelty and careless kindness;  all her characters are expertly and beautifully realised and this, her debut novel, should become by its very objectivity one of America’s literary milestones.  This is a superb story about a shameful page in America’s history and Ms Wrinkle’s story brings home to the reader the ultimate irony:  just as Richardson’s sons carry the family name into the future, Wash the stud slave’s descendants will also do the same, relishing freedom sooner than anyone thinks.  Highly recommended.

Black Irish, by Stephan Talty

It is hard to know where to start with this book:  should I list its virtues first (many), or its faults (enough to make me shout ‘AAAAARGH!)?

I’m a fine one to talk about correct grammar – but even so:  wouldn’t the most casual and uncritical of readers balk at the fact that one of the murder victims (for this is s novel about a serial killer) starts off being called Gerald, then Gregory, then George before he reverts to being good old Gerald again.  WHAAAT???   Are proof readers now extinct in Stephan Talty’s publishing house? 

As if that weren’t bad enough, a descriptive sentence was repeated verbatim IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH;  what a shameful lack of attention to the most ordinary detail  - I mean, this is why authors supposedly submit drafts before the finished product is finally unveiled.  In my opinion (and you know how perfect that is!) it lessened the impact and pace of Mr. Talty’s story:  having said that, he still winds up the tension of his plot in a very satisfying manner, and his characters – even though they have so many aliases – are credible and well-drawn, particularly the main protagonist, Detective Absalom Kearney.

She is the adopted daughter of a retired police detective, and has followed him into the Buffalo NY police force after a glittering Harvard education.  Her stern father is now suffering from the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, and his condition is also a metaphor for the city of Buffalo – it has entered a decline, especially in its once-great steel industry, and people are leaving in their droves.  Typically, those who stay are those who cannot afford to move away, and more than once Abby asks herself why she has returned.  Looking after her father is a thankless task, for he has never been an affectionate man and his condition only exacerbates his aloofness.

Fortunately, Abby’s job with the Buffalo PD is very challenging and gives her many chances to show her brilliance – until a series of murders attributed to a particularly clever serial killer show enough evidence to incriminate her, the main investigator. 

Mr Talty ramps up the action very competently in all the right places and his depiction of  the societal foundering of a big city and its insular and tribal communities is evocative and well written;  what a shame his publishers didn’t attend to the groundwork.  It would have transformed this good suspense novel into a great one.  

       

   

GREAT READS FOR MAY, 2013

Kind of Kin, by Rilla Askew

‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family’.  How true, especially for Georgia ‘Sweet’ Kirkendall.  She is overloaded with family and its attendant responsibilities when this story opens:  she is the reluctant caregiver to her husband Terry’s stepgrandfather (Terry wouldn’t dream of putting any relative of his in a home, despite the burden that it unfairly places on Sweet’s shoulders);  her own father has gone to jail for harbouring illegal Mexican workers on his Oklahoma farm – then refuses to accept bail:  he has principles he wishes to uphold, for the Mexicans were good people and hard workers, and they didn’t deserve to be deported, let alone beaten up so badly that one of them (a pregnant woman) died.  He will stay in jail as a protest.  Which would be all well and good, if grandpa hadn’t left behind his grandson, Dustin Lee, second child of Sweet’s dead sister Gaylene.  Dustin is now a reluctant lodger with Aunt Sweet ‘just until Grandpa comes home, hon’ – but Dustin is starting to despair.  Aunt Sweet’s son Carl Albert is twice his size, hates Dustin with a bully’s fervour, and works tirelessly at making his young life a misery.  Dustin needs to visit his grandpa in jail to tell him to come home – to stop his protest so that their lives can get back to normal, and to worry about principles another day.

Sadly, this does not happen:  the situation escalates from bad to worse, with the revelation that Sweet’s niece, Dustin’s half-sister Misty Dawn (the first of Gaylene’s ‘mistakes’) is hiding her Mexican husband who was deported, but sneaked back so that he could be with his little family again.  Misty Dawn needs – and expects – Sweet’s help in keeping him hidden, for there is a new law going through the books, introduced by an ambitious local counsellor that sends anyone assisting ‘illegals’ to jail.  Sweet is in between a rock and a hard place but the family ties that bind are made of indestructible material, and she does her best for the fugitives even though she seethes with resentment and loathing, mainly directed towards her feckless dead sister – always leaving everyone else to clean up her mess!

While Sweet is trying to solve one problem, another major one occurs with the disappearance of Dustin;  he has decided it’s time to go on the run, and poor Sweet’s life, whilst not entirely satisfactory before, now becomes a nightmare, not just of events, but of choices:  where do her strongest loyalties lie?  With her father, or her disgruntled bigot of a husband, who is raising his son to be a carbon copy, or to her dead sister’s children, Misty Dawn and Dustin Lee, each with their own terrible, poignant dependence on her to make everything right for them:  where to turn?  What to do?

Sweet’s decisions are the meat on the bones of this very fine book.  She is a singular heroine amongst characters that are no less well-drawn, and the problems she deals with are situations that can be recognised universally:  bigotry, familial love, betrayal, racism, responsibility, and attempts, always, to do the Right Thing. 

I hesitate to use that hoary old cliché ‘heartwarming’ when describing this lovely story, but it is a tale that does warm our hearts – and our souls.  Highly recommended.

Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris

Douglas Brodie, Gordon Ferris’s Scottish war hero and protagonist of two previous books , (see review of ‘The Hanging Shed’ below) rejoins us for his third adventure, this time as a reluctant Glasgow private investigator at the end of 1946, hired by a group of Jewish businessmen to track down the criminals who are burgling the homes of their families and friends.  The victims are all recent immigrants, barely surviving the unspeakable horrors of their treatment in the concentration camps;  they have very little to steal, but what is taken  with the jewellery and mementoes are the memories of their lives before the persecution and mass-murder;  all the happiness and stability and respect they enjoyed in a civilised society before Hitler and his sadists permanently stained Germany’s good name with Jewish blood.  The Elders want these callous burglars caught:  their people have suffered enough.

To Brodie this will be an easy nut to crack:  there are enough clues left by the offenders to solve the case within a week – and he does, but discovers from his investigations that when you lift a rock, more than one nasty thing tries to scuttle off:  he soon finds himself on the trail of the ‘RattenLinien’, Rat Lines established by Nazi sympathisers throughout Europe to help Nazi criminals escape upcoming Allied War Crimes Trials in Germany, aiding them with  disguises and paperwork so that they could live new lives in the Americas.

Brodie is outraged.  He was present with the British Army when they liberated Belsen:  he has witnessed sights so dreadful that his life has changed forever and his sleep is riven with nightmares.  His faith in his fellow man is utterly destroyed, and the thought that these cowards, these beasts have an escape route is anathema to him.  They must be caught and brought to Justice;  they must pay for their crimes with their lives, sentenced by a Military Court in accordance with international  law.

Unfortunately, some people have other ideas.  The fleeing Nazis, holed up in Glasgow with their flimsy disguises by a temporary glitch in the escape route, are also being pursued by the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist organisation bent on three things:  the eviction by any means (including murder) of British Peacekeeping troops from Palestine;  the establishment of the State of Israel;  and the capture of Nazi criminals and sympathisers so that they can be returned to Israel to face Israeli justice.

Brodie’s excellent detective work pays off when he discovers Die Ratten’s hiding places, but his bid to bring them to the authorities is foiled by the ultimate betrayal, and to find out WHO, you will have to read the whole gripping story.  Mr Ferris has created a great anti-hero in Brodie;  he has many faults, cynicism and heavy drinking being just two;  he comes from humble origins and has a poor man’s disrespect of the upper classes; but his sense of honour is unshakeable, and despite his baser instincts, he always comes down on the side of right.  Add to that a brilliant evocation of Post-war Britain, rationing and a winter so awful that the reader digs out the parka and balaclava so that the blood doesn’t freeze in the veins before the book is finished, and you have a crime novel that’s first-class.  Highly recommended.

The Hanging Shed, by Gordon Ferris               Reviewed August, 2012

  The year is 1946:  Scottish Douglas Brodie is a decorated soldier;  he has fought a hard war and has distinguished himself by bravery on the field.  The trouble is Civvy Street – his Demob clothing doesn’t fit, nor does the reality of postwar London adjust to his expectations.  He is a lost man, trying to sublimate into peacetime all the aggression and hatred that necessarily sustained him for six years, and he is fighting a losing battle – until he receives a phone call from a childhood friend, a friend who betrayed him when they were teenagers by stealing the love of Douglas’s life.  Brodie has never forgotten or forgiven Donovan’s treachery;  therefore it is beyond shocking to hear from a man who is begging for his help – for Donovan is in a Glasgow jail, charged and found guilty of murder, and due to hang in a month’s time ,unless Brodie can magic up a miracle on his behalf, because he is innocent -  innocent of the heinous, unforgivable crime of child rape and murder, even though the evidence is ‘incontrovertible’.

Donovan’s war has been cruel – he was the rear gunner on a bomber that was blown up by the Luftwaffe;  he survived but wishes he hadn’t:  his injuries have made him into a nightmare figure, and the resultant pain has turned him into a junkie.  He doesn’t care if he dies, but he does care that people know that he couldn’t, WOULDN’T commit the crime of which he is accused.

In his pre-war life, Brodie was a Detective with the Glasgow Police Force;  he is ideally qualified to delve into the evidence both real and manufactured that he is presented with by Donovan’s despairing lawyer:  the question is, does he want to do this favour for his old nemesis?  He loathes Donovan for calling on the far-off memories of staunch childhood friendship, and loathes himself more for not being able to put past treachery behind him.

Unfortunately as the story progresses, Mr Ferris allows his story to get away from him like a stampeding horse;  plot twists vary from unbelievable to bizarre to say the least – the villains are so awful they are almost comic-book caricatures, but he is a wonderfully acute observer of his fellow man, and I defy anyone not to recognise thee and me in the utterly authentic characters he creates.  He can set a scene with the best of them and generate enough action to make me feel that I shall be doing a disservice to myself if I don’t check out his other titles.  So many books, so little time!

  

     

LAST GREAT READS FOR APRIL, 2013

Rubbernecker, by Belinda Bauer

Patrick Fort is 18 years old, and has left home  to study anatomy at university in the Welsh city of Cardiff.  He will share a tiny house with two other students and has a small allowance from his mum for food and incidentals, similar to so many other young people experiencing relative independence for the first time – with one huge difference:  Patrick has Asperger’s syndrome, and has gained his place at university because of his disability. The institution must accept a certain quota of handicapped students by law.

Patrick will never be ‘normal’.  His social skills are practically non-existent;  humour and irony are completely wasted on him, for Patrick takes every statement and situation literally.  If logic is not evident to him in conversations and actions he refuses to respond.  He is also fanatically clean and hates being touched, foibles which baffle and irritate his flatmates and fellow students, who are unaware that his condition has a name.

On the upside, however, Patrick has some enviable skills:  he loves puzzles;  he can fix a mucked-up Rubik’s cube in seconds, then offer to show the mucker-upper (in this case, the university Professor who admitted him to the anatomy class) where he went wrong;  he has a wonderful aptitude for all things mechanical;  and the human body, that supreme example of physical mechanics, is the puzzle he most wants to solve – for Patrick’s father was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was eight and the killer was never found.  Nor can Patrick understand the concept of death logically;  he needs to know by dissecting a body, where life goes, and if it could ever come back.  He needs to know, and the logical place to find out is in the Dissection class where he and his classmates are introduced to a corpse they name Bill.

Bill has donated his body to medical science;  he had been in a serious car accident, putting him in a coma for several months before he died;  now it is up to Patrick and three other students to study every part of Bill, and they must also establish the official cause of death whilst they do so.  Patrick is thrilled;  the mystery of where his father went when his life ended may soon be revealed!

Unfortunately, the only mystery revealed is the cause of Bill’s death:  he did not die of heart failure as was officially stated – he was murdered, and Patrick is faced with solving the biggest puzzle of his young life, and trying to keep himself alive as the murderer becomes aware that his was not, after all, the perfect crime.

This is SUCH a good book!

Ms Bauer has, through her impeccable research and enviable writing skills, made Patrick an entirely credible character, imprisoned within his syndrome but not lost to it.  Her minor characters are excellent and there are some great twists and turns in the plot – she had me fooled more than once, which is, after all, one of the most basic requirements of a good crime novel.  This was a pleasure to read.  Highly recommended.

AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE!

The Cypress House, by Michael Koryta

I found after reading ‘The Prophet’ by the above author, that I absolutely HAD to check out some of his earlier fiction – which makes me wonder where I have been all my life that I have remained ignorant of Mr Koryta (and Ms Bauer) until now.  I have spent too long in my fairy bower, obviously.

Anyway.

Hang onto your hat:  you’re going to have another white-knuckle ride (as all those really flash reviewers say) through a hurricane;  into drug-trafficking;  smacking up against smelly corpses and other nasty things in swamps;  and feeling the hairs rise on the back of the neck (even if you have none) as the hero tries to deal with the supernatural.  Oh, it’s great stuff, and while the reader’s credulity has to be suspended more than once, it’s a small price to pay for such a page-turner.

It is 1935, the middle of the Great Depression, and a band of men employed by the Government  are on their way by train to Florida to work on a hugely ambitious  project:  to construct a succession of highway bridges across the Florida Keys.  The men are excited;  they are employed  where so many thousands are not, and the work will last a long time.  The atmosphere is light-hearted – until one of them, Arlen Wagner,  starts to see his workmates transformed into skeletons.  This is not the first time such a thing has happened to Arlen;  during the Great War of 1914-18 he fought as a Marine in France, in Belleau Wood:  that’s when he first knew who would live and who would die.  He has sought the anaesthesia of alcohol ever since, unable to come to terms with these terrible futuristic visions, but now he knows that they must all leave that train -  get off at the very next station, or die.    Something terrible is going to happen and he is never wrong.

The men regard him as a crank – does he seriously think that they are going to give up the chance of steady work on his whim?  Only one young man follows him off the train;  his would-be friend, Paul Brickhill, a gangly, friendly-as-a-puppy teenager:  something in Arlen’s warning rings true for him.

And as they watch the train of soon-to-be- corpses leaving a tiny station in the deepest, darkest Florida countryside, that’s just the start of misadventure and misfortune for the pair:  worse things are going to occur as inevitably as the sunrise.

This is the perfect airport or beach read.  As Stephen King, that peerless master of Horror says in a cover endorsement: ‘ a hurricane, gangsters and the supernatural – what’s not to like?’  I couldn’t agree more, and the icing on the cake is that Mr Koryta isn’t a sloppy scribe who can tell a good story:  he can really WRITE.  Lucky us.

      

MORE GREAT READS FOR APRIL, 2013

The Prophet, by Michael Koryta

High school football Coach Kent Austin has no contact with his big brother Adam, though they both live in the same small town of Chambers, Ohio.  Chambers has little to recommend it;  its once-prosperous steel mills have closed, people have left, and those who have stayed are there mainly because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.  Adam makes a living as a Bail Bondsman, not his first choice of occupations, but it pays the bills and he’s good at it.  Having a steady income also allows him to indulge in his alcoholism, the perfect medication for the huge guilt that plagues him, for nearly twenty years before, Adam and Kent’s younger sister was cruelly raped and murdered and he holds himself responsible.

In the meantime, Kent has found the Lord, inherited the football Coach’s job, and married his daughter:  he has successfully ‘moved on’, so much so that he feels it in his heart that it’s time to visit the prison and bestow his forgiveness on his sister’s killer (who laughed in his face), thereby earning Adam’s undying hatred.  Far from ‘forgiving’ the murderer, Adam wants to kill him himself and as slowly and painfully as possible.  In Adam’s eyes, Kent has committed the ultimate betrayal, a desecration of their sister’s memory and one awful, drunken night he uses his fists on his brother to emphasise his point.

There things stand until another brutal murder takes place.  This time the victim is the seventeen-year-old girlfriend of the high School’s star quarterback and her death occurs during a make-or-break game for the Cardinals, Kent’s highly successful team;  they are on the way to the State Championship for the first time in twenty years and they have the support of the entire town, not least because it’s great to have something to be proud of again in Chambers.

The girl’s murder casts a pall over everything, but it forces the brothers into the same orbit once more:  the parallels between the latest murder and their sister’s 20 years ago have a familiarity that they can hardly bear to endure – but they must, for the latest killer has intimated that he can murder with impunity – and he is coming for Kent, and Kent’s family.

This is the first time I have read any of Michael Koryta’s books but it won’t be the last:  here is the white-knuckle ride I was promised in ‘The Boyfriend’. After reading that plodder of a book, it was pure pleasure to read a thriller worthy of the name.   That’s not to say that it doesn’t have flaws – I was genuinely surprised when Mr WhoDunIt was revealed, but the reasons for his actions I felt were less than convincing.  That said, Mr Koryta portrays familial love and sibling rivalry in pure, real terms, and it was satisfying to know that Kent, that staunch, respected, holier-than-everyone high school and town leader finally faced the consequences of actions to which he gave no thought many years before.

One last comment:  (I know I should stop here, but I can’t.  It’s the reviewer’s version of verbal diarrhoea.)  For those familiar with gridiron football, this book will be a football fan’s delight.  For those who aren’t, like myself, its rules and plays etc. shall ever remain a mystery.  I watched all the seasons of ‘Friday Night Lights’ and loved it to bits, but was no closer to understanding gridiron at the end of the series than I was at the beginning.  In my defence I have to say that in this part of the world Rugby in its various forms is King, and the All Blacks are its princely warriors.  I have tried to look for similarities between the two games but there are none that I can see, so I’ll just have to sit on my fist and lean back on my thumb, and hope that American readers will forgive my ignorance.

Gold, by Chris Cleave.

A few years ago I read a book by Chris Cleave called ‘The Other Hand’ (‘Little Bee’ in the U.S.A.), a story that has stayed with me because of its unforgettable characters (especially little Bee);  the horror and brutality of the circumstances that turn people, particularly children, into refugees; and how they fare afterwards in a supposedly caring world. 

I have been waiting patiently for Mr Cleave to produce his next opus, and here it is:  he pursues a completely different path this time, but as before commands the reader’s full attention and doesn’t relinquish it until the last page.

The London Olympics of 2012 are fast approaching, and three of Britain’s top cyclists are training hard for what will be their last big competition;  they are into their 30’s now, and despite huge former success and gold medals in previous Olympic competition, they know that this meeting will be their Swansong.

Zoë Castle is Miss Photo Op, the rock star of the trio, the athlete everyone wants to be – but no man wants to really know, unless it is to boast on FaceBook that they have worn her medals while they serviced her.  She is obsessively, destructively competitive and has no friends except her long-suffering rival Kate Argall, who through a superhuman feat of selflessness – or martyrdom, remains her steadfast ally, in spite of Zoë’s constant insults, backstabbing and, at one earlier point, her attempt to steal Kate’s man – just because he was Kate’s.

And that man, Jack Argall, is the third cyclist, brilliant, committed to his sport, to Kate, who is now his wife, and utterly committed and devoted to their daughter Sophie, 8 years old and battling leukaemia.

They all want to win gold for the last time, though in Kate’s case, it would be the only time;  she was looking after baby Sophie for the Athens Olympics, then opted out of Beijing when Sophie was diagnosed with her terrible disease.  She is now in the form of her life and knows full well this will be her last chance.

Zoë wants to win, yearns to win, needs to win again, because without victory she has nothing;  her life is meaningless without competition and victory by fair means or intimidation.  She cannot contemplate a future without being a winner:  a future down amongst the earthlings instead of soaring among the stars is unthinkable.

Mr Cleave handles his trio’s relationships, secrets and dilemmas with skill and insight;  he avoids the obvious tear-jerker element when writing of Sophie’s illness and her parents’ suffering;  instead he produces that welcome and increasingly rare phenomenon:  a novel that makes us think, a story that reflects momentous decisions that we all must make at various times in our lives, and the consequences of those choices. And when all’s said and done, that should be the objective of any writer worth his salt:  to engage his audience completely – not by literary artifice, but with a credible story, beautifully told.  Mr Cleave does so effortlessly.  Highly recommended.