Monthly Archives: February 2009

Review: What is Mine by Anne Holt

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Title: What is Mine (a.k.a Punishment)

Author: Anne Holt

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing [originally published 2001, this translation 2006]

ISBN: 978-0-446-57802-8

In present day Norway a nine-year-old girl has disappeared, presumed kidnapped, then a younger boy disappears and his body is found soon afterwards. There’s a sinister note found with the body but no one is sure if the boy’s disappearance is related to the girl’s. The police inspector in charge of the case, Adam Stubo, seeks help in solving the cases from Joahnne Vik: a lawyer and psychologist. Johanne is reluctant to get involved for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact she is, at the same time, becoming intrigued by an older case. Many years ago a man called Aksel Seier was sent to prison for raping and killing a young girl but was released a few years later under odd circumstances and Johanne is looking into the case on behalf of an ageing lawyer who never believed Seier was guilty.

Thinking about it now this was quite a complex story but it never felt like it while reading it as all the components were drawn together well. Even though there were two quite separate threads for a majority of the book I never found either difficult to follow. I found it quite fascinating to read about horrid events unfolding in a place where such things are rare as there was a noticeable difference in the language used and the reactions ascribed to the various players than would be the case if the book had been set in the US. The ending to the story was a bit disappointing though because it relied too much on a string of coincidences and left a couple of things completely unresolved. These elements (which I can’t be more specific abouot without giving away spoilers) appear to have been forgotten about rather than deliberately left to the reader’s imagination but I could be wrong about that. Either way it was a little annoying to be left in the dark.

The characterisations were generally good although I did tire a bit of the relationship between Johanne and Adam which was a ‘should we sleep together or not’ kind of thing. I just wanted them to either get on with it or shut up about it and found it difficult to imagine two grown adults with no ties would behave as immaturely as they did (surely one of them could have been a grown-up). However there were many other elements to both of their characters which were much more satisfying to watch develop and there were a string of minor characters who were also thoughtfully and artfully depicted. Emilie, the first child to be kidnapped in the story, made me weep.

This book had a high degree of what I like to call unputdownability (i.e. it made me late for work) and, overall, the annoyances were forgivable. I can’t help thinking I’ll be remembering some of these characters for a long while yet which is always the sign of a good read.

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

Reviewed on Euro Crime (September 2006)

And again on Euro Crime (October 2006)

For the record I think the American title, What is Mine, gets to the heart of what the book is about slightly better than the UK title which is Punishment.

Sunday Salon: What to read first (a revised Dartmoor Dozen)

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Last week I wrote about being unable to meet Uriah Robinson’s challenge of putting together a list of books in these categories as a reading list for someone new to this genre. I was told by more than one person that I was missing out on a golden opportunity to recruit new people to the crime fiction cult fold and, when Uriah created a new, more varied list, I decided I’d give it a go in the interests of spreading the word to the uninitiated. And so, my recommendations to you, the novice crime reader.

1] The Origins:

Naturally enough it’s all my mother’s fault. My obsession with crime fiction that is. She has admitted to reading her favourite writer, Edgar Allan Poe, to her children as babies. She started with the poetry but soon moved on to the darker prose. She could be forgiven for thinking that 6 month old me wouldn’t understand anything but her tone of voice but something must have seeped into my teeny developing brain because as soon as I could choose my own books I was reading mysteries. And I’ve never stopped. In honour of my mum then I would have to recommend you pick up a copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination and read the two stories featuring the adventures of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, probably the world’s first detective and definitely a direct ancestor of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Or, as it’s freely (and legally) available on the web you could get started on The Murders at the Rue Morgue right now.

2] The Age of Sherlock Holmes:

I’d just turned 20 when I moved to Sydney to take up my first ‘real’ job after leaving Uni with a fascinating but almost useless politics degree and the clothes on my back. The place I moved to had a pretty woeful library (countless rotating stands full of Mills & Boon books and two shelves of mechanical manuals for Holden cars) and my budget didn’t run to buying a lot of books. I scoured second hand shops though and discovered a set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and I read the lot, cover to cover, several times over that year. The Adventure of the Final Problem is my favourite Holmesian adventure though only by a bee’s whisker from almost everything else. It’s quite fascinating to trace back many of the character traits today’s fictional detectives display, including arrogance (albeit justified), above average intelligence and a predilection for self-destructive behaviour, to Holmes.

ngaio-marsh3] The Golden Age:

In Australia it’s fairly common practice to appropriate all the good things that come out of New Zealand as ‘ours’ so here I will recommend a novel by New Zealand author (Edith) Ngaio Marsh. First published in 1935 The Nursing Home Murder was the third of 32 novels featuring British police detective Roderick Alleyn and on the surface it’s a standard police procedural about the death threats being made against a leading British politician. Like much of Marsh’s work though it has a serious undercurrent and tackles the weightiest political issue of the time namely the rule of what was then called Palestine by Britain. Even today it is illuminating and as a bonus Marsh wrote superbly.

4] Hardboiled:

Without question this is my least favourite of the sub-genres. I’ve read a few over the years but can’t recall being engaged by a single one. All the things that define the genre: the sex and violence, the focus on plot over character development, the kind of first person narrative many of them use, leave me cold. To top it off I generally find them pretty misogynistic and although I can accept they were a product of a different time there’s not enough incentive for me to forgive that. If forced at gunpoint I’d recommend Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon as the ultimate example of the genre but I find it difficult to recommend something I didn’t enjoy.

5] The Police Procedural:

In contrast to the previous category this is one I adore. I have read avidly and compared techniques of fictional police investigators all across the US, the UK, Europe, and parts of Africa. Of late I’ve been discovering my own country’s rich offerings in this arena too and therefore will recommend Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore. It’s a dark, sometimes funny, tale of the investigation into the death of a local businessman in a rural Victorian town. It’s a very Australian story and although when I first read it I lamented its grimness it has stuck with me long after many other books have been forgotten. It also features some of the clearest, most concise writing you’ll see in the genre.

6] Detectives [police, forensic and private]:kathryn-fox1

Another category where I am spoiled for choice. However I’ll continue to highlight Australian talent and recommend Kathryn Fox‘s Without Consent which features forensic doctor Anya Crichton who helps police investigate a series of brutal rapes which may, or may not, have been committed by a man recently released from prison after serving 20 years for rape and murder. I was delighted when I first read this book because it reminded me of the early Patricia Cornwell novels (the ones that actually made sense and had a credible plot). Crichton is a fabulously believable character with no super human powers and the book has a real humanity too in the way it tackles the issue of rape and its affect on its victims.

7] Psychological suspense:

Don’t tell anyone but I’m not much of a fan of Barbara Vine novels. I know it’ll probably get me thrown out of the crime fiction fan club (or at least earn myself a few demerit points) but of those I’ve read I’ve found most of them dull and ponderous. For that reason I have tended not to read other novels in this genre but one I can happily recommend is Dead Lovely by Helen Fitzgerald (another Australian author although she lives in Scotland now). On the very first page of Dead Lovely we’re told that Krissie has killed Sarah, her best friend since they were four. The book then looks retrospectively at how the friends’ relationship deteriorates from ‘best friends’ status and also at the aftermath of the killing. The book’s chapters are short and sharp and Fitzgerald does a great job of differentiating between the voices of her very believable characters, especially Krissie who is struggling with the responsibilities and feelings she experiences as a new mum.

8] Caper and comic crime fiction:

I have written before about the elusive nature of comedy in fiction. I’ve lost count of the number brand new Janet Evanovich books I’ve given away unread because people keep giving them to me as gifts. They’re not funny (to me) and I wish people wouldn’t make assumptions. It’s probably not quite a match for this category but I’m nominating Ian Sansom’s The Case of the Missing Books anyway. It features the world’s most reluctant mobile librarian, Israel Armstrong, whose trials and tribulations while recovering the lost books of the Tumdrum and District Public Library (Northern Ireland) were, for me at least, genuinely laugh out loud funny. And it’s the only book on this list in which no one dies so it’ll suit the weak-stomached reader.

elizabeth-peters9] Historical crime fiction:

Here I can’t go past Elizabeth Peter’s Amelia Peabody books which combine several of my favourite things in fiction: a strong female character, humour and Egyptology (I dreamt of being an archaeologist as a child). The series is still going today but I think for this series you have to start with the first book, Crocodile on the Sandbank. It’s 1884 and our heroine, Amelia Peabody, travels to Egypt for the first time meets the man who will become her husband and solves her first archaeological mystery. It’s a rollicking, old-fashioned puzzle with loads of suspense, fantastic characters and a whole lot of heart.

10] Thrillers:

Mostly, for me, this category is my ‘summer/airplane’ reading: fast, fun and a bit forgettable. They generally don’t have the memorable characters that take a book from good to great on my scale but, on the flip-side, the genre has some of the best story tellers in all of fictiondom. To introduce a newbie to the genre I’d recommend Airframe by Michael Crichton. Actually I’d recommend almost anything by Crichton but this one in particular because it takes such a mundane subject and makes a thoroughly entertaining, edge-of-your-seat story out of it. I’m sure it takes skill to make thrilling stories out of international espionage or ancient curses but to make one out of aircraft design and maintenance demonstrates another level of genius all together. It shows, as always, his skill in turning extensive research into entertainment and my only caveat would be to suggest nervous travellers choose something else to read on their next flight.

11] Crime fiction in translation:

I’m sad that the rest of my list is entirely populated by books written originally in English but in my defence I’ve only been actively seeking out the translated stuff for about a year. Until then I relied on my local library for advice and, frankly, they stick pretty much to the mainstream. However it’s hard to pick just one of of all the marvellous translated books I’ve read in the past 12 months but I am going to choose something I only read this month. Fred Vargas’ The Three Evangelists is a truly marvellous book (here’s my review) and, I think, a particularly good pick for people new to the genre as it has a fairly literary feel to it.

12] The Wild Card category:asa-larsson

Here I’ll stick with the translated fiction and recommend Asa Larsson’s The Savage Altar (published as The Sun Storm in the US). It was the first Scandinavian crime fiction I read and I think it encapsulates the best of the standard procedural while successfully moving the genre to a modern setting. If you haven’t read translated fiction it’s an excellent place to start because it evokes a wonderful sense of its unfamiliar (to me) Swedish setting yet there are familiar plot devices such as the investigative techniques used by the police so you don’t feel completely like a fish out of water. And the characters are wonderful.

And then…?

There are many, many books I couldn’t squeeze into the above categories. Where does the amateur sleuth/cosy fit for example? It’s an enormously popular sub-genre and one I dabble with on occasion. And none of my Dick Francis favourites seemed to fit either although he’s just about written enough for a genre all of his own. And in most categories I have a lot of equally good suggestions as the book I chose. However I’ve decided not to be too concerned about the books not listed as I’m confident that once my target reader has sampled what the genre has to offer via these recommendations they’ll be in touch for the names of the several hundred other books on my shortlist for this challenge.

Other people who’ve met Uriah’s Challenge

Bibliophile at (Another) 52 Books

Feel free to leave a link if you also have met Uriah’s challenge

Review: The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender by Marele Day

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Title: The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender

Author: Marele Day

Publisher: Allen & Unwin [1988]

ISBN: 1 86448 772 0

In the first book a four book series Claudia Valentine is a private investigator in Sydney, Australia, in the late 1980′s. She’s called upon by an old acquaintance to investigate the death of her brother, Mark Bannister, who supposedly died from a heart attack. Claudia soon discovers a number of unsettling facts including the fact Mark had heroin in his system when he died and was writing a book before his death but had kept the content secret from everyone he knew. Her investigation takes into the seamier side of life in the harbour city and she’s soon rubbing shoulders with some nasty characters including the shadowy Harry Lavendar of the title.

I was surprised, a few months ago, to learn that in addition to the much loved female private eye series I have followed for years (Sara Paretsky’s V I Warshawski and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone) there was an Australian-based series featuring a similar character. Despite being a fan of the genre for many years I’d never heard a peep this series which says something about my lack of investigative powers but says more about the paucity of publicity for Australian authors in their home country. On the basis that it is better to have discovered these late than never I thought I’d take a look.

The most noticeable thing about this book when judged by today’s standards is it’s length: 169 pages! Is it only 20 years ago that books didn’t have to be the size and weight of house bricks in order to be published? Amazingly within those few pages an entire story with a beginning, a middle and an end, manages to be told. And it’s a pretty good story too. The plot is logical and has the requisite twists, turns and surprises and Claudia’s investigation is depicted quite realistically. As is often the case with private eyes she uses a combination of friends in the right places and gut instinct to puzzle out whether or not Mark Bannister was murdered and who might have done such a thing and she gets into, and out of, some scrapes along the way. I was bemused by the fact that Claudia’s client never made an appearance after she initially hired Claudia (no worried phone calls were made nor any updates given) but that was the only ‘hole’ I noticed in the plot.

While the story was good, if fairly familiar for the genre, the writing of this book is in a separate class. I can’t think of a word to encapsulate it but it’s very, very good. It evokes a very strong sense of the location. I lived in Sydney at the time the book was set and I was transported back to that time and place by the words. At one point, Claudia is walking through the city noticing the changing nature of the landscape and she reflects

I tried to picture what all this had looked like a few short years ago but couldn’t. Like everyone else, I would accept it once it was a fait accompli, vaguely aware that the signposts of the city’s history and my own were being effaced, as if someone had gone through my photo album and replaced the photos of me with those of another child, more modern, better dressed.

I always marvel when someone can sum up the depth of a feeling so eloquently and so perfectly and there is a lot more of this throughout the book.

It saddens me a little to think I’m not the only Aussie more familiar with US and UK authors than I am with my own country’s literary heritage but I’m rather chuffed to have discovered this author even if it is long after she stopped writing crime fiction (she has written general fiction since this series ended though). If you like private eyes with a lot of guts and a sense of humour you could do a lot worse than track down this book.

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

Reviewed on the Australian Crime Fiction Database

Reviewed on Tangled Web UK

There are three later books in the Claudia Valentine series: The Case of the Chinese Boxes, The Last Tango of Dolores Delgado and The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi

Review: Skin and Bone by Kathryn Fox

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Title: Skin and bone

Author: Kathryn Fox

Publisher: MacMillan [2007]

ISBN: 978-0-06-135333-8

Kate Farrer has been on extended leave from the NSW Police Force after she was kidnapped and tortured in the line of duty. She’s asked to return from leave early and partner a new Homicide detective, Oliver Parke, when an unidentified body is found in a house that was set on fire. Just as the investigation of this case is getting underway the two are transferred to a high profile missing person enquiry and there are also rumblings of an internal investigation into one or all of the team members.

More of a police procedural than Fox’s previous two books Skin and Bone has lots of plot threads on the go concurrently. It reminded me of a Jack Frost book with several cases being juggled by the investigators and the reader never being sure which elements of which story will turn out to be important. When done well, as is the case here, this makes for very entertaining reading because it maintains your attention for the duration and is probably more reflective of reality than one where the detective can concentrate on a single case.

Another sign of above-average writing is that the forensic elements of the investigations are well integrated into the story rather than the long-winded ‘look at all the research I did’ passages that fill lesser novels. Fire is in the news in a big way in Australia at present and so it was a bit difficult to read the more gruesome details about what happens to a body during a fire but it’s not Fox’s fault I happened to pick up this book just now. Importantly, at no time did I feel that the details which were included were put there for any ghoulish purpose.

Most of the people on the investigative team are well fleshed out even if some are wholly un-likable. The interplay between the two main characters was particularly good. I’m bored by unresolved sexual tension being the driving force behind such relationships (frankly it always feels like the easy way out for writers) and I found it refreshing to the relationship grow and change without that element. And while I don’t have to like my characters to appreciate the craft that goes into creating them it certainly doesn’t hurt. Both Kate and Oliver appealed to me greatly; having enough foibles to be interesting but not so many as to be unbelievable. Kate’s progress as she dealt with the psychological issues of having been abducted was very credible. I hadn’t thought about it much before but there are many fictional coppers who I’d be wary of in the real world whereas I found myself thinking we could do a lot worse than a police force full of Kates and Olivers.

I would thoroughly recommend this fast-paced, entertaining and ultimately satisfying novel.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

Reviewed on the Australian Crime Fiction Database

Reviewed on Aust Crime Fiction

Kathryn Fox’s previous two books feature forensic pathologist Anya Crichton are Malicious Intent and Without Consent

Review: No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

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no-time-for-goodbyeTitle: No Time for Goodbye

Author: Linwood Barclay

Publisher: Orion [originally published 2007, this edition 2008]

ISBN: 978-0-7528-9404-1

14-year old Cynthia Bigge woke up one morning alone in the house. At first she thought her parents and brother had all left the house normally without waking her but it soon became clear they had disappeared. She never saw them again. Twenty-five years later Cynthia is married, has an eight-year old daughter and agrees to make a television show about the disappearance to see if it stirs up any information. Eventually it does, although not perhaps what Cynthia and her family were expecting.

The plot here is intricate but well executed. The linking between past and present is well done and the various elements of Cynthia’s story are teased out at a beautiful pace. Although it’s her story, the novel is narrated by her husband Terry which makes for an interesting perspective as there are things he knows that the reader doesn’t but there are many things he learns along with the reader which makes it easier to follow than many thrillers. I have to say though that I found the last portion of the story, the big reveal if you like, a bit predictable. I might have been having a lucky guess day but I think the short chapters that were interspersed with the main story that offered transcripts of telephone conversations gave the game away a bit early. As usual though on the rare-ish occasions when I manage to work out the ending I happily read on to see if I was right.

The far more interesting component of the book for me was the character development, in particular Cynthia and Terry’s relationship and the way they individualy dealt with what was obviously a series of traumatic events. So often in thrillers this element is ignored and it was nice to see someone take the time to explore this. The characters’ reactions to the various events in the book were very natural although, paradoxically, far less predictable than the plot. I was quite taken with the couple and their daughter Grace and stayed up late more to find out if anything truly terrbile would happen to them than to discover what happened to Cynthia’s family.

This book is far more than the run-of-the-mill ‘action sequences plus pseudo-science’ thriller. It’s an engaging, credible story with troubled but likable people who could easily be your neighbours and I’m not at all surprised to see Richard and Judy chose it as a great summer read last year.

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

reviewed in January Magazine [November 2007]

reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise [May 2008]

Linwood Barclay has a series of mystery novels which feature a science fiction writer

Sunday Salon 2009-02-15: What kind of book is it?

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My job requires me to categorise and classify things. In fact it requires me to be something of a crusader about the joys of classification. But when it comes to books I’m really, really bad at it. This week in a post at one of my favourite book blogs, Crime Scraps, Uriah posed the challenge of coming up with a list of books in these categories that you might use to introduce a newbie to the crime/mystery genre. It sounded like a great idea (and was going to be the subject of my Sunday Salon post this week) until I started going through my reading notes to work out what books I would suggest and realised I couldn’t sensibly categorise about 95% of the books I’ve read.

Even looking back through the reviews I posted this week I struggled to categorise them. State of the Onion is recognisably a ‘cosy’ book but I didn’t know how to classify Sacrifice. It’s more of a thriller in some ways although there are crimes in it and there’s a proper police investigation too. What does that make it? I loved The Three Evangelists and would happily recommend it to friends but I couldn’t put one of the sub-genre labels on it if you paid me. I’m not entirely convinced the book is even crime fiction. I heard Ian McEwan say in an interview once that almost all books, including his Booker Prize short-listed Atonement, could be considered crime fiction in the purest sense as a crime occurs in it and there are consequences of that crime that the characters have to deal with.

Anyway, I gave up trying to prepare a list to meet Uriah’s challenge. Maybe I don’t read widely enough in the genre so my reading notes don’t reflect the variety suggested by the categories in that list. Whatever the reason I’ve stopped trying to meet this challenge and am going to spend the remainder of my Sunday curled up with my current book (Linwood Barclay’s No Time For Goodbye which I would classify as…damn good).

Review: The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

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Title: The Three Evangelists

Author: Fred Vargas

Publisher: Harvill Secker [originally published 1995, this translation 2006]

ISBN: 978-1-84343-089-6

One morning an ageing ex Opera singer, Sophia Simeonidis, notices a tree planted in her garden and becomes obsessed with how it came to be there. She turns to her neighbours, three obsessive historians (the evangelists of the title) and a disgraced policeman who share a dilapidated house, called The Disgrace by Sophia’s husband, to help her solve the mystery of the tree. When their initial investigations reach a dead end the matter is dropped until Sophia disappears and, once again, the residents of The Disgrace set out to discover what has happened.

This is a book of observations about a group of eccentric but likable characters that borders on the surreal at times. It’s full of odd, seemingly irrelevant but somehow interesting details about the characters and the most insignificant moments or dialogue turn out to be of the utmost importance. It’s the sort of thing Oscar Wilde might have written if he teamed up with Lewis Carroll. The writing is utterly delightful with many phrases and passages that made me smile just because of their structure and cadence which is a credit to Sian Reynolds, the translator, as well as Ms Vargas. The characters, in particular the historians who each have a historical field they specialise in, turn out to be the opposite of the superficial, immature people they might first appear to be and I was enchanted by them all.

The plot definitely plays second fiddle to the meanderings of the three evangelists and their neighbours but, unusually for me, I found I didn’t mind as I was totally captivated by the people and the place. There is definitely a mystery and towards the end it’s quite suspenseful, but it’s not a traditional procedural or noir crime novel. In fact it might not even be a crime novel at all aside from the fact that a crime is assumed to have taken place in it but I’ve given up worrying about labels. Regardless of what kind of book it is I found it charming, unpredictable and quite a treasure.

My rating 4/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed by Karen on Euro Crime

Reviewed by Maxine on Euro Crime

I thought this was a standalone novel but, according to Wikipedia, there are apparently two more in the series that are yet to be translated into English. Alas I can speak only a smattering of French and not nearly well enough to do justice to Vargas’ writing.

Review: Sacrifice by S J Bolton

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Title: Sacrifice

Author: S J Bolton

Publisher: Bantam Press [2008]

ISBN: 978-0-593-05912-8

Tora Hamilton is an obstetric surgeon who moves to the Shetland Isles with her husband Duncan, a native of the Isles who hasn’t been home for twenty years. As she’s digging a hole to bury her horse on her farm she finds the body of a young woman buried in the peat. It wouldn’t be a mystery novel if this were a straightforward discovery of course and a series of increasingly sinister events follows as Tora and a local police woman try to find out who the woman is and how she cam to be buried there.

I’m a city girl. In my 20′s I spent three years living in a semi-rural location but, although there were aspects of the lifestyle I appreciated, I never felt at home there like I do with the hum, pace and capacity for anonymity of urban life. Despite my preference, or possibly because of it, I am a sucker for the unfamiliarity of stories set in isolated places which is why I grabbed a copy of Sacrifice based on nothing but the setting. And the book delivers: depicting a sense of the isolation, darkness and hard-to-penetrate community that I have always imagined exists in such places. It’s one of the most evocative books I’ve read in a long time.

It’s also a pretty good yarn: full of twists and suspense and that page-turning ‘pull’ of a good story. The complex plot is a little too convoluted in a couple of spots but overall it hangs together well and is credible within the context of the environment that Bolton has created. The traditional folklore elements of the story are well researched and integrated nicely with the modern thriller which is a rare thing and quite remarkable for a debut novel.

As far as characters go Tora is quite typical of the genre in that she’s an ordinary woman who keeps going despite the many nasty things that are done to and around her. However she’s more credible than many in these fictional situations. She doesn’t develop sudden abilities to fight like a ninja as happens so often and her decisions are within the boundaries of what the average human might choose to do in the circumstances. Her changing reflections on whether or not she could trust the people around her were a good device for advancing the plot and there are some real insights about Tora’s relationships with other women that really rang true for me. Dana Tulloch, the Detective Sergeant who investigates the case, is the other character who holds the novel together and she too grows as the story unfolds and is someone I found myself wondering about when I wasn’t reading the book. The male characters are not as well developed which is partly due to their lesser roles but even with that proviso there was room for them to be a little more than the two dimensional good guys or bad guys they were portrayed as.

I thoroughly enjoyed being transported off to the windswept and mysterious Shetland Isles and will be actively looking for Bolton’s next book.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

Reviewed at reviewing the evidence


Review: State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy

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Title: State of the Onion

Author: Julie Hyzy

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime [2008]

ISBN: 978-0-425-21869-3

Series: 1st book in the White House Chef series

Olivia (Ollie) Paras is an assistant chef in the White House kitchen and on her way to work one day she inadvertently becomes involved in international espionage when she prevents an intruder from entering the White House. Ollie becomes the target of a world-famous hit man, has to fight an old enemy for the job of head chef, has a string of fights with her Secret Service boyfriend due to her continuing involvement in the investigation into the intruder’s purpose and must prepare menus and food for the most important political meeting in years.

I picked up this book purely because of the setting. As well as being a crime fiction nut I’m a political junkie and, despite being Australian, my favourite TV show of all time is The West Wing. I knew nothing about the author or the series but was pre-disposed to liking the book. I did enjoy the behind the scenes tidbits about life in the White House, such as the steps involved in preparing for State Dinners and running taste tests for the First Lady, which felt well researched and realistic. And the story was full of suspense and well plotted although a bit far-fetched in parts. But if all the security lockdowns that would probably take place in such a scenario were included the book it would have been about seven pages long and kinda dull so I didn’t mind the artistic license. I struggled far more with the seriousness of the book. It had a ‘we’re involved in the most important job in the world’ undercurrent that got a bit much after a while, although I imagine it would play better to an American audience. For better or worse we Aussies are more cynical about our leaders and I found myself eye-rolling at some of the dialogue.

As a character Ollie is rather likable and a bit more believable than some other amateur sleuths although in many series the first book is more credible than any that come afterwards so it remains to be seen if the believability factor can be sustained. Apart from an over-reliance on the public transport system in times of trouble she didn’t do anything ultra-dumb and she stood up for herself when it counted which I always like to see. The real character problem for me was that there weren’t any others who were terribly well developed (I found Ollie’s boyfriend a bit two dimensional) which would need to change if the series is to continue.

The uniqueness of this setting offers a lot of scope for interesting stories and there’s enough of the traditional romantic cosy elements to satisfy readers who aren’t so interested in politics. Personally I’d like to see a little more humour in the writing but I might be in the minority. All in all this is an above average book for the genre and I’ll look for the second one in the series.

My rating 3/5

More stuff

Review at Mysterious Reviews

Sunday Salon: Web not on publishing radar?

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When I post a book review I usually include a link to the author’s website. Perhaps because I’ve read more books than usual this week or perhaps because I’m seriously involved with web design in my work right now I’ve been struck by how few authors have decent websites.

  • The first review I posted this week was of Alex Barclay’s Blood Runs Cold. Barclay’s website commits one of the cardinal sins of web design by having a slow to-load flash gizmo that you can’t skip through and for your trouble you get three lousy links to PDF extracts of Barclay’s books. Ho hum.
  • My next review led me to Alexander McCall Smith’s website which contains some useful information but would not win any design awards in 2009, especially not from anyone with even a slight vision impairment given that its standard font seems to be about 6 or 8pt.
  • At least those authors have some kind of web branding of their own whereas the only site I could find for Leah Giarratano when I posted a review of Voodoo Doll was a short blurb at her publisher’s site.
  • Finally, yesterday’s review of The Red Dahlia led me to Lynda La Plante’s website and prompted this posting. Why on earth in this day and age would a successful author have a website that hasn’t been updated in nearly three years?

In some ways I guess Giarratano has got it right: if you can’t maintain a website properly then don’t have one at all. That’s certainly a better alternative than La Plante’s outdated site or Barclay’s singularly uninformative one. But the phenomenon of bad author websites got me thinking: why are there so many authors without a decent web presence? Do they, or the publishing industry in general, still believe that if they close their eyes and wish it to be so the Internet will disappear in a puff of smoke? Do they not realise that the old selling models are crumbling in the web 2.0 world and that making the most of social networking and new media will increasingly be the difference between putting food on the table and having to work a second job to pay the bills? Does no one see that today’s consumers want a little more than hundreds of advertisements for the books?

Of course I’m generalising. There are authors with web savvy including the six authors who collectively blog at The Kill Zone and talk about everything but where to buy their books. These are people whose work I will seek out because of their interesting web presence. Irish crime writers also seem to ‘get it’ if Declan Burke’s Crime Always Pays blog and Gerard Brennan’s Crime Scene NI are anything to go by. And new generation thriller writers like Scott Sigler and J C Hutchins are so enmeshed in new media that they don’t even bother with traditional publishers. They blog and podcast and participate fully in a range of online communities and are, undoubtedly, models for the new millennium.

What about your favourite authors? Any of them have a web presence to be proud of?