Monthly Archives: March 2009

Review: The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

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Title: The Tin Roof Blowdown

Author: James Lee Burke

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

ISBN: 978-0-7538-2316-3

No. of pages: 444

Set in the aftermath of 2005′s Hurricanes Katrina and Rita which devastated New Orleans and highlighted the many years of neglect which preceded the storms, The Tin Roof Blowdown is a big story. Burke’s hero, detective Dave Robicheaux, tries to track down who shot two people, one of whom was killed and the other paralysed, in the days of anarchy following Katrina. The people who were shot may have been responsible for the rape of a teenage girl some months earlier and were apparently looting the house of one of New Orleans’ most dangerous criminals on the night they were shot. There are loads more twists in the mix but to reveal any more would be spoiling things.

I’ll admit it: I lost the plots, literally, on several occasions. Between the multiple story threads, the continual jumping between first and third person point of view and the seemingly endless string of connections between people bent on revenge or consumed with guilt I got lost.  There are whole threads I never found the end of despite re-reading several long passages of the book. It was as if the storms and the neglect of the city and its people before and after them weren’t quite enough for Burke to rail against and he had to throw in Vietnam flashbacks, systemic corruption, an ugly sociopath, Al Qaeda (am I allowed an exclamation point after that?) and a half-dozen other sub plots for good measure. In a debut novel I can forgive the writer including every idea they’ve ever had but from a seasoned professional I expect something more (or less as the case may be).

To round out the confusion, the book required a more detailed knowledge of local geography than I can recall needing in 41 years of reading. I’ve visited New Orleans several times and spent a month touring through Louisiana only a couple of years before this book was set but I had to read with a map at my side just to make sense of some of the events. That’s not a normal thing for me to have to do even with books set in places that exist only in someone else’s imagination.

There’s a lot of Burke’s anger and heartache wrapped up in the fiction here and I found it tiresome. I’m not suggesting Burke’s fury isn’t genuine, I’m positive it is. I’m not saying it isn’t well-directed because I’m sure at least some of it is deserved. Neither am I saying it failed to move me: I cried more than once, at least at the beginning. All I am saying is that Burke’s version of the facts surrounding the storms and their aftermath were jammed into the narrative so often and so loudly that it felt at times like the story was an inconvenient interruption to a rant. Nothing I read here has changed my long held opinion: regardless of the worthiness of the message, fiction should entertain first and the political or social themes the author wants to explore should be part of the narrative not the written equivalent of Vegas-style neon signs flashing “insert empathy here”.

There were elements of the book I did enjoy. Burke’s writing, especially his dialogue, is at times beautiful. The kind of beautiful that make you read it out loud just to hear what the words sound like. And there are several interesting themes weaved expertly throughout the book. For example I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating the different ways a person’s past can influence their present as this story has unfolded. Having never read any books by this author before I also enjoyed meeting loyal, persistent Dave Robicheaux and his extended family. There are other parts of the book that I think I might have enjoyed more, such as the strange journey of Bertrand Melancon, if I hadn’t been quite so annoyed by being preached at so consistently.

Overall though, possibly due to over-hype syndrome (my copy proclaimed it’s ‘the novel Burke was born to write’ among other superlative statements), it was a somewhat disappointing read. It seemed to try a little too hard to do a bit too much and managed to push nearly all of the reading buttons that lead to me grinding my teeth and muttering under my breath. I can appreciate that the author wanted to tell a big story about something he felt very deeply but, for me anyway, it was a hard slog that didn’t have the reward I would have liked.

My rating 3/5

Reviewed by Barbara at Barbara Fister’s Place in November 2007

Reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise in June 2008

Sunday Salon 2009-03-28: On libraries, delight and guilt

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Last week one of my face to face book groups picked Jincy Willet’s The Writing Class as our next reading assignment. I’ve had the book on my ‘must read’ list since hearing the author on a local radio show last year and was chuffed that I would now have a reason to read the book. I am currently in the middle of a self-imposed, three-month ban on purchasing any more books (refer here for my ‘greed’ post that prompted this) so I headed to the local public library (funded out of my considerable property taxes) and found they may be able to provide me a copy some time next millennium if I am a very good girl.  I was bemoaning my fate at some length when a colleague piped up with the gem of information that I am eligible by my very existence to borrow books from the public library that’s near work. As this library is in a completely different government boundary it is entirely funded by other people’s considerable property taxes it never occurred to me that I would be allowed to borrow items from it. 

Astonishingly though my colleague was right. The joining process was free and remarkably easy and they had a copy of The Writing Class available. For no additional fee they had it brought to the campus of the library that is a mere stroll from my office rather than have me traipse off to the other end of town to pick it up myself. There were also copies of many other new release books that I have been wanting to read and a whole load of interesting-looking audio books available for my instant gratification.

While I am quite giddy with delight at the unnecessary (because I already have a huge pile of books TBR) but wonderful opportunities I am, not surprisingly to the people who know me well, consumed with guilt. How can I partake of such wonder without contributing a single cent to the institution’s upkeep? Shouldn’t they charge me a nominal fee given that I don’t live in the district and therefore don’t support the institution in the normal way? How on earth can the place stay afloat lending out items to interlopers such as myself? Can I live with myself if I continue to partake of the delights of this institution without contributing anything?

Review: Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen

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Title: Her Royal Spyness

Author: Rhys Bowen

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime [originally published 2007, this edition 2008]

ISBN: 978-0-425-22252-2

No. of Pages: 324

Set in Britain in 1932 this is the first book in a new historical cosy series from Rhys Bowen who is already well known for the Molly Murphy series and the Evan Evans books. This one features Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, better known as Georgie, a penniless but impeccably credentialed young woman who is 34th in line for the throne. When her half-brother and his austere wife try to set her up to marry a frightful foreign Prince Georgie sets off from family home in Scotland to live in London on her own. There she’s faced with the prospect of becoming a lady-in-waiting to a dreary old dowager but instead starts a new career as a domestic. She’s also asked by the Queen to do some spying on her behalf and becomes embroiled in a murder investigation when a man claiming to have won her father’s estate in a gambling debt is found dead in the bath.

Lady Georgie is hard to dislike. She’s fun, funny and not afraid of a little hard work. Her observations about her fellow members of the aristocracy, many of whom lack Georgie’s spirit, show a world that’s undergoing significant change which is interesting to ponder and feels quite realistic.  The inclusion of numerous real historical figures and events among the fictionalised ones, for example the burgeoning relationship between a young Prince and an American socialite called Wallis Simpson, add to the authentic feel of the story. It’s not that the book reads like fact, just that it has a more realistic tone than some cosies. There are loads of other enjoyable characters too: Georgie’s Cockney grandfather, her party-loving school chum Belinda and a host of thoroughly British aristocrats (where else would grown men willingly answer to names like Binky and Whiffy?) all make the book enjoyable.

The plot is a little slow to get going although that is forgivable as some context establishment is necessary to make the idea of an un-chaperoned young woman of royal lineage living alone in London even vaguely credible. Once all that has been done the story does flow more quickly and I found myself wanting to knock the whole book off in an afternoon which is something I rarely do unless there is housework to avoid. More important than the speed is the fact that the story is consistent with itself and the resolution is entirely plausible within the world that Bowen has established.

I’ve not read any of Bowen’s other books so I’ve no clue how this one compares but it did remind me of the Sarah Kelling mysteries written by Charlotte MacLeod which feature the adventures of an impoverished young Boston woman of upper crust breeding. If you’re not a fan of light ‘cosy’ books then this one won’t interest you at all, but if you do like the genre then I think it’s an above average example. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, is delightfully written and achieves exactly what it sets out to do: entertain.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

Reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise (who loaned me the book to read, thanks Kerrie)

The second book in this series, A Royal Pain, was released in July 2008.

Review: Devil’s Game by Patricia Hall

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Title: Devil’s Game

Author: Patricia Hall

Publisher: Allison & Busby [2009]

ISBN: 978-0-7490-7959-8

No. of pages: 301 [hardcover]

In the West Yorkshire town of Bradfield Karen Barnstable disappears after participating in a ‘strangers have sex in public’ meet-up (the book calls it dogging which is not a phrase I’ve come across before) (apparently I’ve led quite the sheltered life). DCI Michael Thackery and his team take a while to unravel this aspect to her disappearance given all the participants’ unwillingness to admit to their activities but they doggedly pursue the evidence. In a parallel thread Thackery’s live-in partner, journalist Laura Ackroyd, becomes increasingly intrigued by her investigation into the takeover of the local comprehensive school by wealthy born-again Christian, David Murgatroyd.

The writing here is way above average. There’s a passage at the beginning where a young policewoman of Pakistani heritage has to interview the man who has reported his wife missing. The first line out of his mouth when he opens the door to her is “Are you the best they could send?” which combined with the racist political sticker in the window gives a pretty clear indication of how things will go. The scene plays out over only a couple of pages but manages to beautifully depict two very strong characters (the belligerent racist and the slightly nervous constable resigned to doing her job regardless of the treatment she receives).There’s a palpable sense of the tension building up in the room too. The rest of the book lives up to this early promise: having consistently concise yet evocative writing. Even the dialogue of locals is written in such a way that I heard it in a Yorkshire accent (well my inner voice’s version of that accent which sounded realistic enough to me).

I can’t think of anything terribly unique about the characters although they did engage me. Thackery reminded me a little of P D James’ Adam Dalgliesh. He doesn’t write poetry but he’s the same kind of intelligent loner (with all the pros and cons that brings) and is also haunted, sometimes to the point of inertia, by dramatic events from his past. I wanted to give him a good slap a couple of times which is often how I feel about Dalgliesh. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Laura Ackroyd who seemed to be the kind of determined, investigative journalist we don’t see much of in the mainstream media these days. She and Thackery dealt with some personal issues in the book which I sometimes find a bit boring but here the balance between this and the rest of the plot was about right.

The plot is solidly constructed and credible but the climax wasn’t terribly surprising. Still I enjoyed finding out if my guess for the villain’s motivation was correct. I couldn’t get my head around how a private person could effectively take over a government-funded school but a stint on Google sorted out the intricacies of the English school system for me. I quite like it when books force me head off to ‘research’ (that sounds better than google as a verb doesn’t it?) because I can pretend I’m learning something useful and not just sitting around entertaining myself like a dilettante.

I’d not read a word by this author until the review copy of this book landed on my doormat although I now know there are 14 previous books in this series, the first of which was published in 1993. There were certainly references to previous events in Devil’s Game but not enough to prevent me enjoying this story on its own and any absolutely necessary explanations were succinctly provided. Having recently had a very different experience with a book that wasn’t the first in its series I was particularly grateful for this. I will be looking for more books in this series and can certainly recommend Devil’s Game if you’re at all interested in well-plotted police procedurals.

My rating 4/5

I was provided with a free copy of this book for review from the publisher via Murder & Mayhem bookclub

Review: The Low Road by Chris Womersley

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Title: The Low Road

Author: Chris Womersley

Publisher: Scribe [2007]

ISBN: 978-1-921215-47-6

Technically this isn’t really a review because I didn’t finish the book. In the portion that I read a disgraced junkie doctor (Wild) and a crook with an untreated bullet wound (Lee) are thrown together by circumstances at a seedy motel on the outskirts of town. They head off on the kind of road trip you’d take if you were unlucky enough to live in Hell, ostensibly to find a surgeon who can deal with Lee’s injury. Another crook (Josef) is angry with the Lee and he follows them. Things go downhill from there.

After I’d read the first 20-odd pages I put the book down and found dozens of ways to avoid picking it up again. I did that same thing three or four more times over the next couple of weeks. But, as I had voted for this book to be the subject of discussion at an online book club and because it’s by an Australian author, I felt obliged to give it another go. I got as far as page 74 before deciding I couldn’t spend my time in the company of these people anymore.

One of the things I love most about reading is that it often provokes strong reactions. I laugh, I cry, I join social justice campaigns, I pull bedclothes over my head in fear. Or, on occasions like this, I feel every crevice of my being becoming full of overwhelming despair. I vowed after finishing Luke Davies’ Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction that I wouldn’t read a book of unending bleakness again, so feeling that despair fill me up like wet cement fills a foundation ditch, I assigned The Low Road to the DNF pile.

I can appreciate the writing. Womersley has a capacity for creating striking and long-lasting images with deceptively simple phrases that I am deeply envious of. It’s the subject matter sucked out my soul. I’ll demonstrate if I may. Josef has broken into Lee’s apartment and before leaving he pisses all over Luke’s bed (don’t ask). Womersley writes

He was unsure to do what to do when he had finally finished. He zipped himself up and waited while the rust -coloured puddle melted into the sheets and mattress. It didn’t give him nearly as much satisfaction as he had hoped, but perhaps he had expected too much.

That is exceptional imagery. But it makes me want to curl into the foetal position and weep.

Before I finish I’m going to have a whinge about the book’s eschewing of quotation marks to indicate dialogue. Is there a point? Is it supposed to be edgy? Modern? Was there a memo I missed? The book has commas, apostrophes and all the other punctuation you’d expect to see in English prose so I fail to see what purpose removing the humble quotation mark served but I found the failure to distinguish dialogue from everything else bloody annoying.

My rating 0/5 (DNF)

Other stuff

My view on this book is a minority one. Most people, including those who judge the Ned Kelly Awards, think it’s a great book. Which shows what I know. Here are links to a few of the many reviews that speak far more glowingly of the book than I do.

Reviewed by Damien at Crime Down Under

Reviewed by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise

Reviewed by Sunnie on Aust Crime Fiction

Review: The Tunnels by Michelle Gagnon

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Title: The Tunnels

Author: Michelle Gagnon

Publisher: Mira [2007]

ISBN: 978-0-7783-2446-1

In the debut novel from this author, bodies of two female college students are discovered the tunnels beneath a prestigious American college and FBI Agent Kelly Jones is called in to lead the investigation into their murders. Due to the nature of the killings it seems likely that a serial killer is responsible. One of the dead students is the daughter of a wealthy man who employs ex-FBI Agent Jake Riley as his head of security and asks that Riley be allowed to assist in the investigation. Much to Jones’ annoyance her superiors say yes to this request and she and her partner Roger Morrow are saddled with Riley and his sometimes unorthodox behaviour.

Familiarity does, as they say, breed contempt and I have read so many serial killer themed books and watched so many serial killer themed TV shows that I wholeheartedly (and undoubtedly mistakenly) believe I could give a pretty accurate profile of your ‘average’ serial killer if called upon (though why I would ever be so called upon is a mystery). Because I’ve overdone crazed serial killers I do tend to stay away from them in my fiction these days but I had a reason for tracking down Michelle Gagnon’s work and so dove in.

The story is a good one with a few really unexpected twists and a nice build-up of tension. The way Jones and her team put the case together is generally believable and Gagnon manages to achieve a nice balance between explaining the insider jargon of the investigators to readers and not clunking up the story with dull details. I assume that’s not nearly as easy as it sounds because a lot of writers fail to do it. I found some of the side action, such as reading about the effect of the killings on the college’s new President, to be just as interesting as the main story and it added a real sense of authenticity that’s often missing when all the action involves only victims and investigators. I would have liked a less clichéd resolution though, as there were a couple of “oh no, you’re not going to use that device are you” moments which spoiled what was otherwise a good, solid story.

Kelly Jones is someone I could envisage in the role of an FBI agent which, again, is not always the case. She has some baggage which is slowly revealed over the course of the novel but not enough to make her dysfunctional, and at the end of the book I found myself wondering what she would do next (a question I can answer at my leisure as I have the second book in the series waiting in Mt. TBR). The rest of the characters, including Jake, were a bit under-developed to be truly engaging but there’s potential.

Perhaps one of the reasons I found this book so credible is that there is a fairly extensive tunnel system underneath my city and I spent quite a bit of time in them a few years ago. I was there for a rather dull work purpose rather than for hunting serial killer purposes but I did often ponder that they’d be the perfect setting for a murder or three. Anyway, I enjoyed this trip back into the world of evil serial killers more than I thought I would. It was creepy and odd enough that I knew it was fiction (I really don’t want to read about things that might have actually happened to real people) but realistic enough to make me pull the bed covers over my head (just in case).

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

I tracked this book down because Gagnon is one of  the group of professional writers who publish The Kill Zone, a great blog about writing, the publishing business and associated topics. I’ve ranted before about publishers and authors who don’t ‘get’ web 2.0 so when I see people who do understand the medium’s potential I make it a point to track down their work (although I did use bookmooch to acquire both of Gagnon’s books which is probably not exactly the financial reaction the Kill Zone authors are looking for).

Reviewed at Mysterious Reviews

Review: When the Dead Cry Out by Hilary Bonner

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Title: When the Dead Cry Out

Author: Hilary Bonner

Publisher: Leisure Books [originally published 2003, this edition 2006]

ISBN: 0-8439-5758-1

In the 1970′s when Clara Marshall and her two daughters disappear from the seaside town of Torquay most people think her husband Richard is responsible. But there are no bodies and no other evidence so Richard Marshall remains free. Many people fail to forget the case including Clara’s father, a local journalist and Karen Meadows who was the Marshall’s neighbour and is now, nearly 30 years later, a Detective Inspector with the Police. When some human remains are found in ship wreck it seems as if Richard Marshall might finally be brought to justice.

This is a fairly standard police procedural with a stronger focus on the personal lives of some of the characters than is normally the case and the plot is well constructed if a bit predictable. It’s a small thing but I could have done without the protagonist promising to give up smoking every time she lit a cigarette. The book seemed to me to be full of that kind of unnecessary repetition.

For me there was nothing very engaging about any of the characters and that’s probably where my real problems with the book lie. It felt like the author was trying a little too hard to make me feel a certain way about each person at a certain time and I’m not fond of being led along like that. At some point one too many cliché was thrown into the mix and I stopped buying into the characters as anything other than plot devices.

Reviews of books I hate are easy to write (words come spilling out of my angry brain faster than my fingers can keep up) and, although a bit more difficult, I can always find plenty to say about books I love. But when my reaction to a book is, for want of a better word “blah” it’s almost impossible to find something to say. And this was just one of those books that I didn’t love and didn’t hate and doubt I’ll be able to remember in six months.

My rating 2/5

Other Stuff

A mini-review among Kerrie’s post about British, female cops in May ’08

This is billed as a standalone novel although some characters do feature in a previous book called A Moment of Madness

Sunday Salon 2009-03-22: It’s not publishing that’s broken folks

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Michelle Gagnon, who writes the Kelly Jones thrillers and is one of the authors responsible for The Kill Zone, this week blogged about publishing being broken. She used as her evidence the recent $3.2 million two-book deal for the pilot who landed a jet in the Hudson in January and turned what would have been a disaster into the feel-good story of the year.  She argued that not only is that a surprisingly large amount of dosh for any book in these financially strapped times but the inclusion of a book of poetry by Captain Sullenberger in the mix is…unexpected to say the least and went on to suggest that publishers should get back to ‘supporting good books by people who have devoted their lives to the craft of writing them’.

I take issue with this sentiment.

Do I think it’s daft that such a large amount of money is being thrown at someone who this time last year would have had a snowball’s chance in hell of garnering $3, 200 for a book deal based on his life let alone a book of poetry? Of course I do. Where I disagree with Ms Gagnon is that she blames publishers and I blame you.

There are, roughly, several gazillion of these books published each each year. Biographies and/or ‘life’ stories of near-nobodies and 15-minutes-of-fame ‘celebrities’ who cannot possibly have enough interesting things to say to fill a pamphlet let alone a whole book. But regardless of the worth, or lack of it, of a person’s story a lot of you are buying this rubbish otherwise publishers, a species not known for their philanthropy, wouldn’t be rushing quite so hard and paying quite so much for the rights to sell it.

A quick look at the biography section of a few online stores demonstrates my point:

I could go on. And on. And on. But my doctors have warned against elevating my blood pressure above a certain level. My point is that publishers are only paying silly amounts of money for non-stories because they believe someone will buy them. Given the rise and rise of reality television, the continued success of celebrity gossip shows and websites and the fact that Britney Spears has (at time of writing) 492,282 followers on twitter they can be forgiven for thinking that way. Much as I might wish it weren’t so, celebrities are ‘in’ and publishers are just looking for their slice of the pie. Supporting writers devoted to their craft doesn’t, apprently, pay the bills.

On a positive note we can all be grateful for the small mercy that it was Captain ‘Sully’ who scored the poetry book as part of his deal and not the week’s other big book-deal winner: George W Bush.

Weekly Geeks 2009 #11 – Part 1 : Historical Fiction

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This week there are four questions all relating to historical fiction. For now I’m choosing to deal with the second question

Do you have a favorite book that really pulled you back in time, or perhaps gave you a special interest in that period? Include a link to a review of it on another book blog if you can find one (doesn’t have to be a Weekly Geek participant).

but will try to return later in the week to take up the final challenge which is to see what books in the genre other Geek-ers have recommended and choose one to read.

For now though I’m going to talk about one of my very favourite books: Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. As with all good historical fiction it’s based on fact: a village in rural England in 1666 was struck by plague and the residents cut themselves off from the outside world to prevent further spread of the disease. Brooks has created some memorable, multi-faceted characters to tell the grim but ultimately hope-filled story and her descriptions are so vivid that I was able to picture the isolated, misty, dark village and could feel the emotions the villagers experienced. This book is about people: what they think, what they do, how they react and what they learn. It is a fascinating and believable depiction of what might have been in 1666 in a world that began and ended within a few miles. I have always been morbidly fascinated by the plague and adding this fictional account to the many factual ones I’ve read only enhances my interest in the theme.

The book has been reviewed quite extensively including by

Much loved and missed creator of the Weekly Geeks, Dewey

Rebbecca at The Inside Cover

Lisa at Books on the Brain

Review: Murder on Monday by Ann Purser

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Title: Murder on Monday

Author: Ann Purser

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime [originally published 2002, this edition 2003]

ISBN: 0-425-19297-0

This is the first in a series of cosy mysteries featuring a cleaner, Lois Meade, who works for a number of families in a small village in England. When a woman is cruelly murdered Lois, who has already shown an interest in volunteering for community police work, is well placed to find out information from her clients and pass it on to the police.

I do like it when books give a sense of place and the social structure and behaviour of the players in this story meant it dripped English-ness. Imagine one of those villages in Midsomer where the dozens of murders that happen all seem to be done in a more civilised way than would happen anywhere else. Although of course there’s lots of hidden emotions and dark passions lurking just under the surface.

I liked, but didn’t love, the characters. Lois is a wife and mother of three children as well as being a cleaner and amateur detective and is a solid lead character but a bit grim for me to be totally engaged by her. For most of the book I thought there was something not quite right about her and towards the end I realised it was her complete lack of friends. She has her immediate family and her clients but that’s it. As well as being odd I thought this probably created a few plot problems for the author because Lois didn’t really have anyone she talked things through with so there was a lot of thinking out loud and writing in notebooks which was a bit unsatisfactory after a while. However there are a few characters, including a couple of members of the Police force, who have the potential to become more substantial players in future books.

The plot was well constructed and sensibly resolved although it seemed to take an awfully long time. The book takes place over many months and for the first few it seemed as if the Police did nothing but wait for Lois to find out something during her daily cleaning rounds. The point of allowing this much time to elapse was, I assume, to allow other parts of the story to unfold but it gave the investigation itself an air of unbelievability. This was at odds with the rest of the story elements, including Lois’ family dramas and day-to-day life in the village, which were all quite realistic.

It would need a dash or three of humour for me to be thoroughly enchanted by the book but it was certainly entertaining and I liked its authenticity. I’ll look for the next in the series on another occasion when I need to take a break from the darker stuff that occupies most of my reading hours.

My rating 3/5

According to Fantastic Fiction there are 8 more Lois Meade mysteries so far (after the days of the week Purser wisely moves on to numbers which won’t run out)