Monthly Archives: September 2010

Review: Tooth and Claw by Nigel McCrery

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DCI Alan Lapslie suffers from synaesthesia, a neurological condition that means he experiences everyday sounds as strong taste sensations. The clicking of his keyboard registers as hot pilchards in tomato sauce while his Sergeant’s voice registers as grapefruit and he experiences a myriad of other tastes continuously unless he can be in complete silence. Which is why is working from home at the opening of this book but his superiors want him to resign from the Force on disability and so demand he comes back to work on the high profile case of a television reporter who has been tortured and murdered. Lapslie doesn’t want to resign and so takes on the case.

The portrayal of Lapslie’s condition and how it affects his work and his personal life is quite fascinating and has a genuine feel to it, though his treatment by his employers is less believable (I couldn’t help but create a mental list of all the health and safety rules that were broken in his case). Lapslie is both an intriguing character and a likable one, desperate not to be seen as disabled and fighting daily to have any semblance of a normal life he never plays ‘the pity card’ but just tries to get on with his job (when he’s not vomiting in the corner from all the overwhelming tastes in his mouth). He’s joined by other warm, interesting characters including DS Emma Bradbury who tries clever ways to help him manage his problem and the Coroner Jane Catherall who has her own physical problems to deal with but is also smart and engaging. McCrery writes female characters well.

In chapters alternating with those depicting the police investigation, we learn about the killer Carl Whittley and this is where the book became less engaging for me. I suppose it is reasonable that these chapters had none of the warmth of those describing the police investigation but I didn’t find the depth either. As the animal torturer turned serial killer Carl seemed very much a stereotype and his family weren’t any more original. In the first book in this series, Still Waters, McCrery does an amazing job of portraying his culprit in a sympathetic light even though she is quite patently mad if not absolutely evil but he doesn’t quite pull that off here. He does show Carl as someone on the fringes of society who perhaps would not have trodden his path if the world were a more caring place but I never quite swallowed Carl as the kind of killer he was being shown as. His ‘plan’, outlined early on, had some glaring logical holes in it that kept making me think things along the lines of “if you really were trying to do what you said then you wouldn’t be choosing this victim” and I thought it was trying a bit too hard to have a gimmick, almost as if murdering people isn’t mad enough.

Summing up all of that is quite difficult as I enjoyed one half of the book and was quite a bit less enthralled with the other half. I suspect this book was written with more emphasis on a possible TV adaptation than the first as it felt like it had more visual content and less concentration on any one thing (there was more going on). Though with McCrery being one of the writers of the TV shows Silent Witness and New Tricks perhaps he is just less successful at writing for the different mediums in this instance. Overall though the book was a fast-paced read and I never considered giving up on it as I really was intrigued to learn how Lapslie and his colleagues would work their way around to Carl.

Check out my review of Still Waters (one of my top ten reads of 2008) and for another review of Tooth and Claw see Euro Crime

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3/5
Publisher Quercus [this edition 2010, originally 2009]
ISBN 9781849162227
Length 309 pages
Format paperback
Source My collection

The good, the bad and the ugly of choosing another brand

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Since I bought an eReader almost everyone I’ve told has had one of two responses:

“oh you mean a Kindle?”

or

“why didn’t you get a Kindle?”

This kind of thing is one of the reasons I didn’t buy a Kindle in the first place. One of my (growing number of) wacky beliefs is that domination by one player in any market is rarely good for the consumer so I wanted to support competitiveness in a market I think will become increasingly important to me. Other factors included a lingering dubiousness about the Kindle seller’s business practices and not particularly wishing to lock myself into a proprietary format for the books I buy (and thereby being at Amazon’s mercy somewhat).

My reason for choosing the PRS-650 in particular is a combination of design and form factor. In my day job I have had demonstrations of a couple of dozen eReaders over the years and have borrowed several (including a Kindle and a Kobo) for extended ‘research’ and found all of them lacking one or other design element I was looking for. The Sony felt perfect as soon as I held it in my hand and didn’t disappoint upon closer inspection.

The Good

The device is pretty much all-screen, with only 5 slimline buttons along the bottom edge for the most commonly used commands (page turning, going to the home screen which is displayed in this picture, changing size of text and accessing the context sensitive menu). There are no buttons along the sides (I have accidentally clicked buttons on the side on several devices I’ve played with). All the other commands you need are accessed via the context-sensitive touch screen menus (i.e. the touch screen menu accessible while you are in the middle of a book has different options than the one which appears when you are managing a collection of books). When you need a keyboard for data entry (which is not that often) one appears on screen and you can use your fingers or the device’s inbuilt stylus. The upshot of all this is that when you’re reading (i.e. 99% of the time) the device feels very little like the computer it is and very much like a book.

It’s a good size: the screen size is 12cm x 9cm (it galls me that even in this country which has used the metric system of measurement since 1977 it was sold as the 6” model) and the device itself 17cm x 12cm with its cover (closed). So it’s slightly wider and taller than a mass market paperback but significantly smaller, lighter and thinner than the trade paperbacks which make up the bulk of my physical book reading. Though light enough to hold for several hours without cramping it still has enough weight not to feel flimsy or easily breakable.

I can easily hold it in one hand and because you can turn pages either via the touch screen or the buttons at the bottom I can read one handed in virtually all circumstances (e.g. curled up in bed with just finger or two poking out from under the blanket on a cold, winter’s night, with the reader propped up against the cereal packet during breakfast etc). I didn’t know I wanted to be able to do this until I could.

The touch screen is not gimmicky like I thought it might be. Using it for page turning feels very responsive and helps replicate the sensation of reading a physical book. The touch screen menus work well too and disappear all together when I’m reading (which is what I do with the device 99% of the time) which adds to that sense of it being a book.

Some of the other features which I love (and are by no means standard on all eReaders I have used)

  • automatic last page memory (i.e. if you leave it alone for a few minutes the device goes into sleep mode but when you wake it up it remembers which page of which book you were on, very handy for people with a tendency to fall asleep while reading)
  • the ability to keep multiple bookmarks in multiple books (the Kobo I used did not have this feature)
  • note taking and underlining that is collected all in one spot for each book (handy for reviewing)
  • an easily accessible dictionary (tap on a word and it is immediately defined for you)

Although many books sold for the Sony do have proprietary Digital Rights Management (DRM) inbuilt which means they too (like books sold for the Kindle) would lock you into the device there are also loads (and the number is growing) which don’t.

The Bad

To get books on the device you have to use a computer and a cable (mini USB/USB), there is no wi-fi or 3G downloading direct to the device. I knew this going in and it doesn’t matter to me in the slightest (in fact it enforces a slight amount of impulse control which is a good thing in my case) but I know it’s an issue for some so it’s worth being aware of.

There are not as many books available in Sony compatible formats as there are for the Kindle. Again I knew this going in but I figured one way to help turn this around is to support a different format myself. This is not likely to be as big an issue for those who live in the UK or US as territorial copyright is far more restrictive on my eBook buying than format-based restrictions (there is for example a Sony eBook store that I am not allowed to access because I am not American).

At $345 (with cover) it’s expensive. That’s nearly double the price of the Kobo (which is its main, non-Kindle competitor here in Australia) and about $100 more than having the equivalent sized Kindle shipped to me. Still, I’d have paid $450-$500 for a new bookcase for physical books and I simply did not like the form factor of the Kobo at all so that wasn’t an option for me.

The ugly

The software that you’re supposed to use to manage your eBook library and to transfer books from your computer to the device is truly awful. Really, truly terrible. Configuring user interfaces for information management systems is part of what I do for a living and if I produced this level of inherent stupidity and clunkiness I would be lynched and/or unemployed very quickly. However, thanks to some lovely people at the Sony Reader Forum (sometimes the internet truly is a magnificent place) I was able to put in place a workaround for the worst of the problems I encountered (the automatic synchronisation between computer and device not working as it ought to). Although the answer was difficult to find (thanks for not helping in any way, shape or form Sony), once I knew the solution it was very quick and easy to implement and turns out to allow better management of books than if it had worked properly in the first place. I also learned about some alternative software I can switch to if I want to which has a much better interface and metadata capturing (I’m still internally debating the pros and cons of switching).

Overall

I love my PRS-650 (even though it has a name that completely fails to roll off the tongue) and am pleased that I waited for it to come along. As I spend a good percentage of my leisure time reading and plan to eventually do all of my reading via eBooks I wanted a device that I actively like using and will be happy to continue using until it falls apart (I didn’t want to be looking wistfully at whatever comes out next month). It is definitely the right device for me. I’ve no idea if it’s also right for you so wouldn’t presume to recommend it but I would urge you to at least consider looking beyond the biggest player in the market. Perhaps this video review (via a great website, The eBook Reader) will inspire you.

Review: Beat Not the Bones by Charlotte Jay

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The 17th book I’ve finished for the 2010 Global Reading Challenge completes the Australasian leg of my virtual tour, taking place on the island of New Guinea.

When Stella Warwick hears that her husband David, an anthropologist working on New Guinea to protect the indigenous people from exploitation while she cares for her invalid father in Australia, has committed suicide she is disbelieving and travels there to find out the truth. She has been told that he committed suicide due to worry over his mounting debts soon after returning from a trip deep into the jungle but Stella wants to know more and keeps asking questions of her husband’s former colleagues, the people who travelled with him and the boys who do menial work for the Australians. In the end she believes the only way to find the answers will be to recreate his final journey into the jungle.

Beat Not The Bones has an excellent sense of its setting both in terms of its physical geography – the heat, humidity, isolation and wild jungle are depicted so well I swear I started to feel sweaty despite reading the book on cold winter days – and its social status as a colonial outpost of Australian government and business interests. As cringe-making as it might be now the reality is that in the 1950’s behaviour towards the country and its people by Australian interests was undoubtedly as patronising as is described in the book. Even the people who are portrayed as enlightened treat the Papuans as little more than ‘the white man’s burden’. Sometimes when I read historical fiction that takes place in times or places where sensibilities are very different from current ones I get the sense that things are altered just a little (even unintentionally) to fit in more comfortably with modern ideas, usually by the insertion of at least one incredibly forward-thinking individual and/or the careful omission of the least palatable facts. For better or worse this contemporary story has none of that ‘glossing over the nasty bits’ feel.

The characters were a less successful aspect of the book for me. Stella for example is a woman so sheltered from life and so utterly dependent upon men (her father, husband and random strangers as long as they are men) that she is barely functional as an independent human being. Perhaps she is a realistic depiction of a woman of her time (though my mother, being roughly the same age, would vehemently disagree) but regardless of that I found it very difficult to care what happened to her. Even when she started developing a smidgen of independent thought towards the end I found I’d lost interest in what happened to her. Although they too were probably credible portrayals none of the other characters generated much in the way of my empathy, with the possible exception of Stella’s travelling companion in the jungle who does seem to suffer from the consequences of his own prior actions and a heat-induced madness (I’m more sympathetic to the latter).

While I found the overall story mildly interesting I must say I wasn’t completely gripped I put the book down for several days a couple of times and was never drawn back to it in any hurry. The main reason for this was the almost gothic, certainly melodramatic, style of writing that did have me rolling my eyes a few times. The ending though was remarkably strong and tackled the thorny issue of there being consequences for the evil that one does during one’s life. Overall I’d recommend the book, especially if you enjoy visiting your tropical locations virtually rather than in person or could do with being reminded that no matter how screwy our current world is we have made some fairly amazing social advances in 60 years.

Beat Not the Bones has also been reviewed recently at Kittling: Books

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Soho Press [this edition 1995, originally 1952]
ISBN 1569470472
Length 219 pages
Format paperback
Source My collection

Review: The Monster in the Box by Ruth Rendell

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I wrote last year of my teenage self’s rejection of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series and my subsequent luke warm appreciation of the books, but when the audio book of The Monster in the Box (the 22nd book in the series) was on sale for under $5 I thought it an opportune time to check in.

Reg Wexford spots in the street the man he believes committed a murder and got away with it; the first murder he investigated as a junior officer some 40 years earlier. Not unnaturally seeing Eric Targo like this puts Wexford in a reflective mood and he reveals to his fellow officer Mike Burden the events that occurred during and after that first investigation. He also spends a fair amount of time in contemplation of his early personal life, including how he met his wife and other events that took place prior to the first novel in the series. When Targo is possibly involved in a new crime things become more critical. At the same time Mike’s wife Jenny, a teacher, and DS Hanna Goldsmith embroil Wexford in a case in which they believe a teenage girl in an Asian family is being prevented from attending school.

The part of the book that deals with Wexford’s obsession with Targo (and Targo’s with Wexford) is compellingly told. I got a really strong sense of why the man bothered Wexford so much and how galling it must be for a policeman to know someone is guilty of murder but not be able to prove that guilt. That such a thing would become an obsession seems perfectly natural in the context of both this story and Wexford’s longer one that has played out over the series. I didn’t think that Targo’s penchant for playing games with Wexford nor his hurriedly described motivations for his crimes rang as true though.

When we move to the ‘case’ of Tamima Kahn and her family I found the book less successful all together. Both Jenny Burden and Hanna Goldsmith are well-intentioned but utterly patronising in their attitudes to the Kahns (and any other Asians encountered) and I’m not convinced that Rendell acknowledging this within the story (by having one of the extended Kahn family tell the two women they are being rude) makes up for it. And even if it does, for me this thread remains far less interesting because of the tone and made the overall book drag a little in places.

The Monster in the Box is apparently to be Wexford’s last outing and in some senses this is fitting in that most people probably finish their careers with a slow whimper rather than a big bang.  I can see how fans might think this an unfitting way for him to finish up his career because neither case requires much in the way of Wexford’s investigative skills to resolve and there is a generally unsatisfactory feel about the resolution to both threads. However as a non-fan I thought it one of the best, most believable portrayals of him that I’ve read, not only with respect to his obsession but also his desire to reflect on his own life and the social changes he’s seen in his time as a man and an officer.  For that alone the book is worth reading.

What about the audio book?

Nigel Anthony has a quiet voice with a hint of an accent which seems to suit the gentle pace of this story. He doesn’t do a completely different voice for each person but seems to pull off the changes in character with very slight changes in tone or volume. This is my favourite kind of narration and I would definitely look for more audiobooks narrated by Nigel Anthony.

The Monster in the Box has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Mysteries in Paradise and Petrona

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3.5/5
Narrator Nigel Anthony
Publisher BBC WW [2009]
ISBN N/A (audio download)
Length 8 hours 49 minutes
Format download from audible.com
Source My collection

Weekly Geeks 2010-32 Overly Critical Readers

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She who loves acronyms (and designs beautiful blog headers like mine) Tara of 25 Hour books has posed this week’s discussion topic. Tara asks if we are Overly Critical Readers (O.C.R.s) which, she tells us, is identified by these symptoms

  • not liking characters in the beginning (needing the main character to prove themselves before you’ll respect them)
  • rolling your eyes while reading (needing things to be completely realistic)
  • shouting things such as “WTF?!” (needing every plot twist and turn to be foreseeable)

Tara then goes on to suggest some remedies to help you from becoming an O.C.R. but before we tackle that part of the equation I should ponder whether or not I am ‘one of them’.

I am certainly a critical reader. This blog is all about one person’s very subjective reactions to the things I read. Just as I’ve raved about the books I’ve loved I’ve ranted about the ones I didn’t love (should you wish to see check out the category listing for 0.5, 1 or 2 stars in the RH side bar). But am I overly critical?

I start each book expecting to like it. Actually at the start each book is a 5 on my personal scale and it loses points along the way for things that make me love it a little less. Some lose no points (the 5s), some lose a couple of points and some…well…require me to switch to a hundred point scale just so there would be more points to lose.

Sometimes points are lost due to lousy characters but I never think of them having to ‘prove themselves’. They don’t even have to be likable but I do want hem to be interesting in some way. Points are also lost for a lack of realism but not because I demand things are exactly like real life. I do however demand that if you create a world then you should be consistent within it. And if you make the claim that your world is realistic then I am going to be disappointed if you make silly mistakes (like using a technology that wasn’t invented until 50 years after your story setting). As for alarming plot twists well the more the merrier I say and I’m far more likely to be critical if the plot is totally foreseeable than when it isn’t.

Most of the reason I write reviews is so that people, including my future self who has a memory like a sieve, will get a sense of whether or not they want to read the book themselves. So there’s a bit of my personality in each review (so you know if your reading tastes are similar to mine and therefore whether the things I like and don’t like about the book will similarly influence you). Then I try to list my reasons for liking or not liking the book and give an overall reaction: love it, hate it or meh.

Personally, when I look for reviews to read I want some criticism. I intuitively ignore sites or Good Reads reviewers who are under-critical. I put them in the same category as people who think it’s OK to give every kid in the class a prize and play sport without keeping score. It just doesn’t feel right. And it’s not particularly helpful to me. If everything is presented as equal then how does that help me make a choice about what to read?

So I’m not sure if I am an O.C.R. or just a C.R. but I’m comfortable. And for myself I like to read reviews by fellow C.R.s and am likely to avoid the U.C.R. (Under Critical Reader).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

If you want to see what others are saying about being an O.C.R. head over to Weekly Geeks. If you have some thoughts on being critical, overly or otherwise, please leave a comment and if you want to be critical of my being critical feel free (the least I can do is take as good as I give).

Review: The Dramatist by Ken Bruen

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Roughly as many friends told me I would love Ken Bruen as told me I wouldn’t. I would love him because he is a brilliant writer or I wouldn’t because noir is not really my thing and/or I wouldn’t ‘get’ him.

‘They’ (or half of them anyway) were right. I loved The Dramatist.

It is the fourth novel in a series featuring Jack Taylor, former policeman in the Irish Guarda with a self-destructive personality that manifests itself most obviously in a series of addictions (alcohol, booze, nicotine) and poor handling of personal relationships. At the start of The Dramatist he is newly sober (through choice) and free of illegal drugs (because his cocaine dealer is in prison). Ostensibly the plot is driven by Taylor being asked by said drug dealer to investigate the death of his sister which has been ruled an accident by police. But really it is just the continuing story of Jack’s meandering, blighted life.

I don’t know how to pitch that the story of one Irish drunk’s life is worth reading so you’ll just have to trust me. Despite the fact that Jack’s investigation runs to not much more than a couple of phone calls and badgering one of his old colleagues a few times there is a load going on here and it’s all captivating. With black ‘you should feel guilty for laughing’ humour Jack struggles with his addictions, entangles himself with women, a priest and some nasty vigilantes and observes the political and social changes in his world in a way that makes it impossible to stop reading. I should also point out that although I haven’t read the first three books in the series there are enough reminiscences to ensure I didn’t feel lost.

The story is told in Jack’s first-person point of view which is normally not something I enjoy but is well-suited here as it allows us to see the best and the worst of Jack who may not be likable but is compelling. Friends, of the kind that don’t mind being dismissed most of the time, and the inevitable enemies swirl in and around Jack’s life. Sometimes he is nice to them, like the lovely moment when he tries to cheer up the elderly lady who runs the small hotel he lives in, but more often he isn’t, because it just doesn’t come naturally. All of them though are totally believable and I really did get sucked into this world. I was going to say ‘drawn into’ but that would suggest I had a choice and after the first 10 minutes or so I had to keep listening.

To be fair the other half of my friends were right too, I don’t always enjoy noir. It’s not the darkness of the subject I mind nearly as much as when there is absolute certainty from the outset that the darkness will prevail.  Where there is certainty there is boredom for me as a reader. I like most of all to be kept wondering. What Bruen does to perfection  with The Dramatist is tease readers with the possibility that things might not end in darkness after all. While there are events in the story that are very dark indeed there are also incidents in which things for Jack border on peachy and therein lies the tantalising hook. Will this incident trigger his downward spiral? Or that one? Or might there not be a downturn at all? Until the last moment of the book I didn’t know and that’s all I can ask.

If you’ve read Charles Ardai’s brilliant definition of noir (and if you haven’t, go now) then you’ll know that

“In noir novels…any apparent order is generally illusory; things don’t work the way they’re supposed to; justice is rare and, when present, often accidental….It’s a broken promise. It’s a book that betrays us and that we love for it…”

That’s The Dramatist in a nutshell: accidental justice and a brutally broken promise. It was the end that tipped the book from good to great for me. It’s 36 hours since I uttered a loud “no” upon hearing the completely unexpected event as I walked through my office building’s lobby and I still can’t quite rid myself of a lingering sadness (not to mention the funny looks I’m still getting from the security guards who were on duty at the time). But I also know that the ending was the perfect one for the book and that’s such a rare thing to find that I will savour it, sadness and all.

What about the audio book?

With the story being written from the first person point of view and with Gerry O’Brien’s mild Irish lilt I really felt like Jack Taylor was telling me his own story in his own words.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5
Narrator Gerry O’Brien
Publisher Isis Audio Books [this edition 2010, originally 2003]
ISBN N/A (audio download)
Length 4 hours 24 minutes
Format download from audible.com
Source My collection

An Epiphany In My Garage (Or Why I Bought an eReader when I said I didn’t need one)

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It was only a couple of months ago that I wrote about my lack of compulsion to own an eReader so I did feel a bit awkward posting about my backflip last week (though in my defence I never said I would never own one, just that I couldn’t think of a reason at that time).

I have to preface the rest of this part of my story by sharing two aspects of my personality:

  • I don’t like stuff. I do not feel an overwhelming need to own or accumulate things. I am the opposite of a hoarder (which I assume is unusual because there is no word to describe people like me, unhoarder perhaps?) and the older I get the less stuff I want. I buy a lot of books because I want to read those particular books, if I could borrow everything I wanted to read from a library when I wanted to read it I would do so in a heartbeat
  • I will donate, sell or re-purpose the stuff I no longer need or want but am unable to bring myself to throw away anything that I no longer want but is in perfectly good working order

And so to the garage

The top picture is my TBR bookcase.

In the picture below you can see the space remaining on my ‘read books’ shelves which all of those books will have to fit into once I have read them. And even if I only procure books at the pace I can read them (currently I’m at about double that rate) I would still need to find space on these shelves for 100+ books I actually read each year.

Because of the repetitive nature of this physics issue what I end up doing every couple of months is trawling through my ‘read’ books and seeing what ones I think I can find new homes for. Which is not as easy as it sounds. I use

  • bookmooch (but being in Oz I am at a disadvantage as I pay a fortune to post books overseas and very few of those overseas members will send their books to me here)
  • I have some places that I donate books to (but my regular charity shops and hospices have started to say “no thanks”)
  • I give books to friends (but not everyone shares my tastes and several share my overcrowding problem).

My current strategy is to move the books I don’t want to the garage and hope like heck a burglar will come by one day and be so smitten my collection of slightly worn crime fiction that he will ignore my grandmother’s jewellery and my HD TV and be on his way.

It was during the last migration season of books from shelves in the house to boxes in the garage that I had my epiphany: if I switched to eBooks I wouldn’t have this problem.

The five-year dream

I really hadn’t thought of eReading as a replacement for the other kind before. The few people I know with eReaders seem to still have large piles of physical books and most people (even the slimy people who’ve been trying to sell me a device for the past 14 years) talk about eReaders as adjuncts to ‘normal’ reading rather than a replacement for it, so the idea of completely switching to eBooks had never occurred to me. But as I looked around my garage on that cold, wet Saturday wondering where I would find room for yet another container of unwanted books I started to dream of a world free of physical books.

My hope is that within five years I will be reading eBooks almost exclusively (I can see situations in which I wouldn’t want an eReader such as in the bath or at the beach but I hardly ever have baths and I despise the beach so these are not huge obstacles for me).

It’s early days yet

Of course owning the eReader is the easy bit. I still have to change my book buying behaviour (largely this involves learning patience as some titles are not released on eBook at the same time as their paper brethren) and wait for all publishers to realise we’re into the second decade of the 21st century already. I also have all those physical books on my TBR shelves that I want to read.

But you gotta start somewhere, right?

Adaptable Agatha

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A contribution to the Agatha Christie Blog Tour celebrating the 120th anniversary of Christie’s birth, September 2010.

If you were in any doubt about the ongoing popularity of the works of Agatha Christie I’ll draw your attention to just a couple of facts that might make you think again. On the 120th anniversary of Christie’s birth, 15 September 2010, Google UK honoured her by adding one of its delightful doodles to its search front page and HarperCollins signed a 7 figure deal for the global rights to publish her works which still sell one million copies annually. ‘Nuff said?

Avowed Christie fan (and host of this blog tour), Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, has listed a dozen excellent reasons for the continued interest in the works of Ms Christie but I am convinced there is one more driving factor: adaptability. More than any other author I can think of Christie’s stories have been adapted for whatever the popular storytelling medium of the day happened to be (stage, big screen, small screen etc) and have been so almost from the outset. What this does is expose the stories to the widest possible audience which has, in turn, fed interest in the traditionally published works. Whether she knew it or not, whether it was deliberate or not, Christie was perhaps the first entertainment brand.

In 1928, only eight years after her first book was published, the first film adaptation of one of Christie’s works was produced. The Passing of Mr Quinn, telling the tale of a mysterious man who comes and goes almost invisibly and ‘speaks for the dead’, was based on a short story (The Coming of Mr Quin) and was adapted by the film’s director, Leslie Hiscott. In the 1930′s and 40′s adaptations of Christie’s works for film started to attract big names including 1937′s Love From a Stranger which starred Basil Rathbone and was adapted from the stage play of the same name which, in turn, was adapted from the short story Philomel Cottage.

Although it was only a fledgling medium Christie’s works were adapted for television in the very early days. A different version of Love From a Stranger aired in 1938 and other TV adaptations included 1949′s Witness for the Prosecution. One of America’s first TV series, Kraft Television Theatre (sometimes called Kraft Mystery Theatre), included an episode entitled Murder on the Nile in 1950, which was based on one of Christie’s most famous novels, Death on the Nile. Christie’s works continued to be incorporated into these kinds of television shows including General Electric Theatre

All the while Christie’s novels continued to be adapted for the stage (in addition to the material she produced as plays in their own right such as The Mousetrap). The stage play of Peril at End House, originally adapted by Arnold Ridley who would later go on to star in the TV show Dad’s Army, might have had a short run initially but it was re-staged as an audio drama for the BBC and remains a popular favourite among amateur dramatic societies ( I speak from personal experience having appeared as Mrs Croft in a version of it some years ago). From the 1950′s onwards the BBC broadcast a variety of Christie’s stories as radio plays and these continued right into the 1990′s with a successful series of dramatisations starring John Moffat as Hercule Poirot.

In the 1970′s all-star extravaganza movies were at the pinnacle of entertainment offerings (think The Towering Inferno or The Poseidon Adventure) and once again adaptations of Agatha Christie’s works were well and truly in the mix. 1974′s Murder on the Orient Express was a resounding success, garnering multiple Oscar nominations and a win for Ingrid Bergman (as Greta). The film was literally dripping with big-name stars including Albert Finney (in my opinion the creepiest Poirot ever seen on screen), Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Anthony Perkins and John Gielgud. Four years later came a big screen adaptation of my favourite Christie novel, Death on the Nile, with Peter Ustinov as Poirot and featuring another superstar cast including Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury (in a brilliant performance as the always drunk Mrs Salome Otterbourne for which she deservedly won the BAFTA that year) and David Niven. The third star-studded Christie film from that period was, for me anyway, the most disappointing of the three but was still successful. 1980′s The Mirror Crack’d (based on The Mirror Cracked from Side to Side) again starred Lansbury (but this time poorly cast as Miss Marple), Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis.

The adaptation of Agatha Christie then moved back to television with British network ITV producing both Agatha Christie’s Poirot, a series of tele-movies starring David Suchet (voted the best man to bring Hercule Poirot to life last year) and later Agatha Christie’s Marple first starring Geraldine McEwan and now Julia McKenzie in the title role. The first episode of this version of Poirot aired in 1989 and new episodes are still being made. Personally I am looking forward to seeing Suchet in Murder on the Orient Express (which aired in the UK and US earlier this year and is making its way to Oz via carrier pigeon) because it’s a great story but Albert Finney spoiled the big-screen version for me.

I could go on. There are dozens more adaptations of Christie’s works I could talk about, including those in less traditional media such as graphic novels and computer games. But, I think, my point is made. Of course it’s partly a chicken and egg argument: adaptations could not have been made if her works had not been popular but ultimately I think her works continue to be popular because the stories have been made accessible to people who wouldn’t, ordinarily, read her books (or any books for that matter). I’m certain that sizable number of the 1 million sales of Christie’s books for each of the past few years for example has been directly due to people seeing David Suchet as Poirot in those wonderful TV films full of luscious costumes and gorgeous art deco buildings.

The biggest fear most publishers of consumable art (music, movies, books etc) seem to have these days is that someone will see or hear the art in question without having paid for it. Accordingly a not so small fortune is spent ‘protecting’ the artistic products via arcane copyright restrictions and obtuse digital rights management. All of this is of course completely daft. Because what they should be deathly afraid of is that no one will see the art at all, paid for or otherwise. Either intuitively or serendipitously Agatha Christie and later the people who have managed her portfolio of works since her death seem to have understood the fundamental truth that people have to see and hear your art to grow to love it and when they do they’ll queue up to pay for it. By allowing adaptations of Christie’s stories to a variety of media almost since her first book was published in 1920, her audience has continued to expand. Although some people undoubtedly do all their consumption for free (watching on free to air TV for example) a healthy number of them are paying for the privilege. There’s a lesson to be learned there.

Last in, first out

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It hardly warrants complaining about but sometimes the sight of my TBR shelves sends me into a tailspin. Which one of the 150-odd books will I read next? I literally dither about in indecision some days (and no we won’t discuss the fact I now have a new eReader on which to cleverly hide TBR books).

When I saw a package from Book Depository on my doorstep as I arrived home tonight I decided I’d read its contents and not force myself to decide which book to select from the shelves. I rarely do this (it normally doesn’t feel ‘right’ to read a book that hasn’t done a fair stint on the sidelines) but it’s only my silly rule not a national law (yet).

I am chuffed the package contained Nigel McCrery’s Tooth and Claw. I can still remember in vivid detail the opening to Still Waters, the first book of McCrery’s that I read nearly two years ago. It created an image that has stayed with me to this day (and made me look askance at every little old lady with gardening shears I have since encountered) (which makes the fact I have taken on the role of creating a local community garden something of a psychological torture let me tell you). The rest of the book was darned good too, offering a great story with a quite powerful commentary about how we treat the people who live differently to ‘the norm’ or on the fringes of society. I rated it 4.5 out of 5 and still recommend it to friends.

I have no clue what this follow-up novel is about. I pre-ordered it as soon as I saw it was by McCrery and featured the same protagonist as the other book (a detective with a neurological condition that means most noises he hears triggers a taste in his mouth which might be bearable when the noise is the telephone and the taste is ice-cream but would undoubtedly be madness-inducing if the sound of your child’s laughter induced the taste of vomit).

Will this one give me nightmares too?

Review: Snow Angels by James Thompson

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This is the fifth of six books I need to read to complete the Scandinavian Reading Challenge and is the only one set in Finland.

If there is a Kittilä Tourism Authority I’m guessing James Thompson isn’t on their Christmas card list. In Snow Angels, part police procedural and part observation on Finnish culture and traditions, he has painted a unflattering portrait of the winter holiday resort in the northern part of the country. Against the backdrop of the investigation of a brutal crime Thompson shows us a country with one of the world’s highest suicide rates, where alcoholism is prevalent and resentment and abuse of foreigners is if not universal then fairly widespread. If that were all he showed then the book wouldn’t be much of a read but, using knowledge and experiences gained during his ten years living there, Thompson, who is American by birth, also depicts some of the subtleties of the culture which help to explain why people act the way they do. He also highlights some positive things like the community’s practical and drug-free way of dealing with a resident with mental health issues. For me this exploration of the customs and cultures of the region was the most successful aspect of the book.

The crime in question is the murder and disfigurement of a beautiful Somali immigrant, Sufia Elmi, who had gained some fame as an actress in her adopted country. It is an uncommon crime but Inspector Kari Vaara is confident he can solve it. When evidence points to the new lover of his ex-wife as the murderer things do start to get complicated for Vaara and the investigation spirals out of control fairly early on. At one point Vaara seemed to be following a logical, evidence-based trail but then story then morphed into pondering his series of weird and wacky theories, based more on guesswork than facts. I think this loss of plot strength stemmed from the first-person point of view in which the whole story is told. This POV also provided for some clunky exposition which would have been far more smoothly integrated in a third-person story.

The characters in Snow Angels go a fair way towards making up for the plot problems though. Kari is hiding some demons of his own but not to the point of being a hopeless alcoholic like so many of his fellow fictional detectives. His new marriage to an American woman is portrayed believably, with her difficulties in adapting to the country being thoughtfully depicted. Having once had to go to hospital in a country where I didn’t speak the language I could entirely identify with Kate’s fears and frustration at the way she perceived her treatment in such a circumstance. Most of the minor characters, like the succession of truly horrid people inhabiting Sufia Elmi’s life and Kari’s fellow police officer Valtteri, are also credible even if some of them are abhorrent. I do agree with Maxine at Petrona though that the victim is never really fully fleshed out so it was difficult to become wholly absorbed by finding out what happened to her. The book could have spent less time repeating the horrible mutilations done to her and more time letting us get to know her back story and how she ended up in such horrid circumstances.

Reading this book made me think about the impact of the author’s perspective on storytelling as it’s the only one of the books I’ve read for this challenge written by someone who isn’t Scandinavian by birth. It’ fairly common to read books by ‘outsiders’ set in the US or UK or even Australia but to come across a non-local but knowledgeable perspective of a fairly closed society like this one is fascinating. Overall I enjoyed the read and could forgive some of the plot problems of the debut novel because the setting and characterisations were well realised and I will happily read another story in which they feature. Though I’ll hope it’s summer time and the poor folk get a bit of sunlight in their lives.

Snow Angels has been reviewed at DJ’s Krimiblog, Material Witness and Petrona

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 3/5
Publisher Putnam [2010]
ISBN 9780399156175
Length 264 pages
Format Uncorrected Bound Proof
Source my collection (bookmooch)