Monthly Archives: October 2010

Review: Negative Image by Vicki Delany

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The 7th book which will count towards my Canadian Book Challenge is the newest installment of Vicki Delany’s Constable Molly Smith series and is due for publication on 2 Nov 2010. This pushes me over the half-way point of the challenge.

In the fictional small town of Trafralgar in British Columbia a famous fashion photographer is murdered in his hotel room. At first the town’s small police force requests the help of the Mounted Police for simple manpower reasons but when the wife of their lead investigator, John Winters, falls under suspicion they are forced to rely, seemingly mistakenly, on the impartiality of the outsiders.

I was very angry with John Winters for much of this book. His behaviour upon learning his wife Eliza was under suspicion for the murder was pretty poor, essentially he abandons the woman he has apparently loved for 25 years, and I mentally tut-tutted that I expected better of a man like him. This is not to say his behaviour was unrealistic, I suspect it would be a common response, but says a lot for the way Delany has grown her stock characters over the series that I was disappointed in Winters. I would also have liked to have seen things more from Eliza’s point of view. We do learn a little about her days as a young fashion model when she had a relationship with the murder victim but it would have been nice to see more of her reacting to being under suspicion and having a her husband go AWOL rather than deal with the issue.

Molly Smith is growing into a nicely well-rounded character. Here Delany depicts the difficulty a young woman might face being in the police force. Not only is Molly subject to some pretty juvenile ribbing and even nastier innuendo about her sexual exploits (let’s face it this could happen to any woman in any job) but she also comes under threat from a man she was responsible for jailing who has now been released. Although I’m sure male police officers experience threats and worse from criminals they’ve imprisoned, I suspect for a certain type of man it would be far worse to have been caught by a ‘lowly’ woman and that’s what seems to play out here. Given that Molly is also undergoing some family trauma and experiencing some minor troubles with her fledgling relationship she’s got a lot to handle in this book but works through it all credibly.

The plot itself, including the main mystery as well as a side thread about a series of robberies and a storyline dealing with Molly’s father’s illness, is very sound if not terribly surprising. As always with this series it is the mixture of crime solving and small town life that is appealing as both feed off each other. Although this book doesn’t have quite the social conscience that attracted me to Valley of the Lost, the second book in the series, it is an above average small town police procedural with very engaging characters and a satisfying puzzle to solve. Another point in its favour is that you could easily read it without having read the previous books in the series which is something of a rarity these days and is to be applauded as there are only so many backlists a mystery fan can contemplate.

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I have read and reviewed two of the three previous books in this series: Valley of the Lost and Winter of Secrets

Negative Image has also been reviewed at Make Mine Mystery and Tome’s Devotee

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My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Poisoned Pen Press [2010]
ISBN 9781590587881 (for the hard cover)
Length 274 pages
Format eBook (PDF, galley)
Source from the publisher via Net Galley

Review: Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey

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This is the 19th book which counts towards the extreme level of the Global Reading Challenge and my final read for the African leg of the tour. It is set in contemporary Ghana and is written by a Ghanian born man who now lives in the US.

In the small town of Ketanu in Ghana a young medical student and volunteer AIDS outreach worker, Gladys Mensah, is murdered and Detective Inspector Darko Dawson is sent from the country’s capital to head up the investigation. The local Inspector believes that a young troublemaker is to blame for the crime, it’s just a matter of getting him to confess, but Dawson thinks they must look further afield.

Darko Dawson is a complex, engaging character who I thoroughly enjoyed meeting. He doesn’t succumb to what might be considered the usual faults of fictional detectives, he is happily married and doesn’t drink alcohol, but he has his share of demons. His young son is in dire need of medical treatment that Darko and his wife cannot afford, he is haunted by the unsolved disappearance of his mother when he was only a boy and he is prone to bursts of violence (though only ever against people who you feel like hitting yourself). He is also a dogged investigator and someone who struggles with the consequences of his actions and decisions and I liked him very much, imperfections and all.

The book is peppered with other well-drawn characters including several strong, credible females. The murdered woman’s Aunt Elizabeth is a delight and deals most admirably with being accused of witchcraft and other unpleasantness and, in the end, the wives of the local ‘fetish priest’ turn out to be made of tough stuff too. The darker characters are equally strong,  engendering a smouldering fury in this reader. The ‘fetish priest’ who accepts gifts of young women to be his wives in return for the removal of curses upon the women’s families vies with the local police Inspector who refuses to see beyond his own prejudices when looking for the murderer for the title of most abhorrent individual in the book.

The other strength of the book is its exploration of modern Ghana where traditional beliefs in witchcraft and healers exist alongside modern scientific and medical practices in an often uncomfortable way.  Quartey, who is a medical doctor, makes it fairly clear what side of any debate he would fall on but the story does allow for the co-existence of some beliefs and practices and also does a lot to explain why the traditional beliefs are attractive and comforting to people in a way that modern science might not be.

To top it all of there is a solid mystery to solve here, and a second one that might also be resolved as Darko uses the opportunity of his return to Ketanu to re-consider his mother’s disappearance all those years ago. For the most part the procedural elements of the story are well-handled, though I found it slightly unbelievable that several people could be arrested for the same crime without much in the way of evidence but that’s a relatively minor point. The ultimate solution wasn’t a huge surprise to me but it was revealed intelligently and its not being obvious to the people in the book was consistent with the culture that was depicted throughout.

I admit I was a little wary picking up this book as I tend to prefer reading books by people who live in the settings they are describing especially when those settings are exotic. However it’s clear that Quartey, who did live in Ghana for many years, has a sound understanding of and respect for the culture. He has managed to depict both positive and negative elements of that culture in a sensitive, non-judgmental way and added a solid mystery and terrific characters to that depiction. I am already looking forward to the second book in this series which is due for publication next year.

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Kwei Quartey recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post about why his next book is a better buy than Stieg Larsson. I’m sure authors the world over are wondering what to do to compete with a years-dead Swedish bloke whose books won’t get off the best seller lists. Though Quartey’s publishers are none to shabby in the vacuous comparison stakes as the version I have has pull quotes and blurbs aplenty along the theme of ‘move over Alexander McCall Smith’ which makes about as much sense as labelling everything from Scandinavia the next Stieg Larsson (cosy this book is not).

Wife of the Gods has been reviewed at International Noir Fiction, Murder by the Book and Musings of a Bookish Kitty

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My rating 4/5
Publisher Random House [This edition 2010, original edition 2009]
ISBN 9780812979367
Length 312 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it

Review: Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indriðason

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First published in Iceland in 1999 Operation Napoleon was published for in English just this month. I couldn’t pass it up when I noticed it available as a new release for my eReader.

Just before the end of World War 2 a plane of mysterious origins crashes on the the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland during a fierce blizzard. Although it is thought to be a German plane the search that is mounted some days later is carried out by the American army which has a base in the country. However only a single wheel is discovered and the search is called off. More than 50 years later satellite images of the glacier seem to indicate the plane’s location and a new search is mounted by the US Army which still has a presence in the country. Several local civilians become unwittingly caught up in the search to find the plane and hide its secrets once and for all, the most notable of whom is a young lawyer called Kirstin whose love of her brother forces her to stand up to some truly nasty individuals.

This stanadlone novel from the author of the Erlendur police procedurals is at heart a fairly standard thriller. There is a big secret that some people will go to any lengths to hide, a few innocent people stumble across the secret’s existence and are unable to extricate themselves from events and then a race to see which side will overcome the myriad of obstacles to achieving their goal which in this case was permanent cover up for one side or survival and exposé for the other. The story certainly stretches the bounds of credibility at some points, especially with respect to Kirstin’s ability to get out a succession of near-death scrapes while around her the body count mounts, but it is by no means as far-fetched as some I have read and its internal logic is pretty sound. It is also well-paced and, particularly in its second half, is brimming with genuine tension and intrigue. The secret, when revealed, is just this side of plausible and is one of those that makes you wonder ‘what if’.

As with Indriðason’s other fiction however there is more to the book than a simple plot as it explores several themes in some depth. The most obvious of these is the complicated relationship between Iceland and the US Army. The reluctance of the Icelandic people to accept the foreign army in their country informs Kirstin’s behaviour towards a former beau, Steve an American, who she turns to for help when she is caught up in the events taking place on Vatnajökull. At a government level there are economic and popularity considerations which compete to be taken into account before action can be taken. Although it’s fairly clear where Indriðason’s heart lies on this issue it is pleasing that he provides a strong character in the form of Steve to display an alternate view to the ‘Americans are evil’ theme.

A theme that doesn’t crop up terribly often in fiction but one Indriðason does seem to be particularly interested in is the relationships between siblings. Here Kirstin only becomes involved in the story and goes well beyond her comfort zone of physical endurance because she fears for the life of her younger brother and as the book progresses we learn more about why she feels so duty-bound to look out for Elias. In addition, one of the Americans who was involved in the very first search for the lost plane turns out to have had a similar reason for maintaining his interest in the search until the present search. There are glimpses too of other ideas that interest Indriðason such as the military hierarchy’s willingness to accept that torture is a legitimate means to an end as long as they can claim deniability (quite insightful given this novel was written long before newspaper headlines about gruesome torture being sanctioned at Gunatanamo Bay) and a hastily explored crack at privacy.

I knew absolutely nothing about this book when I bought it and found myself a bit skeptical when learning it was a thriller involving war-time secrets. However I found it a thoroughly entertaining yarn with the added bonus of more depth than you usually find in a thriller and far fewer explosions (which for me is a good thing).

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Operation Naploeon has been reviewed at Reviewing the Evidence and The View from the Blue House

Earlier this year I reviewed Arnaldur Indriðason’s Hypothermia which remains in hot contention for my favourite book of the year. It’s a very different kind of book to this one!

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My rating 4/5
Translator Victoria Cribb
Publisher Harvill Secker [this translation 2010, original edition 1999]
ISBN 9781846552854
Length 274 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Source I bought it

Review: Affairs of State by Dominique Manotti

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Affairs of State is a combination political thriller and police procedural set in France in the 1980′s. At its core the novel is the story of Francois Bornand, a friend and advisor to President Mitterand and head of a special unit within the security services. He can, and does, get away with things that only powerful people can get away with and his nefarious schemes include the highly profitable arms trade and he doesn’t care much who he does business with. As the novel opens small things start to go awry in Bornand’s circle, including an accidental murder committed by one of his people. The victim of this crime ultimately comes to the attention of a low-ranked rookie police officer named Noria Ghozali who is dogged in her efforts to uncover the truth behind the murder while Bornand is equally determined not to lose his status and influence.

The theme that struck home from this novel it is that power is a dangerous thing. This is probably not news to anyone but it never hurts to be reminded just how easily some people (most?) will abuse their status and privilege given half the chance. They’ll also fight dirty, really dirty, to retain their power and influence once they have it. It would be quicker to write a list of the characters in this novel who didn’t display some form of corruption or immorality including theft, blackmail, mis-using government secrets, perpetrating violence against prostitutes and murder. The plain old vice crimes that virtually everyone participated in on a regular basis don’t seem worth mentioning when stacked up against their nastier counterparts.

And while I appreciated that this depiction was undoubtedly realistic the way this insidious corruption was portrayed lost me a little. My problem was that the book starts off with a bang and never changes its tone. Virtually from page one men (yes they are all men) are doing horrible and/or immoral things to each other, to women, to their government, to anyone and everyone. And they don’t stop until the very end. This style meant that for me, after the first few pages there wasn’t much suspense because the expectation was set up that every few pages a nasty chap would kill or betray someone. So when every few pages some nasty chap killed or betrayed someone I was hardly surprised. There was some tension in considering which chaps would be doing nasty deeds and which chaps (or ladies) would be getting killed or betrayed but this didn’t really compensate for genuine tension. In the last quarter of the book this did change a little as the investigation gathered momentum and there were glimmers of possible alternate outcomes to everyone getting killed or sold out by someone they’d once thought of as a friend, but I’d have enjoyed the book more if it had focussed more on Noria and her investigation rather than having almost all of the attention centred on a succession of morally bankrupt men.

Despite the fact I was numbed by the ‘shock and awe’ style of the book I was engaged enough to keep reading because the writing and translation are first rate. The story flows well, despite its complex political details which could have dragged but didn’t, and the writing is blunt in all the right places. It has also been a very long time since I read a book that packs in so much in a tick over 200 pages.  Although I had misgivings about the overall style of the book I would recommend it to those who enjoy thought-provoking political thrillers and I would certainly not let my misgivings put me off seeking out more of Manotti’s work.

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I am in the minority reacting to the book as I have done, Affairs of State has been reviewed more favourably at Crime Scraps, Petrona and The Game’s Afoot.

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My rating 3/5
Translators Ros Schwartz and Amanda Hopkinson
Publisher Arcadia Books [this translation 2009, original edition 2001]
ISBN 9781906413491
Length 204 pages
Format paperback
Source I bought it

The stupidity of territorial restrictions part 1

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This week’s eAdventure is a little earlier than usual because today I received an email that has me a little hot under the collar.

The message was from Waterstones, a company from which I have purchased several eBooks in the few weeks I’ve owned my eReader (the text is verbatim, the highlighting is mine):

Dear Customer,

We see from our records that you have previously purchased an eBook from Waterstones.com whilst having a registered address outside of the UK and Ireland.

We regret that  as of  20th October 2010, we are no longer able to sell  eBooks to customers placing an order from anywhere outside of the UK and Ireland.  We have had to take this action to comply with the legal demands of publishers regarding the territories  into which we can sell eBooks.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience  that  this may cause.

Please note: Your previously purchased eBooks are not affected by this and will still be available in your ‘Digital order history’ in your online account.

Kind regards,

Waterstones.com Customer Service

I’m sure I’ll tackle territorial restrictions again in future eAdventure installments but what I’d like to do now is highlight the only people who will benefit from the sending of this email.

Pirates.

That is, people who steal legitimately published books and sell them without passing any proceeds on to the authors, editors, translators or anyone else involved in the creative or publication processes.

Do you know how hard it is to buy a pirated eBook? Not at all.

Without deliberately seeking out sites that sell pirated eBooks I have tripped over several of them, including a couple that look pretty kosher. If you think I’m kidding, check out this article on the entirely legal Digital Reader blog which shows just how legitimate some pirate eBook sellers can look and how easy it is to get hold of such things as pirated J K Rowling books (none of which are legally available in eBook format).

Knowing this (in fact learning it all in only the few weeks I have been actively interested in things eBook related) I am awestruck by the new heights of stupidity being displayed by publishers who have told Waterstones (and presumably other stores) to stop selling books to the roughly 5,945,000,000 people who don’t live in the UK.

Do they honestly believe that their inane restrictions will help their cause (whatever that cause might be)? Do they really think that if they prevent us from buying eBooks legally we will sit quietly and wait the 6 months (or 6 years) that it takes for a book to be made available in our location? Do they really have such a limited understanding of the global economy? Do they not get that in 2010 their territory is ‘people who read in English (or other language of choice) wherever they live’? In short, are they as gobsmackingly stupid as they appear to be?

Publishers answering in the affirmative to these kinds of questions do so at their peril.

Right now the only thing standing between me and an eReading device full of pirated eBooks is my innate honesty. But I have a tipping point and it’s not far off.

Review: The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards

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In Coniston in England’s Lake District local newspaper journalist Tony di Venuto starts a campaign to re-open the investigation into the disappearance of a young woman, Emma Bestwick, ten years earlier. At the same time a man who knows what happened to her returns to the area and decides to tip off the journalist. This provides enough information for DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the Cumbria’s Cold Case Review Team, to take another look at the case.

Perhaps it’s because the audio books happen to be narrated by the same person but this book reminded me of the Shetland novels by Ann Cleeves that I’ve read. They have the same wonderful sense of place and combination of solid procedural storyline with fascinating local colour and historical details. In this novel the procedural elements of the story are deftly handled as, without much in the way of forensic evidence, Hannah and her team rely on their interviewing skills and a little bit of luck as they talk to all the people who knew Emma prior to her disappearance. It becomes clear for example that Emma came into a sizable sum of money but she told her sister it was a lottery win and others the money was an inheritance so the squad have to determine the real source of the money and whether or not it had anything to do with the disappearance.

They must also delve into local history which includes a something of a feud between two families, the Cloughs and the Inchmores, which has had a significant impact on the area over time. It was an Inchmore who was responsible for the now abandoned arsenic mines that turn out to be such a crucial location for this story while what remains of the Clough family are now in charge of the quirky Museum of Myth and Legend which also proves instrumental to the plot.

Hannah once again meets up with Daniel Kind, a historian and the son of Hannah’s mentor when she first joined the police force. Daniel’s research into local historical figure John Ruskin eventually provides an important link to part of the investigation. Their obvious attraction to each other, despite being in relationships with other people, is handled interestingly because it’s not simply a case of leaping into each other’s pants because they fancy doing so. I also enjoyed the depiction of Guy, the man who knows what happened to Emma, who is a serial seducer of women for their money. He’s a nasty piece of work to be sure but a compelling character.

All in all The Arsenic Labyrinth is an above average example of the genre. It is well-paced, particularly in the second half, has several satisfyingly unexpected twists and Edwards has generated genuine interest in finding out all the villager’s hidden secrets even if they end up having little to do with the overall mystery. I’m also impressed that the book can be easily read and enjoyed without having read the previous books in the series (I have read the first book but not the second) (yet).

What about the audio book?

Gordon Griffin is fast becoming one of my favourite narrators (he has also narrated the two Ann Cleeves books I’ve listened to). His style and voice are well suited to the art of story telling and I can highly recommend this narration.

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The Arsenic Labyrinth is the third book in Martin Edwards Lake District Mystery series and has also been reviewed at Euro Crime (by Karen) and Euro Crime (by Maxine) as well as at Mysteries in Paradise

You can read my review of the first book in this series, The Coffin Trail, or might be interested in Edwards’ foray into true(ish) crime Dancing for the Hangman.

Martin Edwards blogs about crime fiction and writing at Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

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My rating 4/5
Narrator Gordon Griffin
Publisher ISIS Audio Books [2007]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 10 hours 26 minutes
Format mp3
Source I bought it

Review: The Dead of Midnight by Catherine Hunter

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This is the sixth book I’m counting towards the challenge which requires me to read 13 Canadian books by 1 July 2011. It is yet another great book that I probably wouldn’t have stumbled across if it weren’t for participating in a challenge.

In a small town in Winnipeg, Manitoba a book club meats each week at a local restaurant to discuss a mystery novel (and eat dessert). They start discussing a new series of novels in which a murder always occurs at midnight but soon book club members start experiencing events that eerily reflect the plots of the novels. At the same time one of the club members, Sarah Petursson, begins to uncover the mysteries of her own past, including the death of her mother when she was only six years old.

I read this book in a couple of sittings and was hooked from the outset. Although the basic premise, real-life events mirroring those in books, has been done before there were more than enough interesting twists here that I didn’t get any sense of ‘been there, read that’. Undoubtedly this was helped along by the strong focus on Sarah’s exploration of her past. At first she is reluctant to dig into her murky memories of her early childhood but when she came into possession of some journals of her mother’s she became drawn to finding out about her mother’s life, almost all of which was spent on a tiny private island with only her father and sister for company. The inclusion of extracts from these journals was nicely handled and helped build the intrigue. Meanwhile the investigation of the current crop of crimes does not go terribly smoothly, mostly due to the lazy pig-headedness of one of the detectives assigned to the case, and it’s no wonder those book club members who remain alive grow more than a little frightened.

There’s a plethora of characters in the book, possibly a few too many to get into real depth, but even those who appear only briefly are well-drawn. Thankfully Sarah Petersson avoids almost all of the traps of being a female in danger in a mystery and her self-discovery and the way it impacts her character is surprisingly engaging. Her flighty (and flirty) cousin Morgan turns out to be made of tougher stuff than I imagined at the outset and the many possible culprits provide red herrings and entertainment in equal measure. The only real downfall was with the depiction of the police who seemed either to be lazy or a little too willing to break rules inconvenient to plot advancement but as they didn’t feature heavily in the story it wasn’t a terribly big issue.

Perhaps I was particularly drawn into this novel because I too belong to a crime fiction book club (though ours is not nearly as organised as this one in which members took it in turns to write presentations on the themes raised by the books they read) (and none of our members have been horribly murdered) but whatever the reason it certainly hooked me in from the outset. I found the book genuinely suspenseful and its evocative sense of location and the merest hint of something paranormal was reminiscent of some of Daphne du Maurier’s stories. I think this one would have appeal beyond die-hard mystery fans.

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My rating 3.5/5
Publisher St Martin’s Minotaur [2001]
ISBN 03123083888
Length 360 pages
Format hardcover
Source borrowed from the library

It’s not like holding a real book

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One of the common things that non eBook readers say is that they like the feel of a real book and nothing would quite match it. Having had my eReader for more than a month I would wholeheartedly agree: reading an eBook (at least on my device) isn’t like holding a ‘real’ book.

It is much, much better.

Some of the attributes that my eReader offers over a traditional paper book are

  • I can read single-handedly any time I want to even if the book is 600+ pages long (no more wrist ache from giant books or having to jam one of those cheap mass market paperbacks flat with both hands so you can see the words near the inside margins) (and as Marg from Adventures of an Intrepid Reader points out the ability to read single-handedly on public transport might be the difference between life and death)
  • I always have access to note-taking and highlighting without having to carry a separate pen or post-it pad with me (which I invariably forget)
  • There is a built-in dictionary (multi-lingual too) available at a second’s notice
  • I can change the font size to suit the tiredness of my eyes or the lighting conditions in which I am reading
  • In a presentation/meeting it is much easier to hide the fact I’m reading a book and not paying attention to the boring drone at the front of the room/head of the table

I am not surprised that I find some features of an eReader to be preferable to a physical book but what has astonished me is that I cannot think of a single instance in which the attributes of a physical book are better than those of an eBook. Certainly on some points the two are equal but, right now anyway, there isn’t a single feature for which the physical book would be my preferred option (aside from the fact that not everything I want to read is available in eBook format) (yet). I suppose battery life of the device must come into play at some point but mine seems to be very robust and only needs a charge very 3-4 weeks which is not an onerous task for me.

A few years ago I had cause to read a book called The Myth of the Paperless Office (Abigail J Sellen and Richard Harper, MIT Press, 2001) which, as the title might suggest, ponders the question of why the much sought after paperless office nirvana had, at that time (early 2000’s), failed to materialise. The book’s central thesis was that computers are good at some things (storing, organising and searching huge quantities of data for example) but that paper as a medium also has its own particular attributes (the book called them affordances) that make it superior for other activities like carrying, folding, and writing on. An almost anthropological approach was taken to studying how people interact with both electronic and paper media and specifically tackled the curly question of why people continue using paper even when it is patently inefficient for a given job. At the time I thought the authors of the book were probably right, i.e. that paper and computers would continue to co-exist and be used for their individual strengths, but if I met one or other of them now I think I’d have a debate (assuming they hadn’t changed their own minds in the intervening years as I have done).

I now suspect that eventually, possibly even in my life time, paper will prove to have less and less attributes that make it more attractive than its alternatives, to the point that it fades from common usage.  The thing we need now is to stop trying to recreate the form factor offered by traditional books and use the real strengths of computers. So far us old folk have built our bad habits and comfortable features into our new devices, often without even being conscious of it. This theory is expanded far more intelligently at 4oh4 Words Not Found where I was introduced to a new (to me) word which explains this hangover effect: skeuomorpth. But we are starting to see changes that deliberately ignore familiar features that aren’t needed in an eBook world. Kindles, for example, have done away with page numbers yet the devices have sold in their gazillions. If page numbers are not an essential part of the reading experience what else might we be able to do away with?

What about you? Do you prefer one format over another? Do you think we’ll see the end of physical books? If so, when would you predict it?

Review: Villain by Shuichi Yoshida

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The 18th book I’ve read for the 2010 Global Reading Challenge completes the Asian leg of my virtual tour, being set in contemporary Japan. Three books to go before I will be able to officially say I am an extreme global reader.

When Yoshino Ishibashi is found murdered near the eerie Mitsue Pass in southern Japan, a road locals only take in desperation to avoid expensive tolls on the nearby freeways, Police at first suspect a college student she knew who has also disappeared. But attention is also focused on Yuichi Shimizu, a construction worker from a nearby town.

Rather than being a whodunnit, Villain is an exploration of what makes a murderer and seen in that light it is fascinating. Any focus on the investigation of Yoshino’s murder is incidental to the author’s exploration of changes in modern Japanese society and associated issues of alienation, loneliness and despair. In short chapters, some told in flashback, we meet a wide range of people from different geographical and social backgrounds who all have some connection, albeit tenuous in some instances, to Yoshino or her murderer. We start by meeting Yoshino, a not-very-good insurance saleswoman by day and amateur prostitute with a gift for fantasy by night and move on from there. We then meet her parents, devastated and almost physically immobilised by her death and what they learn about her life, the two friends who were with her on the night of her murder,  the college student and the construction worker who are both suspects in her murder, their friends and families and so on.

The person we learn most about is Yuichi, an almost allegorical character who experiences most of life’s disappointments in a very short space of time. Abandoned by his mother at a young age he is at the beck and call of his ailing grandparents and seems to have no interests other than his car and his fairly disastrous attempts at a love life (virtually all of which involve payment of some kind). In that respect he is not alone as none of the young people in the book seem capable of engaging in anything remotely like a ‘normal’ social life, what little social activity exists  is conducted out via emails and furtive visits to love hotels, though I don’t know enough about life in Japan to know if this is a realistic portrayal of life for twenty-something Japanese people or beefed up for storytelling purposes.

For the most part the writing is very good and the translation by Philip Gabriel makes it easy to forget the words originated in another language but I must admit to finding the some of the ‘hyper-realism’ a bit off-putting as it tended to take me out of the story. The most obvious example of this is the inclusion of the price of every service and product mentioned which made me feel like I should have a calculator by my side or a shopping list on the go and I’m not really sure what purpose it all served.

For its first two thirds Villain is pretty bleak but towards the end there are glimmers of hope in which an unexpected person or two displays a hint of humanity and some of the characters, though none of the younger ones, show a bit of backbone.  However the overwhelming feeling I’m left with is sadness as I think about these difficult to forget characters. If you can handle a slow-paced thoughtful novel that might leave you feeling uneasy about the state of the world then I would highly recommend Villain.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I would also recommend that you ignore most of the publicity material about this novel, much of which is either woefully inaccurate (the blurb on my copy for example claims that one of the characters is arrested for Yoshino’s murder early on which is just not true) or gives away too many spoilers. Also the US cover has a stylized gun on the cover which couldn’t have less to do with the story if it went out of its way to be irrelevant. I can only assume that no one responsible for publicising this book has actually read it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Translator Philip Gabriel
Publisher Harvill Secker [2010, originally 2007]
ISBN 9781846552380
Length 295 pages
Format trade paperback
Source I bought it

Review: Never Look Away by Linwood Barclay

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David Harwood is a journalist for a small paper in upper New York State and is working hard on a story about corrupt local government officials taking bribes to approve the establishment of a privately run prison in the area. On top of this pressure, for several weeks his wife Jan has been exhibiting signs of depression, to the point even of reporting suicidal thoughts to her husband and he is very concerned. In an attempt to lighten the family’s mood the couple take their four year old son Ethan to a local amusement park for the day which is when their lives fall apart.

Never Look Away incorporates a compelling mix of nail-biting tension and normal people behaving credibly despite extraordinary situations. David Harwood is a great character for a thriller, being the sort of person with whom we can all identify. I really liked the fact he didn’t suddenly develop any inexplicable superhuman skills (which tends to happen in thrillers) but stumbled his way through a series of pretty astonishing events in a very believable way. His reaction as he learned that people around him might have lied was particularly credible in the way it showed his willingness to entertain the most bizarre theories rather than the notion he had been deceived. His parents are also wonderfully normal characters and even his wife Jan, though a less orthodox character, has a credibility about her.

I read this book because Maxine at Petrona told me to it and while it didn’t make me miss my bus stop as she suggested that’s only because I walk to work. On two successive mornings I walked an extra long way around to get to my office just to hear a little more. Funnily enough the big plot twists were telegraphed but I didn’t find that detracted from the story terribly much as I was more interested in how the various players would cope with unfolding events than the play-by-play, though the strait narrative was very sold too.

I like thrillers that have an air of normality about them and don’t go too over the top with explosions and other silliness and Never Look Away fits that bill well. At its heart it’s a story of a family where all is not what it seems and plays on the sorts of fears that all of us might face at some time. Top thrills indeed.

What about the audio book?

To be perfectly honest it took me a little while to ‘get into’ Jeffrey Cummings’ narration as he used a wide variety of voices and some of the ones for minor characters were a little odd-sounding. However after the first 20-30 minutes I was totally absorbed and Cummings had made the book whatever the audio equivalent is of a page turner.

Never Look Away has also been reviewed at Crime Watch and Petrona

I’ve also read Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye (which was terrific) and Too Close to Home (which I didn’t enjoy quite as much)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 4/5
Narrator Jeffrey Cummings
Publisher Orion Publishing [2010]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 12 hours 42 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Source I bought it