Monthly Archives: February 2012

On second thoughts…

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…I still don’t like THE SLAP.

I’m sure I have been asked several dozen times at least in my 44 years some variation of “how can you read so much crime fiction…isn’t it depressing and full of horrible murderers?“. From now on my response to that question is going to be “maybe, but not even Ken Bruen has written a book that paints as unrelentingly grim a picture of humanity as Christos Tsiolkas’ THE SLAP.

I had read the book soon after its release in 2008 and didn’t see what all the fuss was about. The premise is that at a suburban Australian BBQ a man slaps someone else’s child and all hell breaks loose amongst those who were at there. But the book really isn’t about the slap (in fact the incident appears to be forgotten quite often) it’s about the people who witnessed it – their lives, their loves and their love of profanity. My reading notes for the book (pre-blog) are succinct so I will quote them entirely: “Boring. Hateful people. Lots of swearing”

Now, on a second reading, I don’t really have much to add. The reason I read it again is that I recently heard an interview with the author that gave me pause. The interviewer asked Tsiolkas what it was like spending so much time with such horrible people and his answer was that he didn’t find them horrible, they were like people he knew. I wondered if I’d been too harsh.

Perhaps I am harsh but if these are people Tsiolkas knows then I feel sorry for him. THE SLAP is populated the most repugnant collection of fictional people I have ever met (and most books I read have at least one cold-blooded killer in them). The adults are all some combination of violent, alcoholic, superficial, philandering, racist, whining, juvenile and, self-absorbed. They drink to excess, take whatever drugs they feel like whenever they feel like it and swear endlessly. For all that they are banal.

The story is like an alternate negative image of the TV show Neighbours. Like the show in this version a small group of people live too much in each other’s pockets but here the people seem to wake up each morning with only one guiding principle: what can they do today to hurt themselves or their loved ones? Between the beatings and the cheating and the feeling trapped and deciding to forego friendship and principles in return for a lifetime of abuse there’s not a healthy adult relationship in the bunch. And I suspect this soap opera is about as realistic as Neighbours.

Maybe I have my head in the sand as I don’t recognise much of my middle-class Australia in these people.. Though to give Tsiolkas his due he does bring the characters alive very well, I just wish he hadn’t bothered.

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If you watched the TV adaptation of THE SLAP (I couldn’t bring myself to) do tell me how they handle the swearing. I was trying to imagine how on earth they could truly claim to have captured the essence of this book without every third word being f*** or c***.

February didn’t make me shiver

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One of my goals when starting this blog was to prompt me to write something about every book I read in the hope that I would remember them more clearly (I choose to believe my failing memory is due to the number of books I read rather than my advancing years). For the most part I’m pretty good about reviewing what I’ve read but this month I have well and truly dropped the ball. Partly this is due too real life getting in the way and partly due to the books not demanding me to write about them. I have hit a period of books that are neither very good nor very bad and am feeling a bit hard done by as a result (I know, I know it’s a first world problem).

Charles Todd’s THE CONFESSION is the 14th book in the Ian Rutledge historical series and has a strong opening in which a man walks into Rutledge’s Scotland Yard office and confesses to murdering his cousin several years earlier. When the confessor himself is killed a couple of weeks later Rutledge starts an investigation which takes him to a horrid little town (the name of which I have forgotten) where a swag of horrid people try to hide things from Rutledge the outsider. There follows a somewhat confusing story involving assumed identities and wartime criminal activity and if you paid me money I couldn’t tell you the outcome of the story and it’s only 3 weeks since I finished the book. I’ve really enjoyed the other books in this series but this one felt a little flat to me. Even that cover looks dull right?

I had high hopes for M.J. McGrath’s WHITE HEAT, a debut novel set in the Canadian Arctic written by an English woman who has spent a lot of time in the region. She has published a non-fiction book about Inuit families who were ‘incentivised’ to move to the barely habitable High Arctic by the government which wanted people living in the far northern territories during the Cold War years and who have been ignored and abandoned since the threat from the evil Russians has disappeared. McGrath uses her obviously extensive knowledge of the people and the area as a backdrop to a thriller in which part time teacher and part time hunting guide Edie Kiglatuk takes some tourists on a hunt where one of them is shot and dies. The local elders arrange for the incident to be dismissed as an accident but Edie is perturbed by some anomalies in the evidence she found at the scene. When a relative of hers dies in questionable circumstances she is spurred to investigate properly. This book didn’t engage me as much as it has other readers. I did enjoy the character of Edie but found the mystery element of the book somewhat rambling and for large chunks of the novel I felt a little too much like I was being lectured at.

Helene Tursten’s NIGHT ROUNDS centres on the investigation into the murder of a nurse in a small private hospital in Sweden. I was happy enough to listen to the audio book while it was meandering along but almost as soon as I had finished it the details started to seep from my brain. It is a perfectly serviceable police procedural, with a modicum of social commentary thrown in for good measure, but it didn’t fully engage me and in another few weeks I doubt I’ll be able to tell you a single thing about it.

My comfort reading for the month was another Dick Francis audio book narrated by Tony Britton who I adore as a reader (if I win the lottery I’m going to hire him to read all my books to me). The book, WILD HORSES, did exactly what you’d expect from a Dick Francis book so I can’t say this one disappointed me. The protagonist is a young-ish film director who is making a film based on a death that occurred in the racing fraternity some years earlier and someone will go to great lengths for the film not to be made. I did enjoy the depiction of the process of making a movie even (Francis has a knack for making things I have no interest in seem engaging) but I found the mystery a bit easy to solve (or perhaps I remember it from years ago when I must have read the book in print form).

To top it off there are some other half-finished books we will speak of no more and I am still plodding through the Sara Paretsky book I wrote about last week (good lord it gets more patronising by the paragraph).

So I am looking around for something to jolt my reading back into high gear. To that end I am re-reading Christos Tsiolkas’ THE SLAP at the moment because I heard an interview with the author which made me wonder if I’d been unfair to the book the first time I read it (when I hated it). And tomorrow I’m picking up Gail Jones’ FIVE BELLS from the library (astute observers will notice that neither of these is crime fiction).

What do you do when you hit a reading slump? What’s your ONE recommendation that will make me love reading again?

This book is Political with a capital P

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I am currently reading Sara Paretsky’s latest V.I. Warshawski novel, BREAKDOWN. It’s set in the present day and sees the series’ long-suffering heroine chance upon some teenage girls who are in a cemetery performing a ceremony they’ve learned from a series of popular books which will call upon vampires. Or something. Unfortunately they’re also in the presence of a murdered man and in trying to shield the girls from the unsympathetic eyes of the police Vic opens up a world of trouble for herself.

I’m about a third of the way through the book and am increasingly frustrated by the political agenda it makes no attempt to hide. I don’t imagine anyone who’s ever read one of Paretsky’s books or seen her interviewed would be surprised that the book takes a left-of-centre view of things but here it is not much more than a diatribe against Fox News (sorry Global Entertainment Network or GEN as it appears in the book) and various thinly disguised commentators and politicians. The plot device used to clunkily wedge all the “we on the left are very hard done by” messages is that several of the teenage girls are related to important Chicago political figures whose opponents use the escapade to trot out hate-filled campaigns against them.

The frustrating thing about this dominant feature of the book is that I have no idea what earthly purpose it serves. It is surely only preaching to the converted as no one who is even vaguely right-leaning in their politics would read much beyond about page 50 unless they had a strong masochistic streak. And do those who share Paretsky’s views really need 430 pages of reminding that their world has gone to hell in a handbasket? The more worrying prospect is that such a book doesn’t just do no good, it might actually do some harm. Can it really help to have yet another extremist view of the world thrown thrown into the cesspool that is modern politics? Do we really need to separate out into “us” and “them” at every turn? Can’t someone take a more nuanced position? Please?

My ultimate concern as a reader is that the story isn’t great and the reason it isn’t great is that there’s too much preaching and kvetching and polarising going on. When Vic isn’t being bitter she’s being so bloody righteous that she makes me want to vote conservatively (and for the record I voted for The Greens in our last election because the mainstream left wing party wasn’t socially or financially liberal enough for me).

I like fiction that explores social issues but this book isn’t exploring in any kind of thoughtful way: it’s daring readers to disagree with its agenda and ridiculing them if they do. On top of being annoyingly superior that’s bad writing in my view, and exactly the kind of thing that “liberals” often get upset about when “the other side” does it. Tsk Tsk.

Have you read BREAKDOWN? What did you think about its political overtone? Do you like books that have this kind of political overtone? Should I finish the book (I am on page 116 of 430)?

Review: THE CALLER by Karin Fossum

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I’m almost unwilling to admit that I found THE CALLER unsettling. Not because I’m worried you’ll think I’m a wuss (I am but I don’t care that you know it) but because you’ll think that’s a derogatory thing to say about the book and I don’t mean it to sound that way. Because I think it’s a terrific book, even if extremely sad and…unsettling…in the way it exposes the fragility of the lives we create for ourselves. The subject matter is too dark to for me to say I enjoyed it, but it has gotten under my skin in a way that few books do and I absolutely loved it.

It opens by introducing us to Lily Sundelin who has the perfect life in her small Norwegian town. Her gorgeous baby Margrete is asleep in a pram under a tree in their back yard and she is cooking a favoured meal to share with her much-loved husband when he comes home from work. After their relaxed meal she goes to bring Margrete inside and finds her covered in blood. After rushing to the hospital and fearing the worst they learn that Margrete is fine; the blood was not hers. And while you’d think such an outcome would be cause for rejoicing Fossum takes the story in a less obvious direction, depicting a family that fractures due to the loss of intangible things like security and certainty and the understanding of each person’s role in the family.

We learn early on who is responsible for the prank and this is where one of the book’s many strengths shines through. Because while feeling sympathetic towards the Sundelin family and the prankster’s subsequent victims I felt equally sorry for the perpetrator of the increasingly malicious pranks (which include things like publishing a death notice for an elderly lady who is still alive). He is a teenager who has never known the unquestioning, blind love of a parent that is, or should be, the birthright of every child. His father is unknown, his mother a cruel drunk who abandoned her maternal responsibilities many years ago and while not excusing the boy’s behaviour this situation certainly explains it. Like Konrad Sejer, the inspector assigned to the case, I couldn’t help but wonder how different the boy’s life would have been if he’d ever known the feeling of being loved and protected.

Sejer does not play a huge role in this book although the depiction of an ageing man reflecting on his life, his sadnesses and his joys is thoughtful and drew me into his world. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of the life of Sejer’s much-loved grandson with the life of Johnny, the perpetrator of the vicious pranks, and the way it demonstrated the difference that love can make to lives that start out badly. But the real stars of this book are the various victims of Johnny’s pranks who all feel like very realistic characters to me and their range of reactions to their treatment is fascinating. You might be pleased to know that at least one, a young girl, is not cowed or unduly traumatised by what happens to her which probably says something about the resilience of the young (at least those who are loved and wanted).

THE CALLER is beautifully written (for which at least some of the credit must go to translator K.E. Semmel), full of compelling characters, has a deliciously ambiguous ending and is a superb study of the fragility of life. As Sejer muses towards the end of the novel when one of the pranks results in an unexpected and horrific outcome: What life has in store for some of us. Imagine if we knew.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE CALLER has been reviewed at Euro Crime, Petrona and Yet Another Crime Fiction BLog

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My rating 5/5
Translator K.E. Semmel
Publisher Harvill Secker [2011]
ISBN/ASIN 9781846553936
Length 296 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #8 in the Inspector Sejer series to have been translated into English.
Source I borrowed it from the library
Creative Commons Licence
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 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: AGENT 6 by Tom Rob Smith

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AGENT 6 is the somewhat epic conclusion to Tom Rob Smith’s trilogy featuring MGB agent turned human being Leo Demidov. It takes readers from 1950 to 1980 and from Russia to America to Afghanistan in something that feels less like a thriller than it does a haphazard tour through the lowlights of Soviet-era history. As the book opens we’re in 1950 which is earlier than the action in the first two books and we see Leo at the height of his powers as a security agent who very much believes in the value of his role to the country he loves. He has been assigned a new agent to mentor and there are chilling scenes in which Leo teaches his protegé what to look for in a person’s diary in order to discern how much harm that person could potentially be to the State (the premise being that no one with a diary could be entirely harmless). Leo is also asked to assist with arrangements for the visit to Russia of American singer Jesse Austin (loosely modelled on Paul Robeson), one of the few western artists permitted to visit the country and only because of his professed belief in and support for communism. The visit provides an opportunity for Leo to properly meet Raisa, a woman he spoke to briefly on the train one day and the person who will become his wife.

This action ends rather abruptly and we jump forward 15 years to the period following Leo’s downfall and departure from government service (all of which is covered in the other two books in the set, CHILD 44 and THE SECRET SPEECH). Leo is disillusioned but seems happy enough; his loss of faith in the communist state is made up for by having his family around him. However that family, his wife Raisa and adopted daughters Elena and Zoya, are soon off on a state-sponsored trip to New York where the girls are to be part of a joint choir with American children at the United Nations. Many of the reviews and synopses I’ve seen describe subsequent events to this but I think that spoils things so shall stop here, except to say that members of the Russian delegation get in touch with their supporter Jesse Austin and the trip does not end as expected.

I almost didn’t bother reading this book after the disappointment which was its predecessor but I had an urge to complete the trilogy and did wonder if Smith had managed to recreate any of the magic of his first book, CHILD 44, which I can still remember passages from three years after reading it. In the end I am glad I read AGENT 6 because it washed away the distaste left behind by the ludicrous second novel, even if it didn’t manage to achieve the particular magic of that first novel.

The biggest difference between CHILD 44 and the subsequent books is that CHILD 44 essentially told a single, coherent story and almost as a by-product of that demonstrated broader points about the awfulness of a totalitarian regime, the lengths people will go to when they are pushed too far and the misery that can accompany seriously having to question one’s long-held beliefs. The story itself is quite intimate and allows the reader to be drawn into Leo’s world and develop a sense of the changes he is experiencing. The remaining books in the trilogy largely lacked this layer of narrative and so, for me, the power of exploring the broader issues was dissipated as we jumped hither and thither through Soviet history without any real focus. In AGENT 6 though there is an echo of the first book’s intimacy in the thread that depicts the life of Jesse Austin and his fall from grace, orchestrated by an unforgiving government. Austin’s dignity and his wife’s steadfast support of her husband and refusal to be bitter about all they lose were heart-achingly sad, especially when juxtaposed with the mean-spirited and cynical people attempting to use the Austin’s on both sides of the America versus communism fight.

For me the rest of the book is less successful, being too disjointed and broad to be fully engaging. The large chunk that takes place in Afghanistan, where Leo is forced once again to work for the State, though this time with his eyes open, was too long-winded. It felt to me like the author was trying way too hard to highlight the parallels between the Soviet attempt to conquer the country and the current war being fought there by America and its allies. This section of the book did introduce someone who should have been a compelling and sympathetic character but she didn’t quite work for me and in the end I don’t think she or the entire section added much to this book or the trilogy overall.

Like most readers I’m sure I spent most of the book wondering when the eponymous agent 6 would appear and then being quite disappointed when it finally happened but at least the ending of this book had less of a Hollywood feel than its predecessors. I do think Smith is a talented writer and even though I don’t think the ambition of this trilogy was evenly successful I’m glad to have read it and met some of the beautifully drawn characters. If you have read the other two books in the series I would definitely recommend you complete the picture with this one but if you’ve yet to start I’d just read CHILD 44 and leave it there.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I have reviewed CHILD 44 and THE SECRET SPEECH

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My rating 3/5
Narrator Gareth Armstrong
Publisher Simon & Schuster UK [2011]
ASIN B005KTRZHC (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 13 hours 33 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #3 of Leo Demidov trilogy
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
This work by
http://reactionstoreading.com
 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: CARTE BLANCHE by Carlo Lucarelli

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I have an overwhelming urge to make this a very short review, in keeping with the book which comes in at less than a hundred pages that contain any writing.

April 1945 must be in the running for most chaotic time of Italian political history (though it does have some stiff competition) as the Fascist regime is in its last days and its powerful supporters scramble to escape the country or distance themselves from the formerly powerful leaders. Amidst all this Commissario De Luca has transferred back to the ‘normal’ police from the military/political police and is tasked with finding the murderer of a wealthy playboy Vittorio Rehinard. Although wary of the political fallout from the investigation De Luca is promised he will have full cooperation but even so he spends at least as much time untangling the political mess surrounding the case as he does narrowing down the suspect pool.

What I should have been thinking about in the hour or so it took to read this novella was the problems faced by a basically good (?) man trying to do a difficult job when most people involved in the case have competing agendas. And for some of the time I did manage to focus on this aspect of the book. But for a lot of it I have to admit to getting sidetracked by wondering whether the author has it in for women. To be fair most of the characters of either gender in CARTE BLANCHE are pretty horrible but, to me, the author seemed to be making some kind of point with the fact that all the women in the book are evil temptresses or worthless functionaries and both kinds are universally treated with contempt by all and sundry (De Luca included).

There is certainly a cloying atmosphere created here and there is enough of interest to make me want to read the other two books in the trilogy. But for someone who has complained often about the padded length of much modern crime fiction I’m undoubtedly going to sound like a contrarian when I say that for me this book was too short. The loose ends and lack of character depth necessitated by the brevity left me, ultimately, not entirely satisfied.

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CARTE BLANCHE has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Petrona and The Game’s Afoot

I have reviewed the first book in another of Carlo Lucarelli’s series, ALMOST BLUE, which I liked a little more than this one.

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My rating 3/5
Translator Michael Reynolds
Publisher Europoa [This translation 2006, original edition 1990]
ISBN 9781933372150
Length 108 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in Commissario De Luca Trilogy
Source Borrowed from the library
Creative Commons Licence
This work by
http://reactionstoreading.com
 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Surrender by Donna Malane

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Diane Rowe finds people for a living. Whether it be for family members, PI firms, lawyers looking for witnesses, insurance companies, television shows or the cops Diane’s job is to find people who have gone missing. In the case that threads through SURRENDER some decades-old remains are found in a remote part of the Rimutakas, a mountain range on New Zealand’s North Island, and Diane is tasked with discovering who the person was.

But Diane has something else on her mind as the book opens. Her ex-husband Sean, a Wellington policeman, arrives at her house with the news that a fresh body has been found. It is the body of a lowlife called Snow, the man everyone thinks (but can’t prove) responsible for the murder of Diane’s younger sister Niki a year ago. As Snow has been murdered in the same way that Niki was it seems likely there is a connection but Diane seems unwilling, unable even, to allow the police investigation to take its course without getting involved herself.

Both stories open strongly and though they remain unconnected except by Diane’s involvement for the length of the book, Malane manages to switch back and forth between threads with ease; combining them into a snappily paced book with much to offer readers. The missing persons case proves to have several false starts and though the methods used to start narrowing down the possibilities are a little more mundane than depicted in TV shows like Without a Trace I found this aspect of the book fascinating. Diane’s dabbling in the investigation of Snow’s death, or to be more precise Snow’s life as it pertained to her sister, is equally absorbing. Again there are several points at which it seems things are resolved only to find that there is yet another twist in this satisfyingly complex tale.

Another strong element of the book is the character of Diane who narrates her story with an attractive mixture of humour, self-deprecation and introspection. She’s quite straight forward in taking responsibility for her marriage breakup, fully admitting that she was impossible to live with in the aftermath of her sister’s death, and this frankness lulls the reader into thinking that Diane is as self-aware as she will ever be. But as the book progresses and she learns more about her sister’s life Diane also learns more about herself and the ways in which her own behaviour might have failed her sister. The reflection that we often don’t know people as well as we think we do, even those closest to us, is a tough lesson but one most of us have to grapple with at some stage. Malane teased this aspect of the story out sensitively but without straying into maudlin territory and it’s all the more compelling for the restraint shown.

I always worry when I mention that a book has humour that people will think the whole thing a barrel of laughs so I’ll be clear and say this book has dark moments too. I don’t want to give spoilers but I can say that at one point Diane is personally endangered and attacked. The way she deals with the aftermath of this, though perhaps surprising for a procedural-y kind of story, had an air of authenticity and helped make the book a memorable one for me.

SURRENDER was the winner of the inaugural NZ Society of Authors award for best unpublished manuscript in 2010 and (for once!) I can see exactly what the judges were thinking in bestowing the prize. This is a very assured piece of writing that offers intelligence, humour and suspense in equal measure and there’s a strong sense of physical place, a hint of romance and a wonderful canine character. I look forward to more of all of this from Donna Malane.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

SURRENDER has been In The Spotlight at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist and has been reviewed at Crime Watch

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Publisher NZ Society of Authors [2010]
ISBN 9780473174149
Length 300 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #1 in the Diane Rowe series (hopefully there are more to come)
Source I received it as a gift from a fellow book lover in San Diego - thanks Margot, I’ll be sure to pass it on to another book lover
Creative Commons Licence
This work by
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 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Books of the Month – January 2012

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I struggled to choose a single book for the month, feeling like there were several books equally deserving of the title. But in the end I’ve decided on Sulari Gentill’s MILES OFF COURSE which I finished two weeks ago but which still puts a smile on my face when I think of it. There is something I particularly treasure about a book that makes me happy and this combination of whodunnit, exploration of a lesser-known part of our history and old-fashioned fun is an absolute delight.

I finished 12 books for the month and all the rest are  recommended reads (anything rated 3 or more)

The Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012

Two of the books were by Australian woman (counting towards the total of 10 I’m aiming for) and I managed two genres as well

I also kept up as best I could with what other challenge participants are saying about the challenge in these round-up posts

Other, non-review related posts this month

What about you…was January a good reading month? Did you have a favourite book? Or did you acquire anything you’re itching to read? Any issue you need to get off your chest?

If you want to see other people’s crime fiction picks of the month head over to Mysteries in Paradise for the Pick of the Month meme