Monthly Archives: August 2012

Review: A KILLING IN THE HILLS by Julia Keller

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As I remarked in a comment left at the first review I saw of this book it’s becoming clear that one of the reasons the newspapers I read are so full of underwhelming journalism these days is that all the best journalists have turned to writing crime fiction. And who can blame them? Whereas in the media they must try to satisfy a plethora of masters (owners, bosses, readers (and their subset – the vitriolic commenters on newspaper websites), advertisers) in crime fiction they can often tell stories that get to the very heart of things in a way that can be prevented in factual reporting. As the latest in a long line of journalists-turned-crime writers Julia Keller has hit the ground running.

A KILLING IN THE HILLS is, in many ways, quite breathtaking. It is ostensibly the story of the investigation into the shooting of three elderly men in a restaurant in the small (fictional) town of Acker’s Gap in West Virginia. But that’s really only a plot device (and not always a well conceived one) for an exploration of a rural community overwhelmed by poverty and all of its associated problems.

The human star of the book is Belfa (Bell) Elkins, prosecuting attorney for Raythune County and mother of 16 year old Carla who was in the restaurant at the time of the shooting. Bell’s had a tough life, perhaps best evidenced by the fact that being orphaned at age 10 probably wasn’t the worst thing that had occurred in her young life. However as a teenage mother she escaped the town with her high school sweetheart, went to law school and looked set for a high-flying career in Washington DC. But then she felt the pull of return to Acker’s Gap. With practical skills and empathy she thought she could make a real difference in her home town. When her husband remained resolutely uninterested in returning she and her daughter went alone. Bell believes that the single biggest positive influence she can have is to help crack down on the area’s flourishing drug industry, a task she tackles with the obsessiveness of a zealot. As well as giving her character some unlikeable traits (she can be fairly dismissive of anyone or anything that isn’t focussed on this which particularly impacts on her daughter) this makes Bell a target for the area’s drug bosses.

The non-human star in A KILLING IN THE HILLS is the setting. Acker’s Gap is described as “a shabby afterthought of a town tucked in the notch between two peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, like the last letter stuck in a mail slot after the post office has been closed down for keeps”. Its industries – a closed shoe factory and played out coal mines – are only memories and “weeds, wadded-up Doritos bags and crushed Camel packs are staging a hostile takeover” of deserted parking lots. But there is beauty too – especially in the late spring when “….the tree-lined valleys exploded in a green so vivid and yet so predictable that it was like a hallelujah shout at a tent revival. You always knew it was coming but it could still knock you clean off your feet.”

But setting is not only about physical space. It’s also about the people who live in it and the society they construct for themselves. And the community in this novel is hurting. With few jobs to offer and an economy that is barely functional there’s little wonder that many people, including the novel’s killer who is revealed early on, choose to become involved in the drug trade Bell hates so much. But even many of those who don’t stray into that territory are on a hiding to nowhere. Of one of the teenage girls we meet (whose name I won’t include in this quote to prevent spoiling a sub plot) Keller writes “The [girl's name] of this world didn’t go looking for trouble; they slid into it, like a cheap shack built on a muddy hillside that ends up in the creek. When the rain came – and the rain always came – down they went, scooting and sliding and making excuses and telling stupid lies as they rode the ooze to the bottom“.

With such imagery-laden writing Keller has made it easy for the reader to imagine themselves in the world she has created.

Writing some reviews I scrabble to find enough to highlight about a book to give anyone enough sense of the thing to make a decision about whether they think they’d like to read it. But with this book I feel I could go on forever. I haven’t talked about the sad sub plot that wends its way through the book to highlight that even the most obvious things are not always as they first appear. Or the way Bella’s past plays into the story. Or the many fine character portraits besides Bell’s. But you have to stop somewhere right?

The book is not without faults. The main plot really doesn’t work and the dénouement, with its revelation of the town’s Mr Big of the drug trade, borders on the laughably incredible. And I’d have liked the book to explore other ways of dealing with the drug problem than laws and long jail sentences (though I’ll concede this probably says more about my own beliefs than it does about the book). But despite these flaws I still think it’s a great book and heartily recommend it. The hints of future storylines are, for me, a welcome promise of more to come from this fine début novelist.

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A KILLING IN THE HILLS has been reviewed glowingly at Aunt Agatha’s, Criminal Element and Petrona (home of my fairy godmother) and also at Book’d Out where Shelleyrae liked the setting but was less taken with the other elements of the novel.

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My rating 4.5/5
Publisher Headline [2012]
ISBN 9780755392872
Length 370 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #1 in the Bell Elkins series
Source I received a copy from my fairy godmother

Can three baby rants make one adult rant?

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Either the world is good or I’ve been too busy to rant here lately but during this past week a couple of things have gotten under my skin. None of them are really annoying enough for a fully-powered rant all on their own but together they’ve allowed me to build up sufficient steam :)

The first is what I think of as the Americanisation of literature. I liked Toronto-based legal thriller THE GUILTY PLEA a lot but the edition I read had some very un-Canadian features. Firstly, on multiple occasions clunky bits of exposition were included to explain the differences between the Canadian and American legal systems. Occasionally this was done via the Canadian detective character explaining things to the American journalist character in an almost realistic fashion (though surely any journalist worth her salt who regularly operated on both sides of the border would know this stuff already) but at other times it seemed like sentences were inserted in the narrative virtually without context. Secondly, and even more annoyingly, Canadian characters talked in imperial measurements (e.g. some chap was referred to as weighing a certain number of pounds versus the kilograms that a Canadian would actually use in real life).

I can’t decide which explanation for this sad state of affairs is worse. On the one hand there might only be one edition of the book and everyone – including Canadians – is just supposed to accept a Canadian story that has an oddly American feel to it. Presumably if this is true then publishers and/or authors are deliberately inserting the American-specific language and exposition in any book they want to do well in the American market. The alternative possibility is that there is a separate edition of this book (and probably many others) for American readers which means, presumably, that American publishers think American readers are too stupid or too insular to be able to read a book in which lawyers can’t engage in a side-bar conversation while in court and judges don’t have gavels.

Either way this homogenisation is something I think we should all (American readers included) rail against. Surely one of the joys of reading books set in different places is learning a little something about different cultures, language and social norms. And if we come across an unfamiliar fact or a word there is virtually ubiquitous access to Google or Wikipedia these days for a quick bit of ‘research’.

Is it really unreasonable to want a book set in Canada (or Sweden or France or Australia) to read like it is set in Canada (or Sweden or France or Australia) rather than the 51st state of the bloody union?

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The second gripe is the woeful state of eBook formatting. You’d think I’d have been chuffed that Aussie author Andrew Nette’s début novel GHOST MONEY was not only great reading but also well formatted. And of course I was. I liked the crispness of the font, the spacing of the lines, the margin width that meant none of the text was affected by the tiny shadows formed on my eReader’s slightly inset screen. And I particularly liked the fact that the book was free from the wordsallrunningtogether and inexplicably

split lines that virtually every other eBook I’ve read is plagued by.

But after the first glow of wonderment had abated I started to get hot under the collar about why all my eBook reading experiences aren’t similarly perfect.

I’ve paid good money for some eBooks that my fifth grade English teacher would have knocked back with something along the lines of “no one will care about what you say if you can’t say it properly” or an acerbic “are the jam fingerprints an integral part of the story young lady?” (both are actual quotes from Mrs Gibbon, a recent immigrant to Australia from India when she taught me and though 35 years have since passed I still feel the influence of her insistence on presenting the written word with due reverence) (it is, after all, with a nod to Mrs Gibbon that I even proofread my text messages). It could be argued that the book’s publisher, Snubnose Press, only publishes eBooks so they ought to be good at it but how long should traditional publishers get a pass for? A year? A decade? For the term of their natural lives (which won’t be much longer if they don’t smarten up)? Perhaps in the interim Snubnose can make some extra dosh by offering to format the eBook versions of traditionally published books for those publishers who, seemingly, can’t be bothered.

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My last gripe concerns FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. Or rather the people who will not stop promoting it. I received three emails and one piece of physical junk mail in the last week alone offering deals on the trilogy. All from local (Australian) stores.

Book stores in general and Australian ones in particular have been bemoaning their lot in life in recent years. The incursion of online shopping and easy access to US and UK stores with their significantly lower prices has, undoubtedly, impacted the local market (for example the store where my book club used to meet closed its doors 2 weeks ago). But whenever they talk about fighting back they bang on about how they have something unique to offer readers, especially in the areas of curation and recommendation. THERE IS NOTHING SPECIAL ABOUT OFFERING ME A BOOK I CAN, LITERALLY, PICK UP OFF THE STREET.  For all its slightly worrying behemoth-ness Amazon’s recommendation algorithm has never offered FSoG up to me.

I am the kind of customer my local book stores need. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on books each year, unlike the occasional reader who will be tempted to enter the store just once for this Fifty Shades of Soft Porn that everyone is talking about. And I want a book store to make intelligent recommendations and offers. Instead of stuffing their newsletters and shelves with yet more copies of FSoG how about some Australian offerings? Each time I have bought a copy of Virginia Duigan’s THE PRECIPICE this year (one for me, two as gifts) I’ve had to order it in. It’s a new-release Australian novel that was long listed for this year’s Miles Franklin award and it’s f***ing brilliant. But there’s no room for even a handful of stock copies amongst the entire display of E.L.James’ tomes. If that’s all my local store is going to offer a reader like me then I will revert to buying online (something I’ve hardly done at all for the past 12 months).

Review: THE GUILTY PLEA by Robert Rotenberg

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On the morning Terrance Wyler’s divorce trial is due to start his body is found on the kitchen floor by his four-year old son’s nanny. He has been stabbed seven times and it isn’t long before suspicion turns to Wyler’s soon-to-be ex-wife Samantha. In fact the evidence piles up so quickly and convincingly that even Samantha’s own lawyer seriously considers all the angles of her pleading guilty despite her claim that she did not kill her husband.

Essentially this is a book with the deceptively simple goal of exploring the implications of someone pleading guilty to a crime they claim to be innocent of. With the evidence stacked against the accused is it better to take the certainty of pleading guilty to a lesser crime (manslaughter over murder for example) or to risk everything on being found innocent by a jury? It’s hard to imagine too many scenarios more frightening than the prospect of spending many years in prison for a crime you know yourself to be innocent of but how much faith would you put in the justice system to get it right?

All the players you would expect are present in this engaging and their back stories are teased out nicely: the victim and his family, the investigating detectives, the accused’s lawyer, the prosecutor, And of course the accused woman herself. All have secrets, fears and prejudices that impact their view of the case and in many cases their willingness to tell the whole truth. Rotenberg does a particularly nice job of making the reader empathise for those characters who are forced to reveal things about themselves they’d rather have kept secret.

But the real strength of the book is in its courtroom scenes where Rotenberg has obviously drawn on his own experiences to capture the genuine drama of the setting. He makes it clear that no amount of preparation can guarantee how things will play out in court as there are so many variables that even the best judges and lawyers cannot control. Readers are drawn into the ups and downs in mood and tension each day of the trial and the way cases swing to favour one side then the other based on a myriad of small details. The tone of voice used by a witness, the amount of research undertaken by an investigator, the decision to call a witness whose memory or presentation style might not work entirely in your side’s favour and a dozen other things will all play a role in the outcome of a trial like the one depicted here.

I picked up this book based mostly on the recommendation of Bill at Mysteries and More. I was intrigued because Bill is a practising Canadian lawyer who thought this Canadian legal thriller represented the legal system he works in intelligently. I like the idea of legal procedurals and thrillers but find many of them incredible so I was curious to see if I too would find this one believable. Happily I did and enjoyed it a lot though I’m not sure if the lesson the lawyer in Rotenberg wants readers to take away is that justice is all a bit of a crap shoot but that is the impression he left me with.

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My rating 3.5/5
Narrator Paul Hecht
Publisher Whole Story Audiobooks [2011]
ASIN B005QRCFFK
Length 11 hours 12 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #2 in the Old City Hall series
Source I bought it
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This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: IN THE DARKNESS by Karin Fossum

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This book tells two stories really. The first involves the discovery of the body of a man who has been missing for some months. Because the body is found in a river and due to the delay in finding it Sejer and his colleagues have little in the way of evidence or reliable witness statements to go on but they doggedly pursue the investigation. The second story is that of the person who was responsible for the man’s murder. The fact this culprit is revealed about half-way through the book but does not result in a lessening of suspense is a sign of Fossum’s superior writing talents. In a skilled kind of misdirection she makes the reader forget they now know who committed the crime and that, theoretically at least, there are no more secrets to reveal. Because there is suddenly the more interesting question of ‘why’ to be answered and Fossum does this by exploring the culprit’s past and inner life in an engaging way, ensuring resolution is not entirely comfortable for either Sejer or the reader.

It is due to the vagaries of the publishing industry, particularly with respect to the order in which foreign language series are translated into English, that I read the tenth novel in this series, THE CALLER, earlier this year while this first book of the series,published in its original Norwegian in 1995, has only just been released in English. However I found IN THE DARKNESS to be a very accomplished novel, regardless of the fact it is a début, and I enjoyed comparing the beginning of the series with the most recent work while my ailing memory could remember both. The biggest difference is, I think, that IN THE DARKNESS is more of a traditional police procedural than the latest novel in the series, though I wonder if I’d have noticed this if I’d read more of the intervening titles. But even here Fossum’s interest in and empathy for the people who commit crimes as well as those who solve them is plain to see.

The characters are thoughtfully drawn. Konrad Sejer is somewhat gently introduced as a middle-aged widower with an adult daughter whose son was adopted while she and her husband lived in Africa. The depth of his personality is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that his hobby is parachute jumping but only when the weather conditions are absolutely perfect. This defines a sort of deliberate cautiousness that seems to sneak into his approach to his work too. Although obviously responsible for upholding the law he is shown to have a capacity to see the other side of things and understand, if not condone, the actions led to the crimes committed here.

The culprit too is a nicely rounded character whom we see first as a normal participant in day-to-day life with the same struggles to be a good parent and caring child looking after an elderly father. When this character’s culpability becomes obvious and we are told the series of events which led to the point of murder it becomes much more difficult to see the horrid crime in the purely black and white terms of right and wrong. I’m always impressed when an author can achieve this, almost without me noticing.

In some ways I’m quite happy that I’ve still got quite a few of Fossum’s novels left to read (in completely the wrong order now) because she really is a terrific writer. I enjoy the unpredictable road she takes with her stories and the fact that although she shows an empathy for the perpetrators of crimes she doesn’t condescend to those characters or her readers along the way. And perhaps the thing I like best is that the thoughts and issues raised by this book, like the two others of hers that I’ve read, have continued to play across my mind long after I finished it.

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IN THE DARKNESS has been reviewed at Euro Crime and Petrona and a new to me blog called Finnish and Scandinavian Review (by a Finnish author living in England)

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My rating 4/5
Narrator David Rintoul
Translator James Anderson
Publisher Random House Audiobooks [2012]
ASIN B008K7SOPI
Length 8 hours 49 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 in the Inspector Sejer series
Source I bought it
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Review: PIERCED by Thomas Enger

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Taking place soon after the end of BURNED this second novel from Norwegian journalist Thomas Enger is a welcome addition to the series; managing to continue the good traits noticeable in the first book while controlling the wildness of plot that marred the debut a little for me. PIERCED’s protagonist is Henning Juul, a journalist for an online publication (just like his creator once was) whose only son was killed in a house fire two years earlier. Juul is far from recovered from this trauma, either physically or emotionally. He is contacted by Tore Pulli, a prison inmate who claims to be innocent and is prepared to exchange knowledge of what happened the night of the fire that killed Juul’s son in return for Juul’s investigation into the murder Pulli has been convicted of. Blaming himself for his son’s death Juul cannot refuse to become involved in the hope of learning something about the events surrounding his son’s death.

Juul is a great character; not entirely likeable but totally believable. His struggles with guilt over his son’s death and the physical and mental problems resulting from only just having survived the fire himself are very realistic. But though this is a constant presence in the character’s life Juul does get on with some semblance of a normal life, in particular his work (though this is a bit sad if you are the sort of person who has ever admired journalism as a profession). A key aspect of his character development from the first book is that here his personal relationships, notably with his ex-wife and the journalist she is now in a relationship with, are far more mature and nuanced.

There are other very well drawn characters too. There’s a television cameraman who gets caught up in the case surrounding Tore Pulli in a most terrifying way and whose life spirals out of control rather rapidly as a result. Enger tugs at reader’s emotions with this character’s tribulations but there’s nothing saccharine about the way this is done. I loved the way this thread forced me to ponder what I would do in the given circumstances even though I was a little uncomfortable with my conclusions.

The story in PIERCED is complicated but overall it is more restrained than that of its predecessor and is much more successful at combining the investigative and thriller elements of the plot. The investigation into the murder that  Tore Pulli was convicted of is quite fascinating, involving the shady end of the fitness industry and associated minor celebrities. And the long-running back story of Juul’s son’s death does not overwhelm the book or threaten to become on of those ‘oh we’re back to this again’ devices that feel like the crutch of lazy writers. The reader does get a sense of real development in this thread and it’s definitely a motivation to eagerly await the next instalment.

I think you could read this ably translated novel without having read the first but, even though I thought the plot of BURNED a little outrageous, I’d recommend you start at the beginning before moving onto this book. What are you waiting for?

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PIERCED has been reviewed at Crimepieces and Petrona

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My rating 4/5
Translator Charlotte Barslund
Publisher Faber and Faber [2012]
ISBN 9780571272471
Length 399 pages
Format eBook (kindle)
Book Series #2 in the Henning Juul series
Source I bought it

Book vs Adaptation: Murder on the Orient Express

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For me MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS and its several adaptations offer a fine example of the spectrum of approaches that adaptors take when choosing to tell a story that has already been told. On one end of that spectrum is the faithful recreation of all a book’s main plot and character elements and on the other end is something which takes only a couple of elements from the source material – a key character or a setting – but takes the story in new directions, sometimes almost unrecognisable from that source..

The book

Vying for status as Christie’s best known novel, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS was released in 1934 to fairly wide acclaim. It’s a kind of mobile country house mystery really, telling the relatively simple tale of a luxury train journey across Europe during which a man is killed during the night. The suspect pool consists of a single train carriage’s staff and passengers. Working out whodunnit falls to Hercule Poirot and his first real clue is that the murdered man was not who he claimed to be. In a series of interviews and observations Poirot builds up a solid case against a culprit which I can remember astonished me when I first read the book many years ago. While the denouement might might be considered obvious these days I think that really is only because the intriguing plot has had many imitators over the years. And in addition to its clever plot the book explores the very notion of justice, a concept that is, or should be, at the heart of all crime fiction.

The adaptations

One For many the 1974 adaptation of the book, with Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and an all-star ensemble cast, is the definitive adaptation of this story and indeed Agatha Christie’s novels in general, achieving both popular acclaim and critical success in the form of an Academy Award win for Lauren Bacall (as Mrs Hubbard) and another 5 nominations in other categories. While it must leave out some material due to length considerations it is almost slavishly faithful to its source material in terms of significant plot developments, characters and dialogue (though a few names and minor details are altered for reasons that I’ve never quite understood).But if you have read the book when you see the train and its passengers for the first time they are almost familiar.

For me though there’s one giant gap in this faithfulness in the form of the depiction of Poirot. I’m not sure if the fault lies with Finney or Sidney Lumet (the film’s much-feted Director) but the Belgian detective comes across here with a near-slapstick sensibility – more akin to an Inspector Clueseau-style caricature than anything resembling Christie’s original creation. Even his moustaches are all wrong. I’ve no problem with someone making a Pink Panther version of the story but in such an instance I’d expect to see a whole comedic movie not a lone comic character amidst a dramatic cast as was the case here. Personally I think the rest of the cast all overact a bit too but I suppose that’s what happens when everyone’s a star in their own right.

Two: One of the familiar ways to add a twist to an adaptation is to set an old story in a modern setting. Enter a 2001 made-for-TV movie called AGATHA CHRISTIE’S MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS starring Alfred Molina as Poirot. This version opens with Poirot at the end of a denouement for an unrelated case in an Istanbul nightclub owned by a his love-interest (a beautiful;l jewel thief) who he then proceeds to moon over from afar for the rest of the film. If that hasn’t made all the Christie afficionados groan in horror I’m sure the rest of the story would do.

I am actually quite partial to modernisations but it is not nearly as easy as it might appear to do the job well. It’s not, as the makers of this debacle seemed to assume, enough to change the date on a calendar in the background and shove a few bits of modern technology into the characters’ hands (especially not when your budget is so low that an ab roller constitutes cutting edge new millennium technology). When modernising a classic a lot of thought must be given to how to make allowances for things that would have been perfectly understandable in the original setting but do not translate to the modern environment. It is perfectly understandable for example that people on a train stuck in remote Yugoslavia in the middle of a blizzard in the 1930′s would not be able to contact the authorities but that scenario is far less credible when a train is stopped by six papier-mache ‘rocks’ and a few sticks of firewood on a balmy evening in 2001. Lots of original details appear to have been changed for no reason, though perhaps reducing the suspect pool from its original (and numerically significant 12 people) had something to do with budgetary constraints.

Three: The long-running Agatha Christie’s Poirot TV series featuring David Suchet as Poirot waited until season 12 to tackle MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. Although set at the correct time period, starring the man almost universally acknowledged as the definitive Poirot and incorporating the main plot points of the original this version of the story does depart significantly from the source material in a way that is controversial amongst Christie’s fans.

The opening itself is quite different from the book’s as Poirot’s evidence against a soldier leads to the man’s suicide and Poirot then witnesses a woman’s stoning on the streets of Istanbul before making his way to the train. From there the original plot is loosely followed but the focus in this version is less on the mechanics of who dropped the hanky and other vital clues and more on the reasons for people’s behaviour. Probably the most controversial aspect of this adaptation is that Poirot is shown struggling emotionally, even turning to his Catholicism to help him decide what action to take once he has determined who the murderer is.

The winner?

I’m not convinced that any of the adaptations of Christie’s classic tale are better than her book but, for me, the last one comes closest. It is certainly my favourite of the three films though there is a difference between something being a good film and it being a good adaptation. But Christie liked to play with new techniques of storytelling and she did adapt her style over her many years of writing to keep up with the trends that audiences were interested in. These days crime fiction audiences are interested in why a thing was done as well as in who done it. This adaptation delves into why the crime was committed and also how a person with such a strong tradition of following the law as Poirot has might come to grips with what is a pretty major ripping up of his rule book. I can’t help but think if Christie were writing today she’d have adapted her style to the modern interest in the inner lives of characters and a more emotion-driven form of storytelling.

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Book vs Adaptation is an irregular series of posts stemming from the fact that sometimes I’m too tired to read and so turn to DVDs and downloads (all legal I assure you, I am far too terrified of prison to turn to channel bittorrent). If there’s an adaptation you think I should look out for do let me know. All my posts in this series are available on their own page.

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Books of the Month – July 2012

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I’m finding it difficult to believe that 2012 is more than half over, not least because I’m reading less than I have in some years. However, July proved to be a terrific month in terms of quality, with three books achieving 4.5 out of 5 stars on my personal scale. They are all so different and so good that I have decided not to choose between them for my pick of the month. In reading order they are

Liza Marklund’s LAST WILL sees journalist Annika Bengtzon act as an eye witness to the assassination of a Nobel Prize winner. When she is banned from disclosing or publishing anything she saw her boss forces her to take leave and she continues to investigate the case unofficially. It is an above average combination of criminal investigation, exploration of intriguing political themes (including the cut-throat world of medical research and the unintended consequences resulting from the increases in security measures worldwide that followed the September 11 2001 attacks in the US) and salient observation on modern domestic life.

Geoffrey McGeachin’s BLACKWATTLE CREEK is the second historical crime novel to feature Charlie Berlin, a policeman in post WWII Australia who is still recovering from his experiences as a pilot and POW during the war. The book starts innocently enough with Charlie being asked by his wife Rebecca to look into something odd that happened to a friend of hers. The can of worms that Berlin subsequently opens when he starts looking into practices at a local funeral home turns out to be dangerous and quite horrifying. This book has great historical detail, absorbing characters and is an absolute ripper of a yarn. I think it’s better than the excellent first book in the series (which won last year’s Ned Kelly Award for best fiction).

Sulari Gentill’s PAVING THE NEW ROAD takes series characters Rowly Sinclair and his friends from the relative safety of 1930′s Australia to a much less secure Germany. Rowly has been tasked with preventing an Australian politician from becoming too en-meshed with European fascists and bringing their beliefs and practices back to Australia. Rowly and the gang investigate the death of the spy who preceded them to Germany in addition to becoming embroiled in several incidents indicative of the changes taking place in the country as the Nazi party increases its power. It is a superb example of the historical crime genre with wonderful characters, a truly suspenseful story and an enveloping sense of time and place.

Other books I read during the month that I would recommend are

My non review posts for July included

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

Review: THE BLACK ECHO by Michael Connelly

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A recent post at the excellent crime fiction blog Confessions of a Mystery Novelist made me realise I have read a paltry amount of crime fiction set in Los Angeles, despite it being the place outside my home country I have visited most often due to having family who live there. Another blogging friend whose tastes are eerily similar to mine raves about Michael Connelly so when I spied a sale at my favourite audio book source I figured it was time to start at the beginning of Connelly’s Harry Bosch series.

Although the first book to feature Hieronymous “Harry” Bosch Harry is no spring chicken when we first meet him. He’s 40 and has had a long, often difficult career in the LAPD after a stint as a soldier in Vietnam. As this book opens a body, presumably that of a junkie, is found inside a drainage pipe just off the city’s infamous Mullholland Drive and Bosch, recently demoted from a more prestigious Unit, gets the weekend callout. Somewhat incredibly he recognises the dead man as Billy Meadows, a fellow ‘tunnel rat’ from his time in Vietnam. Although no one else is terribly interested in what (or who) killed Meadows Bosch fights to have the case taken seriously. The death is proven to have been murder and Bosch links it to an open FBI investigation which is when the case really heats up with Bosch teaming up with an FBI Agent and linking the case to Meadows’ time in Vietnam.

The exceptional aspect of this book for me was its setting. The Los Angeles of the early 90′s is depicted as vast in size and a place where you need serious money to acquire life’s comforts. The police force that Harry Bosch works within is reeling from recent corruption and racial violence scandals and most of his fellow cops have multiple jobs just to stay afloat financially. Connelly has done an equally good job of setting the scene that Meadows and Bosch himself experienced during their time in Vietnam…this is done in an understated way that is the more powerful for not going over the top.

The other elements of THE BLACK ECHO were, for me at least, average. Not great, not bad but not remarkable. The story is a good one that did keep my attention, especially as it started looking into the crime of bank robbery which is not something you see a lot of in crime fiction and the way the investigation unfolded was compelling. However it is full of coincidences and contrivances and they don’t all work.

The characterisation is really limited to Harry and I’m afraid he did feel a bit like a collection of clichés rather than a fully rounded individual. Orphaned as a boy due to the murder of his mother, traumatized by war time experiences, has trouble with authority figures (and for the most part these run-ins appear to be for no reason at all that I could discern), is a loner whose only interests outside work are drinking beer, smoking and listening to jazz music (though at least he has been given a reason for the jazz obsession). I didn’t like or dislike him as nothing really stood out about him for me.

Narrated to me nicely by Dick Hill the book engaged me enough to read (or listen to) the second in the series but I’m not sure I can understand what all the fuss is about Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch just yet. However as the sale that scored me this book was a 3 for 2 deal on series there are two more books from the series waiting on my iPod in which Connelly, or Bosch, can earn a more permanent spot on my reading calendar.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3/5
Narrator Dick Hill
Publisher Brilliance Audio [this edition 2006, original edition 1992]
ASIN B002VACGL8
Length 13 hours 17 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #1 in Harry Bosch series
Source I bought it
Creative Commons Licence
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